Stimulus Spent Over $617k in Non-Existent Missouri District

This seems to the norm rather than the exception. More examples here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

I love the smell of transparency in the morning.

Labels: dodd, economics, obama, pelosi, reid, signage

This post sponsored in part by a sweetheart mortgage from Countrywide and by taxpayers like you.



Poll: Dodd approval rating drops
Chris Dodd Is Getting His Butt Kicked In Latest Poll (ACE)

Related
The Secret 'Friends of Angelo' (WSJ)
Chris Dodd's Irish 'Cottage'

Labels: dodd

He also thanked China for financing the $800 BILLION stimulus and the $1.5 TRILLION national health care scheme. He also lauded the millions of jobs "saved or created" by fabricating these nifty signs along the Merritt Parkway.

Related
Biden stumps for Dodd, Himes: Parkway event touts benefits of stimulus
Unemployment rate rises to 9.8 percent in September, as employers cut 263,000 jobs

If laid-off workers who have settled for part-time work or have given up looking for new jobs are included, the unemployment rate rose to 17 percent.

It's Still the Economy, Stupid
Slow Joe Talks Straight About The Stimulus Package
Unemployment Rate With and Without the Stimulus
Rob Simmons for U.S. Senate

Notable
Jim Himes (D-CT4) worked at Goldman Sachs like Henry Paulson, Ben Bernanke, and Timothy Geithner

Labels: china, connecticut post, dodd

This is a work in progress and I still have to source the authors. I took some liberty with the bit about the liberal(s) lust for dictatorship.

I originally wanted to title the post 'Why Daddy is a Democrat' but this title fits better. This was an easy list to compile since liberals seem to exemplify cognitive dissonance.

(1) Liberals assume that their cosmic humanitarianism and brotherly egalitarianism exempt them from following mere mortal laws. [Victor Davis Hanson]

Example: Rangel Failed to Disclose $500,000 in Assets for ’07

(2) In order to enact state planning, and superimpose an overarching government plan onto our own messy agendas, we must bow to a technocracy. [Victor Davis Hanson]

Example: Find a copy of Liberal Fascism or The Road to Wigan Pier

(3) Mythologizing Guevara, Castro, and the Communist dictatorship must never end because some dismaying percentage of liberals actually like (prefer?) them. [Source Jay Nordlinger]

Example: "You can think whatever you want to about Fidel Castro, but he was one of the brightest leaders I have ever met." (Rep. Diane Watson [D])

(4) Embracing liberal policies grants a politician carte blanche in his personal or private life. [Andrew Breitbart]

Example: The Silky Pony (AKA John Edwards) and Ted Kennedy

(5) Liberals aren't good with numbers. [Commenter on Ace of Spades HQ]

Example: "We have to spend money to keep from going bankrupt"

(6) Liberals Love the Masses; They Just Don't Want to be Seen With Them [Ace from Ace of Spades HQ]

Example: "We won't smell the tourists anymore." (Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid [D])

(7) Liberals need a leader to put their minds in the right place to do the right thing. They are not heroic individualists seeking to extend America’s promise but conformists who chose to sit out and complain during the tough years in order to ensure their guy got in the next go-around. [Andrew Breitbart]

Example: The Pledge

Labels: connecticut post, cuba, dodd, liberals, pelosi, rangel

Dodd, Conrad told deals were sweetened

WASHINGTON (AP) - Despite their denials, influential Democratic Sens. Kent Conrad and Chris Dodd were told from the start they were getting VIP mortgage discounts from one of the nation's largest lenders, the official who handled their loans has told Congress in secret testimony.

Both senators have said that at the time the mortgages were being written they didn't know they were getting unique deals from Countrywide Financial Corp., the company that went on to lose billions of dollars on home loans to credit-strapped borrowers.

Labels: dodd

August Recess Reading
(1) Our Angry Aristocracy by Victor Davis Hanson

Scolding Americans for our various sins is proving popular among an elite group of self-appointed moralists...Yet these influential prophets of doom do not have lives remotely similar to the lesser folk they lecture.

