Sometimes you just have to put it out there in plain English.  In my book, few do it better than Glenn Beck.  What he had to say yesterday about his “One Thing” should be easily understood by even the littlest of we, the “little people”, and should, frankly, scare the bejesus out of anyone who’s not been paying much attention to the news.  I find it wasteful to reinvent the wheel, so to speak, so watch for yourself:

 

Regardless why it’s finally happened, it has been announced that the annual spring slaughter of baby seals in the northern White Sea region has been scrapped after Vladimir Putin condemned the clubbing of baby seals for their fur as a “bloody trade”. 

As the EU continues to consider a ban on seal products, this year’s Canadian seal “hunt” has already started with 200 grey seal pups being beaten to death with wooden bats on Hay Island  (2,000 would have died except that this year – at last – there were no buyers.)  The main “hunt” begins in just 2 days.  Taking place over a period of just 2-3 months and with deaths numbering hundreds of thousands, it is the largest single slaughter of mammals in the world.  Its cruelty has been well-documented for over 100 years and should be legendary yet…it continues.  Matthew Scully has written eloquently yet plainly about it (here and here and here).  And here is an excerpt of notes from one eye-witness to last year’s activities in Newfoundland:

“One seal tried desperately to crawl away, leaving a sickening trail of blood behind her on the ice.  For agonizing moments, we watched from our helicopter as she slowly dragged herself toward the water. Finally, the sealers reached the still-struggling pup. Without missing a beat, they impaled her on a steel hook, dragged her across the ice, and pulled her up onto their boat. A sealer threw her body onto a pile of about 50 dead and dying seals, then casually reached for a club and smashed her skull.

Another seal pup that had been shot but not killed was hooked and dragged across the ice while still conscious. The pup was tossed callously onto a pile of dead seals in a boat. Moments later, we saw the seal pup moving amidst the carcasses.

One wounded seal struggled as she was stabbed with a boat hook. Seeing that she was still alive, the sealer stopped and clubbed her ineffectively with a wooden pole – an illegal weapon.

Yet another seal was shot and injured but, as blood poured from him, managed to make it to the edge of the ice, where he disappeared into the water. Though a part of me cheered inside when he evaded the hunters, I know all too well that he will almost surely bleed to death slowly – just one of the countless thousands of wounded seals who endure this fate each year.”

Independent veterinarians have condemned this hunt as cruel, even though the “hunters” knew at the time they were being watched.  And even worse than the overall cruelty involved in beating helpless babies to death is a fact no one likes to have bantied about:  as many as 42% of those battered babies are skinned alive. 

Already heavily-subsidized by the Canadian government (indirectly through such things as grants and numerous unrepaid loans to processing plants and heavy marketing aimed at the European fashion industry), the truth is that it would cost little to end it right now.

But apparently even the Russians now have at least more sense, if not heart, than the Canadian Prime Minister and the Canadian Department of Fisheries.

I don’t believe in coincidence, so as more and more comes to light about the use of TARP monies to pay bonuses to people who failed to do their job properly in the first place, it sure seems as if someone knew what they were doing when they came up with the acronym. 

But, like a big, blue, plastic tarp, this one can also be lifted so folks can peer at what’s hidden underneath.  And so far, though not really surprisingly, what it’s hiding ain’t a pretty sight.

We’re seeing nonstop, outraged news stories about AIG all over the media and today a televised Senate hearing with Edward Liddy, the CEO of AIG telling a House Financial Services subcommittee what’s being done about these abuses of taxpayer money and trust.  The anger of those questioning him is almost believable – except when you remember that most voted for TARP and it included these bonus provisions.  And it wasn’t some mysterious surprise to the administration, either.  Something I’m sure they’d all very much like to keep under under cover. 

The AP is reporting today that Fannie Mae is also paying out retention bonuses with TARP monies, and Freddie Mac isn’t far behind in paying them out, too.  The federal regulators think it’s a jolly good idea because this is all about “human assets”; no weasel words as yet from the administration, of course.  But lots of other folks are beginning to notice.

In contrast, Hewlett Packard, listed at #14 on the Fortune 500’s 2008  list and reporting first quarter net profits of $1.9 billion, is slashing salaries but apparently not slashing executive bonuses.  Hardest hit – with a sum total 15% pay cut coming for U.S. and Puerto Rican employees in the month of April – are the “human assets” of recently acquired Electronic Data Systems (EDS), that quiet innovator in information technology services where people are the company’s primary resource.

Sure, in all cases shareholders deserve a decent return on their investment.  But I have to ask, now one voice among a growing chorus, just how much is enough?  When it is the employees who sweat and labor (salaried folks working overtime without pay) to manifest and to validate a company’s reputation, aren’t they considered a stakeholder in the company and worth more, really, than someone who simply tosses the appropriate weasel words at analysts and the media?  How do executives justify multi-million dollar bonuses when that money comes directly out of the paychecks of the company’s employees or, in the case of AIG and Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac, out of the pockets of tax-paying citizens? 

