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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: longnshort who wrote (32672)	2/13/2009 12:31:48 PM
From: Peter Dierks	Respond to of 71588

Democrats Delay Bill Release to Conceal Details by Connie Hair 02/13/2009 Democratic staffers released the final version of the stimulus bill at about 11 p.m. last night after delaying the release for hours to put it into a format which people cannot “search” on their home computers. Instead of publishing the bill as a regular internet document -- which people can search by “key words” and otherwise, the Dems took hours to convert the final bill from the regular searchable format into “pdf” files, which can be read but not searched. Three of the four .pdf files had no text embedded, just images of the text, which did not permit text searches of the bill. That move to conceal the bill’s provisions had not been remedied this morning at the time of publication of this article. (You can find the entire bill on the House Appropriations [http://appropriations.house.gov] website.) So, what are they hiding? A lot. We searched the bill randomly -- the only way possible -- to see what’s being hidden from the public and the members of Congress who will be voting on the bill today. We found one provision that may be a good example of why the Democrats are desperate to stop any exposure of what is in this bill. Like this gem: SEC. 1607. (a) CERTIFICATION BY GOVERNOR -- Not later than 45 days after the date of enactment of this Act, for funds provided to any State or agency thereof, the Governor of the State shall certify that: 1) the State request and use funds provided by this Act , and; 2) funds be used to create jobs and promote economic growth. (b) ACCEPTANCE BY STATE LEGISLATURE -- If funds provided to any State in any division of this Act are not accepted for use by the Governor, then acceptance by the State legislature, by means of the adoption of a concurrent resolution, shall be sufficient to provide funding to such State. This provision -- apparently aimed at conservative governors such as South Carolina’s Mark Sanford who does not want the federal money -- would overturn state laws and constitutions, intervening directly in the state’s government to give the legislature the power to overturn a government’s decision. This provision probably violates the U.S. Constitution, a matter which will be of no concern to Congressional Democrats. This act -- to strong-arm state governments and a governor’s ability to control the state budget -- is Chicago-style bipartisanship. This bill is so bad that even the Associated Press analyst report today concludes that the bill will not jump-start the economy. Scramble in the Senate Roll Call is reporting that Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) will likely not be able to travel to Washington for the vote. This causes a conundrum for Reid, as it would bring the vote total down to 60 -- the number needed -- but no Republican wants to go on record as the 60th vote. Reid may try to get around Senate rules to enable Specter, Snowe and Collins to avoid being Vote #60 for the stimulus bill. Connie Hair is a freelance writer, a former speechwriter for Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ) and a former media and coalitions advisor to the Senate Republican Conference. humanevents.com

To: longnshort who wrote (32672)	2/14/2009 3:47:36 AM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

Re: "accepting more than $2.6 million from a private youth detention center in Pennsylvania in return for giving hundreds of youths and teenagers long sentences." Ah... the joys of privatizing the correctional systems! 'Pay for play' never had such a meaning. :-(

To: longnshort who wrote (32672)	8/31/2009 10:44:27 PM
From: Peter Dierks	1 Recommendation Respond to of 71588

NBC Frets Over Filling Kennedy's 'Void,' Skips How He and Democrats Created It By Brent Baker (Bio \| Archive) August 31, 2009 - 20:33 ET With “Filling the VOID” as the on-screen heading, Monday's NBC Nightly News, without any consideration for how Massachusetts Democrats blocked the Governor's interim appointment power, fretted over the loss to Democrats of Ted Kennedy's Senate seat as a health care vote approaches. “Less than 48 hours after Ted Kennedy was laid to rest at Arlington Cemetery, the political reality of his vacant Senate seat has set in,” Chuck Todd warned. Though you could argue Kennedy's plight left the seat empty all year so far, Todd explained: “Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick set January 19th, 2010 for the special election, leaving the potential for the seat to be vacant for five months. To avoid a lengthy vacancy, next week the Massachusetts legislature begins debating a change in the law to give the Governor the power to appoint an interim Senator, a power most Governors in other states already have. It was a wish Senator Kennedy himself and his family made known directly to Massachusetts' lawmakers.” Todd, however, failed to point out that in a crass 2004 political maneuver urged by Kennedy, Bay State Democrats changed the law so then-Governor Mitt Romney, a Republican, could not replace John Kerry if he had won the presidency. Story Continues Below Ad ? Todd proceeded to chafe over how “this Senate vacancy comes at a time when President Obama and Democrats are pondering different strategies to get a health care bill passed, making every single Democratic Senate seat crucial, something Ted Kennedy himself recognized.” Really? Kennedy knew of his prognosis in plenty of time to announce his plan to resign at the end of 2008 and thus allow an election for his seat to be part of the regular November election last year so Massachusetts would have a new Senator as of early January 2009. ... newsbusters.org