konane's Blog

"Exposing ACORN: Introducing James O’Keefe

"MIssing" mostly from Latin America

Source Powerlineblog.com

September 10, 2009 Posted by Paul at 8:30 AM

"Last night, Scott wrote about "Obama's missing millions." These are the 16 million people who were included when President Obama said last month that 46 million Americans lack health coverage but excluded when, in his speech to Congress, Obama lowered the number to 30 million.

It seems clear that most of these missing millions (9.6 milllion, in fact) are non-citizens, and, in most of these cases, illegal immigrants. The remainder, I assume, are people who are enrolled in Medicaid or S-CHIP but didn't tell the census taker. This is the so-called "Medicaid undercount," discussed here.

So Obama counted non-citizens as "Americans [who] don't have health coverage" in his Portsmouth, New Hampshire speech when he wanted to inflate the number of uninsured Americans so as to persuade us that there's an enormous crisis. He then discounted them when the charge that Democrats will insure illegal aliens gained traction.

Obama and his supporters want to call this charge a lie, but the "lie" begins to look true when illegal immigrants are included among those whose situation the legislation is designed to remedy -- "Americans" who don't have health coverage. The "lie" is, in fact, substantially true because Democrats have defeated all efforts to include an enforcement mechanism that would prevent illegal aliens from being covered.

Stated more concisely, in order to make his opponents out to be lying, our slippery president must now abandon his prior false statement."

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/09/024480.php

________

"Obama's missing millions

Source Powerlineblog.com

September 9, 2009 Posted by Scott at 8:39 PM

"Only last month In Portsmouth, New Hampshire, President Obama declared: "I don't have to explain to you that nearly 46 million Americans don't have health insurance coverage today. In the wealthiest nation on Earth, 46 million of our fellow citizens have no coverage."

Tonight Obama declared that "[t]here are now more than 30 million American citizens who cannot get coverage.he number of our fellow citizens who have no coverage is 30 million."

These statements can be reconciled. "Nearly 46 million" is "more than 30 million[.]" But this is obviously not what Obama meant. It would be a mistake to reconcile the statements in this way. In any event, both numbers are bogus. It would be a mistake to take either of them seriously.

What can we learn from the malleable, missing millions who provide the pretext for Obama's proposed takeover of the health care system? He willfully misrepresents the magnitude of the problem. He is not to be trusted with numbers. He does not fear being called out on the obvious discrepancies on the fundamental rationale he presents to support his program, whatever it is.

He will say whatever he deems necessary to seek to persuade his audience. A man who refuses to get this issue right cannot be trusted with the more important facts, figures and propositions with which his speech was larded.

UPDATE: Byron York: "Obama: I used to say 47 million uninsured. Now, it's 30 million." At this rate, if we can wait until November, the problem may resolve itself.

JOHN adds: The number of "uninsured" who have suddenly disappeared amount to three and a half times the population of the State of Minnesota. You get the feeling that Barack Obama is a person to whom numbers don't mean much. He's not someone you would put in charge of a business."

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/09/024477.php

From Powerlineblog.com, attorneys who know how to read and interpret the Obama-care bill, also how to point by point separate BS from fact in Obama's speeches.

____________

"From a policy standpoint, there was nothing new in President Obama's speech to a joint session of Congress tonight. It can only be assessed, therefore, in political terms. I read the transcript rather than watching it, but the speech struck me as reasonably effective. I assume the delivery was standard Obama--smooth, generally flat, occasionally a bit whiny.

One striking aspect of the speech was that Obama kept talking about the "plan" that he "announced" tonight--but there is no plan; not in writing, anyway. Not unless Obama meant Nancy Pelosi's House bill, but he didn't seem to, since he made a point of saying that details remain to be filled in, referred to work still going on in committee, and said that "his plan" is open to alternatives to the public option. This vagueness gives him a sort of deniability: what he was describing was more his concept of the qualities health care legislation should have, rather than a specific bill. Whether that was politically smart remains to be seen. So far, vagueness hasn't seemed to be the President's friend on this issue.

Here are some excerpts from the speech that I thought were noteworthy:

Instead of honest debate, we have seen scare tactics.

Then, a few minutes later:

Everyone in this room knows what will happen if we do nothing. Our deficit will grow. More families will go bankrupt. More businesses will close. More Americans will lose their coverage when they are sick and need it most. And more will die as a result.

By far the biggest scaremonger on this issue has been Obama himself.

Well the time for bickering is over. The time for games has passed.

I'm not sure whether Obama and his handlers understand how this sort of talk grates on those of us who are not liberal Democrats (a large majority of the country). Debating public policy issues is not "bickering." Disagreeing with a proposal to radically change one of the largest sectors of our economy is not a "game." This kind of gratuitous insult--something we never heard from President Bush, for example--is one of the reasons why many consider Obama to be mean-spirited.

I assume most people noticed how, in tonight's speech, Obama's assurance that we will not lose our present insurance coverage has been scaled back. This was after thousands of critics pointed out that under the Democrats' proposals, many people (more than 100 million according to some estimates) will in fact lose the insurance coverage they now have:

[I]f you are among the hundreds of millions of Americans who already have health insurance through your job, Medicare, Medicaid, or the VA, nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have. Let me repeat this: nothing in our plan requires you to change what you have.

That's true, of course. No one ever said it did. What the Democrats' plan does do, however, is give employers the opportunity and, depending on pricing, the incentive to terminate their employees' plans and dump them into the public system. And whether private insurance companies can compete with the public "option" depends on whether Obama keeps his pledge that the public program won't be subsidized.

[I]nsurance companies will be required to cover, with no extra charge, routine checkups and preventive care, like mammograms and colonoscopies - because there's no reason we shouldn't be catching diseases like breast cancer and colon cancer before they get worse.

How does that work? Better coverage for more people at less cost. Does anyone actually believe that is possible? I don't think so.

Obama described his plan for an insurance exchange where those who are not part of a larger plan will be able to buy coverage. He then added:

This exchange will take effect in four years, which will give us time to do it right.

But wait! Aren't people dying? The Democrats tried to ram their bill through Congress before the August recess, with essentially no debate and with virtually no one having read it. Their theory was that we are facing such a dire emergency that there is not a moment to lose. If, in fact, we have four years to spare, could we maybe stop trying to cram the bill down Americans' throats?

Now, even if we provide these affordable options, there may be those - particularly the young and healthy - who still want to take the risk and go without coverage.

That's true, of course. There are millions of people, mostly young and single, who choose not to buy health insurance or take a job where compensation comes largely in the form of benefits (same thing) because they have made a rational decision that for them, health insurance isn't worth the money. As Americans, they should have that right. The problem is that, in the unlikely event they do get sick, they know they will be treated anyway.

That's why under my plan, individuals will be required to carry basic health insurance - just as most states require you to carry auto insurance.

Traditionally, it was liability insurance that drivers were required to carry, not to protect themselves, but to protect others from their possible negligence. It is only because of no-fault laws that most states now require drivers to carry insurance that includes first-party coverage. There are some similarities, but many differences, between automobile and health insurance.

[U]nless everybody does their part, many of the insurance reforms we seek - especially requiring insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions - just can't be achieved.

This is a key point that many will overlook. One of the central purposes of nearly all health care "reform" proposals is to force young people into the system to help pay older peoples' bills. Why is it that you can't force insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions--i.e., "insure" against something that has already happened, a logical impossibility--unless you force young people to "do their part"? Insurance companies, and, eventually, the government as single payer, need young people to pay premiums that far exceed any actual risk to subsidize the known losses that will come from being forced to "insure" people whose medical conditions are not risks but certainties.

Consider the analogy to life insurance: could a dying, 90-year-old person expect an insurance company to issue him a million dollar life insurance policy? Maybe, but it would cost close to a million dollars. Why can life insurance companies sell policies at rates that people consider reasonable? Only because they are insuring against premature death, and the insured has been paying premiums for many years, during most of which time there was little risk of his dying. The same principle applies, pretty closely, to health insurance.

Some of people's concerns have grown out of bogus claims spread by those whose only agenda is to kill reform at any cost. The best example is the claim, made not just by radio and cable talk show hosts, but prominent politicians, that we plan to set up panels of bureaucrats with the power to kill off senior citizens. Such a charge would be laughable if it weren't so cynical and irresponsible. It is a lie, plain and simple.

No, it isn't. The Democrats' bill doesn't call the agencies it sets up "death panels," it says they will decide on "best practices." But any socialized medicine scheme saves money by rationing care. Who gets shorted, the politically powerful? No, of course not; the elderly and those who are otherwise helpless. In the United Kingdom, the death panel goes by the Orwellian acronym "NICE."

There are also those who claim that our reform effort will insure illegal immigrants. This, too, is false - the reforms I'm proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally.

This is an outright lie, as Congressman Joe Wilson couldn't resist blurting out during Obama's speech. The Democrats defeated Republican-sponsored amendments that would have attempted, at least, to prevent illegals from being treated under the House version of Obama's plan. I think everyone expects that if Obamacare becomes law, illegals will receive benefits on an equal basis with citizens.

