Former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich has been indicted on charges he engaged in a "wide-ranging scheme to deprive the people of Illinois of honest government." A federal grand jury handed down the 19-count indictment against Blagojevich, his brother, two former aides and two businessmen on Thursday. It accuses Blagojevich of corruption involving billions of dollars in state pension bonds.
FBI agents arrested the Chicago Democrat in December on allegations that also include trying to auction off President Barack Obama's vacant U.S. Senate seat.
Illinois lawmakers impeached him and threw him out of office in January.
Blagojevich has repeatedly denied wrongdoing.
The former governor is not in Chicago. He's with his family at Walt Disney World in Florida. Is he going to be singin' of the pain?
#2
Ala FREEREPUBLIC + TOWNHALL + OTHER, alleged evidence agz BLAGO strongly infers that VARIOUS FEDERAL POSITIONS/SEATS had been locally compromised = OFFERED IN EXCHANGE [State-Level Nepotism = Pol Favors], but also strongly infers POTUS OBAMA = OBAMA ADMIN WERE WILLING ACCOMPLICES [Federal/
National-level]???
ALLEGED EVIDENCIAS GAZ BLAGO + BOYZ WERE [seemingly]STRONG ENOUGH FOR FEDERAL ARREST + PROSECUTION, NOW INDICTMENT, AT LEAST AT THE STATE-LOCAL LEVEL.
Read the whole thing. Put down your coffee before reading, though
Welcome, International Olympic Committee!
While you're being wined and dined at fancy restaurants by Chicago political and business leaders hoping to cash in on the 2016 Games, the humble taxpaying readers of this column today offer you their hospitality and IOC love.
I'm stunned, actually. Stunned is the word. On Sunday, I asked readers for authentic Chicago-style Olympic event ideas to honor the IOC evaluators. Hundreds of responses poured in, each sure to warm the heart of Mayor Richard Daley.
Chicago 2016's new slogan is "Imagine," so reader Stanley G. imagined an Olympic oath read aloud by our business tycoons and politicians should Chicago win the games....
Many of you sent variations of "Sprints to the Federal Building," "Pothole Vaulting" and "Hired Truck Demolition Derby." Most popular was "Olympic (Wrought Iron) Fencing," the gold going to the mayor's brother Cook County Commissioner Johnny Daley, who sold insurance to the politically connected fence contractors....
What other events?
"Synchronized Scheming" (Jeff S.); "Parking Dibs Derby" (Jerry P.), and an adaptation of a street game I played as a wee lad on South Peoria Street: "Fed Rover, Fed Rover, Let the Feds Come Over" (Ryan L.) in which politicians and their cronies hold hands and federal prosecutors run toward them, to break the weakest link....
PIKEVILLE, N.C. Vice President Joe Biden brought a clear message to this tiny Eastern North Carolina town Wednesday: The federal recovery money isn't just for big banks and auto companies.
Biden and U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack announced a new wave of $10.4 billion in federal stimulus money for home loans across the country, and billions more for essential services in rural communities such as Pikeville, which is getting money for a new fire station. Biden used the outdated, current station as a backdrop. Pikeville is just north of Goldsboro in Wayne County.
"We're investing in places like this all across the country," Biden said, "to demonstrate the vital role towns like this play in the recovery."
Most of the money for the station that was announced Wednesday, however, had been secured last year under the Bush administration, according to fire department officials.
State Sen. David Rouzer, a Republican who represents Pikeville and worked in the Agriculture Department under President Bush, said he helped secure the fire department money last year out of the federal agency's regular programs.
"They're coming in and cherry picking the best projects and switching out the money, saying it's stimulus money," Rouzer said. "But it was already approved and in the pipeline. It's totally disingenuous to come down here and say this is stimulus money, when regardless of whether a stimulus bill passed, they were getting the money."
The Obama administration is working to draw attention to money for rural communities, where gravel roads and volunteer fire departments are the norm. The moves come as irritation and anger are rising over federal money that has been streaming to Wall Street, banks and car companies.
Biden and Vilsack talked Wednesday about grants that are being parceled out for water systems, police stations, hospitals and fire stations. Earlier in the day, they visited Goshen Medical Center in Faison, where $635,000 in federal money will help hire two doctors, two nurses and three administrative workers.
Pikeville, where nearly all residents live below the poverty line, will receive $150,000 in grants and a $1 million loan toward the $1.3 million cost of the new fire station, said Fire Chief Wesley Wooten.
