[NEWYORK.CBSLOCAL] Following a series of arrests including State. Sen. Malcolm Smith Tuesday morning over an alleged plot to fix the upcoming New York City mayoral race, Mayor Michael Nanny Bloomberg offered his theory on the scheme.
Bloomberg said he believes the opportunity for the kind of corruption alleged against the politicians arose because political parties are part and parcel of New York City's elections.
"All of this comes out of the fact that we have partisan elections when cities aren't partisan. And what happens is, only people that can go through whatever the majority party is, whether it's Democrat here or Republican someplace else -- they're the only people that really can face the voters and have any meaningful chance," Bloomberg told news hounds including WCBS 880′s Rich Lamb.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/04/2013 00:00 ||
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#1
The bid was a Democratic state senator conspiring with Republican power brokers to take the Republican/Fusion nomination for the mayoral race. For those of you who don't follow NYC politics, the way that a city with something like a 75-20 partisan split in favor of the Democrats keeps electing nominal Republican mayors in election after election - including, in the last century and change, Strong, Mitchel, La Guardia, Lindsay, Giuliani, Bloomberg - is by fusion tickets, pulling together "reform" Democrats to make up a plurality with the Republican rump.
City mayoral politics are all *about* this sort of thing, although usually it's the good-government types on both sides making a fusion, not the corrupt machine types. And that's where this is a little out of the ordinary. Probably driven by the complete and utter disappearance of anything like the old Tammany Hall apparatus, the easy-money boys are floating around everywhere, there's no magnet to draw them into the Democratic party mainstream.
Posted by: Mitch H. ||
04/04/2013 11:47 Comments ||
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#2
After this scum whore changed election laws to get himself another term.
[THEHILL] Rep. Peter King ...U.S. Representative for New York's 3rd (central Long Island) congressional district, serving since 1993. He is of the Publican persuasion and is known for his active support for the IRA Irish republican movement... (R-N.Y.) said Tuesday that the United States had the right to take preemptive military action against North Korea if there was "solid evidence" that Kim Jon Un planned to attack the U.S. or South Korea.
"If we have good reason to believe there's going to be an attack, I believe we have the right to take preemptive action," King said on CNN's "Erin Burnett Outfront."
"I don't think we have to wait until Americans are killed or maimed or injured in any way," he continued. "I'm not saying we should be rushing into war, don't get me wrong, but if we have solid evidence that North Korea's going to take action, then I think we have a moral obligation and an absolute right to defend ourselves."
Posted by: Fred ||
04/04/2013 00:00 ||
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#1
Sounds good Pete. We'll let you stand in the door and lead the first stick in over Pyongyang.
[Washington Post] The Obama administration is engaged in a broad push to make more home loans available to people with weaker credit, an effort that officials say will help power the economic recovery but that skeptics say could open the door to the risky lending that caused the housing crash in the first place.
President Obama's economic advisers and outside experts say the nation's much-celebrated housing rebound is leaving too many people behind, including young people looking to buy their first homes and individuals with credit records weakened by the recession.
In response, administration officials say they are working to get banks to lend to a wider range of borrowers by taking advantage of taxpayer-backed programs -- including those offered by the Federal Housing Administration -- that insure home loans against default.
Housing officials are urging the Justice Department to provide assurances to banks, which have become increasingly cautious, that they will not face legal or financial recriminations if they make loans to riskier borrowers who meet government standards but later default.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/04/2013 00:00 ||
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Another factor: the bad experience with the lousy loans the FHA has bought has caused it to raise its insurance requirements to 1.3% per year starting this month. That's $220 per month on a $200,000 loan, a 136% increase. And the borrower now also pays 1.75% upfront (adding $3,500 to the closing costs), instead of 0.01% ($20).
What is really bad: if a buyer puts down less than 10%, he will pay insurance for the life of the loan, instead of it dropping out when the loan balance goes below 80% of the original appraised value. You have to refinance to get rid of it. This kicks in in June.
FHA had to do this, their insurance pool was depleted.
The effect is to force everyone who can possibly qualify for a conventional mortgage to choose that, leaving the taxpayers to backstop the new crap. And make financing a home drastically less affordable for those with less than excellent credit.
None of this is getting much attention, but it should raise hell with the housing market, at least at the low end.
Of course, we need a new government initiative to fix this. i.e. hang the fix on the honest taxpayers and homeowners.
#5
Does having a mind formed by years of family and 'educational' processes in the Socialist/Redistributionist mold make it intent in the question of malice? Or, as in the allegory of the frog and scorpion, just part of his nature?
#6
Thomas Sowell: No one will really understand politics until they understand that politicians are not trying to solve our problems. They are trying to solve their own problems of which getting elected and re-elected are number one and number two. Whatever is number three is far behind.
Many of the things the government does that may seem stupid are not stupid at all, from the standpoint of the elected officials or bureaucrats who do these things.
#1
We, laugh and rightfully so, but her statement is quite revealing. I suspect she became confused on the terms of reference, slipped up, and is actually talking about the regime's current strategy for programmed depletion of ammunition [not magazines].