And one more misunderstanding I want to clear up - under our plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions, and federal conscience laws will remain in place.

More oily language from the master of the half-truth. Under Obama's plan, it won't be necessary for federal dollars to fund abortions, at least not until socialized medicine actually arrives. Insurance dollars will fund abortions. The House bill sets up a nameless, unaccountable committee that will decide what coverages must be included in any approved private insurance policy. Those required coverages, you can be 100 percent certain, will include the costs of abortions. But Obama will take no responsibility; those are just "best practices."

This seems to me to be the most critical moment in Obama's speech:

My guiding principle is, and always has been, that consumers do better when there is choice and competition. Unfortunately, in 34 states, 75% of the insurance market is controlled by five or fewer companies. In Alabama, almost 90% is controlled by just one company. Without competition, the price of insurance goes up and the quality goes down.

In fact, Obama and Congressional Democrats have zero interest in increasing choice and competition. If they did, there is an easy solution. There are over 1,000 health insurance companies in the United States; why do you think it is that in Alabama, one company has 90 percent of the business? It is because there are major legal obstacles to insurance companies operating across state lines. State legislatures, and lots of the companies, like it this way. Competition is hard. But if Obama really wanted to expand "choice and competition" in health care, all he would have to do is go along with the Republican proposal to allow health insurance companies to sell on a national basis. Like, say, computer companies, beer companies, automobile companies, law firms, and pretty much everyone else. The Democrats' refusal to allow existing health insurance companies to compete against each other nationwide, more than anything else, puts the lie to their nonsense about "choice and competition."

Now, I have no interest in putting insurance companies out of business.

Really? We've all seen the YouTube video where Obama says that under his plan, private health insurance will be driven into extinction over a period of ten to twenty years. Has he changed his mind? When? Why? Does President Obama fail to understand the ubiquity of YouTube? Does he not understand that many millions of Americans consider him a liar when he says things like this?

President Obama talked about the "public option" and assured listeners that it would not be subsidized by the government:

I have insisted that like any private insurance company, the public insurance option would have to be self-sufficient and rely on the premiums it collects. But by avoiding some of the overhead that gets eaten up at private companies by profits, excessive administrative costs and executive salaries, it could provide a good deal for consumers.

Is it churlish to point out that profits are not overhead? It might be if this were just a slip of the tongue on the stump. But this was a speech that was carefully crafted by Obama and his top advisers. They really do not know the first thing about business or economics. So why should we put them in charge of our economy?

I want to speak directly to America's seniors for a moment, because Medicare is another issue that's been subjected to demagoguery and distortion during the course of this debate.

Actually, the administration has said that around half the cost of the plan, $500 billion, would be paid for by cuts in Medicare. So it isn't exactly "demagoguery and distortion" to suggest that there might be cuts in Medicare.

[N]ot a dollar of the Medicare trust fund will be used to pay for this plan.

I should hope not, since there isn't any Medicare trust fund, just like there isn't any Social Security trust fund.

The only thing this plan would eliminate is the hundreds of billions of dollars in waste and fraud...Reducing the waste and inefficiency in Medicare and Medicaid will pay for most of this plan.

But wait! If we can identify hundreds of billions of dollars in waste and fraud in Medicare and Medicaid and we know how to eliminate it, why haven't we done so already? Why don't we do so--right now!--regardless of the administration's highly controversial health care bill?

There is no possible answer to these questions. The Obama plan--whatever it is, once reduced to writing--depends for most of its financing on the bare assertion that we are currently wasting hundreds of billions of dollars, and that we will stop wasting that money only if taxpayers knuckle under to Obamacare.

This was not, to put it kindly, a speech that was directed at thinking people."

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/09/024478.php

Video links cited in article below if you care to watch .... explicit language warning!

ACORN Baltimore Prostitution Investigation Part I

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtTnizEnC1U

ACORN Baltimore Prostitution Investigation Part II

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNYU9PamIZk

_____________________

"ACORN Officials Videotaped Telling 'Pimp,' 'Prostitute' How to Lie to IRS

"Officials with the controversial community organizing group ACORN were secretly videotaped offering to assist two individuals posing as a pimp and a prostitute, encouraging them to lie to the Internal Revenue Service and providing guidance on how to claim underage girls from South America as dependents.

The videotape was made public Thursday on

 BigGovernment.com, a political blog launched by Andrew Breitbart as a companion site to his BigHollywood.breitbart.com blog.

In the videotape, made on July 24, James O'Keefe, a 25-year-old independent filmmaker, posed as a pimp with a 20-year-old woman named "Kenya" who posed as a prostitute while visiting ACORN's office in Baltimore. The couple told ACORN staffers they wanted to secure housing where the woman could continue to maintain a prostitution business.

ACORN — the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now — bills itself as the nation's largest community of low- and moderate-income families "working together for social justice and stronger communities," according to its Web site. The organization has been accused by Republicans and conservative activists with fraud in voter registration drives around the country and has been under fire since last year for its support of President Obama and for its planned participation in next year's census.

A spokesman for ACORN, Scott Levenson, when asked to comment on the videotape, said: "The portrayal is false and defamatory and an attempt at gotcha journalism. This film crew tried to pull this sham at other offices and failed. ACORN wants to see the full video before commenting further."

On the videotape, "Kenya" can be seen telling an ACORN staffer that she earns roughly $8,000 a month. The ACORN employee then suggests to "Kenya" that ACORN could submit a tax return for 2008 showing that she made $9,600 for the entire year — instead of $96,000 — and that ACORN would charge "Kenya" $50 instead of the usual $150 fee for preparing her taxes.

ACORN offers tax preparation and benefits application services free of charge during tax season; it charges nominal fees during non-tax season.

The ACORN staffer can also be seen suggesting that the prostitute list her occupation as a freelance "performing artist."

"It's not dancing, trust me," the "pimp" says.

"But dancing is considered an art," the ACORN staffer replies. "[Exotic dancers] usually go under performing artists, or yeah, they usually go under performing arts, which will be what you are — a performing artist."

The "pimp" later says that he and "Kenya" plan to bring up to 13 "very young" girls from El Salvador to work as prostitutes. Although an ACORN staffer points out their plans are illegal, she also suggests that the girls can be claimed as dependents.

"What if they are going to be making money because they are performing tricks too?" the pimp says.

"If they making money and they are underage, then you shouldn't be letting anybody know anyway," the ACORN staffer says, and laughs. "It's illegal. So I am not hearing this, I am not hearing this. You talk too much. Don't give up no information you're not asked."

The "pimp" then asks ACORN staffers to "promise" not to discriminate against his sex worker because of "who she is and what she does," according to the audiotape.

"If we don't have the information, then how are we going to discriminate?" the ACORN staffer replies. "You see what I am saying?"

If the girls are under age 16, the ACORN staffer says on the tape, then they are not legally allowed to work in the state, regardless of what they do.

"So it's like they don't even exist?" "Kenya" asks.

"Exactly," the ACORN staffer replies. "It's like they don't even exist."

The staffer goes on to suggest that as many as three of the underage girls can be listed as dependents at the home, but a "flag" will be raised if as many as 13 are listed.

"You are gonna use three of them," the staffer says. "They are gonna be under 16, so you is eligible to get child tax credit and additional child tax credit."

The ACORN workers also appear to be promoting the group's services to the "pimp" and "Kenya."

A second ACORN employee can be heard on the audiotape suggesting that the couple join the organization for an annual cost of $120 prior to attending one of its first-time homebuyer seminars, which are underwritten with taxpayer funds.

Later, when the "pimp" asks what would happen if the organization is somehow connected to the scheme, the ACORN staffer replies, "First of all, it's not gonna damage us because we not gonna know. And with your girls, you tell them, 'Be careful.' Train them to keep their mouth shut."

"These girls are like 14, how can we trust them?" the pimp asks.

"Just be very, very careful," the ACORN staffer says. "Whatever you do, always keep your eyes in the back of your head."

Reached by FOX News, O'Keefe said he was "shocked" at the level of assistance provided by ACORN staffers.

"I was prepared for them to call the police, throw me out of the office and be hostile," he said. "Without hesitation, they helped me every way they could with evading taxes and setting me up with a brothel, with getting around federal tax laws — doing everything they could to help us. I was completely shocked."

House Republicans issued a report in July accusing ACORN of engaging in a scheme to use taxpayer money to support a partisan political agenda. California Rep. Darrell Issa, the top Republican on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, called for a criminal investigation into the group, which dismissed the report as a "partisan attack job."

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,548827,00.html

Highly informative legal opinion about government health care, as to what the bill will and won't do.

Took the liberty to copy Michael Connelly's credentials quoted from his site to show qualification for his legal opinions.