I don’t believe this bonus problem is solved by unions – we don’t need another bloodsucking leach pulling money from our paychecks just so they can use it to romp around looking important – but when most “little people” invest in mutual funds and 401ks, perhaps it would behoove them to choose to invest in companies that are run in some semblance of fairness to all parts of it.  Perhaps it is time that the small investor consider how they would feel if their paycheck was being reduced simply in order to give it to the shareholders and executives, even when the company was turning a profit.  I’m guessing that the majority of them would consider such a situation unfair and so choose to not invest in that company.  If they are given the opportunity, perhaps they should read the voting ballots sent to them for the boards of directors of companies in which they own stock and look at it as if they were the owner of that company (which they are) and don’t let someone cast their vote in proxy when all it’s doing is perpetuating unfairness.

This – not government handouts – is the ground zero change that must take place.  A shift in the collective mindset.  Not just tossing the Congress critters who demonstrate so aptly the corrupting influence of power, but also tossing out anyone in any business who shows the same greedy stripes.  Level the playing field a little bit, so to speak, starting from the ground up both by investing wisely in companies who make their profits by being fair to all and by voting at the ballot box.

Nancy Pelosi went on the record last Saturday night with a group that included illegal immigrants, telling them that she thinks they are “very, very patriotic” and that the current enforcement of United States immigration laws is “un-American”.

Really?

Again, I have to ask:  just what part of “ILLEGAL” is so difficult to understand?  Surely, as Mrs. Pelosi said, illegal immigrants are “very special people”, however, I get no warm and fuzzies with them taking “responsibility for our country’s future” by breaking its laws the moment they set foot in this country.  Such “specialness” is by definition deliberately and intentionally criminal and needs to be treated as such.

Yes, indeed, something needs to change.

And I believe it’s the Speaker of the House, not our immigration laws.

Kausfiles.com posted a little rant yesterday about Obama needing cajones when it comes to getting his administration properly staffed.  In a nutshell, they claim the President is obsessed with avoiding having to deal with any kind of negative press (as demonstrated by the continued adolescent whining about Rush Limbaugh, Jim Cramer, et al).

‘Tis true, of course, and it plays out on a daily basis with the continued fawning of the mainstream media over some perceived “novelty” of the new administration (a rare, notable, and interesting exception that the love affair is fading can be seen here).  However, I believe the administration’s inability to find someone “worthy” of appointment begs a far greater question:  Is there no one involved in politics who has real morals and ethics and obeys the law?  The resumes of potential appointees like Daschle, who failed to pay tens of thousands of dollars in taxes, should be tossed into the circular file; Geithner should never have been allowed oversight of every penny provided by taxpayers after his own failure to pay tens of thousands of dollars in taxes and his role in the meltdown on Wall Street.  Even the President cannot lay claim to honesty what with the now conveniently-forgotten questions about his campaign contributions, and his wife’s $195,000 raise at the University of Chicago Hospital when he became a Senator (and promptly obtained a million-dollar earmark for a pavillion there; interestingly her job and that of the other “executives” were eliminated due to “budget concerns”, shortly after she had tendered her early January resignation).

But I digress.  Corruption in the DNA of political critters seems to be mandatory criteria for membership in the club.  And while it may, indeed, be hypocritical for the President to conveniently insist on hiring responsible and ethical people, that he cannot succeed in doing so after 2 months in office should be a big wake up call for everyone who reads about these never-ending vetting failures and the sound of silence echoing throughout the corridors of the Treasury Department. 

For far too long we have paid our elected representatives (perhaps too) well and in some strange way have elevated them to a sort of pedestal, believing that by doing so they magically obtain a level of vision and intelligence not accessible to the common man.  Being inherently creatures of convenience and very narrow focus we have chosen to forget that they serve to represent us, their job is to represent our basic and collective interests,  which are really little more than keeping our country – and therefore us – safe from harm.  They don’t know – they cannot know – what is best for us, each individual.  My wants from this journey we call life is probably far different than those of you who are reading this blog.  Yet the government’s primary role is simply to allow us to pursue those wants, through the inalienable freedom that basically means doing so pretty much as we wish, s0 long as we don’t harm one another in the process.  We send those critters to Congress to make sure that is the case.

And we’ve ended up here.  For all the world like little deer in the headlights as the “best and brightest” have managed to collapse the world as we’ve known it with their oh-so-clever “models” that, in fact, bear little to no semblance to reality.  We have laws and rules and regulations up the yin-yang, and see hands out to get something for nothing everywhere we look.  We have millions of sheep-like followers and so few real leaders (no, Barack Obama is no leader; he is simply a good orater and that doesn’t count, particularly when nothing of any sense or valid purpose is found in the words).  I’ve heard it said that honest people want nothing to do with government, and the more I watch what goes on there, I can’t say as I can find much fault with such an assumption. 