Do the wealthy and the powerful lecture us about our wrongs because they know their own insider status ensures that they are exempt from the harsh medicine they advocate for others? Or does the hypocrisy grow out of a sort of class snobbery?

Do elites hector the crass middle class because it lacks their own taste, rare insight, and privileged style? Or is the new hypocrisy an eerie sort of psychological compensation at work?

(2) ObamaCare in Trouble by Karl Rove
Polls are turning against President Barack Obama’s health-care plan...The polls are crumbling because of a flood of bad news about Mr. Obama’s health-care proposals.

But the most damaging news came from Congressional Budget Office (CBO) Director Douglas Elmendorf, who said last week that the White House’s health-care proposals would not “reduce the trajectory of federal health spending by a significant amount.”

Democratic leaders, including the president, are now backing away from a vote on health care before August. But that’s not likely to decrease voter angst. Americans for Prosperity and others are already organizing voters to attend public meetings with members of Congress this summer. My guess is that members of Congress are about to hear a lot from their voters on the government takeover of health care, new energy taxes, the failed stimulus, record deficits, and growing joblessness.

Labels: dodd, obama, pelosi, rangel, reid, weekend

Disarray. That's one word to describe the status of the Obama administration's legislative program as Congress heads into its final four weeks of work before the August recess...

Related
$1 Trillion Deficit Complicates Obama's Agenda (WSJ)
Federal budget deficit tops $1 trillion with 3 months left in budget year (USA Today)

Limestone Commentary
Who will the DEMS blame?

Labels: democrats, dodd, left-wing media, obama, pelosi, reid

"The emperor needed the wealthier classes to help him run the empire. Senators in particular were the class he lived amongst and their attitude towards him tended to dictate how he would be portrayed in later histories."

- How Rome Fell, Adrian Goldsworthy

Related
Amid Criticism, Post Drops "Appalling" Plan to Sell Access (ABC)
Barack Obama Seeks to Turn America into a Third World Country
Again, Why the Diffidence?
National Security & the Cult of Personality
Congress's Travel Tab Swells: Spending on Taxpayer-Funded Trips Rises Tenfold; From Italy to the Galápagos (WSJ)

Labels: dodd, history, left-wing media, obama, pelosi, quotes, reid

I've just started this meaty book by Adrian Goldsworthy and will eventually post a full book review. For now, I found this quote in the preface rousing:

The Roman Empire did not fall quickly, but as part of a very slow process, and this should warn us against magnifying current events and their likely consequences on the long-term fortune of countries. Britain has been a fairly depressing place in the last decade or so. Ministers caught out in incompetence, corruption or blatant deceitfulness cling on to power like limpets, first denying everything, before finally apologising and expecting this to be enough. Bureaucracy and regulation continue to grow apace, while the basic efficiency of institutions declines, rendering them incapable of even the apparently simple tasks. Yet while the number of civil servants rises, the size of the armed forces shrinks at the very time they are more committed to serious campaigns. It would be easy to draw parallels with the Roman Empire in the fourth century. The self-righteous tone of so much government legislation certainly chimes with late Late Roman imperial decrees, as does the apparent failure of so much of this to achieve its aim. Such comparisons are unlikely to assist our analysis of the Roman Empire, and would be no more than the author indulging himself. Understanding the history must come first.

And as soon as I read the word limpets I thought about this post at Instapundit (and hyenas).
Our elected officials are like a pack of hyenas (Dodd and his sweetheart loan from Countrywide). I can just see Obey and Waters standing over the carcasses of hard-working taxpayers, forcibly extracting money as payoffs to special interest groups and to engorge their own private coffers. These are filthy people.

en·gorge
- verb (used with object), verb (used without object), -gorged, -gorg·ing.
1. to swallow greedily; glut or gorge.

Labels: books, dodd, history, quotes

Is Carol Gould writing about Dodd, Rangel and Murtha?

