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California's Democratic congressional leaders said Wednesday they hope to address concerns raised by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger about the cost of health insurance legislation moving through Congress. Schwarzenegger wrote members of the state's congressional delegation this week and asked them for more flexibility to deal with the state's financial woes instead of imposing new costs through an expansion of Medicaid. He estimated that the health care legislation being debated in Congress would cost the state an extra $3 billion to $4 billion annually. “This crushing new burden will be added to a safety net that is already shredding under billions of...

Interesting Provisions That Recently Appeared In Senate Health Bill ? $100,000,000 For “Health Care Facility” “At A Public Research University In The United States That Contains A State’s Sole Public Academic Medical And Dental School.” NEBRASKA “As Part Of The Deal To Win Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson's Support, The Federal Government Will Fund Nebraska's New Medicaid Recipients.” (“Ben Nelson's Medicaid Deal,” Politico, 12/19/09) VERMONT “The Health Care Overhaul Taking Shape In Congress Includes A Provision Pushed By Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy To Increase The State’s Medicaid Payments By $250 Million Over Six Years. The Provision, Also Supported By Sen. Bernie...

Politics: If the Democrats' stitched-together Frankenstein monster of health care reform gets the 60 votes to get through the Senate, it will have been done through an assortment of bribes and brass knuckles. (snip) Sen. Ben Nelson, a Nebraska Democrat, has also been critical of the buy-in and public option, but he has an additional issue about whatever comes out of the Senate not involving public funding of abortion in any way. Michael Goldfarb on the Weekly Standard blog quotes a Senate aide as saying the White House is now threatening to put Nebraska's Offutt Air Force Base on the...

Ben Nelson says that he knows who started the rumor, and that it may be embarrassing if/when that info comes out. Says, no one threatened him or offered him ANYTHING for his vote. He's says the abortion issue is not the only thing stopping him from supporting the Senate bill.

The Senate clerk has finished reading the text of the manager's amendment to the chamber's healthcare bill. After roughly seven and a half hours of reading, the clerk concluded reading the 383-page manager's amendment to the bill, which was submitted by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) earlier today. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) forced a reading of the amendment earlier today in a bid to string along the Senate healthcare debate. In the interim, Senate Democrats announced an agreement with Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) to secure the necessary 60 votes to move forward with the bill. They also released...

Only a day after Senate Democrats voted to move into a historic debate on overhauling the nation's healthcare system, key centrists made it clearthat the party is still a long way from delivering on its promise to provide near-universal insurance coverage and contain medical costs. Faced with the prospect of Republican filibusters, Democratic leaders must deliver the same kind of total unity they managed to achieve in Saturday's vote to begin debate: Every Democratic senator, plus two independents who caucus with them, supported the key procedural motion. But several of those senators spoke out today to say that they will...

Now that we know that the Democratic leadership in Congress and the Obama Administration have bribed Senator Ben Nelson into supporting the government takeover of healthcare, the question arises, who ARE these people, anyway? Are they aliens from outer space? They certainly don't act like normal human beings who are fully aware of reality. Senator Ben Nelson, for example, will vote in favor of the mammoth, debt-busting monstrosity in spite of the fact that in the latest poll Nebraskans indicate by a 61% majority that they will vote against Nelson if he votes in favor of this bill.

How desperate has the White House become to get anything passed under the name of health-care reform? According to Michael Goldfarb’s source on Capitol Hill, the Obama administration has targeted the last remaining Democratic holdout, at least among moderates — and they’re willing to damage national security to extort his support. The White House has threatened Ben Nelson (D-NE) with the closure of Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska if he opposes Reid’s latest version, despite its status as the headquarters of US Strategic Command: According to a Senate aide, the White House is now threatening to put Nebraska’s Offutt...

While the Democrats appease Senator Lieberman, they still have to worry about other recalcitrant Democrats including Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson. Though Lieberman has been out front in the fight against the public option and the Medicare buy-in, Nelson was critical of both. Now that those provisions appear to have been stripped from the bill, Lieberman may get on board, but Nelson's demand that taxpayer money not be used to fund abortion has still not been met. According to a Senate aide, the White House is now threatening to put Nebraska's Offutt Air Force Base on the BRAC list if Nelson...

