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POPSBlackwater:Ain't Misbehaving, Saving My Contracts for You
Of course the US government was blind to this - they didn't want to know, they turned a blind eye to what Blackwater was doing because it would have been too hard to arrange for another contractor to do all the security missions that it had ongoing. In both Iraq and Afghanistan, there are as many private contractors as there are uniformed military personnel. Most of them are not security guards as Blackwater's most visible function was. The lack of oversight is abhorrent but not surprising; the State Dept's failure to can this company is inexcusable. My only observation on this article is to suggest how the US government got into this predicament, and it's pretty easy to see. The Bush administration wanted to hold onto the fiction of a few conservative principles, one of those being the concept of a small federal government. Since it already blew that "principle" with the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, I'm betting there was White House guidance that directed "no mo
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POPSSacramento Jobs Looking for jobs careers employment in Sacramento, CA? Search Sacramento, CA California county jobs careers employment job career search openings positions. Search jobs in Sacramento, CA California city area as part time sales medical college nursing accounting health care summer in employment agencies job fairs. Find all jobs in western Sacramento, CA government agency corps engineering driver design jobs careers in development department federal employment.
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POPSThe Ruling Elite Not having government run health care gives these people even more reason to get re-elected. Leave no incumbent in office.
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POPS800,000 Americans Busted Annually for Pot
They argue the drug war “is doing far more harm than marijuana itself ever will,” because * it diverts hundreds of thousands of police agents from serious crimes “to the pursuit of harmless tokers”; * it costs taxpayers at minimum $10 billion a year to catch, prosecute, and incarcerate marijuana users and sellers; * it enables government to snatch the cars, money, computers and other properties of people caught up in drug raids even if they have had no charges filed against them; and * it allows “police agents at all levels to trample our Bill of Rights in their eagerness to nab pot consumers.” The drug war has also unleashed a torrent of racism in the form of unjust sentencing, which confines crack-cocaine users who are mostly black to prison for longer terms than powder snorters, who are mostly white. Hightower and Frazer say authorities have perverted the infamous “Patriot Act” of 2001 for use in non-terrorism cases, allowing “sneak-and-peak” search warra
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POPS Thomas Sowell: Random Thoughts
But what this means is that even the record-breaking federal deficit understates the government's real financial liabilities, because agencies like FDIC and the Federal Housing Authority are likely to need increased amounts of money to keep going. An e-mail from a reader says that liberals like to take the moral high ground, even though their own moral relativism means that there is no moral high ground. I doubt whether the man responsible for the massacre at Fort Hood will pay with his life for the lives that he took. He may well be free again someday. We can only hope that he does not get a hero's welcome when he arrives in some terror-sponsoring country, the way the Lockerbie bomber did. A recent study by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights showed that, after the housing boom and bust, blacks, whites, Hispanics, Asian Americans and American Indians all reduced their subprime mortgage loans. Only politicians seem not to have learned anything from the economic disaster ...
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POPSObamaCare: A Bad Deal for Young Adults Massachusetts benefits from another type of subsidy that props up its regime of mandates and price controls: large subsidies from the federal government. In contrast, the United States as a whole has no external party it can exploit to subsidize a nationwide Massachusetts-style health care overhaul"unless Congress finances that overhaul through additional deficit spending, which is really just another way of taxing the young to subsidize the old. by Aaron Yelowitz Aaron Yelowitz is an associate professor of economics at the University of Kentucky and an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute. This paper is based on a lecture delivered to the Undergraduate Economics Society at the University of Kentucky on October 1, 2009.
