Here's just a few samplings of how our Washington Overlords screw us over.
Charity Is Politicians’ Slush Fund
A Baltimore charity created to finance programs for the underprivileged largely serves as a slush fund for city officials who routinely dip into its multi million-dollar coffers to pay for projects unrelated to the foundation's tax-exempt purposes.
A local news report reveals that, with virtually no oversight, the foundation (Baltimore City Foundation) regularly violates Internal Revenue (IRS) rules by spending nonprofit contributions on political purposes and by serving as a secret account where taxpayer funds can be stashed without public scrutiny.
Among the unscrupulous things funded by the Baltimore City Foundation was the corrupt mayor’s lavish inauguration bash at a local ice skating rink. Criminally indicted Mayor Sheila Dixon’s “Winter Wonderland” festivities cost more than $15,000 for rental of a temporary ice rink at the War Memorial Plaza, musical entertainment, a fancy ice sculpture of a reindeer and security.
White House For Sale To Donors
Keeping with the infamous Clinton tradition of selling coveted White House access for political donations, Barack Obama rewards wealthy contributors with exclusive visits, parties and other intimate activities at the executive mansion.
The deep-pocketed contributors and bundlers are being aggressively courted by the commander-in-chief and his Democratic Party to raise large sums for congressional candidates in the 2010 elections. To thank them for giving generously to his presidential campaign—and inspire them to keep the dollars flowing—Obama has promised high-dollar fundraisers VIP White House access, private briefings with advisers and invitations to important speeches.
The secret Obama deals were made public this week by a Washington D.C. newspaper that obtained internal Democratic National Committee documents, including advisory board and finance committee papers. They reveal that high-dollar fundraisers have been promised access to senior White House officials in exchange for pledges to personally donate $30,400 or to raise $300,000 for the 2010 midterm elections.
Lawmaker Gets Donors’ Puerto Rican Bank $935 Million Bailout
A veteran Illinois congressman embroiled in a big-city corruption scandal last year unscrupulously pressed the federal government to bail out a Puerto Rican bank operated by his wife and several major political donors.
Eight-term Democrat Luis Gutierrez conveniently omitted his longtime close ties to the failing Banco Popular when he directed the Treasury Department to save it, claiming it was a special case in need of an urgent rescue. In a letter to the nation’s Treasury Secretary Gutierrez said it’s in the best interest of the U.S. government and Puerto Rico that the failing bank continues providing services to maintain a safe and sound financial system.
Bush Homeland Sec. Chief Advocates For Child Beater
The presidential cabinet member once responsible for securing the nation’s safety has requested leniency for a drug-abusing acquaintance that savagely beat a toddler and fractured her skull, causing permanent neurological damage.
Bush Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge actually wrote the sentencing judge a letter seeking compassion for the 21-year-old monster (Matthew Lazenby) who brutally attacked his girlfriend’s daughter in a drunken rage. Lazenby, a drug abuser determined by psychologists to have intense anger issues, admitted striking the 23-month-old girl in the head and shaking her so intensely that he fractured her skull. The injuries left the child developmentally disabled in speech and motor skills.
Ridge and the Lazenby’s are neighbors in the upscale Pennsylvania community of Millcreek Township and the former Homeland Security chief is just trying to help an old friend.
Ridge, once a prosecutor in Erie County, currently operates a lucrative security consulting firm in Washington D.C. In a tell-all book he claims that the Bush Administration pressured him to raise security threat level assessments for political reasons ...
Recovery.gov Contract Kept Secret
The Obama Administration refuses to disclose information about a controversial, multi million-dollar contract with a politically connected firm to redesign a website that lets the public track federal stimulus spending.
This constitutes yet another violation of the administration’s own transparency policy, which promises to offer the public unprecedented government openness and accountability. The president has repeatedly ignored his highly touted order, withholding information on everything from secretive transition meetings with special interests to a contentious decision not to criminally charge his governor friend in a bribery scheme that cost him a cabinet post.
Now Obama is hiding the details of a suspicious $18 million contract to redesign his heavily promoted website (Recovery.gov), ironically created so that Americans can follow how federal stimulus dollars are spent. Remember when the president promised that Americans will be able to track “every dime” of the $787 billion stimulus? Recovery.gov is the tool that will assure the mission is completed.