Every day one sees yet another shop being abandoned and boarded up; in London some local authorities are allowing charities and small groups to move into abandoned shop premises rather than let them become damp-ridden dumps. As this unfolds, members of Parliament are reported to have been claiming £18,000 for a bookcase and £6,000 for a wooden floor, while engaging in complicated “flipping” arrangements in which they received payments for switching homes every so often.

These politicos live fabulously (Chris Dodd's Irish 'Cottage') while pick pocketing us poor rubes. Where is the outrage as Gore stands to make millions from Cap-And-Trade (Con-And-Transfer)? How about tax cheat Geithner's auto industry adviser who is building a $15 MILLION DOLLAR summer home in Martha's Vineyard! Meanwhile all these schemes, while populist in tone, increase the every man(s) living expenses! The new CAFE standards will IMPOSE a $1,300 car tax on the working/middle class!

Related
British expense scandal ousts lower house speaker
Doing Penance

Labels: democrats, dodd, obama, pelosi, rangel, reid

Christopher "Countrywide" Dodd is mentioned @1:54.

Labels: dodd

Black Breath - Name given to the fell influence of the Nazgûl, which resulted in despair, unconsciousness, and bad dreams, and after prolonged exposure, in death.

I think you can catch the equivalent from Barney Frank, Christopher "Countrywide" Dodd, Charles Rangel, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi. I'm not sure who in this motley lot would play the Lord Of The Nazgûl.

Related
The Hunt For Gollum

Labels: dodd, obama, pelosi, rangel, reid

Where is the outrage? Is this how it ends?

Congress: The spectacle of the very same people responsible for one of the nation's great financial calamities angling to be given even more control to fix the problem would be funny if it weren't so tragic.

Frank, one of the chief architects of the housing mess that's brought us so low, isn't satisfied merely with pretending he and his Democratic pals aren't to blame for all this. No, exploiting voter anger over the now-infamous AIG bonuses, he also wants to dictate to American capitalism what it can earn and what it can't.

This is the kind of thing that normally happens in Third World countries ruled by tinhorn dictators, or in fascist states, where the democratic rule of law has collapsed. Not the U.S.

Source: IBDeditorials.com

Related
ACORN Behind ‘Protests’ At AIG Homes
Busload of Crazies to Tour Homes of AIG Executives This Weekend

To GIVE and to SERVE: the $6 billion National Service boondoggle

Labels: democrats, dodd, pelosi, rangel, reid

While Dodd, Frank, Pelosi, Obama, Rangel, Reid and Geithner stomp around like a carnival act over the AIG/DNC taxpayer bonuses the Fed decided to create (PRINT) another $1.2 trillion of U.S. currency. Jim Manzi provides the details here but the money quote and eventual outcome is encapsulated in this formula.

More dollars + the same assets = more dollars per asset = inflation.

Related
The David Copperfield School of Economic Recovery
The Fed’s Monumental Move
The AIG Mystery Deepens
Dodd Admits Role In AIG Bonus Controversy
The Obama CYA Act of 2009

Labels: democrats, dodd, economics, obama, pelosi, rangel, reid

I read about Kudlow as a potential challenger at Instapundit here and here. According to the Connecticut Post Shays is selling his Bridgeport (Black Rock) home. More interesting though is his potential appointment to head the Peace Corps by the Obama administration.

Labels: dodd

The Coming Depression

Update

>>> Holy Grue! <<< (in convenient chart form)

Additional background is available at Financial Armageddon and BobKrumm.com.

If you need a little palette cleanser take a look at Christopher Countrywide Dodd's nice Irish cottage. He lives like one of those greedy job-creating entrepreneurs he's always demonizing.

Related
Mean Street: Obama’s Dow 5000
$25,573.48 - what Barack Obama's budget will cost each taxpayer
The Coming Blue State Collapse

Labels: dodd, economics, end times, obama, pelosi, rangel, reid

Investor's Business Daily examines the market sell off (30% in six weeks).