One of President Barack Obama's campaign pledges on taxes went up in puffs of smoke Wednesday.
The largest increase in tobacco taxes took effect despite Obama's promise not to raise taxes of any kind on families earning under $250,000 or individuals under $200,000. This is one tax that disproportionately affects the poor, who are more likely to smoke than the rich.
To be sure, Obama's tax promises in last year's campaign were most often made in the context of income taxes. Not always.
"I can make a firm pledge," he said in Dover, N.H., on Sept. 12. "Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes."
He repeatedly vowed "you will not see any of your taxes increase one single dime."
Now in office, Obama, who stopped smoking but has admitted he slips now and then, signed a law raising the tobacco tax nearly 62 cents on a pack of cigarettes, to $1.01. Other tobacco products saw similarly steep increases. The extra money will be used to finance a major expansion of health insurance for children. That represents a step toward achieving another promise, to make sure all kids are covered.
Obama said in the campaign that Americans could have both--a broad boost in affordable health insurance for the nation without raising taxes on anyone but the rich. His detailed campaign plan stated that his proposed improvement in health insurance and health technology "is more than covered" by raising taxes on the wealthy alone. It was not based on raising the tobacco tax.
The White House contends Obama's campaign pledge left room for measures such as the one financing children's health insurance. "The president's position throughout the campaign was that he would not raise income or payroll taxes on families making less than $250,000, and that's a promise he has kept," said White House spokesman Reid H. Cherlin. "In this case, he supported a public health measure that will extend health coverage to 4 million children who are currently uninsured."
In some instances during the campaign, Obama was plainly talking about income, payroll and investment taxes, even if he did not say so. Other times, his point appeared to be that heavier taxation of any sort on average Americans is the wrong prescription in tough times.
"Listen now," he said in his widely watched nomination acceptance speech, "I will cut taxes--cut taxes--for 95 percent of all working families, because, in an economy like this, the last thing we should do is raise taxes on the middle class."
An unequivocal "any tax" pledge also was heard in the vice presidential debate, another prominent forum. "No one making less than $250,000 under Barack Obama's plan will see one single penny of their tax raised," Joe Biden said, "whether it's their capital gains tax, their income tax, investment tax, any tax."
The Democratic campaign used such statements to counter Republican assertions that Obama would raise taxes in a multitude of direct and indirect ways, recalled Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. "I think a reasonable person would have concluded that Senator Obama had made a 'no new taxes' pledge to every couple or family making less than $250,000," she said.
Jamieson noted GOP ads that claimed Obama would raise taxes on electricity and home heating oil. "They rebutted both with the $250,000 claim," she said of the Obama campaign, "so they did extend the rebuttal beyond income and payroll."
Government and private research has found that smoking rates are higher among people of low income. A Gallup survey of 75,000 people last year fleshed out that conclusion. It found that 34 percent of respondents earning $6,000 to $12,000 were smokers, and the smoking rate consistently declined among people of higher income. Only 13 percent of people earning $90,000 or more were smokers.
Federal or state governments often turn for extra tax dollars to the one in five Americans who smoke, and many states already hit tobacco users this year. So did the tobacco companies, which raised the price on many brands by more than 70 cents a pack.
The latest increase in the federal tax is by far the largest since its introduction in 1951, when it was 8 cents a pack. It's gone up six times since, each time by no more than a dime, until now.
Apart from the tax haul, public health advocates argue that squeezing smokers will help some to quit and persuade young people not to start. But it was a debate the country didn't have in a presidential campaign that swore off higher taxation.
#3
Double, triple, and quadruple the taxes on cigarettes. Make 'em unaffordable. Quit subsidizing tobacco companies. Tobacco can burn in hell, and so can its promoters.
My family members who have died of smoke related illnesses include some who died young after hellacious suffering from lung and throat cancer, leaving young children alone and devastated. Another passed out from his heart problems while smoking, setting the house on fire and killing his mother too.
Casting a cigarette tax as an imposition on the poor is nonsense. If you're poor, you can't afford cigarettes, and you certainly can't afford the respiratory problems that make it hard to work and live comfortably. Use the tax to underwrite programs to help the poor quit smoking.
#4
Given that I spent last night gaming at a house full of pagan O-bots, one of whom kept blowing pipe smoke in my face, I'm feeling all sorts of schadenfreude this morning.
Posted by: Mitch H. ||
04/02/2009 9:45 Comments ||
Top||
#5
You might get your wish, mom...