______

"MORE ABOUT THE HEALTH CARE BILLS

"How many times have we watched a movie about World War II and looked at the scene where a menacing Nazi soldier has stopped a citizen of an occupied country or even a German citizen and demanded to see the person’s “identity papers.” Failure to produce such papers would cause the person to be immediately arrested. I always felt good when I watched this because I knew that in my free country that couldn’t happen.

Yes, we have our driver’s license that you have to produce if you are stopped for a driving infraction and you may have to produce to write a check. However, if you choose not to drive you are not required to have one and you can get another form of identification to do something like cash a check. Yet, the fact is that you are not legally required to have either of these documents and if you do have them they can only contain a limited amount of information.

When I was practicing law I dealt with a situation where in the State of Louisiana you were required to provide your Social Security number to get a Driver’s License and it was also put on the license for everyone to see. I represented a client who had both privacy objections to this and religious objections. We won the case on the grounds that this requirement violated his constitutional rights. What made this particularly interesting was the fact that in support of our position I cited an opinion by a Court of Appeal Justice named Ruth Bader Ginsburg who is now one of the more liberal members of the Supreme Court.

Now, HB 3200 will mandate that everyone in the United States have a National Healthcare card that they will be required to produce to get medical treatment. This will be required whether they have private health insurance or are involved in the so-called public option. There are no real options, you must have this card and it can contain any information that the Obama administration requires. It will be the “identity papers” that so many totalitarian regimes are infamous for.

Of course, you may be thinking that this will no longer be a problem if the “public option” is removed from the bill. This has been a trial balloon floated by the Obama administration yet it really means nothing if the rest of the bill is adopted. The Congress will still be transferring unlimited power to the Executive Branch of Government and the Commissioner appointed by President Obama can still require a National Health Care identification card, still have access to your financial and medical records, and still fine you for having a plan unacceptable to the government. This will result in the ultimate destruction of private health insurance and the adoption of a public system of rationed health care totally controlled by the government.

I found it interesting that a week after I wrote my first blog questioning the constitutionality of House Bill 3200 Judge Andrew Napolitano on Fox News interviewed two Constitutional experts who also saw this as an unconstitutional action by the Congress. They pointed out that normally when this type of legislation is introduced in Congress the members of the House of Representatives or the Senate cite the provisions of the U.S. Constitution that authorize such legislation.

 This has not been the case in any of the Health Care Bills proposed. This is not a simple oversight on the part of the Congress. They know they don’t have Constitutional authority to do this, but they simply don’t care. They intend to do it anyway. I find this to be both supremely arrogant, and absolutely terrifying. If they succeed in this, then no provisions of the Constitution are safe from attack.

In fact, in future articles I will point out where other provisions of our Constitution that I consider sacred are being totally disregarded and under full scale assault by the Congress and the Obama administration. I repeat what I said in my previous article; this is not about health care. It is about our fundamental rights as free citizens of the United States."

"The Truth About the Health Care Bills

           "Well, I have done it! I have read the entire text of proposed House Bill 3200: The Affordable Health Care Choices Act of 2009. I studied it with particular emphasis from my area of expertise, constitutional law. I was frankly concerned that parts of the proposed law that were being discussed might be unconstitutional. What I found was far worse than what I had heard or expected.

            To begin with, much of what has been said about the law and its implications is in fact true, despite what the Democrats and the media are saying. The law does provide for rationing of health care, particularly where senior citizens and other classes of citizens are involved, free health care for illegal immigrants, free abortion services, and probably forced participation in abortions by members of the medical profession.

            The Bill will also eventually force private insurance companies out of business and put everyone into a government run system. All decisions about personal health care will ultimately be made by federal bureaucrats and most of them will not be health care professionals. Hospital admissions, payments to physicians, and allocations of necessary medical devices will be strictly controlled.

            However, as scary as all of that it, it just scratches the surface. In fact, I have concluded that this legislation really has no intention of providing affordable health care choices. Instead it is a convenient cover for the most massive transfer of power to the Executive Branch of government that has ever occurred, or even been contemplated. If this law or a similar one is adopted, major portions of the Constitution of the United States will effectively have been destroyed.

            The first thing to go will be the masterfully crafted balance of power between the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches of the U.S. Government. The Congress will be transferring to the Obama Administration authority in a number of different areas over the lives of the American people and the businesses they own. The irony is that the Congress doesn’t have any authority to legislate in most of those areas to begin with. I defy anyone to read the text of the U.S. Constitution and find any authority granted to the members of Congress to regulate health care.

            This legislation also provides for access by the appointees of the Obama administration of all of your personal healthcare information, your personal financial information, and the information of your employer, physician, and hospital. All of this is a direct violation of the specific provisions of the 4^th Amendment to the Constitution protecting against unreasonable searches and seizures. You can also forget about the right to privacy. That will have been legislated into oblivion regardless of what the 3^rd and 4^th Amendments may provide.

            If you decide not to have healthcare insurance or if you have private insurance that is not deemed “acceptable” to the “Health Choices Administrator” appointed by Obama there will be a tax imposed on you. It is called a “tax” instead of a fine because of the intent to avoid application of the due process clause of the 5^th Amendment. However, that doesn’t work because since there is nothing in the law that allows you to contest or appeal the imposition of the tax, it is definitely depriving someone of property without the “due process of law.

            So, there are three of those pesky amendments that the far left hate so much out the original ten in the Bill of Rights that are effectively nullified by this law. It doesn’t stop there though. The 9^th Amendment that provides: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people;” The 10^th Amendment states: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are preserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” Under the provisions of this piece of Congressional handiwork neither the people nor the states are going to have any rights or powers at all in many areas that once were theirs to control.

            I could write many more pages about this legislation, but I think you get the idea. This is not about health care; it is about seizing power and limiting rights. Article 6 of the Constitution requires the members of both houses of Congress to “be bound by oath or affirmation” to support the Constitution. If I was a member of Congress I would not be able to vote for this legislation or anything like it without feeling I was violating that sacred oath or affirmation. If I voted for it anyway I would hope the American people would hold me accountable.

            For those who might doubt the nature of this threat I suggest they consult the source. Here is a link to the Constitution: http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution_transcript.html

            And another to the Bill of Rights: http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/bill_of_rights_transcript.html

            There you can see exactly what we are about to have taken from us.

Michael Connelly

Retired attorney,

Constitutional Law Instructor

Carrollton, Texas "

http://michaelconnelly.viviti.com/

EDUCATION   

·    Diploma, Redemptorist High School in New Orleans, La. 1966.

·    Bachelor of Science, Business and Public Administration, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, La. (Degree required numerous political science and business courses. Many history and public speaking courses were taken as electives.) 1971

·    Juris Doctorate, Louisiana State University Law School, 1973.

·    Graduate, U.S. Army Intelligence School, Fort Huachuca, Arizona, 1973.

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

            MILITARY:

·    Commissioned a 2nd Lieutenant in the U.S. Army Reserve, 1971.

·    Active duty at the U.S. Army Intelligence School from Sept. 1973- Nov. 1973.

·    Assigned to reserve duty with 352nd Army Security Agency company in Baton Rouge from Jan 1974 until Aug. 1978. (Served as Supply officer, Operations officer, and Recruiting officer.)

·    Left the reserves in 1978 as a Captain.

LEGAL:    Licensed attorney in Baton Rouge, La. since 1973.

·    Qualified to practice before all Louisiana State and Federal Courts and the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

·    I have also represented clients before the U.S. Supreme Court.

·    Areas of practice include Constitutional Law, Personal Injury Law, Criminal Law, Family Law, Business Law, Medical Malpractice and Successions.

·    Special assistant attorney general for the State of Louisiana, 1977-80.

·    Of Counsel for U.S. Justice Foundation, 1980-98.

·    General Counsel, Council for Inter-American Security, 1978-95.

·    Still licensed, but inactive since 2001.

REAL ESTATE CONSULTING:

·    Part Time Real Estate consultant for McNichol & Connelly, Dallas, TX. (Duties included preparation of Market & Financial Feasibility studies, locating real estate for various projects, brokering loans, and locating potential investors.) 1997 - 1999     

TEACHING:

·         Currently teaching courses on Evidence Law, Constitutional Law, Courtroom Strategy and Business Law for Education to Go, an online company providing courses for numerous universities.

·    Have appeared as a guest lecturer at both LSU and University of New Orleans.

·    Substitute high school teacher for East Baton Rouge Parish School System, Sept. 1998-Jan. 2000.

·    Temporary full time teacher of World Geography, Woodlawn High School, Baton Rouge, La., 1998-99.

PUBLICATIONS AND PUBLIC SPEAKING

·    Authored, “Riders in the Sky: The Ghosts and Legends of Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico”, published by Merril Press in Aug 2001, and "The Mortarmen", published by Trafford Press in April 2005.

·    Authored the true story, “Winds of Merit” which was the basis for a television documentary segment on the show “Storm Warning” shown extensively on both the Discovery Channel and The Learning Channel.

·    Authored numerous published articles on politics, law, and scouting as well as many “keyword” articles for various companies.