My favorite quote:

"Business leaders are demonized. Yes, there are bad eggs out there like the Madoffs and Stanfords. But most CEOs are hugely talented, driven, highly intelligent people who make our corporations the most productive in the world and add trillions of dollars of value to our economy.

They don't deserve to be dragged before Congress, as they have been dozens of times in the past two years, for a ritual heaping of verbal abuse from the very people most responsible for our ills — our tragically inept, Democrat-led Congress."

Obama misspent his "mandate" when he outsourced the spending bill to Pelosi/Reid.

Why?

Did Obama owe them for his victory? Was his transition team too lazy to draft something on their own? Was his plan to have Pelosi/Reid own this travesty all along?

Or is Obama just a charlatan, slippery enough to hide his hard-core lefty ideology from a gullible public hungry for change after two decades of Bush/Clinton/Bush?

I'm not sure America would have given Obama a "mandate" for European style socialism had they known the truth. It's unfortunate he was abetted by the media (derelict in its duty) because the real cost of this debacle is now becoming clear. As Kudlow wrote a month ago capital is on strike and all those evil CEOs progressives decry provide the ornaments of civilization.

There is hope though! Congressional approval ratings were at an all time low in July (Gallup) and this cadre of miscreants (Pelosi/Reid/Dodd/Rangel/Frank) will be put before the American public again in 2010.

Related
Tea Party USA Watch: Taxpayers coming together

Labels: dodd, liberals, obama, pelosi, rangel, reid

Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit continues to cover the raw hypocrisy and ethical obtuseness of Christopher "Countrywide" Dodd. See here, here, here, and here.

I lived in Bridgeport, CT in 2004 when Dodd was running for re-election and I remember his goons swooping into the Black Rock Area and plastering it with hundreds of his hideous black and yellow signs.

Michelle Malkin has been covering the growing taxpayer (tea party) protests here. She was at the tea party in Denver on February 17.

Meanwhile Rich Karlgaard at Forbes.com explains how Obama has delegated domestic policy to a virulently anti-capitalistic House.

Lastly, Mark Steyn writes about the significance of Obama's decision to return the bust of Sir Winston Churchill to the British.

Conservatives need heroes and Mark Steyn, Michelle Malkin, and Glenn Reynolds are as BIG as they come. I would add Jonah Goldberg to this list as well.

Labels: dodd, england, obama, pelosi, the good guys

It's not going to take very long for Americans to figure out that Obama and his ilk are a bunch of two-bit charlatans. Biden told us it was patriotic to pay taxes which means that Rangel (the government employee who authors the tax code), Geithner (the government employee who collects the taxes) and now Daschle must be positively un-American. These three tax cheats, all party apparatchiks calling for higher taxes, are poor representatives in Obama's new era of responsibility.

"They and Barack want me to do more, to work harder? I just bailed out every stupid company in America, you [deleted]! We're going to be saved because Puff Daddy is going to turn his lights out? I'm supposed to buy a $30,000 hybrid because some Hollywood [deleted] tells me I should?"

Actually, that's a highly sanitized version of what Blue-Collar Guy wrote. The dude is angry. He knows perfectly well that the liberal cultural elite have no use for people like him and tend to regard his kind as bitter, racist mouth-breathers who "cling to guns or religion" because, the thinking goes, they don't have jobs.

Don't sneer at or underestimate the anger of Blue Collar Guy. We in the news media rarely see him, much less sympathize with him. But he knows what's going on. He knows he's not too big to fail. He knows where he stands in the eyes of power elites – and he's figuring out where he's got to take his stand when the time comes.

Labels: dodd, obama, rangel

An Uneasy Feeling
I distilled from the press coverage and the crowds and the punditry yesterday that for all too many suddenly a vote for Obama redeems America. Now, to paraphrase Michelle Obama, for the first time in their lives they are apparently proud of the United States.

So I am surprised that suddenly the election of a single individual means that we are united, patriotic, proud of America? Suddenly Okinawa or Antietam, or all those who died at the Argonne, are ours to claim again?

