Archive for the ‘Government Out of Control’ Category
CHARTS: Here’s what Obama is calling “catastrophic” cuts imposed by the sequester
You heard President Obama’s hysterical press conference yesterday about “catastrophic” spending cuts imposed by the sequester.
Now for some perspective . . .
Note that federal spending still goes up every year under the sequester, even while household incomes continue to decline.
January posted the sharpest decline in personal incomes for Americans in 20 years, and the worst decline in after-tax incomes since 1959. American households have lost nearly $5,000 in annual income under Obama. But the federal government continues to grow and spend more regardless.
The federal government is now borrowing 46 cents out of every dollar it spends. If Obama were really concerned about the “children,” as he always claims, he’d be concerned about the mountain of debt he’s piling onto their backs.
Every baby born today in America owes $55,000 on the national debt debt. This number doubles every seven years at the current rate of spending.
If Republicans in Congress cave on this modest spending restraint mechanism known as the sequester, there really is no hope for the country.
Here was Obama’s presser on the sequester . . .
Cop admits he plants drugs on innocent people to meet arrest quota. Says this is common.
It will be real interesting to see how well he gets along with his fellow inmates.
NY DAILY NEWS: A former NYPD narcotics detective snared in a corruption scandal testified it was common practice to
fabricate drug charges against innocent people to meet arrest quotas.
The bombshell testimony from Stephen Anderson is the first public account of the twisted culture behind the false arrests in the Brooklyn South and Queens narc squads, which led to the arrests of eight cops and a massive shakeup.
Anderson, testifying under a cooperation agreement with prosecutors, was busted for planting cocaine, a practice known as “flaking,” on four men in a Queens bar in 2008 to help out fellow cop Henry Tavarez, whose buy-and-bust activity had been low.
“Tavarez was … was worried about getting sent back [to patrol] and, you know, the supervisors getting on his case,” he recounted at the corruption trial of Brooklyn South narcotics Detective Jason Arbeeny.
“I had decided to give him [Tavarez] the drugs to help him out so that he could say he had a buy,” Anderson testified last week in Brooklyn Supreme Court.
Failed Solyndra spent $1.9 million lobbying Obama
NEW YORK TIMES: The 1,100 full- and part-time employees who were abruptly laid off two weeks ago aren’t the only ones whose paychecks have been affected by the sudden and dramatic failure of bankrupt solar energy company, Solyndra Inc.
Because for its brief lifespan, Solyndra proved to be pretty good for the lobbying community.
According to records filed with the Clerk of the House and a search of disclosure forms compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics, Solyndra spent nearly $1.9 million on lobbying activities over a period of 43 months from 2008 to 2011.
About $1 million of that was earned by the company’s two in-house lobbyists, Joseph Pasetti and Victoria Sanville, over an 18-month period from 2010 until this year. But Solyndra has also had several big-name lobbying shops on its payroll, including established powerhouses Dutko Worldwide and Holland and Knight, which began representing the then-fledgling company in 2008.
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Remember disgraced, disbarred North Carolina District Attorney Mike Nifong? His successor appears to be just as lawless.
NEWS OBSERVER: The final witness in the trial of Frankie Washington was his
prosecutor, Tracey Cline.
Cline had pursued charges against Washington for more than four years, accusing the handyman of burglary, robbery, kidnapping, assault and an attempted sex offense in a frightening West Durham home invasion.
At the trial in late February 2007, Cline was in the witness box, an unusual spot for a longtime assistant district attorney. Washington’s attorney, preparing for an appeal, wanted to question her about forensic tests on the evidence – a winter hat, a bandana, a pistol-grip shotgun and a stolen purse.
Crucial testing of the purse and the hat had taken years, delaying Washington’s trial. The attorney, Lawrence Campbell, had complained for years about those delays. Now, he wanted Cline to tell the jury what happened.
Cline repeated what she had told a judge in a previous hearing: The state crime lab was responsible for the long delays.
But records tell a different story. Cline had not submitted the evidence to the lab for more than three years. It was Cline’s job to ensure that the evidence, along with a judge’s order to test it, were sent to the lab.
When the evidence was finally tested, none of it matched Washington.
Update on what Michael Nifong is up to
NEW YORK TIMES: The disgraced former prosecutor who led the debunked Duke
lacrosse rape case filed for bankruptcy, citing more than $180 million in liabilities — the majority from the threat of two pending lawsuits. The prosecutor, Michael B. Nifong, reported $243,898 in assets of real and personal property to United States Bankruptcy Court. The filing came the same day that Mr. Nifong and other defendants were required to respond to a sweeping federal lawsuit filed in October by the three exonerated players whom he had falsely accused of rape.
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POLICE STATE: Illinois man faces 75 years in prison for video recording his encounter with cops
DJ PANGBURN-D&T: A 42-year old Illinois man named Michael Allison is facing 75 years in prison for recording video of police. This, of course, just days after the 1st District Court of Appeals upheld the right to record police actions in public in Glik v. Cunniffe.
Michael Allison recorded video of Illinois police visiting his mother’s home to investigate his unregistered
vehicles. Allison recorded the police without their consent while they fined him and impounded his vehicles. Now he faces 75 years in prison for these videos as well as those recorded at a court proceeding related to the case.
And Allison is being prosecuted under archaic laws governing eavesdropping on police. Each of the five counts of eavesdropping would bring him 15 years, as it is a class-one felony in Illinois, which puts Allison’s actions in league with rape.
Of course, police are free to videotape citizens at will.
This has all happened amidst a trend of citizens armed with smart phones recording video and audio of police arrests and encounters. Rochester, New York citizen Emily Good was arrested for videotaping a police arrest outside her home, even though she was on her property (because the officer Mario Masic felt threatened). And, of course, OpenWatch released CopRecorder and OpenWatch Recorder to monitor police encounters.