·    Contributor to the book, “Intruder in Your Home” by Ronald L. Cruit, published by Stein and Day, 1983

·    Frequent speaker before civic groups and guest on radio and television talk shows (both local and national) on various political and legal subjects.

·    Frequent speaker before school groups on Native American Heritage.

·    Editor and Publisher of an award winning independent campus newspaper while at LSU.

·    Co-host of a weekly radio talk show while at LSU.

References available on request."

Long commentary but very worth the read.   Am also totally disgusted by the GOP because they held hands with Democrats to get us where we are now.  Believe we'll see a rise of a third party in the near future.

_____________

"Too late for Obama to turn it around?
Plus: The left's visionaries lost their bearings on drugs -- but the GOP is led by losers

By Camille Paglia
Source Salon

"Sept. 9, 2009 | What a difference a month makes! When my last controversial column posted on Salon in the second week of August, most Democrats seemed frozen in suspended animation, not daring to criticize the Obama administration's bungling of healthcare reform lest it give aid and comfort to the GOP. Well, that ice dam sure broke with a roar. Dissident Democrats found their voices, and by late August even the liberal lemmings of the mainstream media, from CBS to CNN, had drastically altered their tone of reportage, from priggish disdain of the town hall insurgency to frank admission of serious problems in the healthcare bills as well as of Obama's declining national support.

But this tonic dose of truth-telling may be too little too late. As an Obama supporter and contributor, I am outraged at the slowness with which the standing army of Democratic consultants and commentators publicly expressed discontent with the administration's strategic missteps this year. I suspect there had been private grumbling all along, but the media warhorses failed to speak out when they should have -- from week one after the inauguration, when Obama went flat as a rug in letting Congress pass that obscenely bloated stimulus package. Had more Democrats protested, the administration would have felt less arrogantly emboldened to jam through a cap-and-trade bill whose costs have made it virtually impossible for an alarmed public to accept the gargantuan expenses of national healthcare reform. (Who is naive enough to believe that Obama's plan would be deficit-neutral? Or that major cuts could be achieved without drastic rationing?)

By foolishly trying to reduce all objections to healthcare reform to the malevolence of obstructionist Republicans, Democrats have managed to destroy the national coalition that elected Obama and that is unlikely to be repaired. If Obama fails to win reelection, let the blame be first laid at the door of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who at a pivotal point threw gasoline on the flames by comparing angry American citizens to Nazis. It is theoretically possible that Obama could turn the situation around with a strong speech on healthcare to Congress this week, but after a summer of grisly hemorrhaging, too much damage has been done. At this point, Democrats' main hope for the 2012 presidential election is that Republicans nominate another hopelessly feeble candidate. Given the GOP's facility for shooting itself in the foot, that may well happen.

This column has been calling for heads to roll at the White House from the get-go. Thankfully, they do seem to be falling faster -- as witness the middle-of-the-night bum's rush given to "green jobs" czar Van Jones last week -- but there's a long way to go. An example of the provincial amateurism of current White House operations was the way the president's innocuous back-to-school pep talk got sandbagged by imbecilic support materials soliciting students to write fantasy letters to "help" the president (a coercive directive quickly withdrawn under pressure). Even worse, the entire project was stupidly scheduled to conflict with the busy opening days of class this week, when harried teachers already have their hands full. Comically, some major school districts, including New York City, were not even open yet. And this is the gang who wants to revamp national healthcare?

Why did it take so long for Democrats to realize that this year's tea party and town hall uprisings were a genuine barometer of widespread public discontent and not simply a staged scenario by kooks and conspirators? First of all, too many political analysts still think that network and cable TV chat shows are the central forums of national debate. But the truly transformative political energy is coming from talk radio and the Web -- both of which Democrat-sponsored proposals have threatened to stifle, in defiance of freedom of speech guarantees in the Bill of Rights. I rarely watch TV anymore except for cooking shows, history and science documentaries, old movies and football. Hence I was blissfully free from the retching overkill that followed the deaths of Michael Jackson and Ted Kennedy -- I never saw a single minute of any of it. It was on talk radio, which I have resumed monitoring around the clock because of the healthcare fiasco, that I heard the passionate voices of callers coming directly from the town hall meetings. Hence I was alerted to the depth and intensity of national sentiment long before others who were simply watching staged, manipulated TV shows.

Why has the Democratic Party become so arrogantly detached from ordinary Americans? Though they claim to speak for the poor and dispossessed, Democrats have increasingly become the party of an upper-middle-class professional elite, top-heavy with journalists, academics and lawyers (one reason for the hypocritical absence of tort reform in the healthcare bills). Weirdly, given their worship of highly individualistic, secularized self-actualization, such professionals are as a whole amazingly credulous these days about big-government solutions to every social problem. They see no danger in expanding government authority and intrusive, wasteful bureaucracy. This is, I submit, a stunning turn away from the anti-authority and anti-establishment principles of authentic 1960s leftism.

How has "liberty" become the inspirational code word of conservatives rather than liberals? (A prominent example is radio host Mark Levin's book "Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto," which was No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list for nearly three months without receiving major reviews, including in the Times.) I always thought that the Democratic Party is the freedom party -- but I must be living in the nostalgic past. Remember Bob Dylan's 1964 song "Chimes of Freedom," made famous by the Byrds? And here's Richie Havens electrifying the audience at Woodstock with "Freedom! Freedom!" Even Linda Ronstadt, in the 1967 song "A Different Drum," with the Stone Ponys, provided a soaring motto for that decade: "All I'm saying is I'm not ready/ For any person, place or thing/ To try and pull the reins in on me."

But affluent middle-class Democrats now seem to be complacently servile toward authority and automatically believe everything party leaders tell them. Why? Is it because the new professional class is a glossy product of generically institutionalized learning? Independent thought and logical analysis of argument are no longer taught. Elite education in the U.S. has become a frenetic assembly line of competitive college application to schools where ideological brainwashing is so pandemic that it's invisible. The top schools, from the Ivy League on down, promote "critical thinking," which sounds good but is in fact just a style of rote regurgitation of hackneyed approved terms ("racism, sexism, homophobia") when confronted with any social issue. The Democratic brain has been marinating so long in those clichés that it's positively pickled.

Throughout this fractious summer, I was dismayed not just at the self-defeating silence of Democrats at the gaping holes or evasions in the healthcare bills but also at the fogginess or insipidity of articles and Op-Eds about the controversy emanating from liberal mainstream media and Web sources. By a proportion of something like 10-to-1, negative articles by conservatives were vastly more detailed, specific and practical about the proposals than were supportive articles by Democrats, which often made gestures rather than arguments and brimmed with emotion and sneers. There was a glaring inability in most Democratic commentary to think ahead and forecast what would or could be the actual snarled consequences -- in terms of delays, denial of services, errors, miscommunications and gross invasions of privacy -- of a massive single-payer overhaul of the healthcare system in a nation as large and populous as ours. It was as if Democrats live in a utopian dream world, divorced from the daily demands and realities of organization and management.

But dreaming in the 1960s and '70s had a spiritual dimension that is long gone in our crassly materialistic and status-driven time. Here's a gorgeous example: Bob Welch's song "Hypnotized." which appears on Fleetwood Mac's 1973 album "Mystery to Me." (The contemplative young man in this recent video is not Welch.) It's a peyote dream inspired by Carlos Castaneda's fictionalized books: "They say there's a place down in Mexico/ Where a man can fly over mountains and hills/ And he don't need an airplane or some kind of engine/ And he never will." This exhilarating shamanistic vision (wonderfully enhanced by Christine McVie's hymnlike backing vocal) captures the truth-seeking pilgrimages of my generation but also demonstrates the dangerous veering away from mundane social responsibilities. If the left is an incoherent shambles in the U.S., it's partly because the visionaries lost their bearings on drugs, and only the myopic apparatchiks and feather-preening bourgeois liberals are left. (I addressed the drugs cataclysm in "Cults and Cosmic Consciousness: Religious Vision in the American 1960s" in the Winter 2003 issue of Arion.)

Having said all that about the failures of my own party, I am not about to let Republicans off the hook. What a backbiting mess the GOP is! It lacks even one credible voice of traditional moral values on the national stage and is addicted to sonorous pieties of pharisaical emptiness. Republican politicians sermonize about the sanctity of marriage while racking up divorces and sexual escapades by the truckload. They assail government overreach and yet support interference in women's control of their own bodies. Advanced whack-a-mole is clearly needed for that yammering smarty-pants Newt Gingrich, who is always so very, very pleased with himself but has yet to produce a single enduring thought. The still inexplicably revered George W. Bush ballooned our national deficits like a drunken sailor and clumsily exacerbated the illegal immigration debate. And bizarrely, the hallucinatory Dick Cheney, a fake-testosterone addict who spooked Bush into a pointless war, continues to be lauded as presidential material.