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POPSDreams Die Hard
Within the context of conventional party politics - the kind that has been baseline "normal" in the USA for a long time - we see this playing out in two factions that are increasingly out-of-touch with reality. The Obama government has made itself hostage to a toxic form of pretense and lying. In order to sustain the wish for "hope" - if not hope itself - the President and his White House advisors along with his cabinet appointments, are pretending that the historical forces of compressive contraction are not underway. They're flat-out lying about the employment figures issued in the government's name. They're willfully ignoring the comprehensive bankruptcy gripping government at all levels. They refuse to bring the law to bear against "the malefactors of great wealth." They appear to not understand the epochal energy scarcity problem the whole world faces, or its implications for industrial economies. Most of all, they persist in promoting the lie that this economy can return t
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POPSThe Lords of Entitlement They WILL subjugate us. They do not represent us; they have, indeed, become our "lords". We work for Washington. The American people have entered a new era of serfdom and slavery. The action in the Senate on this bill and the 2010 elections are our last hopes.
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POPSHealth Care Takeover Roll Call Vote — and What GOP Rep. Joseph Cao Got from Obama Well, since he was elected, Cao has backed the S-CHIP expansion, the $108 billion IMF bailout, and the omni-waste spending bill. And he voted to rebuke GOP Rep. Joe Wilson for calling out President Obama on his health care lies. That is a steep price to pay for Rep. William Jefferson’s removal. Can’t the GOP do better? For what it is worth, here is the cheap price the Democrats paid for Cao’s vote: Louisiana Congressman Anh “Joseph” Cao on Sunday morning released a statement after he voted as the only Republican in favor of the Democratic health care reform bill. The health care reform bill, dubbed the “Affordable Health Care for America Act” (H.R. 3962), passed the U.S. House of Representatives in a 220 " 215 vote. “Tonight, I voted to keep taxpayer dollars from funding abortion and to deliver access to affordable health care to the people of Louisiana,” Cao said in a statement released by his office. “I read the versions of the House
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POPSCoerciveCare Bill Passes House 220-215, Sat Night Mandatory health care insurance reform bill passes House. Socialist Security 2.0. Never mind that half the population opposed this. And the "public option" is not optional--it is now mandated that you must buy health insurance. How is it that the Federal government can force you to buy something? Private property rights are trampled, the government thinks it can tell you to buy something or face jail and/or tax penalties. This also then means every American's private and personal health information will be put into a data-base system, the end of privacy. Your health care, and body, will belong to the Collectivist Society now and the Government , which will no doubt link this to your National ID Card (REAL ID and PASS ID system) --increasing the Electronic Leash on "free" Americans.
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POPSHouse passes health care bill FTA: The legislation would require most Americans to carry insurance and provide federal subsidies to those who otherwise could not afford it. Large companies would have to offer coverage to their employees. Both consumers and companies would be slapped with penalties if they defied the government's mandates. Insurance industry practices such as denying coverage on the basis of pre-existing medical conditions would be banned, and insurers would no longer be able to charge higher premiums on the basis of gender or medical history. In a further slap, the industry would lose its exemption from federal antitrust restrictions on price gouging, bid rigging and market allocation.
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POPSirs tax attorney The NWC Tax tax attorneys monitor the changes in tax laws and assist our clients in the compliance of them. In the event of a tax audit, we represent and defend our clients before government agencies such as the Internal Revenue Service and various state taxing authorities.
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POPSBarbara Ehrenreich: The Swine Flu Vaccine Screw-up More: According to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, the government was misled by these companies, which failed to report manufacturing delays as they arose. Her department, she says, was "relying on the manufacturers to give us their numbers, and as soon as we got numbers we put them out to the public. It does appear now that those numbers were overly rosy." If, in fact, there's a political parable here, it's about Big Government's sweetly trusting reliance on Big Business to safeguard the public health: Let the private insurance companies manage health financing; let profit-making hospital chains deliver health care; let Big Pharma provide safe and affordable medications. As it happens, though, all these entities have a priority that regularly overrides the public's health, and that is, of course, profit…
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POPSEven more lies, damned lies and stimulus jobs So we've now seen reports of goosing stimulus job stats in Georgia, Illinois, Wisconsin, California, New Hampshire, Florida, Ohio, New Jersey, Virginia and Texas. (Ed Morrissey at Hot Air has more thoughts on the California story, as well as a round-up of some of the other state reports on stimulus chicanery.) At first the White House was owning up to "persisting errors" in the stimulus jobs data -- but when all the supposed errors seem to create the illusion of more jobs and are widespread from coast to coast, it sure looks like a deliberate ruse to hide the stimulus' clear failings. The White House needs to explain how this is happening before it turns into a full-fledged scandal.