But America was always ours, the public, and the nation transcends the proposition of whether Obama gets elected or not—given that the United States, in its worst hour, was better than the alternatives at their best. So I think it would be wise to cool it on the “I am now proud of America” rhetoric. If getting your way means suddenly the dead at Iwo or those who were blown up in B-17s over Germany are at last your own and matter, then we are in deep trouble.

More from Victor Davis Hanson

As Obama begins to govern and as the public sees that he simply borrowed Bush’s foreign policy rhetoric, jazzed it up with his cadences and pauses, and then took either Bushites or Democratic centrists and called them hope and change, and as he glued new rhetorical veneers on the Patriot Act and FISA, and as he alienates many by making decisions other than voting present, and as the gaffes begin (Biden and Michelle can’t be put under wraps forever), and the Chicago fumes linger (Blago ain’t through yet), the fawning media will begin to look embarrassed, then ridiculous, and finally completely bankrupt. They offered no audit of Obama, no tough treatment, no honest examination of his flips, no balance in their treatment of Bush, and they will soon pay a terrible price for that derelection and worse, as the public sees them as the state megaphones that they have so sadly become. The only suspense? Will they play Pravda to the end?

The point of all this? Excuse me, but as a cynic I confess the politics of the left are now about power, ego, status, and the notion of control, rather than genuine concern for the planet, or the creed of egalitarianism or for freedoms of the people. The conservative grandee at least lives by his unapologetic creed, one that we sometimes abhor, but accept is consistent with the natural law of the jungle in that the stronger and more capable claim that that they deserve a greater material reward for their greater accomplishments or, barring that, even unabashedly for their greater luck in being born lucky.

But for the leftist. the desire for wealth, status, exceptional treatment, all this earns the additional wages of hypocrisy. We all know the conservative failing—that a Larry Craig or Mark Foley who preaches constraint and traditional values are themselves slaves to nefarious and destructive appetites. But ignored are their liberal counterparts in hypocrisy—that men and women of the people no more wish to live as the people than the rich they so loudly despise. If some conservatives adopt the patina of a Cato’s stern agrarian conservatism to mask their own weakness for drink, or drug, or sex, then at least grant such psychological states exist for many liberals who demand global parity as a sort of psychological get out of jail card for their cravings for money, status, and privilege.

Labels: dodd, left-wing media, liberals, obama, pelosi, rangel, reid

Dodd can't wash hands on bailout (Connecticut Post)

In a Jan. 12 interview with Diane Sawyer on ABC's "Good Morning America,"

U.S. Sen. Christopher J. Dodd blamed the myriad bailout foibles on the Bush administration. Hitting your opponent as he is leaving the ring is generally considered unsportsmanlike, but Dodd confabulates with such conviction that the sucker punches go unnoticed every time.

Curiously, as a senator, Dodd takes no responsibility for the flawed bailout legislation for which he voted. More curiously, even though he is chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, Dodd somehow washes his hands of his role in the recent financial collapse. Even more curiously, he implies that he was duped by a president that liberals claim has the IQ of a turnip.

Was Dodd asleep at the wheel? Was he too busy calculating the interest savings on his sweetheart mortgage deal that he, by sheer coincidence, received from Countrywide Financial, that he was absolutely shocked to discover could be construed as buying influence, and that in no way was related to any financial woes Countrywide might be having?

At least when the Emperor Caligula installed his horse in the Roman Senate, he sent the whole horse. Most curiously, Connecticut voters see fit to send only the hindquarters.

Related
Still ticking! It's the Dodd Clock

Labels: connecticut post, dodd

The blogger with many visions™ is very close to publishing his predictions for 2009. The photo is a teaser of things to come. The there for 2009:

"...and now the people who caused the problem(s) have been put in charge of solving it."

(1) Christopher "Countrywide" Dodd will escape any MSM scrutiny regarding his role in the banking collapse.