Which brings us to Afghanistan: Let's get the hell out! While I vociferously opposed the incursion into Iraq, I was always strongly in favor of bombing the mountains of Afghanistan to smithereens in our search for Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida training camps. But committing our land forces to a long, open-ended mission to reshape the political future of that country has been a fool's errand from the start. Every invader has been frustrated and eventually defeated by that maze-like mountain terrain, from Alexander the Great to the Soviet Union. In a larger sense, outsiders will never be able to fix the fate of the roiling peoples of the Near East and Greater Middle East, who have been disputing territorial borderlines and slaughtering each other for 5,000 years. There is too much lingering ethnic and sectarian acrimony for a tranquil solution to be possible for generations to come. The presence of Western military forces merely inflames and prolongs the process and creates new militias of patriotic young radicals who hate us and want to take the war into our own cities. The technological West is too infatuated with easy fixes. But tribally based peoples think in terms of centuries and millennia. They know how to wait us out. Our presence in Afghanistan is not worth the price of any more American lives or treasure.

In response to persistent queries, I must repeat: No, I do not have a Facebook page, nor am I a "friend" on anyone else's Facebook. Nor do I Twitter. This Salon column is my sole Web presence. Whatever doppelgänger Camille Paglias are tripping the light fantastic out there (as in the haunted bus-station episode of "The Twilight Zone"), they aren't me!"

http://www.salon.com/opinion/paglia/2009/09/09/healthcare/

Looks like the Federal Reserve power grab would have taught us by now to not place so much authority in one entity. 

Bait being used is awfully appealing.

_____________ 

"Obama and the Bureaucratization of Health Care
The president's proposals would give unelected officials life-and-death rationing powers.

By SARAH PALIN
Source Wall Street Journal
September 8, 2009, 7:45 P.M. ET

"Writing in the New York Times last month, President Barack Obama asked that Americans "talk with one another, and not over one another" as our health-care debate moves forward.

I couldn't agree more. Let's engage the other side's arguments, and let's allow Americans to decide for themselves whether the Democrats' health-care proposals should become governing law.

Some 45 years ago Ronald Reagan said that "no one in this country should be denied medical care because of a lack of funds." Each of us knows that we have an obligation to care for the old, the young and the sick. We stand strongest when we stand with the weakest among us.

We also know that our current health-care system too often burdens individuals and businesses—particularly small businesses—with crippling expenses. And we know that allowing government health-care spending to continue at current rates will only add to our ever-expanding deficit.

How can we ensure that those who need medical care receive it while also reducing health-care costs? The answers offered by Democrats in Washington all rest on one principle: that increased government involvement can solve the problem. I fundamentally disagree.

Common sense tells us that the government's attempts to solve large problems more often create new ones. Common sense also tells us that a top-down, one-size-fits-all plan will not improve the workings of a nationwide health-care system that accounts for one-sixth of our economy. And common sense tells us to be skeptical when President Obama promises that the Democrats' proposals "will provide more stability and security to every American."

With all due respect, Americans are used to this kind of sweeping promise from Washington. And we know from long experience that it's a promise Washington can't keep.

Let's talk about specifics. In his Times op-ed, the president argues that the Democrats' proposals "will finally bring skyrocketing health-care costs under control" by "cutting . . . waste and inefficiency in federal health programs like Medicare and Medicaid and in unwarranted subsidies to insurance companies . . . ."

First, ask yourself whether the government that brought us such "waste and inefficiency" and "unwarranted subsidies" in the first place can be believed when it says that this time it will get things right. The nonpartistan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) doesn't think so: Its director, Douglas Elmendorf, told the Senate Budget Committee in July that "in the legislation that has been reported we do not see the sort of fundamental changes that would be necessary to reduce the trajectory of federal health spending by a significant amount."

Now look at one way Mr. Obama wants to eliminate inefficiency and waste: He's asked Congress to create an Independent Medicare Advisory Council—an unelected, largely unaccountable group of experts charged with containing Medicare costs. In an interview with the New York Times in April, the president suggested that such a group, working outside of "normal political channels," should guide decisions regarding that "huge driver of cost . . . the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives . . . ."

Given such statements, is it any wonder that many of the sick and elderly are concerned that the Democrats' proposals will ultimately lead to rationing of their health care by—dare I say it—death panels? Establishment voices dismissed that phrase, but it rang true for many Americans. Working through "normal political channels," they made themselves heard, and as a result Congress will likely reject a wrong-headed proposal to authorize end-of-life counseling in this cost-cutting context. But the fact remains that the Democrats' proposals would still empower unelected bureaucrats to make decisions affecting life or death health-care matters. Such government overreaching is what we've come to expect from this administration.

Speaking of government overreaching, how will the Democrats' proposals affect the deficit? The CBO estimates that the current House proposal not only won't reduce the deficit but will actually increase it by $239 billion over 10 years. Only in Washington could a plan that adds hundreds of billions to the deficit be hailed as a cost-cutting measure.

The economic effects won't be limited to abstract deficit numbers; they'll reach the wallets of everyday Americans. Should the Democrats' proposals expand health-care coverage while failing to curb health-care inflation rates, smaller paychecks will result. A new study for Watson Wyatt Worldwide by Steven Nyce and Syl Schieber concludes that if the government expands health-care coverage while health-care inflation continues to rise "the higher costs would drive disposable wages downward across most of the earnings spectrum, although the declines would be steepest for lower-earning workers." Lower wages are the last thing Americans need in these difficult economic times.

Finally, President Obama argues in his op-ed that Democrats' proposals "will provide every American with some basic consumer protections that will finally hold insurance companies accountable." Of course consumer protection sounds like a good idea. And it's true that insurance companies can be unaccountable and unresponsive institutions—much like the federal government. That similarity makes this shift in focus seem like nothing more than an attempt to deflect attention away from the details of the Democrats' proposals—proposals that will increase our deficit, decrease our paychecks, and increase the power of unaccountable government technocrats.

Instead of poll-driven "solutions," let's talk about real health-care reform: market-oriented, patient-centered, and result-driven. As the Cato Institute's Michael Cannon and others have argued, such policies include giving all individuals the same tax benefits received by those who get coverage through their employers; providing Medicare recipients with vouchers that allow them to purchase their own coverage; reforming tort laws to potentially save billions each year in wasteful spending; and changing costly state regulations to allow people to buy insurance across state lines. Rather than another top-down government plan, let's give Americans control over their own health care.

Democrats have never seriously considered such ideas, instead rushing through their own controversial proposals. After all, they don't need Republicans to sign on: Democrats control the House, the Senate and the presidency. But if passed, the Democrats' proposals will significantly alter a large sector of our economy. They will not improve our health care. They will not save us money. And, despite what the president says, they will not "provide more stability and security to every American."

We often hear such overblown promises from Washington. With first principles in mind and with the facts in hand, tell them that this time we're not buying it."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203440104574400581157986024.html

There were several photos in this article, follow link at bottom to view.

_______

'Doctors told me it was against the rules to save my premature baby'

By Vanessa Allen and Andrew Levy
Last updated at 7:58 AM on 09th September 2009

Source DailyMail.co.uk

"Doctors left a premature baby to die because he was born two days too early, his devastated mother claimed yesterday.

Sarah Capewell begged them to save her tiny son, who was born just 21 weeks and five days into her pregnancy  -  almost four months early.

They ignored her pleas and allegedly told her they were following national guidelines that babies born before 22 weeks should not be given medical treatment.
 
Battle: Sarah Capewell is fighting to have guidelines about caring for very premature babies changed

Miss Capewell, 23, said doctors refused to even see her son Jayden, who lived for almost two hours without any medical support.

She said he was breathing unaided, had a strong heartbeat and was even moving his arms and legs, but medics refused to admit him to a special care baby unit.

Miss Capewell is now fighting for a review of the medical guidelines.
 
Heartbreak: Sarah Capewell with her daughter Jodi, five
 
Sarah Capewell is fighting for new guidelines on when infants should be given intensive care after her premature son Jayden (right) was refused treatment

Medics allegedly told her that they would have tried to save the baby if he had been born two days later, at 22 weeks.

In fact, the medical guidelines for Health Service hospitals state that babies should not be given intensive care if they are born at less than 23 weeks.

The guidance, drawn up by the Nuffield Council, is not compulsory but advises doctors that medical intervention for very premature children is not in the best interests of the baby, and is not 'standard practice'.

James Paget Hospital in Norfolk refused to comment on the case but said it was not responsible for setting the guidelines relating to premature births.

A trust spokesman said: 'Like other acute hospitals, we follow national guidance from the British Association of Perinatal Medicine regarding premature births.'

Miss Capewell, who has had five miscarriages, said the guidelines had robbed her son of a chance of life.
 
Short life: Miss Capewell's son Jayden died two hours after he was born at James Paget Hospital in Gorleston, Norfolk, in October 2008

She said: 'When he was born, he put out his arms and legs and pushed himself over.

A midwife said he was breathing and had a strong heartbeat, and described him as a "little fighter".

I kept asking for the doctors but the midwife said, "They won't come and help, sweetie. Make the best of the time you have with him".'