His biography also emphasizes his capacity to effect compromise noting that he is “known as a consensus builder who has worked to forge compromise agreements”. However, this is a man who knows the truth that the child in the womb is one of us and that we must not allow any Health Care Reform package to pass - and then become law - which uses Federal tax Dollars to kill our innocent neighbors. There are some truths which are incapable of “compromise.” The first among them is the fundamental human right to life and the first freedom, the freedom to...

Here is video of South Carolina GOP Sen. Jim DeMint saying he is prepared to delay a vote on the Senate Health Care Bill in any way possible. DeMint also said that Democrat Sen. Ben Nelson will be an "American hero" if he refuses to support this bill. DeMint said he did not know if Nelson could hold out against the pressure being brought upon him by the White House. DeMint said he will seek to slow the bill down so it can at least be read before it is voted on. . . . (VIDEO)

United Methodist Church Bashes Ben Nelson on Abortion Funding Refusal Washington, DC -- The United Methodist Church has never made a secret of its support for abortion as it regularly participates in a radical national pro-abortion religious group. With one of its members, Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson, holding up the health care bill over abortion funding, the church is on the attack. http://www.LifeNews.com/nat5792.html

Reid scrambles as deadline looms By: Carrie Budoff Brown and Meredith Shiner December 18, 2009 06:54 PM EST Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid led a marathon negotiating session Friday with Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) in a hectic bid to persuade the last holdout to sign onto the health care reform bill ahead of a key deadline Saturday morning. Nelson was huddling into the evening with Reid, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and a circle of top White House officials that included deputy chief of staff Jim Messina and senior adviser Pete Rouse. Nelson was seeking stronger language to prohibit federal financing...

The Washington Times reported last night Senator Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) had told reporters no deal was agreed to after he emerged from a meeting with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and other Democratic leaders. He went on to say health care talks were ongoing. What he failed to mention, through all of his rhetoric about his concern for pro-life language in the bill, was the huge Medicaid pay off to Nebraska being slipped into the health care bill. Essentially, the federal government will pay for Nebraska's new Medicaid recipients. The provision is worth about $45 million for the first...

Not that this will come as any great shock, but Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), the lone Democrat holdout against the current iteration of healthcare reform, announced Saturday he will vote for the bill. Also unsurprising: much like Mary "Louisiana Purchase" Landrieu (D-La.) before him, Nelson sold his vote and his very soul for some financial benefits to his state. As Politico reported moments ago: Sen. Mary Landrieu got the "Louisiana Purchase." Sen. Ben Nelson got the federal government to pick up most his state's future Medicaid tab -- forever. As part of the deal to win Nelson's support, the federal...

Since he sold out the country perhaps we should send him 30 pennies. Now I know it should be 30 silver coins but we don't make them any more and he and his ilk not only sold out the country but devalued our currency. so 30 pennies seems appropriate.

SOLD: Sen. Nelson’s Bribeby Publius We’ll be blunt. The ‘health care reform’ legislation under consideration in the Senate is the most corrupt piece of legislation in our nation’s history. Yes, we understand that is a strong statement and there have been other abominations throughout our nation’s life. But never before did corrupt legislation threaten to radically and forever change the live’s of every American.Exhibit A is the outright bribe extracted by Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Corn Huckster State) from Sen. Harry Reid. As a result of Nelson’s performance in his role of Hamlet in the health care deliberations, we will...

The White House and Democratic Leadership in the Senate has told Senator Nelson they will close every military base in Nebraska — a threat that is not credible, really — but they have also offered Senator Nelson between $300 million to $500 million in earmarks, according to key hill health care operatives. These hundreds of millions will be available for whatever he wants to spend them on in Nebraska. Given Senator Nelson’s hard core earmarking history as an appropriator, the word on the street is that this is the real carrot that could get Nelson to agree to some cover...

It’s obvious by now healthcare reform is not reform at all. The latest votes cast in the Senate opens the door to “debate” on the bill, but will do little to change it. We know that Congress is up to its comfortable tricks stuffing pork in every piece of legislation it passes. The biggest obstacle Senate Majority Leader Reid faces is how much it will cost to bribe a few of his members to vote favorably in the end. He needs every single Senate Democrat plus two Independents. Will there be any holdouts among them? Probably not – government officials...

