RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — For the past decade, North Carolina Democrats in charge of state government have been successful persuading the public they’re unlike fellow party colleagues who’ve ended up behind bars. Democrats have remained in power in the Legislature and at the Executive Mansion despite the news of illegal activities that sent then-House Speaker Jim Black, Agriculture Commissioner Meg Scott Phipps and Rep. Thomas Wright to prison. They’ve done so while passing tougher ethics and campaign finance laws, and even expelling Wright from the Legislature. At the same time, they’ve had political advantages to get their message out, such as outraising Republicans on campaign dollars, pushing education initiatives and presiding during a span largely marked by growth and prosperity in the state. Read more. Despite President Obama’s long history of criticizing the Bush administration for “sweetheart deals” with favored contractors, the Obama administration this month awarded a $25 million federal contract for work in Afghanistan to a company owned by a Democratic campaign contributor without entertaining competitive bids, Fox News has learned. The contract, awarded on Jan. 4 to Checchi & Company Consulting, Inc., a Washington-based firm owned by economist and Democratic donor Vincent V. Checchi, will pay the firm $24,673,427 to provide “rule of law stabilization services” in war-torn Afghanistan. A synopsis of the contract published on the USAID Web site says Checchi & Company will “train the next generation of legal professionals” throughout the Afghan provinces and thereby “develop the capacity of Afghanistan’s justice system to be accessible, reliable, and fair.” Read more. Trying to guarantee Americans the thrill of the precipice, the president dashed to Massachusetts on Sunday, thereby conceding that he had already lost Tuesday’s Senate election, which had become a referendum on his signature program. By promising to cast the decisive 41st vote against the president’s health-care legislation, the Republican candidate forced all congressional Democrats to contemplate this: Not even frenzied national mobilization of Democratic manpower and millions of dollars could rescue one of the safest Democratic seats in the national legislature from national dismay about the incontinent government expansion, of which that legislation is symptomatic. Because the legislation is frightening and unpopular, Democrats have had to resort to serial bribery to advance it. Massachusetts voted immediately after the corruption of exempting, until 2018, union members from the tax on high-value health insurance plans. This tax was supposedly the crucial component of what supposedly was reform’s primary goal: reducing costs. Read more. The chief of the U.N.’s climate science panel says he isn’t going anywhere, despite calls for his head amid allegations that he is a sloppy scientist who presided over a report that contained intentionally misleading statements. “I know a lot of climate skeptics are after my blood, but I’m in no mood to oblige them,” Rajendra Pachauri, head of the U.N.’sIntergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), told The Times of London. Pachauri spoke following revelations that an oft-cited “fact” in his panel’s 2008 climate change report — that the Himalayas were on track to melt by 2035 — was sloppily copied from a magazine interview with a single glaciologist in 1999. Like water flowing downhill from a melting glacier, other errors have since emerged from the report, simply titled AR4. Read more. A bipartisan, independent commission on stopping the spread of weapons of mass destruction says that the Obama administration has failed in its first year in office to do enough to prevent a germ weapons attack on America or to respond quickly and effectively should such an attack occur. In a 19-page report card being published Tuesday, the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction, Proliferation and Terrorism, chaired by former Senators Bob Graham, a Democrat from Florida, and Jim Talent, a Missouri Republican, gives the new administration the grade of “F” for failing to take key steps the commission outlined just over a year ago in its initial report. Specifically, the commission concludes that the Obama administration, like the three administrations before it, has failed to pay consistent and urgent attention to increasing the nation’s ability to respond quickly and effectively to a germ attack that would inflict massive casualties on the nation. Read more. They meet across the region in bars, restaurants, churches and fire stations. They’re Republicans, independents, even Democrats. They belong to groups with names such as We the People, Stand Up America and CAUTION. What most share is frustration over what they see as an ever-expanding federal government and a belief that America has drifted from its founding principles. They’re engaged and – like the voters who pushed Republican Scott Brown to victory in Massachusetts – energized. “We’ve been asleep in politics too long. We’ve got to get involved,” says Deborah Walters, 52, one of more than 200 people at this month’s kickoff of Strengthen Charlotte. Read more President Obama, after spending hundreds of billions his first year, now is seeking a partial three-year federal spending freeze that would reduce budgets by less than 1 percent. The drop-in-the-bucket nature of the president’s proposal was underscored Tuesday by a Congressional Budget Office estimate projecting the 2010 federal deficit to hit $1.35 trillion — Obama’s spending freeze would be expected to save up to $15 billion the first year. The president will propose the congressional freeze on “non-security” spending in his State of the Union address Wednesday night, senior administration officials said. The freeze, which would apply to annual spending on day-to-day government, appears to be an attempt to answer widespread voter concern about rising deficits and debt. Read more. Civitas first reported on the now infamous $25 million fishing pier in Nags Head as a Bad Bill of the Week in May. TheAugust issue of Civitas Review featured “Pier Pressure,” an in-depth background of this project and its ties to Senate President Pro Tempore Marc Basnight (D-Dare). As the funding of this project was questioned, Civitas continued to provide the below updates on our Civitasreview.com blog. Although this project was hailed as “shovel ready” by lawmakers, job creation claims were overblown and even downright ridiculous. Yet, despite concerns, the N.C. Aquariums have continued to pursue planning for additional piers in Emerald Isle and Carolina Beach. The December issue of Civitas Review exposed how Sen. Basnight has benefited from his support of the Pier. Civitas continued to update this story, when it became clear that Basnight Construction has received subcontract work on the Pier. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is pushing a $300 billion “fix” to the Senate health care bill, saying that her chamber could approve the Senate’s package if those changes are made first. Senior Democratic aides told Fox News that Pelosi has offered up the new package of changes to Senate Democratic leaders, with the hope that they will be able to pass it using a controversial procedural maneuver known as “reconciliation.” The maneuver would allow Democrats to pass the measure with just 51 votes, without having to first overcome the normal 60-vote threshold. Some Democrats are keen on using that process, since the election last week of Republican Scott Brown to the U.S. Senate from Massachusetts broke the Democrats’ 60-vote supermajority. However, some Democratic moderates — notably Arkansas Sen. Blanche Lincoln and Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh — have balked at using the controversial tactic to ram through health care reform measures. Read more. Leading lawmakers and the governor are shaping a wide range of reforms that promise more accountability and sunshine across state government, fixes aimed at restoring trust after a stretch of scandals. The efforts are moving with speed and are coalescing as another embarrassment commands attention: Ruffin Poole, a longtime senior aide to former Gov. Mike Easley, was arrested and appeared in court Thursday for the first time since his indictment last week on 51 corruption charges. Poole, 38, has not entered a plea. He and his lawyer declined to comment Thursday. Read more. The closure of the military detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is beginning to look like a protracted and uncertain project for the Obama administration as political, legal and security concerns Having blown the one-year closure deadline set last January in an executive order, the administration is planning to transfer some detainees to a state prison it hopes to acquire in Illinois. But there appears to be little mood in Congress to provide the administration with either the funding for the prison or the authority to transfer detainees who will be held indefinitely. At the same time, opposition is building to plans to transfer a number of detainees, including Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, to a civilian court in Lower Manhattan for federal trial. Read more. WASHINGTON – Senate Democrats needed all 60 votes at their disposal Thursday to muscle through legislation allowing the government to go $1.9 trillion deeper in debt. Democratic leaders were able to prevail on the politically volatile 60-39 vote only because Republican Sen.-elect Scott Brown of Massachusetts has yet to be seated. Republicans had insisted on a 60-vote, super-majority threshhold to pass the measure. An earlier test vote succeeded on a 60-40 vote. The measure would put the government on track for a national debt of $14.3 trillion — about $45,000 for every American — and it served as a vivid reminder of the United States’ dire fiscal straits. Read more.Bin Laden claims airline bomb attempt on Christmas
CAIRO (AP) – Osama bin Laden claimed responsibility for the failed attempt to bomb a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas in a new audio message released Sunday threatening more attacks on the United States. The United States said there was no indication to suggest that bin Laden or any of his top lieutenants had anything to do with the attempted attack and that the claim may have been motivated by the wish of the terror network’s leaders to appear in control of al-Qaida’s offshoots. “They offer strategic guidance and rely on their affiliates to carry out that strategic guidance,” State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said in an interview. Read more. NC Democrats must again overcome corruption rap
Obama Administration Steers Lucrative No-Bid Contract for Afghan Work to Dem Donor
Democrats on the precipice of failure
Climate Chief Staying Put Despite Calls for His Head
Obama Gets ‘F’ on Stopping Spread of Weapons of Mass Destruction
Sense of frustration awakens activists
Obama Seeks Partial Three-Year Spending Freeze
A “Fishy” business: Sen. Basnight, Basnight Construction and the $25 million dollar state pier
Thomas Jefferson’s Words of Wisdom
When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe. The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not. It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world. I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them. My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government. No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms. The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government. The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical. People Said It didn’t Matter
God Save Us From Those Among US Who Are Too Stupid to Know the Truth And Worse: They Don’t Care! The Fundamental Transformation of America When Obama wrote a book and said he was mentored as a youth by Frank, (Frank Marshall Davis) an avowed Communist, people said it didn’t matter. When it was discovered that his grandparents, were strong socialist, sent Obama’s mother to a socialist school, introduced Frank Marshall Davis to young Obama, people said it didn’t matter. When people found out that he was enrolled as a Muslim child in school and his father and step father were both Muslims, people said it didn’t matter. Read more. Gloves come off after Obama rips Supreme Court ruling
Washington (CNN) — The political furor escalated over President Obama’s high-profile rebuke of a recent Supreme Court ruling on campaign advertising Thursday, as Democrats pounded the high court decision. Democrats rallied around Obama the day after the president committed a rare breach of political etiquette, criticizing the controversial ruling in his State of the Union address as members of the high court sat only a few feet away. The court’s 5-4 decision, issued last week, removed long-established legal barriers preventing corporations from spending unlimited sums of money to influence voters in political campaigns. Democrats fear the decision has given the traditionally pro-business GOP a powerful new advantage. Read more. Pelosi Pushes $300 Billion ‘Fix’ to Senate Health Care Bill
Poole’s arrest puts reform in fast lane
Gitmo closure looks increasingly uncertain
Senate votes to raise limits on national debt
Friday, January 29, 2010
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