Cop threatens to shoot motorist in the face during routine traffic stop
Watch cop assault 14-year-old skateboarder for calling him “Dude”
My son calls me “dude” sometimes. But I don’t take it as an insult. It’s just the way kids talk these days. Sometimes I will say: “Pete, probably best not to get in the habit of calling adults ‘dude.’ They might think you’re being disrespectful.”
He’ll then say, “Oh, yeah, sorry Dad. I guess it’s just a habit because that’s what everyone my age calls each other.”
Good thing we had video of this
Without camcorders, we never would have learned about the Rodney King beating
YOUR FRIENDLY GOVERNMENT: Man in critical condition after cops beat him into a coma for riding a bicycle without a light
KRISTV: It’s news no one wants to hear; a family member is in the hospital on life support unable to speak and even worse there are few answers about how it all happened.
That’s exactly what one Aransas Pass family says they are going through.
Martin Garcia Ortiz is in critical condition after an incident allegedly involving Aransas Pass police back on August 10th.
The family and their attorneys say they believe a rogue police officer may be to blame for Ortiz’s severe injuries.
“We want to find out what happened to my uncle. We want him to hurry up and talk to see what he can tell
us,” said Victoria Hernandez, Ortiz’s niece.
48-year-old Martin Garcia Ortiz is a life long Aransas Pass resident, though for the past few weeks he’s been at Spohn Memorial Hospital in Corpus Christi.
On August 10th, Ortiz’s family says he was riding his bicycle home and just a few blocks away something happened to put him in critical condition.
Just before midnight, the family’s attorneys say they believe police tried stopping Ortiz for not having a headlight on his bike. Then, the situation took a dramatic turn when one officer allegedly knocked Ortiz to the ground.
“Either with his vehicle or with his person pushed him over on his bicycle. He fell over to the street,” said Stephen Carriganan, attorney for the family.
Attorneys say Ortiz was knocked from his bike along Cleveland Street. The allegations are only more shocking from there.
They say they believe when Ortiz was already on the ground bleeding the officer got out and punched or kicked him causing even more injuries.
Attorneys say they have evidence that supports their claims, but are holding off on revealing their sources.
We contacted Aransas Pass police department for comment but our calls weren’t returned.
It’s not clear if the officers involved received disciplinary action, but it appears they’re still on duty in the city.
Police are charging Ortiz with public intoxication and resisting arrest.
The family’s attorneys report the police department has told them the dash-cam video from the police unit was- for some reason- unable to record the incident.
Attorneys also say the department hasn’t given them a complete copy of the incident report.
“I can find very little justification. If what we believe is true; if they pushed or ran this guy of the road, whatever they did with their car or their persons. I’d be very surprised if there is any justification for that in a report,” said Chris Gayle, an attorney for the family.
Now, the family and attorneys say they are faced with a lot of unanswered questions about exactly what went on that night, but they’re hopeful they will find the truth.
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Woman holds yard sales to pay for her bone cancer treatments. Government shuts her down.
SALEM KATU: A woman fighting a terminal form of bone cancer is trying to raise money to help pay bills with a few weekend garage sales, but the city of Salem says she’s breaking the law and is shutting her down.
Jan Cline had no idea, but the city of Salem has a clear law that states a person can only have three yard sales a year.
Cline has been selling her stuff in the backyard for a few weekends and said she thought she’d be fine by keeping the sale out of everyone’s way.
“It’s a struggle,” Cline says. “It’s a struggle for me because I’m very independent, used to taking care of myself.”
She’s run businesses and supported herself for years but this summer she was diagnosed with bone cancer.
“It’s a bone marrow cancer that eats through the bones and causes holes in the bones so that just by walking I can break a bone,” she says.
In one day she lost her independence, her ability to work and earn an income that could pay for all those medical bills.
So she decided to sell what she owned. The sale was bringing in several hundred dollars each weekend until one neighbor complained and she got a visit from the city.
“He said, ‘I’m sorry. Rules are rules.’”
Sen Coburn admits there are no spending cuts in debt deal law for 2012
Actually, there are no spending cuts at all, ever, period
This chart shows why federal spending never goes down under any plan.
The Ryan plan boasts $6.2 trillion in savings over 10 years. So that takes the projected national debt in 2021 from about $28 trillion all the way down to $22 trillion.
So we get a $22 trillion debt under the Ryan Plan . . . 10 years from now — instead of the $28 trillion debt Obama wants to give us.
Doesn’t sound like much of a plan to me.
And this is Paul Ryan’s chart.
So there’s really not a whole lot of difference between the Ryan budget plan and Obama’s spendaholism. Yet Dems, such as Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden, call Ryan’s plan economic terrorism against the elderly and the poor.
The best we can say about the Ryan plan is that it’s a little bit less worse than the Obama budget.
So . . . not so good.
I like Paul Ryan. He’s a really smart dude. But we can do better than this.
Back to the drawing board.
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HEAVY-HANDED GOVERNMENT: Police shut down girl’s lemonade stand
ASSOCIATED PRESS: Police in Georgia have shut down a lemonade stand run by three girls trying to save up for a trip to a water park, saying they didn’t have a business license or the required permits.
Midway Police Chief Kelly Morningstar says police also didn’t know how the lemonade was made, who made it or what was in it.
The girls had been operating for one day when Morningstar and another officer cruised by.
The girls needed a business license, peddler’s permit and food permit to operate, even on residential property. The permits cost $50 a day or $180 per year.
One girl, 14-year-old Casity Dixon, says the three had to listen to police and shut down.
The girls are now doing chores and yard work to make money.
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