We can thank the Drudge Report for directing us to ABC News reporter Jonathan Karl’s brief but extremely important piece whose title “The $100 Million Health Care Vote?” calls to mind the truth that since antiquity, politicians have never had a single scruple against whoring themselves — for the right price, of course. That’s not to equate politicians with ordinary prostitutes; for as the greatest writers have told us throughout the ages, politicians make saints of them. After all, never in human history has a single honest practitioner of the “oldest profession” displayed the disgusting arrogance required to charge millions,...

What does it take to get a wavering senator to vote for health care reform? Here’s a case study. On page 432 of the Reid bill, there is a section increasing federal Medicaid subsidies for “certain states recovering from a major disaster.” The section spends two pages defining which “states” would qualify, saying, among other things, that it would be states that “during the preceding 7 fiscal years” have been declared a “major disaster area.” I am told the section applies to exactly one state: Louisiana, the home of moderate Democrat Mary Landrieu, who has been playing hard to get...

Selling candy didn't raise much money last year, so a Goldsboro middle school is selling grades. A $20 donation to Rosewood Middle School will get a student 20 test points - 10 extra points on two tests of the student's choosing. That could raise a B to an A, or a failing grade to a D. Susie Shepherd, the principal, said a parent advisory council came up with the idea, and she endorsed it. She said the council was looking for a new way to raise money.

Nearly half the members of a powerful House subcommittee in control of Pentagon spending are under scrutiny by ethics investigators in Congress, who have trained their lens on the relationships between seven panel members and an influential lobbying firm founded by a former Capitol Hill aide.

President Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize, and we are having a difficult time figuring out why. The prize committee cited its decision on this: “For his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.” Really? We missed this. Obama seemed surprised by this announcement and said winning the prize was a “call to action.” The nominations for the prize took place in February, which was only a couple months after Obama’s inspirational and change-promising “Yes We Can” campaign. In fact, he is the first U.S. president to be awarded the prize in his first term. Obama...

A Decadent Nobel A prize for soft moralism. By DANIEL HENNINGER So Donald Rumsfeld was right about Old Europe. The Norwegian Nobel Committee has taken it in the neck for awarding this year's Peace Prize to a nine-month old American presidency. There's been much mockery of pencil-necked Norwegian academics in faraway Oslo. This is unfair. The committee said it chose Barack Obama for his "vision of . . . a world without nuclear weapons" and for "meeting the great climatic challenges the world is confronting." I'd say that completes the argument over old and new Europe. This is a Nobel...

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama called on Congress Wednesday to approve $250 payments to more than 50 million seniors to make up for no increase in Social Security next year. The Social Security Administration is scheduled to announce Thursday that there will be no cost of living increase next year. By law, increases are pegged to inflation, which has been negative this year.

MY FIRST three thoughts upon hearing that President Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize were: ■ For what!?!? ■ So this is how low our image sunk under President Bush? ■ This is our Nobel! Even the most fervent Obama supporters have to scratch their heads. The Nobel Committee praised Obama’s “extraordinary efforts’’ on international diplomacy and cooperation, citing his nascent efforts to reduce nuclear weapons and America’s “more constructive role’’ on climate change. The committee said Obama had become “the world’s leading spokesman’’ for international policies the committee has sought to “stimulate’’ for 108 years. Talk about giving...

....In other words, the prize was conferred by experienced politicians who seem to know exactly what they were doing. Expressing its particular approval of Obama's "vision ... of a world without nuclear weapons," the committee wrote: "Obama has as president created a new climate in international politics. ... Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future. ... For 108 years, the Norwegian Nobel committee has sought to stimulate precisely that international policy and those attitudes for which Obama is now the world's leading...

Analysis: Did Obama win Nobel for not being Bush? Posted: October 10th, 2009 12:15 PM ET From CNN Political Contributor Robin Oakley LONDON (CNN) — Did President Obama land a Nobel peace prize at such an early stage of his presidency simply because he's not George W. Bush? Diplomatic circles are certainly not dismissing such a notion and a "surprised and humbled" Obama has himself agreed that the award (for which nominations had to be submitted only two weeks after his inauguration) can hardly have been a recognition of anything he has yet accomplished. It is a prize for aspiration...

