Consuming one sixth of the U.S. Economy
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Monthly Archives: June 2012
Ominous Warning of World Wide Financial Collapse: The Handwriting is on the Wall
Prepare Yourselves for the Worst and Hope for the Best
This will happen quickly…..are you prepared?
If we still have Elections come November 6th…
V O T E
Chronicles 7:14
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Obama Appoints Mob Tainted IUOE Union Lawyer Richard Griffin Jr. to NLRB Post
Shown here is NLRB member Richard Griffin, Jr., right. At left are Colombo family boss Joel Cacace, top, and Gambino family member Andrew Merola.
Obama pick for NLRB was top lawyer for union tainted by mob ties, history of corruption
The rap sheet for members of the International Union of Operating Engineers reads like something out of “Goodfellas.”
Embezzlement. Wire fraud. Bribery. That’s just scratching the surface of crimes committed by the IUOE ranks. And it is from this union that President Obama earlier this year picked one of his latest appointees to the National Labor Relations Board, the federal agency tasked with resolving labor disputes between unions and management.
That recess appointee, Richard Griffin, was former general counsel for the 400,000-member union of heavy equipment operators — a union tainted over the years by mob connections and a history of corruption.
Public documents obtained by Fox News show that more than 60 IUOE members have been arrested, indicted or jailed in the last decade on charges that include labor racketeering, extortion, criminal enterprise, bodily harm and workplace sabotage.
In some of the more egregious examples, federal prosecutors alleged in February 2003 that the Genovese and Colombo crime families wrested control of two IUOE locals, and stole $3.6 million from major New York area construction projects — including the Museum of Modern Art and minor league baseball stadiums for the Yankees and Mets in Staten and Coney Islands.
Congress and the American public may never know whether Griffin’s fiduciary responsibilities as general counsel were compromised by the avalanche of arrests, indictments and prosecutions of IUOE members. Griffin did not respond to Fox News’ request for an interview. Before joining the NLRB, he served in various positions at the IUOE dating back to 1983.
But records indicate he did not take an active role in representing any of the accused union members in criminal matters while he was general counsel for the union.
In at least one case during Griffin’s tenure, the IUOE national headquarters placed a local that had run afoul of the law into trusteeship. But it remains unclear what other firewalls, if any, Griffin erected to separate the national union from its corrupt locals, or how he dealt with individual local union members who were in legal trouble.
On April 9, 2008, a dozen high-ranking members of an IUOE local in Buffalo, N.Y., were arrested for damaging more than 40 pieces of heavy machinery at construction sites where non-union workers were hired. They poured sand into oil systems, and cut tires and fuel lines. They also ran the license plate numbers of victims through a state database to get personal information including the names and addresses of victims’ wives.
Among the individual union members and associates prosecuted in various investigations were:
- Andrew Merola, a high-ranking member of the Gambino crime family who, in 2010, admitted to committing nine different acts of racketeering, including wire fraud involving a no-show/low-show job he got as an operating engineer for local 825 of the IUOE.
- James Roemer, a former treasurer of Operating Engineers local 14, who was sentenced in September 2003 to 41 months imprisonment and ordered to pay $2.7 million in restitution for conspiracy to fraudulently receive unlawful labor payments.
- Joel Waverly Cacace, Sr. The imprisoned acting boss of the Colombo crime family conspired with IUOE members to get a paid no-show construction job for his son, Jo-Jo Cacace, Jr. The senior Cacace was sent to prison in February 2003 for 20 years. The three-year investigation that sent him to jail also produced more than 24 other convictions.
Former U.S. Attorney and present New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie prosecuted some of the IUOE criminal cases. In one of Christie’s prosecutions, Kenneth Campbell, the former business manager of local 825 of the IUOE, pleaded guilty to embezzling $200,000 from his union and taking bribes from contractors to buy high-end electronics and a Lincoln Town Car for his father, a retired IUOE member.
‘They treated local 825 like a piggy bank.’