WASHINGTON Anti-smoking forces are predicting a long-awaited victory when the House votes on legislation that would, for the first time, allow government regulation of tobacco products.
The House scheduled a vote for Thursday morning on the legislation, which gives the Food and Drug Administration authority to regulate but not ban cigarettes and other tobacco products.
Action by the Senate, and President Barack Obama's signature, still would be needed before the bill could become law.
Supporters were convinced they could achieve both those steps. They said success was in sight after years of attempts to tame an industry so fundamental to America that carved tobacco leaves adorn some parts of the U.S. Capitol.
"We have come to what I hope will be an historic occasion, and that is finally doing something about the harm that tobacco does to thousands and thousands of Americans who die each year," Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., said Wednesday as lawmakers debated his Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act.
His bill wouldn't let the FDA ban nicotine or tobacco outright, but the agency would be able to regulate the contents of tobacco products, make public their ingredients, prohibit flavoring, require much larger warning labels and strictly control or prohibit marketing campaigns, especially those geared toward children.
#6
Casting a cigarette tax as an imposition on the poor is nonsense.
There is absolutely no disputing the FACT that Tobacco taxes are Regressive - NONE. The definition of a regressive tax is that they impose a greater burden, relative to resources, on the poor than on the rich. The pernicious nature of Tobacco taxes is as they relate to the physical addiction of the product. In other words, the consumers are much less likely to quit consumption and forgoe other, perhaps more important, products and services. You know like baby formula.
Whenever the duplicity of these taxes is exposed the advocates have no choice but to justify through deceptive emotional appeals. In this instance they re-state the obvious in that it will reduce harmful consumption and therefore is a good thing. However, their primary goal is NOT to reduce smoking. Their motivation is to raise revenue for their pet programs. So what happens when the revenues eventually decline to adequatley fund their programs? Answer; They raise more taxes! After all its for the children.
#7
Raising revenue under cover of morality, pure and simple. I would consider myself a centerist on the subject of smoking, but I see too much evidence to conclude that this 'is for the people's own good', which can be another subject altogether. The potential HHS secretary Sebelius would be the perfect face to continue the taxing/banning of smoking in the USA as that has been her pet project (state smoking ban) for the last year and half (timing it?).
The author of this article is, at best, stretching a thin arguement and comes across as more a nit-picker of the president than making a decent point IMHO, though does make a point - people can only fight and quit any kind of addiction only when they are GD good and ready (or get doped legal - ex those nicotine pills - or illegal - Rodney King quitting crack but hitting to booze hard for those who watch Doctor Drew - on something to replace that addiction). It has been my experience that poor people do find a way to get money to feed their addictions, and those who cut resources from their kids have a spiritual problem which cannot be solved in this manner.
#9
If you get the taxes high enough the Mexican drug cartels will add smuggling of untaxed cigarettes to their enterprise.
You could get rid of the regressiveness by adding an earned lung cancer tax credit on the IRS 1040. Of course they would have to earn less than $250,000 and smoke to qualify. Save your cigarette receipts. /snarc
#13
It was some eddie murphey movie where he was a cop, beverly hills cop I think, he is undercover selling black market cigs - that movie was in mid '80's. Fortunately for the smokers round here, cuz GBUSMC is absolutely right, there is a ms-13 branch within 60 miles. More like a quick shop operation, you know big city variety with small town lines >:(
#14
The delemma is smoking funds the the childens health care. Stopping smoking is therefore anti-children, but that means taxes on alchohol and gasoline etc will have to be raised to cover the shortfall of money from those selfish quitters.
#15
I've noticed a lot of people have started "rolling their own". No taxes at all. They are also starting to grow their own tobacco plants.
Posted by: Oscar Snomorong1173 ||
04/02/2009 18:52 Comments ||
Top||
#16
I first noticed that when a 20 year old kid walked up to me last week and said, "Can you show me how to do a roll?" I didn't realize what he was trying to do. I thought it was pot, but then realized it was tobacco and paper. Another guy showed him how to do it.
Posted by: Oscar Snomorong1173 ||
04/02/2009 18:55 Comments ||
Top||
#17
Yeah and it worked so good with whiskey it's worth doing all over again with smokes.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
04/02/2009 23:44 Comments ||
Top||
Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd is trailing several potential Republican challengers in the 2010 Senate race, according to a new state poll which shows the veteran Democratic lawmaker suffering from fallout over the AIG bonuses.