Dodd is just playing against the clock until Obama is sworn in. He will also avoid, like his ethically challenged colleague Charlie "Tax Skat" Rangel, any formal congressional censure. Glenn Reynolds continues to follow this story at Instapundit. Dodd is up for re-election in 2010 and the people of Connecticut will send this rotund, obtuse and ethically challenged mooncalf back to the Senate with 60% of the vote.

(2) The people of New Jersey, Michigan, and California will continue to elect the same DEM leadership that has successfully engineered higher-than-national unemployment rates, taxes, and poverty. California will declare bankruptcy in 2009.

(3) General Motors and Chrysler, under the auspices of the Car Czar and using our hard-earned tax dollars, will build "The Pelosi" and it will be the equivalent of "The Homer". Obama, under pressure from the unions, will enact Hoover like tariffs and all Americans will be forced to purchase "The Pelosi".

(4) The unemployment rate will hit 20% by the end of Q4 and it will be accompanied by rampant inflation.

(5) The FDA will approve a drug to treat the "tingle and thrill" in the leg of Chris Matthews.

(6) Obama will determine that newspapers like the NY TIMES are too big to fail.

(7) The Fairness Doctrine will pass and it will extend to the INTERNET.

(8) Melissa Etheridge will pay her taxes but Charlie "Tax Skat" Rangel will write a new loophole to circumvent his.

(9) Liberals, despite BIG gains in 2009, will still be miserable and their assault on values (religion) will reach a fever pitch.

(10) Iran will strike Israel and it will cause an international conflagration involving Russia.

(11) GOOGLE will help draft policy in the B. Hussein Obama administration and it will be influenced by Al Gore and Jimmy Carter.

(12) The US will look more like Soviet Russia of the 1950's but Pelosi, Clinton, Reid, and Obama will still live fabulously.

Labels: dodd, economics, end times, obama, pelosi, rangel, reid

Congressional Performance
Approval of Congress Drops to Single Digits Again

I wonder why? Here's a little ancillary evidence.

Exhibit 1
With economy in shambles, Congress gets a raise

Exhibit 2
Caroline Kennedy’s Moment—A Sad Reflection of Our Times

"The probable appointment of Caroline Kennedy, the 51-year-old daughter of former President John Kennedy, to fill Secretary-of-State nominee Hillary Clinton’s New York Senate seat is both laughable and yet a parable for our bankrupt times."

Exhibit 3
Report: Jesse Jackson Jr. Is Senate Candidate Number 5

"The revelation may prove to be a problem for Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. "Candidate Number 5" is referred to by Rod Blagojevich as being willing to fork over a million dollars for Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich's campaign should he run for reelection for the Barack Obama Senate seat,. This was told to Rod Blagojevich, it is alleged, by associates of Candidate Number 5."

Exhibit 4
Dodd deflects question on mortgages

"Dodd was one of two senators implicated earlier this year in allegedly receiving preferential rates on two loans. Conde Nast's Portfolio, citing Countrywide documents, claimed that the company made two loans to Dodd in 2003, trimming three-eights of a point from a $506,000 loan to refinance a townhouse in Washington. A second loan to refinance a house in Connecticut was written at a quarter point below the going rate. After the Countrywide scandal broke, Dodd promised the media that he would disclose information about his mortgages."

Labels: democrats, dodd, liberals, pelosi, rangel

It may be the greatest act of malfeasance ever leveled against the American public and this weekend the NY TIMES is trying to provide cover to its Democratic author(s). Prominent DEMS like Dodd, Frank, Obama, Clinton, Johnson, and Raines are getting a free pass from Old Pinch and his merry band of folk writers.

We just had an election in which the decisive financial melt-down was, as Roger Kimball details today, directly traceable to the Community Reinvestment Act and the Fannie/Freddie implosion — Democrat debacles through and through (with Obama as a top recipient of Fannie and Freddie pay-offs, er, I mean, contributions). Yet the Bush White House evidently figured it was beneath the president to speak out about these facts, and the GOP candidate was either blind to or frozen by the appearance of this hanging curveball, somehow deciding the campaign homestretch was, instead, the perfect time for an ode to, and preening display of, bipartisanship. After all, we wouldn't want to have elections be contests between parties about issues of importance to our lives, right?