She cuddled her child and took precious photos of him, but he died in her arms less than two hours after his birth.

Miss Capewell, who has a five-year-old daughter Jodie, went into labour in October last year at 21 weeks and four days after suffering problems during her pregnancy.

She said she was told that because she had not reached 22 weeks, she was not allowed injections to try to stop the labour, or a steroid injection to help to strengthen her baby's lungs.

Instead, doctors told her to treat the labour as a miscarriage, not a birth, and to expect her baby to be born with serious deformities or even to be still-born.
 
Treasured memories: Pictures of baby Jason's feet and hands

She told how she begged one paediatrician, 'You have got to help', only for the man to respond: 'No we don't.'

As her contractions continued, a chaplain arrived at her bedside to discuss bereavement and planning a funeral, she claims.

She said: 'I was sitting there, reading this leaflet about planning a funeral and thinking, this is my baby, he isn't even born yet, let alone dead.'

After his death she even had to argue with hospital officials for her right to receive birth and death certificates, which meant she could give her son a proper funeral.
 
Justice for Jayden: His mother is campaigning to change the law

She was shocked to discover that another child, born in the U.S. at 21 weeks and six days into her mother's pregnancy, had survived.

Amillia Taylor was born in Florida in 2006 and celebrated her second birthday last October. She is the youngest premature baby to survive.

Miss Capewell said: 'I could not believe that one little girl, Amillia Taylor, is perfectly healthy after being born in Florida in 2006 at 21 weeks and six days.

'Thousands of women have experienced this. The doctors say the babies won't survive but how do they know if they are not giving them a chance?'

Miss Capewell has won the support of Labour MP Tony Wright, who has backed her call for a review of the medical guidelines. He said: 'When a woman wants to give the best chance to her baby, they should surely be afforded that opportunity.'

What the medical guidelines say...
Guidance limiting care of the most premature babies provoked outrage when it was published three years ago.

Experts on medical ethics advised doctors not to resuscitate babies born before 23 weeks in the womb, stating that it was not in the child's 'best interests'.

The guidelines said: 'If gestational age is certain and less than 23+0 (i.e at 22 weeks) it would be considered in the best interests of the baby, and standard practice, for resuscitation not to be carried out.'

Medical intervention would be given for a child born between 22 and 23 weeks only if the parents requested it and only after discussion about likely outcomes.

The rules were endorsed by the British Association of Perinatal Medicine and are followed by NHS hospitals.

The association said they were not meant to be a 'set of instructions', but doctors regard them as the best available advice on the treatment of premature babies.

More than 80,000 babies are born prematurely in Britain every year, and of those some 40,000 need to be treated in intensive care.

The NHS spends an estimated £1 billion a year on their care.

But while survival rates for those born after 24 weeks in the womb have risen significantly, the rates for those born earlier have barely changed, despite advances in medicine and technology.

Medical experts say babies born before 23 weeks are simply too under-developed to survive, and that to use aggressive treatment methods would only prolong their suffering, or inflict pain.

The guidelines were drawn up by the Nuffield Council on Bioethics after a two-year inquiry which took evidence from doctors, nurses and religious leaders.

But weeks before they were published in 2006, a child was born in the U.S. which proved a baby could survive at earlier than 22 weeks if it was given medical treatment.

Amillia Taylor was born in Florida on October 24, 2006, after just 21 weeks and six days in the womb. She celebrated her second birthday last year.

Doctors believed she was a week older and so gave her intensive care, but later admitted she would not have received treatment if they had known her true age.

Her birth also coincided with the debate in Britain over whether the abortion limit should be reduced.

Some argued that if a baby could survive at 22 weeks then the time limit on abortions should be reduced.

The argument, which was lost in Parliament, followed a cut to the time limit in 1990 when politicians reduced it from 28 weeks to 24 weeks, in line with scientific evidence that foetuses could survive outside the womb at a younger age.

However, experts say cases like Amillia Taylor's are rare, and can raise false expectations about survival rates.

Studies show that only 1 per cent of babies born before 23 weeks survive, and many suffer serious disabilities."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1211950/Premature-baby-left-die-doctors-mother-gives-birth-just-days-22-week-care-limit.html

Congratulations Dr. Orly Taitz and all who've worked on getting this heard by the courts!!!! 

_____________ 

"BORN IN THE USA?
Shocker! Judge orders trial on eligibility issue
Arguments planned Jan. 11 for major Obama challenge

Posted: September 08, 2009
4:42 pm Eastern

By Jerome R. Corsi
© 2009 WorldNetDaily

Is this the footprint of baby Barack Obama?

A California judge today tentatively scheduled a trial for Jan. 26, 2010, for a case that challenges Barack Obama's eligibility to be president based on questions over his qualifications under the requirements of the U.S. Constitution.

If the case actually goes to arguments before U.S. District Judge David Carter, it will be the first time the merits of the dispute have been argued in open court, according to one of the attorneys working on the issue.

In a highly anticipated hearing today before Carter, several motions were heard, including a resolution to long-standing questions about whether attorney Orly Taitz properly served notice on the defendants, which she had.

In a second ruling, Carter ordered that attorney Gary Kreep of the United States Justice Foundation can be added to the case to represent plaintiffs Wiley Drake and Markham Robinson, who had been removed by an earlier court order. Drake, the vice presidential candidate for the American Independent Party, and Robinson, the party's chairman, also were restored to the case.

Want to know for certain where Obama was born? Demand the truth by joining the petition campaign to make President Obama reveal his long-form, hospital-generated birth certificate!

But the judge did not immediately rule on Taitz' motion to be granted discovery – that is the right to see the president's still-concealed records. Nor did Carter rule immediately on a motion to dismiss the case, submitted by the U.S. government, following discussion over Taitz' challenge to the work of a magistrate in the case.

The judge did comment that if there are legitimate constitutional questions regarding Obama's eligibility, they need to be addressed and resolved.

Carter ordered a hearing Oct. 5 on the motion to dismiss and ordered arguments submitted on the issue of discovery.

If the case survives that challenge, a pretrial hearing has been scheduled for Jan. 11 and the trial for two weeks later.

The case would be the first time, according to Kreep, that the actual merits of the dispute will have been heard in open court. A multitude of such disputes have been rejected out of hand by various state and federal courts. Even the U.S. Supreme Court repeatedly has rejected urgent appeals to hear the evidence.

The suit alleges Obama is actually a citizen of Indonesia and "possibly still citizen of Kenya, usurping the position of the president of the United States of America and the commander-in-chief."

WND has reported on dozens of legal challenges to Obama's status as a "natural born citizen." The Constitution, Article 2, Section 1, states, "No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President."

Some of the lawsuits question whether he was actually born in Hawaii, as he insists. If he was born out of the country, Obama's American mother, the suits contend, was too young at the time of his birth to confer American citizenship to her son under the law at the time.

Other challenges have focused on Obama's citizenship through his father, a Kenyan subject to the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom at the time of his birth, thus making him a dual citizen. The cases contend the framers of the Constitution excluded dual citizens from qualifying as natural born.

Complicating the situation is Obama's decision to spend sums estimated in the hundreds of thousands of dollars to avoid releasing a state birth certificate that would put to rest the questions.

WND has reported that among the documentation not yet available for Obama includes his kindergarten records, Punahou school records, Occidental College records, Columbia University records, Columbia thesis, Harvard Law School records, Harvard Law Review articles, scholarly articles from the University of Chicago, passport, medical records, files from his years as an Illinois state senator, his Illinois State Bar Association records, any baptism records, and his adoption records.

In the U.S. Justice Department's motion to dismiss, attorneys didn't address the concerns directly, but instead focused their efforts on technical procedures, suggesting the matter can't be decided in court and that the dozens of plaintiffs cannot demonstrate they have been injured by having Obama in the Oval Office.

See the movie Obama does not want you to see: Own the DVD that probes this unprecedented presidential eligibility mystery.

 

"It is clear, from the text of the Constitution, and the relevant statutory law implementing the Constitution's textual commitments, that challenges to the qualifications of a candidate for president can, in the first instance, be presented to the voting public before the election, and, once the election is over, can be raised as objections as the electoral votes are counted in the Congress," wrote Assistant U.S. Attorneys Roger West and David DeJute. "Therefore, challenges such as those purportedly raised in this case are committed, under the Constitution, to the electors, and to the Legislative branch."

President Obama's defenders also said they would file a motion seeking to block any discovery of evidence at this point.

Kreep said said his addition to the case probably will mean additional arguments over the president's eligibility.

Among the long list of plaintiffs are former ambassador and presidential candidate Alan Keyes and longshot vice-presidential candidate Gail Lightfoot, both of whom ran in 2008.

Justice officials say because neither had a mathematical chance at winning, they were not directly harmed by the election of Obama.

But among the issues that appear to be looming is a claim that Obama's actual birth certificate from Kenya has emerged.