- Then-U.S. Attorney Chris Christie, referring to members of an IUOE local
Then-U.S. Attorney Christie, said, “Campbell and his cronies were simply corrupt. They treated local 825 like a piggy bank at will to treat themselves to luxuries at the expense of dues-paying members they ripped off.”
Because he was recess appointed, Richard Griffin, Jr., underwent no congressional scrutiny before he was sworn in on Jan. 9 of this year.
At the time of his recess appointment, Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., ranking member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, told the Wall Street Journal he was, “extremely disappointed” in Obama’s decision to “avoid the constitutionally mandated Senate confirmation process.” He said that two of three nominees for the NLRB, including Griffin, were submitted to the Senate on Dec. 15, just before the Senate was to adjourn, allowing only a day to review the nominees.
Griffin has been an advocate for enhanced NLRB power for decades.
In 1988 testimony before the U.S. House Subcommittee on Employer/Employee relations, Griffin, who was then serving on the Board of Trustees of IUOE’s Central Pension Fund, argued for more power for the NLRB to fine companies without a court order to enforce its rulings. He also argued against legislation that would have forced the NLRB and the Department of Labor to pay the legal costs for small businesses who won in court against unions.
Griffin’s tenure on the NLRB will be longer than most recess appointees. The president delayed his appointment by one day until the start of a new congressional session — effectively doubling to two years his stay. Recess appointments last until the end of the Senate’s next session — meaning Griffin will sit on the NLRB until December 2013.
Neil Cavuto Slams MSNBC on Multiple Sclerosis Claims against Ann Romney
Hat tip to The Blaze for this story
‘Horse’s Asses’: Multiple Sclerosis-Afflicted Cavuto Slams MSNBC’s Attacks on Ann Romney
MSNBC’s continuous string of near slander against Mitt Romney has just spawned yet another aggressive bit of push-back, this time from Neil Cavuto of Fox News. You may recall that MSNBC anchor Lawrence O‘Donnell recently slammed Mitt Romney’s wife, Ann Romney, for claiming that she participates in the sport of dressage as therapy for her multiple sclerosis. According to O’Donnell, “There are a lot of things you can do to try to deal with MS. But come on, dressage does not appear in any of the more traditional courses of treatment.”
Turns out that that assertion is breathtakingly wrong, as Cavuto pointed out while citing multiple clinical organizations that treat multiple sclerosis and consider horse therapy a very traditional, and often very effective form of therapy. Watch his takedown here:
As you can plainly see, Cavuto doesn’t pull punches in this clip. “You’ve got a disease in your name – maybe you should stop calling names,” he starts the segment.
He then proceeds to go right for the jugular, while still remaining preternaturally calm, calling MSNBC a collection of “horse’s asses“ and slamming them as ”condescending, sanctimonious“ people with ”incredible ignorance” of multiple sclerosis treatments. He then points out that the horse riding therapy – known as “hippotherapy,” according to Cavuto – is used to treat walking conditions associated with multiple sclerosis. Quoting from the “industry bible” on neurology, Cavuto says straight out that “this is a legitimate therapy.”
Cavuto’s stern correction only serves to confirm the generally low opinion of MSNBC which is beginning to percolate amongst the rest of the media. Glenn Beck, for instance, hammered the network over its smear tactics on his radio show today after savaging their most recent factual errors:
“You have no credibility at all,” Beck thundered. “The ratings are going to tank on MSNBC, because Americans are fair.”
On a side note, setting aside the numerous factual errors on the network, Cavuto‘s takedown misses a blistering example of hypocrisy on the part of Lawrence O’Donnell. To complain about how particular therapies don’t appear on the “traditional” list, when the Left has pushed for numerous untested medical ideas, such as embryonic stem cell research and assisted suicide. Neither of these is in any way “traditional,” and O’Donnell is not on record opposing either of them, so why the selectiveness?