We really need to start all over again.  Toss every critter out of Washington and toss probably most every one of them out of the state legislatures, too; trim down government spending to the truest, most basic needs and then allow those who know how to lead to lead.  Everyone else follows or or at least gets out of the way.  The Tea Parties springing up all over the country are, in my opinion, a very good sign.  It means that people are starting to pay attention and starting to at least become angry over the selfishness that pervades our government – but I believe, however, that we must also see this as a mirror of the overall collective American mindset.  As individuals we must also return to the basics, each one reclaiming morals and ethics and choosing to deliberately perform to the best of their abilities.  All the while with the understanding that doing so is no guarantee of equal material reward, only that we are guaranteed the opportunity to pursue it while demonstrating fairness in our dealings with one another – from family to neighbors to coworkers to employees to shareholders. 

This is what I call cajones from the ground up.  Not the ground-up cajones that we let run things today.

Here’s a nice example of real-life responsibility, straight from the Orchid Office.  Foxnews reports today that President Obama just can’t seem to break his addiction to being in some kind of spotlight so is heading off for a taping of “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno” on Wednesday.

Maybe he heard they’re going to have Waygu and mushroom risotto leftovers for dinner?

Don’t forget, it’s OUR tax dollars that will be paying for this little bit of levity.

Though this whole administration behaves like they’re stuck in some nasty flashback to junior high school, sometimes I find I’m starting to think of Barack Obama less as the president and more along the lines of “Daddy Dearest”.  With all his chiding and scolding and gloomy-doomy fears, he sounds a lot like the parent of a teenager.  A really bad parent.  One of the “do as I say, not as I do” kind of parent, replete with the full quota of hypocrisy.

He says, “We can’t drive our SUVs…as much as we want….”  But he takes a brand-new Air Force One to Chicago for a weekend vacation after his first 3 weeks in office.  Oh, and don’t forget the 28 new Marine One helicopters (costing $11.2 billion).

He says, “We can’t…eat as much as we want….”  But he and the extended family will dine on Waygu beef, and the staff will make so much mushroom risotto that there’s too much left over.  Of course, then Michelle can have her very own photo op at a food bank.

He says, “We can’t …keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times….”  But he’s from Hawaii, ok?  So the Oval Office will be kept warm enough to “grow orchids”.

He says, “There are a lot of individual families who are experiencing incredible pain and hardship right now.”  But he and Michelle will go out partying with the folks from 3 of Washington’s local luxury lifestyle magazines — Capitol File, DC magazine and Washington Life.  It’s part of their job to “embrace Washington’s glittery social scene” while the economy falls in around the rest of us. 

He says, “The fact that we’ve had to take these extraordinary measures and intervene is not an indication of my ideological preference, but an indication of the degree to which lax regulation and extravagant risk taking has precipitated a crisis.”  But he was only (supposed to be) serving in the Senate.

He says, “It’s important that we…ensure that the budget process works better, that taxpayers are protected, and that we save billions of dollars that we so desperately need to right our economy and address our fiscal crisis.”  But his personal assistant had to attend New York’s Fashion Week.  For research.

I find it amazing that people still continue to think he’s some kind of “good guy”.  One staunch supporter I recently questioned, despite secretly admitting to now having serious misgivings, resorted to blaming the Republicans for not allowing the President to “do his job”. 

I never realized that Republicans had some magic power to make people act like hypocrites.

The District of Columbia city’s chief technology officer, Vivek Kundra, was recently named “Federal Chief Information Officer (CIO) of the United States of America.” 

It has been reported that his former D. C. city offices were raided and today one worker (Yusuf Acar) and another man (Sushil Bansal) have been arrested.  Details remain sketchy, but while Kundra was in charge, with Acar responsible for contracting, Bansal’s company was awarded 2 technology contracts to the tune of $350,000. 

Acar is being charged with four different crimes:

COUNT ONE  (Conspiracy to Commit Bribery)
Between in or about October 2008 and the present in a continuing course of conduct, in the District of Columbia and elsewhere, YUSUF ACAR and SUSHIL BANSAL did knowingly combine, conspire, confederate and agree with each other and others known and unknown, to commit the offense of bribery of a public official by inducing Yusuf Acar to do an act or omit to do an act in violation of his official duty in return for a thing of value. (Conspiracy to Commit Bribery of a Public Official in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Sections 201 and 371).