As WND reported over the holiday weekend, Lucas Smith, the man who tried to sell an alleged Barack Obama Kenyan birth certificate on eBay, filed court papers insisting – under threat of perjury – that the Obama birth certificate in his possession is the genuine article.

The document above is alleged by Lucas Smith to be Barack Obama's original, authentic birth certificate from Kenya.

 

Taitz posted on her blog Smith's declaration, which claims he obtained the alleged birth certificate from Coast General Hospital in Mombasa, Kenya, and insists it's real.

"The true and correct photocopy of the birth certificate obtained is attached to this affidavit as Exhibit A," the declaration reads. "I declare, certify, verify, state and affirm under penalty of perjury under the laws of the United States of America that the foregoing statements of fact and descriptions of circumstances and events are true and correct."

Smith's affidavit, which includes a copy of the certificate, has been filed Carter, whose works in the Central District of California.

In his filing, Smith declares that he traveled to Kenya in February and paid off a military officer in order to obtain a copy of the birth certificate from Coast General Hospital in Mombasa. The declaration also states that the hospital administrator signed and sealed the copy, which indicates Obama's birth in Africa on Aug. 4, 1961, at 7:24 p.m.

As WND reported, Smith released a video of the document he claims is a copy of Obama's hospital birth record, though WND's own investigation failed to substantiate the document's authenticity..

WND first reported earlier this year when Lucas Smith, a former resident of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and known by the eBay handle "colmado_naranja," claimed to have a document proving Obama's birth in Mombasa, Kenya.

After promising to reveal the document to WND, Smith then dropped communications with a team of people offering to help him verify the document, only fueling the belief the sale – and therefore the alleged document – was a scam.

WND followed Smith's ongoing saga as "colmado_naranja" as he attempted several times to sell the document, or photos and stories surrounding it, on eBay, only to have the auctions repeatedly removed by site administrators.

WND also launched an investigation into "colmado_naranja," which led through several online aliases and reported collaborators, including Dawnella Wilson, "InspectorSmith" and, eventually, Lucas Smith.

Smith, whose background includes a lengthy criminal record and a reported attempt to sell his kidney to a man in need of organ transplant, nonetheless insists that his motives are above board, even if his past looks dubious.

"I do have a background. I've made mistakes in my life," Smith told WND in an e-mail. "It took a guy like me to go and get tangible proof about Obama. I don't mind breaking a few laws or policies here and there. I don't mind paying the military in foreign countries to look the other way ... The military [in Africa] will grant you access to anything for just a few dollars. People are starving. So yes, it takes a guy like me to get things done once in a while."

An enhanced version of the Smith YouTube video has been published by Repubx.com, permitting a more legible examination of the document.

WND has also determined that a supposed Kenyan birth certificate previously released by attorney Orly Taitz probably is a forgery.

WND has reported on an authentic 1961-era Kenyan birth certificate, which looks distinctly different from the document Smith released in the video.

Authentic 1961-era Kenyan birth certificate obtained by WND

Because of the dearth of information about Obama's eligibility, WND founder Joseph Farah has launched a campaign to raise contributions to post billboards asking a simple question: "Where's the birth certificate?"

"Where's The Birth Certificate?" billboard at the Mandalay Bay resort on the Las Vegas Strip

 

The campaign followed a petition that has collected more than 450,000 signatures demanding proof of his eligibility, the availability of yard signs raising the question and the production of permanent, detachable magnetic bumper stickers asking the question.

The "certification of live birth" posted online and widely touted as "Obama's birth certificate" does not in any way prove he was born in Hawaii, since the same "short-form" document is easily obtainable for children not born in Hawaii. The true "long-form" birth certificate – which includes information such as the name of the birth hospital and attending physician – is the only document that can prove Obama was born in Hawaii, but to date he has not permitted its release for public or press scrutiny.

Oddly, though congressional hearings were held to determine whether Sen. John McCain was constitutionally eligible to be president as a "natural born citizen," no controlling legal authority ever sought to verify Obama's claim to a Hawaiian birth."

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=109242

Tuesday, September 8. 2009

Posted by Karl Denninger

Source Market Ticker

"An Address To Our Schoolchildren

"My Fellow Americans.

"Today you heard from our President, Barack Obama.  Some of your parents voted for him, and most of the rest of the country voted for his opponent, John McCain.

What you heard from President Obama today was a plea for you to pay attention in school and finish your education.

What you did not hear from President Obama today was that your government, together with your school, has refused to provide you with the knowledge necessary for you to understand what has happened to this nation and its economy over the last 30 years.

This is not an accident.

In math class you are taught "the power function", which you think of as squares, cubes, and similar.  It is written as 4^2, or, expanded, as 4 x 4.

But what you're not taught is how this applies to finance, even though every household and every American has their own financial challenges, and every person in America should understand how finance works.

Neither Republican or Democrat wants you to see this graph.  This is how much each American, from 1970 to today, is in debt because of our government's policies:

2009's "fiscal year" (that is, the year for accounting purposes) doesn't close until the end of this month.  But as of today, this graph is correct (and will only get worse in the next three weeks.)

Let me be clear: In the last two years your mother, father, school teacher, grandma and grandpa have stuck each and every American with $10,000 in personal debt, and since 2000 the amount of debt you have had forced upon you has doubled.

This debt was forced upon you not because of the need to defend this country from a foreign invader such as occurred on December 7th 1941 or because of the War on Terrorism, but rather because a bunch of greedy men and women on Wall Street and Washington DC, both Democrat and Republican, lied, cheated and stole money from ordinary Americans for more than a decade.

You have undoubtedly been taught that stealing is wrong, and indeed, that if you steal you can go to jail.  But you need to understand that the law applies only to "little people" like you.  If you work on Wall Street, own a fancy suit and private airplane, and steal millions and millions of dollars from people worldwide, instead of going to jail you will be rewarded with a huge bonus and be able to buy a really big boat, while the cost of your stealing will be forced on the children - and unborn - throughout America.

That's you, by the way.

You need to understand that this is not a "Democrat" or "Republican" thing.  Indeed, both Democrats and Republicans in Washington DC know about this and both are equally responsible for letting it happen.  Both Democrats and Republicans voted for a law called "TARP" and allowed The Federal Reserve to take actions over the last two years that were responsible for you having to pay that extra $10,000.  They voted for this law even though ordinary Americans just like you told them not to vote for it - in fact, for every person who called their offices or sent an email to tell them to vote "yes", 100 people called, faxed or emailed and told them to vote "no".

They voted "Yes" anyway and as a result you must pay that $10,000 in the future, whether you want to or not, so that those who robbed, cheated and stole can have their yacht and your parents can lose their house to foreclosure.

President Bush signed that law and President Obama refused to step in and stop it when he became President.  President Bush is a Republican and President Obama is a Democrat.  Do not be deceived - both major political parties are equally responsible for this outrage - and for forcing you to pay.

The worst part of the graph above is that this is not all of the debt you must pay.  In fact your "share" of the debt is five times what's shown on that graph.

That's right my fellow Americans - you are in debt for more than $200,000 - each and every one of you, including every school child in America.

Why?

Because our government is lying about how much everyone owes.  See, our government has promised everyone free medical care and free retirement money.  But our government doesn't have the money to pay for that, since every penny that the government has must come from either borrowing or taxing, and the government isn't forced to follow the law when it comes to honest accounting - that is, honest math.

When you cheat on your math test in school you get an "F". 

But when the government cheats on its math they get re-elected, because our schools refuse to teach students just like you how math applies to finance, and as a result 95% of Americans don't understand that they're being screwed to the tune of $200,000 each.

That's because the schools are run by the government, and for that reason the government controls what you learn - and what you don't.

Our debt is supposedly $11 trillion dollars.  But the money the government must have in the future to pay for those free benefits, Social Security and Medicare, doesn't exist.  The former Comptroller of the Currency of America (that's a fancy word for the chief guy who keeps track of the books), David Walker, has said that the real debt is more than $53 trillion dollars, or almost five times what you see in the graph above.

Why was this allowed to happen?

It really is quite simple:

They're big, and you're small.  They're right, and you're wrong. 

Just because they said so. 

While you were out playing in the back yards and playgrounds of America both Democrats and Republicans were making promises they could not keep.  Instead of raising taxes right now for whatever they wanted to promise they instead decided to send you the bill, and your parents went along with it.

So when you come home from school this afternoon say "Thanks" to your Mom, Dad, Grandpa and Grandma for selling you into slavery.

For obligating you to pay for the stealing that has gone on for nearly ten years on Wall Street and in Washington DC.

For allowing those very same lies to cost your family (or that of someone you know and love) their house, their job, and their future.

And finally, make sure you thank your Teachers and Principal for not teaching you the math you need to be able to understand what is really going on with your government, so you don't get mad enough to put a stop to it - or demand that your parents do so.

After all, they're right and you're wrong.

They're big and you're small.

They, including your school teachers, principals and school boards, won't teach you about how math applies to all of this, because if they did, they couldn't lie to you any more and you might revolt (quite literally) - either now or later.