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MSNBC at it again editing a Romney Speech Video to show him as Out of Touch: Shame on you BS-NBC
Hat tip to Fox News for this story
MSNBC edits Romney rally speech
to portray candidate as out of touch
MSNBC is taking heat again for selective editing a day after presenting video of Mitt Romney seemingly awestruck by the process of ordering a sandwich at a convenience store.
During an afternoon broadcast of “Andrea Mitchell Reports,” video of the GOP presidential candidate seemed to show a politician out of touch as he discussed ordering a hoagie at Wawa.
“It’s amazing,” Romney said, as the Pennsylvania crowd appeared to laugh. Then viewers saw Romney say, “You have a touchtone keypad, and you touch that, touch this, go pay the cashier, there’s your sandwich.”
What viewers didn’t see or hear was nearly three minutes of Romney discussing the nightmare of paperwork faced by an optometrist he’d talked to in trying to get the post office to change his address. He expressed mock amazement at Wawa’s efficiency to underscore how the private sector often runs circles around the clumsy bureaucracy.
“We went to Wawas and it was instructive to me, because I saw the difference between the private sector and the governmental sector. People who work in government are good people and I respect what they do, but you see, the challenge with government is that it doesn’t have competition,” Romney said in a portion edited out of the segment.
A laugh track spliced in from another part of the speech allowed the left-leaning news network to further mock Romney.
But Mitchell invoked an old campaign stumble by George Bush, who famously marveled at a supermarket scanner during his failed 1992 re-election bid, thus demonstrating in the eyes of some that he was out of touch with the lives of everyday Americans.
Representatives for the Romney campaign declined to comment, but officials from the Romney camp had reached out to the Peacock Network, which promised they would correct the issue.
At the opening of Tuesday’s show, Mitchell addressed criticism over the misleading edits.
“There’s been a lot of discussion about a conversation you and I had yesterday, Mitchell said to MSNBC contributor Chris Cillizza, “We ran clips of Mitt Romney in Cornwall, Pa., talking about his trip to a Wawa.”
“The RNC and the campaign both reached out to us saying that Romney had more to say about that visit, about federal bureaucracy and innovation in the private sector,” she added before playing the unedited clip from the rally.
Officials for NBC Universal, which owns MSNBC, did not immediately return a request for comment.
Last August, Ed Schultz of MSNBC played an edited clip in which then-presidential candidate Rick Perry described the national debt as a “big black cloud that hangs over America” to make it sound like a racial dig at President Obama. Schultz later apologized.
And in March, NBC was caught editing the audio of George Zimmerman’s 911 call as he watched Trayvon Martin in the minutes before he fatally shot the Florida teen. On a tape edited and played on the “Today” show, Zimmerman was heard calling Martin “suspicious” and volunteering that he was “black.” But the full, unedited tape showed that Zimmerman only mentioned Martin’s race when asked by the dispatcher. The result made it sound like Zimmerman was racially profiling Martin. The network fired three people after getting widespread criticism.
Fox News’ Chris Liable contributed reporting for this story.
The FCC should take this Corrupt Propaganda (News) Agency off the Air !!!!!
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The Most Important Election in the History of the United States is coming November 6th
As America inches ever closer to that all important November 6th election President Obama accelerates his power grab as Americans helplessly watch their Freedoms slip away.
This is shaping up to be the single most important election in the history of these United States of America. The American people are slowly beginning to see for themselves the devastation that has befallen US by this still UN-vetted President.
Should President Barack Obama win re-election this November all that has been America will cease to exist as the Founding Fathers intended.
Don’t let it happen America
Get out and encourage everyone you know to vote this November 6th. Get involved on the Blogs and let your voice be heard.
America is still the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.
Don’t let it Slip Away
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MSNBC says only Racist Conservatives would interrupt Presidents Speech
Hat tip to The Blaze for this story
MSNBC Ponders: Would a White President Get Interrupted During Speech?
MSNBC jumped at the opportunity to pull the race card after The Daily Caller‘s Neil Munro and President Obama got into a heated exchange during the president’s White House speech on immigration earlier today.