And, natch, we got smoked ... and now the people who caused the problem have been put in charge of solving it, which is pretty damn bipartisan if you ask me.

It is a big part of the Left's project to control the historical narrative. If you consistently roll over for them, they will consistently roll over you. I'm delighted to find the White House now, six weeks after the election and eight months after the Bear Stearns fire-sale, telling us all about how Democrats fought off efforts to regulate Fannie and Freddie, about how "Democratic leaders brazenly encouraged Fannie and Freddie to loosen lending standards and instead encouraged the housing GSEs to play a larger and larger role in the housing market — even while explicitly acknowledging the rising risks[,]" etc.

Related
Who caused the global economic crisis? (Hint: it wasn’t George W. Bush)

"Perhaps the most amazing thing about the Times’s little drama that casts George Bush as the protagonist of our economic tragedy is not what’s in it but what isn’t. You will search in vain for the name “Barney Frank” or the phrase “Community Reinvestment Act.” But telling the story of our economic crisis with out those elements is like staging Macbeth without Macbeth or the witches."

Capital Is On Strike

"As Shlaes writes in The Forgotten Man, if Hoover caused the Depression, FDR prolonged it by constantly attacking the investor class, whom he called the “malefactors of great wealth”–a phrase originally said by the first Roosevelt, Theodore. FDR’s attempt to pack the Supreme Court in 1937 was driven in part by his wish to tax the rich retroactively."

(Anti-) Mustard Seeds

"I’m going to get to mustard seeds in a moment, but let me first address two anti-mustard seeds: “bailout nation” and a pump-priming Fed. Bailout nation remains an ongoing issue. It really goes to the issue of government planning, industrial policy, and Uncle Sam picking winners and losers. This obviously includes Detroit, which we will probably get a decision on later this week.

Here’s a quote from President Bush that captures all my concerns about bailout nation: “I’ve abandoned free market principles to save the free market system.” Oh no. Say it ain’t so Mr. Bush. Either you believe in markets, or you don’t. Unfortunately, right now, the intellectual and policy tide out of Washington is anti-market. Not good."

Labels: clintons, democrats, dodd, economics, left-wing media, rangel

Charles Rangel (D, NY)
(1) Rangel paid no federal income tax on some $75,000 in rental income from his Caribbean villa — that lapse would result in a felony tax-evasion charge for the rest of us who dared to try that year in and year out. (2) Something called Nabobs Industries gave $1 million to something called the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service at City College of New York — and, apparently in exchange, got tens of millions of dollars in tax waivers from Rangel’s committee. Surely if Scooter Libby went to prison for faulty recall about not being the first one to “out” (non-covert) CIA operative Valerie Plame, a special prosecutor could also examine Rangel’s role in what may have resulted in a nearly $1 billion shortfall to the federal treasury. (3) Rangel seems to be claiming his New York campaign office as his home in order to continue to garner rent-control exemptions, improperly saving him thousands of dollars through aggregate subsidies. That someone who oversees the drafting of American tax policies and regulation cannot follow them himself is now a statement of fact, not baseless slander.



Christopher Dodd (D, CT)
Chris Dodd is currently chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. As such, he refinanced his own mortgage property through (the now bankrupt) Countrywide’s “V.I.P.” program. That is, Dodd was given an unusually favorable loan discount that over the life of his mortgage in theory would have saved him several thousand dollars. Yet Senate rules make it illegal for members to knowingly receive gifts worth $100 or more a year from private businesses like Countrywide that makes use of lobbyists. What’s more, Countrywide had also contributed $21,000 to Dodd’s senate campaigns since 1997. Worse still, Dodd received about $70,000 in campaign gifts from Bank of America — which bought out the bankrupt Countrywide.

Source: Parallel Lives by Victor Davis Hanson

"No question now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which."
    - George Orwell

Labels: dodd, pelosi, rangel