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POPSShhhh! Census Worker May Have Committed Suicide * The Democratic Underground quickly posted a ‘Handy Guide to how Republicans and Fox News are responsible for Census worker being hanged'. * Rachel Maddow suggested Sparkman was killed simply because ‘he was a federal employee'. * Time chalked it up to government distrust, a sentiment fanned by ‘talk media, tea parties and white-hot town-hall meetings'. * The Huffington Post immediately assumed this was a case of right-wing paranoia. * True/Slant opined that the body of Sparkman should be shipped to Glenn Beck. * Think Progress pointed the finger at Michelle Bachman and her ‘inflammatory and fear-mongering rhetoric against the Census'. * New York Magazine linked the death to that of ‘some wide-eyed, hysterical woman' named Michelle Bachman. (The irony in this is that the reference to a wide-eyed, hysterical woman was made in an article mentioning Nancy Pelosi).
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POPS Uncle Sam’s Collections Continue Their Steep Drop It is ironic to say the least that Congress and the Obama administration are glorifying the idea of a “public option” that would ultimately lead to government-run health care while Treasury receipts continue to shrink. If the private health insurance market disappears, so will its taxes. To name just one example, Aetna’s recorded income tax expense on its financial statements for 2005-2008 (including state and local taxes) averaged roughly $900 million per year. Put the company’s health insurance segment out of business, and a large portion of those taxes would stop coming in, digging the country’s and various states’ debt holes that much deeper. The establishment press has paid very little attention to fiscal 2009’s drop of 19.5% in receipts from economic activity, so I expect similar treatment of October’s continuation of the trend. It would appear that they don’t want any unsettling news getting in the way of the statist agenda.
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POPSOink Report - 3 November 2009 I am so glad that children who won't be born for decades yet will be paying the interest on the money spent to keep the Merry-Go-Round Museum open. That must save or create a gajillion jobs.
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POPSLower costs with more administration I have owned, ran and worked for a number of small, and a couple large, businesses in my career. I can honestly think of NO instance where hiring thousands of people, especially unionized, paid-for-life government workers, could lower costs for anyone. Even at 1900+ pages, it doesn't cover HALF the uninsured. This is success? Wake up people before 20% of your wages are stolen for shoddy "care."
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POPSCarly Fiorina Enters California Senate Race to Unseat Barbara Boxer I feel absolutely great and I am raring to go." True to her word, she wasted no time going directly after Boxer. "Sometimes I wonder whether California even has two U.S. Senators," Fiorina said. "There's Dianne Feinstein and then there's...what's her name?" Fiorina charged that during Boxer's 17 years in Washington, she had passed only three pieces of legislation and written two fiction novels. "What do you say we work together to give Barbara Boxer the chance next year to be a full-time novelist?" The Boxer campaign responded immediately to the assertion that Boxer had not produced meaningful legislation in the Senate. "Fiorina is just plain wrong about the Boxer record. More than 1,000 of Senator Boxer's provisions have been adopted and enacted into law," the campaign said in a statement. During a question and answer session following her speech, Fiorina was asked if she favors term limits. Yes, she said, she favors them and believes Boxer demonstrates why limits
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POPSThe High Price of Nuclear Waste The federal government agreed in 1982 to provide a permanent site to deposit nuclear waste...and now, just like that, it's off the table & closed. MORE incompetency. He just jerked the rug out from under the nuclear power program and the nation's utilities are in a real financial bind..
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