(Related: Obama Raises His Voice, Scolds Reporter During Immigration Speech)
“This is just so unprecedented and outrageous, that you have to ask the question, would the right-wing be doing this if we had a white president there?“ MSNBC guest and Democratic strategist Julian Epstein asked on ”Bashir Live.”
“Well, you go ahead and answer that question Julian,” host Martin Bashir replied.
So he did.
“I think it’s a vert important question because I think this is the first African-American president. We’ve never had a white president been told by the opposing party to shut up in the middle of a major address to the Congress. We’ve never had a president like this heckled so disrespectfully. We‘ve never had this otherness afforded to any other president and I think the right wing has some explaining to do because to me it’s patently obvious,” he said.
Bashir was entirely on board with his guests’ assessment of the incident, apparently painting Munro as a racist who only interjected because the president is black.
“Well, Mitt Romney says nothing when a woman’s called a slut and a prostitute, so he’s hardly going to stand up and say anything to this heckler is he,” Bashir added.
Watch some of the video from MSNBC here:
Watch the full video of President Obama scolding Munro for interrupting him during his speech here.
(H/T: Townhall)
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/msnbc-ponders-would-a-white-president-get-interrupted-during-speech/
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Exploiting Seal Team 6 for Political Gain: The Obama Campaign Movie coming soon…
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FINALLY: Maxine Waters Corruption Case Resumes
Hat Tip to The Blaze for this story
House Ethics Committee Resumes Case Against Maxine Waters
California Representative Maxine Waters has technically been under investigation for numerous ethical problems for the past three years. However, because Waters has done her damnedest during those three years to exploit as many legal technicalities as possible to try to get the investigation halted, it has dragged on endlessly. Today, yet another of her excuses ran out of mileage.
The Los Angeles Times reports:
The House Ethics Committee put its case against California Congresswoman Maxine Waters back on track Wednesday after finding that her due process rights had not been violated.
In the latest twist in an investigation that has gone on for three years, the committee acknowledged that its staff’s communications with only the Republican committee members during its investigation of Waters, a Democrat from Los Angeles, had “raised concerns about the appearance of staff partisanship.“ It also found that a committee staff member made ”inappropriate” remarks during the investigation.
But a review by an outside counsel concluded that none of the actions violated Waters’ due process rights.
With the due-process concern decided, committee members will now await a recommendation from their outside counsel, Washington lawyer Billy Martin, on whether to pursue the case on its merits. Waters, a South Los Angeles political fixture who won election to the state Assembly in 1976 and to Congress in 1990, was to face a rare trial before an ethics panel in 2010, but the hearing was put off to allow for further investigation.
Waters has been accused of intervening improperly on behalf of a bank on whose board her husband served and in which he owned stock.
These results are refreshing, but to those who have followed the case, thoroughly unsurprising. Discomfort with Waters’ ethical problems transcends partisanship – indeed, even the liberal organization Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics and Washington (CREW) added Waters to their list of “Most Corrupt Members of Congress” after this particular conflict of interest was disclosed. From their profile on Waters:
In the midst of a national financial catastrophe, Rep. Maxine Waters used her position as a senior member of Congress and member of the House Financial Services Committee to prevail upon Treasury officials to meet with OneUnited Bank. She never disclosed that her husband held stock in the bank.
Rep. Waters is an eleven-term member of Congress, representing California’s 35th congressional district. She is a senior member of the House Financial Services Committee.
Rep. Waters was included in CREW’s 2005 and2006 Most Corrupt Report for unrelated matters, as well as in the 2009 report for her actions regarding OneUnited.