Note: The following text is a quote: Thirty-Nine Individuals Charged with Conspiring to Bribe Chair of D.C. Taxicab Commission WASHINGTON—Yitbarek Syume, 51, of Silver Spring, Maryland, Berhane Leghese, 47, of Arlington, Virginia, and Amanuel Ghirmazion, 53, of Hyattsville, Maryland, were indicted on bribery charges on October 1, 2009, by a grand jury sitting in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, announced Acting United States Attorney Channing D. Phillips and FBI Assistant Director in Charge Joseph Persichini, Jr. The indictments, unsealed today, allege that Syume, Leghese, and Ghirmazion, conspired to bribe the Chairperson of the District of...

The cavalry is here -- and they're in white coats and scrubs: More than a half a million doctors and millions of nurses are joining forces to help pass real health reform. Americans listen to their nurses and doctors when it comes to health reform -- and for good reason. If we can help them amplify their voices, it'll be a huge boost to our campaign for change. So we're working on a new television ad featuring their voices explaining why doctors and nurses so strongly support President Obama's plan -- and asking Congress to pass it. We'll run the...

Bronx hospital employees, lawyer charged in insurance fraud scam Employees of the city's Health and Hospitals Corporation (HHC) received bribes to deliver confidential patient information to personal injury lawyers, city and state officials allege. Six HHC employees and a former HHC employee who worked at Lincoln Hospital, Bronx, and a private attorney, were arrested today on bribery charges in connection with the insurance scheme. According to the office of Attorney General Andrew Cuomo -- who filed the charges -- the information was allegedly used to lure patients into receiving unnecessary treatment and then submitting over a million dollars in phony...

Obama in his three complete years in the Senate was the second largest recipient of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae campaign contributions, behind only Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., the powerful chairman of the Senate banking committee.

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- Two key Democrat senators were cleared by the Senate Ethics Committee on Friday from year-long investigations about whether mortgages they obtained from Countrywide Financial Corp. violated the senate's rules on gifts. The bipartisan committee, which supported the decision unanimously, did scold the senior lawmakers, Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., and Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D., for not being more careful in their dealings. "While the committee finds no substantial credible evidence as required by committee rules that your Countrywide mortgage violated Senate ethics rules, the committee does believe that you should have exercised...

n the middle of a difficult re-election campaign, Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., on Friday was cleared by the Senate Ethics Committee from a year-long investigation about whether mortgages he obtained from Countrywide Financial Corp. violated the senate's rules on gifts. The committee, however, did scold the senior lawmaker for not being more careful in his dealings. "While the committee finds no substantial credible evidence as required by committee rules that your Countrywide mortgage violated Senate ethics rules, the committee does believe that you should have exercised more vigilance in your dealings with Countrywide in order to avoid...

Like we haven't been saying this for years: ALEXANDRIA, VA. - Former Democratic Congressman William Jefferson was found guilty of 11 of 16 corruption charges today by a federal jury. The jury of eight women and four men returned a guilty verdict following five days of deliberation. In the 16-count indictment, Jefferson was charged with soliciting bribes and other crimes for a series of schemes in which he helped American businesses broker deals in West African in exchange for payments or financial considerations to companies controlled by members of his family, including his brother Mose, his wife, Andrea, their five...

Florida businesswoman says she sought to bribe former Rep. William Jeffersonby Jonathan Tilove and Bruce Alpert, The Times-Picayune Tuesday July 21, 2009, 2:24 PM ALEXANDRIA, VA. -- A Florida businesswoman who had lined up a deal to exploit untapped oil reserves off the coast of the African island nation of Sao Tome and Principe testified today in the corruption trial of former Rep. William Jefferson that she had agreed to give his brother Mose an oil lot potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars in exchange for the congressman's help in untangling the knots that had tied up the deal....

RALEIGH - The prosecution of former state House Speaker Jim Black wound to a close Thursday, when he received the minimum 11- to 14- month state sentence for bribery after having paid a $1 million fine. But Black, who is already serving a 63-month sentence in federal prison, will serve his state sentence concurrently and will therefore likely not spend any additional time in a prison cell. "He is an old man who is sick and who will stay in prison, perhaps the rest of his life," said Wake County Superior Court Judge Donald Stephens, in explaining his leniency. "I...

Ex-congressman filmed accepting $100,000Published: 07/08/2009 By Matthew Barakat Associated Press ALEXANDRIA, Va. - From four different angles, jurors saw a former Louisiana congressman accept a suitcase filled with $100,000 on videos played in court Tuesday. **SNIP** The recordings played in U.S. District Court show Lori Mody, a northern Virginia businesswoman who cooperated with an FBI investigation, leading Jefferson to the trunk of a car parked outside the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Pentagon City. Jefferson reaches in, grabs the suitcase and puts it in a small duffel bag. The FBI recorded the handoff from five different angles, and four of those were...