The Quinnipiac University poll released Thursday shows Dodd with record low approval ratings. Just 33 percent of Connecticut voters approve of the job Dodd is doing in the Senate.
The numbers foretell a challenging race for the five-term senator in 2010. In one matchup, the survey shows Dodd trailing former U.S. Rep. Rob Simmons, an announced rival, 50 to 34 percent. In two other matchups, Dodd trails state Sen. Sam Caligiuri, 41 to 37 percent, and former ambassador Tom Foley, 43 to 35 percent.
Dodd's job approval rating stands at 33 percent, a dip from 44 percent in a March 10 poll. That is "especially devastating" considering he is a longtime incumbent Democrat in a solidly blue state, poll director Douglas Schwartz said.
Simmons, who acknowledged that his standing against Dodd could fluctuate drastically over the next year and a half, said it's still "exciting to start not only even but way ahead."
He said Dodd's numbers are a reflection of the controversy over the $165 million in bonuses doled out by American International Group -- the insurance giant that distributed the bonuses despite being bailed out by the federal government to the tune of more than $180 billion. Some employees have since pledged to return their bonus money. "This is a historic low (for Dodd's numbers), but these are historic times," Simmons said. "People up here feel he has abdicated his responsibility."
Dodd is chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee and took heat for a provision added to the February stimulus bill that exempted previously negotiated bonuses at companies like AIG from certain pay restrictions.
The Quinnipiac survey shows 27 percent of state voters believe Dodd is most to blame for the bonuses, while 28 percent pin the blame on former President George W. Bush. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was the top scapegoat for 20 percent, while 7 percent blamed President Obama.
The poll surveyed 1,181 registered Connecticut voters and had a margin of error of 2.9 percentage points. The poll was conducted between March 26-31.
#2
The fact that Sen. Dodd is still walking the streets a free man and not locked away in a Federal Pen is an indictment upon his colleagues and our system of government. Just my humble opinion.
I am quite certain that this is not the protocol, and is most unbecoming a President of the United States.
Update: See Miss Manners on the protocol. Americans do not bow to foreign monarchs because that act signified the monarch's power over his subjects.
Here is the protocol from the Queen of England's website -- which applies even to her own subjects: "The Queen meets thousands of people each year in the UK and overseas. Before meeting Her Majesty, many people ask how they should behave. The simple answer is that there are no obligatory codes of behaviour - just courtesy.
However, many people wish to observe the traditional forms of greeting.
For men this is a neck bow (from the head only) whilst women do a small curtsy. Other people prefer simply to shake hands in the usual way.
On presentation to The Queen, the correct formal address is 'Your Majesty' and subsequently 'Ma'am'. "
#3
The President of the United States, bowing before a monarch. Perhaps somebody who has studied the Constitution so well will realize the reason we have the Constitution of the United States is because left the monarchies of the olde world to fight and die so as to never again bow to a monarch.
Even Joey Fatone was able to get ahold of himself when they ressurected his career for the tv guide channel red carpet interviews. He is behaving like a 16 braggard at a college age party.
Maybe he has an idea of his own: Thirty years in the same location I have stayed,
There I am, right next door to Willy's Fun Arcade.
I got tough competition but I'm not afraid,
'Cause it's my destiny to be the King of Suede.
#5
Compare and contrast, another American (not a President though) in the presence of a former deity. The ex-deity being an ex-deity because his subjects had killed many Americans a few years before that picture was taken:
"Don't think we're not keeping score, brother." That's what President Barack Obama said to Rep. Peter DeFazio in a closed-door meeting of the House Democratic Caucus last week, according to the Associated Press.
Continued on Page 49
Yo. Find somebody that knows a buncha songs that old ladies like and upload a shitload of them on an Ipod...
President and First Lady Obama gave Her Royal Highness Queen Elizabeth II a video iPod with inscription, songs uploaded and accessories, plus a rare musical songbook signed by Richard Rodgers.
Uploaded onto the iPod:
Photos from the Queen's 2007 White House State Visit
Photos from the Queen's 2007 Jamestown, Va., Visit
Photos from the Queen's 2007 Richmond, Va., Visit
Video from the Queen's 1957 Jamestown Visit
Video from the Queen's 2007 Jamestown Visit
Video from the Queen's 2007 Richmond Visit Photos from President Obama's Inauguration
Audio of then-state senator Obama's speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, and
Audio of President Obama 2009 Inauguration Address Oh. Your speeches. How...lovely. Thanks so much...