What‘s Waters’ excuse? “The only reason my husband still owns those shares is that no one wants to buy them!” Listen below:
Now, who actually believes this? Waters claims she was “looking out for the interests of small and minority-owned banks” and questions why those same banks couldn’t get a meeting with then-Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson. In other words, she was just trying to level the playing field for all the poor victimized minorities whose banks were closing. We‘ll see how much pull that explanation has with the House Ethics Committee now that Waters’ final red herring – that she was victimized by the evil partisan Republicans – has been suitably gutted.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/house-ethics-committee-resumes-case-against-maxine-waters/
Listen to Maxine Waters actually telling the Truth
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Liberal Democrats and Big Unions take another Shellacking… but this time in Wisconsin
From Fox News:
Wisconsin GOP Gov. Scott Walker wakes up Wednesday knowing he’ll get to finish out his term, after voters by a wide margin sided with him in a recall election that had gained national attention and divided much of the state, from opposing political parties to neighbors and even family members.
However, several key questions remain unanswered, including whether Wisconsin now can move past the recent acrimony — and how much impact the recall results will have on the presidential election just five months away.
“Now is the time for us to come together,” Walker told supporters after claiming victory. “Tomorrow we are all Wisconsinites.”
Walker’s Democratic challenger, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, made a similar plea in his concession speech late Tuesday night, urging supporters residents to put aside their differences.
“Now we must look to the future,” said Barrett, who also lost to Walker in 2010.
Walker led Barrett in the official count 53 percent to 46 percent with 99 percent of the 3,424 precincts reporting. Walker’s lieutenant governor, Rebecca Kleefisch, also was projected to survive her recall election.
The recall effort began when the first-term governor and Republicans in the state legislature rolled back what they considered excesses in the collective bargaining agreements of public-employee unions — an effort to cut Wisconsin’s estimated $3.6 billion budget shortfall.
Wisconsin went for President Obama in 2008, but the recall results give Republicans hope that their presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, can win there in November.
“Governor Walker has demonstrated over the past year what sound fiscal policies can do to turn an economy around, and I believe that in November voters across the country will demonstrate that they want the same in Washington,” Romney said.
Republicans see Walker’s win as evidence voters across the country want their elected officials to keep government living within its means. They said this paves the way for Romney to become the first Republican candidate to carry Wisconsin since Ronald Reagan in 1984.
The outcome Tuesday is also a blow to the labor movement, which poured considerable resources into the failed effort to oust Walker.
Of the three recall elections of governors in U.S. history, only Walker has survived.
The recall effort started about a year and a half ago, after the legislature passed Walker’s proposal to curb public employee union power, while also requiring most public state workers to pay more for health insurance and pension benefits.
Democrats and unions argued the governor had gone too far, and they helped organize massive statehouse protests and gather 900,000 signatures for the recall vote.
Roughly $63 million was spent on the race, with much of Walker’s support coming from outside of the state.
The Republican Governors Association spent $1.5 million in a last-minute, get-out-the-vote effort. However, most voters seemed to have decided long before Election Day.
Democratic groups — including those funded by unions, the Democratic Governors Association and the Democratic National Committee — poured in about $14 million, based on a tally from the government watchdog group the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign. Barrett’s $4.2 million in donations were mostly from inside Wisconsin.
The race attracted some big names on both sides. Republican New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie appeared on behalf of Walker, while former President Bill Clinton came out for Barrett in the race’s final days.
Though Romney visited the state with Wisconsin GOP Rep. Paul Ryan earlier this year, President Obama did not travel to Wisconsin to campaign for Barrett, though he tweeted his support Monday night.
Since taking office, Walker has reduced the state budget and seen a drop in the state’s unemployment rate.
Walker, the 44-year-old son of a minister, remained unflappable throughout the campaign, as he was during the massive protests that raged at the Statehouse for weeks as lawmakers debated his proposal.
Along the way, he has become the most successful fundraiser in Wisconsin politics, collecting at least $31 million from around the country since taking office.
Walker wasn’t the only politician up for recall Tuesday. In addition to Kleefisch, three Republican state senators also face recall votes. A fourth state Senate seat will be determined after the Republican incumbent resigned rather than face the recall. The Associated Press projected Republicans to hold onto at least three of those four seats, and the Republican well ahead in the fourth race.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
We Press on towards November to Finish the Job we began back in November, 2009
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