So sit back and enjoy your childhood; your time to become a slave, when you leave school and start having to pay that $200,000 by having it taken from you in the form of taxes will be here soon enough.

Wall Street and the politicians, both Democrats and Republicans, thank you for quietly accepting your role as a slave to pay for their yachts, along with the lies, cheating and stealing that have been going on literally every day for more than ten years.

Now sit down at your desk, shut up and behave while your teachers show you only what the government wants you to know.

Wall Street and Washington DC are relying on you, our nation's youth, refusing to demand the truth.

They're sure you won't disappoint them."

http://market-ticker.org/archives/1416-An-Address-To-Our-Schoolchildren.html

"Up to $3,800 fine for failure get health insurance

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9AJ8OBO0&show_article=1

Six Million Home Foreclosures: Are FDIC Insured Banks the Next Time Bomb? (Part 2)

http://seekingalpha.com/article/159368-six-million-home-foreclosures-are-fdic-insured-banks-the-next-time-bomb-part-2

_________

"Over a year ago Hank Paulson declared "The US Banking System Is A Safe and Sound One", the market's reaction to that piece of news was to short Fannie (FNM) and Freddie (FRE) into oblivion. A key issue there was holdings of mortgaged backed securities, specifically RMBS; valuations of those things depended on (a) their credit rating, (and once the LTV started to slip the rules said they had to be downgraded, so the price tanked), and (b) there was a rule of thumb that the value of those things was what an equivalent Treasury cost, less the cost of a CDS to insure them; when fear took over, the cost of a CDS went through the roof, the "market" (it never was a real market), froze. Then there was Lehman.

What drove that crisis was fear of the future, and the reason so much money was required to bail out the players ($2.7 trillion so far) was that previously if you had a "good credit score" you could borrow short-term Treasures, and buy an RMBS on 100% margin, and make a fortune; then the margins got called.

What happened was nothing different from a gambler going into a casino, borrowing from the house, using that money to bet on a "sure thing", and losing. Lucky for the gambler the "house" decided he was too big to fail - if you or I were to do something like that, we would be lucky to get away with a pair of broken legs.

Now the future is threatening to arrive:

There are two issues, (a) how much of that $2.7 trillion paid out mainly by the Fed (largely without any oversight by Congress) will get paid back, and (b) what's going to happen to the legacy banks who (then) had the luxury of being able to "take a view" on their portfolios of "originate and hold", and make a provision.

Right now the "reserves for losses" of FDIC insured banks is $211 billion on a portfolio of $7.625 trillion of loans and leases plus another $1.365 trillion of RMBS. In the circumstances that looks a tad light.

But the die is still rolling, and where it ends up will determine how much the "Too Big To Fail" card-sharks pay back, and how much of the $1.422 trillion of equity capital of the FDIC banks gets destroyed.

It's sometimes easy to forget that in this war the front line is foreclosures; although you wouldn't think that from the news. All you get is occasional pretty charts from the Mortgage Bankers Association with percentages (it's never quite clear of what), plus sound bites from the rating agencies like "the cure rate went down last month" or from RealtyTrac: "total filings went up last month".

From that trickle of managed, massaged and censored dispatches, it sounds suspiciously like somebody (or some-bodies), is trying to hide something.

Like a ticking bomb?

Perhaps the bottom in house prices was in May or perhaps there will be another leg down, but that's starting to be academic; a bottom is somewhere in the neighborhood. The story now is foreclosures; that's what drove house prices down to where they are now and that's what will keep them down. The acid on that cake and the nightmare for anyone in negative equity, is how many there will be by the time this is all over?

Since January 2005 over two million homes in USA have been foreclosed, that's about 1.7% of the total housing stock.



Many of those were family homes, so that's probably already directly affected about 3.5% of the American population.

This is the Bomb:

Right now in the USA there are over two million mortgages in either the first stage or the second stage of foreclosure; a large majority of those will end in foreclosure. At the current rate of "clearance" it will take two years for all of those to be processed.

And that's not counting new ones getting added to the pipeline at a rate of about 100,000 a month. That's clearly not something that anyone thought worth mentioning in the one hundred pages of turgid drivel "The Industry" shoveled out over the past three months; that I ploughed through to make sure I got it right (dear reader - just for you). And you wonder why there is a credit crunch?

The News Is, It Ain't Pretty

The headline data that is typically released, for example by RealtyTrac (i.e."360,000 Filings In July") is an aggregation that has to be disaggregated to make any sense of it, there are three stages:

• Stage 1: A notice of default is posted in the County Recorder's Office
• Stage 2: A Notice of sale is announced
• Final Stage: A public auction supervised by the trustee who transfers the deed.

The borrower can normally "cure" the process at any point, typically up to five days before the date of sale, although some mortgages give the lender the power to push through to disposal of the property as soon as the loan becomes delinquent. In most cases the process is non judicial and governed by the wording of the mortgage so there is no requirement to involve the Courts and the only option the borrower has to stop or delay the process is to pay up.

It's hard to get data, the best source I found was Mark Hanson plus there was data here and there from RealtyTrac. This is what I managed to cobble together:

That's not complete data, presumably that exists somewhere but it's not in the public domain. The reason there are more 1st Stage than 2nd Stage than Final Stage is (a) because some mortgages are cured (no hard data on how many) and (b) because the flow through from 1st to 2nd and Final is not linear.

An optimist might say that it looks like there is a top developing since Stage 1 and Final Stage are flattening; here are some theories:

1. That could perhaps be due to the recent moratorium from Q-4 2008 through Q-2 2009; but perhaps all that did was increase the backlog, and cure rates for those are going down (according to Fitch).
2. Another possible reason could be that the "system" just can't handle more than about 80,000 final foreclosures a month, perhaps that's about the limit. In 2005 the average was less than 20,000 a month, 80,000 is a 400% increase. For every foreclosure somebody from the lender has to show up and make decisions, the trustee has to show up and administer the auction and transfer the deed, perhaps there just aren't enough "somebody's" who understand the procedures to go round?
3. There again it might be that the lenders could be trying harder to look for ways to modify loans so that foreclosure can be avoided; that takes time (putting together an offer, squaring it away - particularly if the loan is part of a pool and the pool has covenants, then getting an answer back from the borrower, perhaps negotiating).
4. Or could it be that when a loan goes from "Non-current" to "loss" the banks or the service providers in the case of RMBS or CDO, have to book that number as a loss, not a provision? And that really messes up "mark-to-fantasy" accounting.

Which?

This is a plot of the difference between the S&P Case-Shiller 20 City Index and the final foreclosure number with a six-month lag, starting at the top where it was 207 (i.e. in January 2008 the Index was 181, so the difference is 26 and that's compared to foreclosures in June 2008 on the chart (six months later)). That's a measure of the Negative Equity of households.

This is the way I read that chart:

1. There is clearly a relationship between Final Stage foreclosures and the amount of "negative equity"; also the moratorium had an effect, if the trend line had continued by now there would be 160,000 final foreclosures a month (assuming there had been enough capacity to deal with them), so in that sense the moratorium was a success, it "saved" 570,000 homes from foreclosure.
2. It looks as if the moratorium also slowed down the number of 1st Stage filings which appear also to have stepped down from where they were headed in July and August last year, but are clearly driven by the "negative equity index", although thanks to the moratorium, the effect of that was from a lower base. So perhaps 400,000 1st Stage filings were "saved" there.

That appears to go against the theory that the moratorium encouraged or encourages people to default.

It's interesting how bankers, accountants and rating agencies never seem to miss an opportunity to blame their incompetence on the innate dishonesty, lack of personal ethics and downright crookedness of ordinary Americans, as if this whole thing was caused by Liar Loans, i.e. Liars. One of the turgid self-satisfied reports I read was about how the FBI "ought" to mobilize up to catch the people who "lied" as if that was what caused this disaster. Well I've met a lot of bankers, accountants and people from rating agencies, and I've also met a lot of ordinary Americans, and I don't think that I need to explain where my sympathies lie   ( http://seekingalpha.com/article/157808-liar-loans-not-the-problem )   in that department. The track of the blue dots appears to prove my point.

It is likely also that easing off on foreclosures, was one, and perhaps the only reason for the recent "bounce" in the S&P Case-Shiller Index (helped perhaps by seasonal factors).

The Effect Of The Moratorium

The problem is that over the past nine months, despite the moratorium, another 1.2 million new 1st Stage Fillings were made, yet "only" 850,000 "left" the system to foreclosure, so that's another 350,000 in the system on top of the estimated 1,750,000 that were in the system in the first place (1st and 2nd Stage).

So that's 2,100,00 still "stuck" in the system, less the "cures", which are hard to gauge, I could not find consistent data on that.

Although if you have gone past the 1st Stage to once an auction date has been set (2nd Stage), the chances of modification or cure are much less; and from the first chart it is clear that the moratorium had little or no effect on the progression from 1st Stage to 2nd Stage. That suggests that unless new measures are brought in, the system might simply be playing catch up. "