Breaking on Michigan Radio and the unpostable here on FR Detroit Newspapers, that wife of Rep John Conyers will plead Guilty to Bribery charges.

(Select Local Story #4 - video only) All the media is carrying Roland Burris' prepared remarks, denying any "pay to play" allegations. But what this story shows is a frustrated and angry Burris yelling at WLS-TV reporter Jason Knowles when ambushed early in the day outside his home. That segment begins about 1 minute into the video.

It's not just what you know, it's who you know. And it's not just who you know, it's who you pay off. As the Center for Public Integrity reports (as cited in last week's Financial Times), the largest US originators of subprime mortgages spent roughly $370 million on lobbying and campaign donations in Washington during the past decade in attempts to stave off tighter regulation of their industry. The study “shows that most of the top 25 originators, most of which are now bankrupt, were either owned or heavily financed by the nation's largest banks, including Citigroup (C), Goldman Sachs...

>Harman Vehemently Denies Bribery Allegations Allegedly Caught on NSA Tapes [California Democratic Congresswoman] Jane Harman says she never offered to help a "suspected Israeli agent" in exchange for the agent lobbying House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for a key chairmanship for Harman. [California Democratic Congresswoman] Jane Harman vehemently denied on Monday allegations published in a congressional magazine that she had offered to help a "suspected Israeli agent" seek reduced charges for two men accused of espionage in exchange for the agent lobbying House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for a key chairmanship for Harman. ,,, Harman, a California Democrat, was overlooked by Pelosi...

Representative Jesse L. Jackson Jr. went to see the Illinois governor in December to press for an appointment to the United States Senate seat being vacated by Barack Obama.

President Obama continued collecting money for his 2010 Senate re-election campaign even after he resigned his seat from Illinois, including a maximum $2,300 donation the day after Christmas from a top executive of a Wall Street firm that had received a government bailout. Four contributions - $4,800 in all - were donated to the Obama 2010 fund on Dec. 26, according to Federal Election Commission reports. The money came from some of Mr. Obama's top presidential fundraisers: Bruce A. Heyman, managing director at Goldman Sachs, which received a $10 billion bailout last year; Steven Koch, vice chairman at Credit Suisse...

As China's Communists gather, luxury sales soar By David Barboza Saturday, March 14, 2009 BEIJING: A week ago, a finely dressed Chinese man walked into Louis Vuitton's flagship store here trailed by a bodyguard and said he wanted to purchase a gift for a government official. "This is for a very senior official," the man told a clerk. "I tell you, he is at the top. So what kind of handbag do you think is suitable for him?" Sales clerks at Louis Vuitton and other luxury stores in Beijing offer an intriguing explanation for the appearance of such customers: every...

An official in the D.C. government's office of the chief technology officer has been arrested in a federal bribery sting, according to law enforcement sources. http://www.butasforme.com/2009/03/12/breaking-news-fbi-raiding-obamas-chief-technology-officers-office/

Morgan Stanley’s Chinese Land Scandal By DAVID BARBOZA SHANGHAI — Since the height of China’s property boom, Morgan Stanley’s huge real estate deals here have been the envy of the industry. Then, scandal hit. Last month, with property prices here and elsewhere in free fall, the bank dropped a bombshell: in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing, it said it had fired an executive in its China real estate division after uncovering evidence that he might have violated the United States Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which bars American business people from bribing foreign officials. That executive, Garth Peterson, was a...

Systematic Consumer Fraud by GSK (GlaxoSmithKline)in conspiracy with researchers who were bribed to suppress or obscure suicide risk data during clinical trials of one of the highest selling medicines-Paroxetine.

Halliburton Co. said it has agreed to pay $559 million to the U.S. to settle charges that one of its former units bribed Nigerian officials during the construction of a gas plant. The deal needs to be finalized by the U.S. Justice Department. Halliburton declined to say whether the company admitted to or denied the charges as part of the proposed settlement, saying that it would wait to provide specifics until the deal was finalized with the Justice Department. A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment on the case. The proposed settlement appears to mark a turning point in the...