Britain's Press Association reports that the Royal couple gave the Obamas "a silver-framed, signed photograph of themselves." Calm down, Michelle. At least it's a nice frame...
UPDATE: And the Obama team confirms that these show tunes were also uploaded on Ye Olde Queen's iPod, as first reported by the AP:
"Oklahoma!"
"If I Loved You," Jan Clayton, "Carousel"
"You'll Never Walk Alone," Jan Clayton, "Carousel"
"There's No Business Like Show Business," Ethel Merman, "Annie Get Your Gun"
"Once in Love with Amy (Where's Charley?)," Ray Bolger
"Some Enchanted Evening," "South Pacific"
"Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend," Carol Channing, "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes"
"Getting to Know You," Gertrude Lawrence, "The King and I"
"Shall We Dance?" Gertrude Lawrence, "The King and I"
"I Could Have Danced All Night," Julie Andrews, "My Fair Lady"
"I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face," Rex Harrison, "My Fair Lady"
"The Party's Over (Bells Are Ringing)," Judy Holliday
"Maria," "West Side Story"
"Tonight," "West Side Story"
"Seventy Six Trombones," "The Music Man"
"Everything's Coming up Roses," Ethel Merman, "Gypsy"
"The Sound of Music"
"Try to Remember," Jerry Orbach, "The Fantasticks"
"Camelot," Richard Burton
"If Ever I Would Leave You," Robert Goulet, "Camelot"
"Hello, Dolly!" Carol Channing
"If I Were a Rich Man," Zero Mostel, "Fiddler on the Roof"
"People," Barbra Streisand, "Funny Girl"
"On a Clear Day (You Can See Forever)," John Cullum
"The Impossible Dream," Richard Kiley, "Man of La Mancha"
"Mame," Charles Braswell
"Cabaret," Liza Minnelli
"Aquarius, Ronald Dyson, "Hair'
"Send in the Clowns," Judy Collins, "A Little Night Music"
"All That Jazz," Chita Rivera, "Chicago"
"One," "A Chorus Line"
"Tomorrow," Andrea McArdle, "Annie"
"Don't Cry for Me Argentina," Patti LuPone, "Evita"
"And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going," Jennifer Holliday, "Dreamgirls"
"Memory," Elaine Paige, "Cats"
"The Best of Times," George Hearn, "La Cage Aux Folles"
"I Dreamed a Dream," Aretha Franklin, "Les MisDerables"
"The Music of the Night," Michael Crawford, "The Phantom of the Opera"
"As If We Never Said Goodbye," Elaine Paige, "Sunset Blvd."
"Seasons of Love," "Rent" Maybe she can trade with Brown for the DVD's...
#2
I strongly suspect that what happened here was that some Obama toady called Buckingham palace and asked what the Queen wanted.
The "old money" love to prank the "noveau riche". They just can't resist. Like suggesting, but not saying, that a formal party is going to be a costume party.
The Bush family are "old money" going back to the American revolution. They have been powerful in America longer than the Windsor line in England (that is, King George III was Hanovarian). As such, they know *exactly* what to bring as gifts when visiting the Queen, again.
So, Obama shows up to the party wearing a jester outfit, with Michelle wearing an 19th Century ballroom gown, and looking utterly silly, in a manner of speaking.
And all the old money British noblemen split a gut trying to not laugh out loud at the silly American president, as he presents Her Highness with an iPod.
#3
Gee Barry, couldn't find a used Thighmaster? How about a tiny license plate keychain w/ LIZA written on it?
Posted by: ed ||
04/02/2009 14:58 Comments ||
Top||
#4
I'd laugh like hell if her highness gets a nasty summons from the RIAA for listening to pirated music.
But who the hell's downloading "Everything's Coming up Roses"?
#7
Obama should have given her Nancy Pelosi's Gulfstream. It's a classy gift for a monarch and Pelosi could learn the joys of flying coach with her constituents.
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.
PIKEVILLE, N.C. Vice President Joe Biden brought a clear message to this tiny Eastern North Carolina town Wednesday: The federal recovery money isn't just for big banks and auto companies. 
One of President Barack Obama's campaign pledges on taxes went up in puffs of smoke Wednesday.
Now in office, Obama, who stopped smoking but has admitted he slips now and then, signed a law raising the tobacco tax nearly 62 cents on a pack of cigarettes, to $1.01. Other tobacco products saw similarly steep increases. The extra money will be used to finance a major expansion of health insurance for children. That represents a step toward achieving another promise, to make sure all kids are covered. 