Even with panic buying, commercially available small arms ammunition inventories should have recovered by now and be meeting supply and demand. In fact, suppliers should be in an over-stocked position. They are not, and what is available is exorbitantly priced.
The emperor and his regime know they cannot pass "meaningful" gun legislation so they are imposing other restrictions such as flooding ammunition manufacturers with massive government contracts and suggesting costly firearms owners insurance. Increased restrictions or closure of public hunting lands may be on the horizon as well. Of course it will be cloaked as a cost-cutting sequester action.
Make no mistake, these people want to end private ownership of firearms.
#2
Boeserker gets it. She might not know a clip from a magazine but she knows what she is talking about as far as what the future holds. She committed a gaffe in the sense that she accidentally told the truth, which is that the Dems want to make ammo either scarce or prohibitively expensive. They might be able to do this through regulatory rulemaking, which is even harder than straight-up legislation to find and squelch. Dangerous times.
Posted by: Jonathan ||
04/04/2013 9:33 Comments ||
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#3
Sorry, misspelled Besoeker's name.
Posted by: Jonathan ||
04/04/2013 9:34 Comments ||
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#4
Freudian slip
I don't think B minds :-)
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/04/2013 10:22 Comments ||
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#5
Anyone else notice how whenever Colorado is in the news it's something embarrassing?
[WASHINGTONEXAMINER] Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel called for the Defense Department to be organized more efficiently than it was under Ronald Reagan after raising the possibility of cuts in pay and benefits for military members.
Meanwhile, we're hiring community organizers in the Treasury Department at up to $48 per hour to sign people up for Obamacare.
Hagel blamed the prospective cuts on sequestration. "[F]iscal realities demand another hard look at personnel -- how many people we have both military and civilian, how many we need, what these people do, and how we compensate them for their work, service, and loyalty with pay, benefits and health care," Hagel said at the National Defense University today.
He also hinted at cutting jobs for military brass. "The last major defense re-organization, Goldwater-Nichols, was drafted at the height of the Reagan defense buildup and focused on improving jointness and establishing clear operational chains of command," Hagel said. "Cost and efficiency were not major considerations . . . Today the operational forces of the military -- measured in battalions, ships, and aircraft wings -- have shrunk dramatically since the Cold War era. Yet the three and four star command and support structures sitting atop these smaller fighting forces have stayed intact, with minor exceptions, and in some cases they are actually increasing in size and rank."
Posted by: Fred ||
04/04/2013 00:00 ||
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#1
And we wonder in total amazement at North Korea continuing to act in such a belligerent manner.
#2
Today the operational forces of the military -- measured in battalions, ships, and aircraft wings -- have shrunk dramatically since the Cold War era. Yet the three and four star command and support structures sitting atop these smaller fighting forces have stayed intact, with minor exceptions, and in some cases they are actually increasing in size and rank.
Good, he can start by reducing the number/ratio of general officers to troops. That in turn will shave the entire structure back to a more pyramid distribution of ranks. Let loose the hounds of bureaucratic empires upon the public - to whine and cry to protect their fiefdoms. Watch the lie, that the military doesn't lobby Congress, exposed before you as they fight for their 'piece of the action'.
#3
Very troubling, very troubling indeed. Fok the generals, all of this could eventually lead to the Command Sergeant Major losing his staff car, blanket TDY orders, and parking slot at the DFAC.
Army Plans To Involuntarily Retire 'Excess' Colonels, Lieutenant Colonels
The Army plans to convene an "early retirement board" in August to tap many of the service's colonels and lieutenant colonels for involuntary retirement, according to an internal message from Army Chief of Staff Gen. Raymond Odierno and Army Secretary John McHugh.
[DAILYMAIL.CO.UK] Former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford publicly debuted the woman he sacrificed his political career for four years ago as he won the GOP nomination for a vacant U.S. House seat on Tuesday.
His fiancée Maria Belen Chapur stood by his side as he delivered his victory speech and thanked her for putting up with him throughout his race against former county council member Curtis Bostic.
He secured a 57-43 victory over Bostic in the GOP runoff for the first Congressional District, and Sanford will now face Elizabeth Colbert Busch in early May to regain his former seat.
It is the first time he has stepped out publicly with Chapur after he disappeared from South Carolina in 2009 and returned to confess to an extramarital affair with the Argentine woman.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/04/2013 00:00 ||
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#1
Long run, the Ferrari, any Ferrari is cheaper...
#5
At the time I assumed Ms. Chapur was a honey trap -- she took down a conservative up and comer. Now the situation appears to have been more complicated.
Sanford's behavior was an embarrassment. That said, I don't want to fall into the trap that the Leftists so often set for us. It's not a bad thing to set high moral standards for yourself and for your party, even if you sometime fail to maintain those standards. We are human. We are not perfect. The other side solves this problem by having no moral standards whatsoever thereby freeing themselves of ever being accused of failing to meet them. I think our approach is better, even if it gets messy sometimes.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Michael 
North Korea
[Washington Post] The Obama administration is engaged in a broad push to make more home loans available to people with weaker credit, an effort that officials say will help power the economic recovery but that skeptics say could open the door to the risky lending that caused the housing crash in the first place.