COUNT TWO  (Honest Services Wire Fraud)
At all times material to this complaint Yusuf Acar was an officer or employee of the District of Columbia Office of the Chief Technology Officer.
Between in or about October 2008 and the present in a continuing course of conduct, in the District of Columbia and elsewhere, Yusuf Acar and Sushil Bansal devised and intended to devise a scheme and artifice to defraud and deprive the District of Columbia Government and the citizens of the District of Columbia, of their right to the honest services of Yusuf Acar, performed free from deceit, favoritism, bias, self-enrichment, self-dealing, concealment, and conflict of interest.

On or about December 18, 2008, in the District of Columbia, for the purpose of executing the scheme and artifice to defraud and deprive, Yusuf Acar knowingly transmitted and caused to be transmitted by means of wire communication certain signals in interstate commerce, that is, the falsified timesheets of Khalid Rahman, sent via facsimile from the District of Columbia to the Commonwealth of Virginia. (Wire Fraud Deprivation of Honest Services of a Public Official , in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Sections 1343, 1346).

COUNT THREE  (Conflict of Interest)
Between in or about October 2008 through the present in a continuing course of conduct, in the District of Columbia, Yusuf Acar, being an officer and employee of the District of Columbia, knowingly and willfully participated personally and substantially as a Government officer and employee, through decision, approval, recommendation, the rendering of advice and otherwise, relating to awarding contracts, purchase orders and selecting vendors, in which Yusuf Acar had a financial interest. (Acts Affecting a Personal Financial Interest, in violation of Title 18 U.S.C., Section 208).

COUNT FOUR  (Conspiracy to Launder Monetary Instruments)
Between in or about October 2008 and the present, in a continuing course of conduct, in the District of Columbia and elsewhere, YUSUF ACAR, SUSHIL BANSAL and others conspired to commit the offense of laundering monetary instruments, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1956. (Conspiracy to Commit the Offense of Laundering Monetary Instruments, in violation of Title 18 U.S.C., Sections 1956(a)(1)-(2), 1956(h)).

 

Either Kundra was too stupid to know what his employees were doing, or he knew and didn’t care.  And it’s not like this was a big outfit, with a budget around $69 million and some 298 employees; so where was the oversight or maybe some whistleblower or at least an external auditor’s questions?  Or is this simply the way that this little government organization typically does business?

The company kept by this administration leaves much to be desired.

I’m speechless. 

CNN reports that Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki confirmed Tuesday that the Obama administration is considering making veterans pay for treatment of service-related injuries with private insurance.  It isn’t enough that they are going to tax anyone with any money left at all right out of business, but now they’re thinking they will make some money via “third-party collections” for services to our veterans, as estimated in the 2010 budget proposal.

Hotair had this to say about it:

“And people used to complain that Bush didn’t care enough about veteran care – even though he increased the VA budget by 56% from 2001 to 2008.  Bush never offered the notion that the nation should shirk its duty to those who gave their health for the defense of America, especially not in the same week in which his administration signed a record omnibus bill with 8,000 pork items in it.  In fact, I don’t think any administration has ever signaled such a policy, mostly because previous administrations weren’t dumb enough to try it, let alone crass enough to consider it an area to save a little cash.”

How dare they?  And Shineski, of all people?  A retired U.S. Army General who served (and was wounded himself) in Vietnam.  He is a traitor to all of those who gave their lives under his command while in service of this country, and to those who continue to lay their lives on the line for us every day.  And our nation’s commander-in-chief is no better for allowing such a thing to even be considered.

Even when the Senate doesn’t have to confirm the choices, President Obama and his administration continues their losing streak.  It has finally been reported that Charles Freeman made the decision to walk away from his appointment as National Intelligence Council chairman.   

True to form, his resignation stated in part, “There is a special irony in having been accused of improper regard for the opinions of foreign governments and societies by a group so clearly intent on enforcing adherence to the policies of a foreign government — in this case, the government of Israel.” 

Nothing like sour grapes to go with that whine, eh, Chas?

And it looks like all that dirt with which he surrounds himself is finally starting to tarnish the candy coating.  The NRO reported on Monday that President Obama’s approval rating had dropped to 56%.  Don’t expect much of a rebound after tomorrow’s National Press Club news conference announces that “evidence in the 1970 bombing murder of a San Francisco police officer points to Weather Underground members Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers.” 

I don’t expect the stock market to move up, either.  Rep. David Obey (D-Wis) has told staff of the House Appropriations Committee to begin “preparing options” and ideas for the possibility of another bill to revive the ailing economy.  Could it be that he already knew Freddie Mac was going to ask for a $30.8 BILLION bailout?

Or does Nancy Pelosi have another trip planned for her friends and family this weekend?

Oh, I must be fair and balanced here.  As predicted, new unwed parents Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston won’t be getting married after all.

Looks like that’s the only bet in town that would have paid off.