Free Republic

The White House's top budget official declared on Sunday that "fundamentally, the economy is weak" while saying the administration's own financial predictions could need a revision by midyear. Peter Orszag, President Barack Obama's Office of Management and Budget director, said in television interviews that the economic downturn has been years in the making but cautioned that the new administration wasn't yet looking at a second economic stimulus package. Orszag said the already-in-place $787 billion stimulus should have a chance to work before officials ask Congress to consider a sequel.

CRITICS RIP TREASURY'S TIMID MORTGAGE PLAN Housing industry insiders say Obama's $75 billion rushed mortgage rescue plan is missing crucial elements that doom it to failure, .......doesn't include adequate property appraisals or risk management of reworked loans...... Without these safeguards, steadily declining home values will waste taxpayers money by putting homeowners back into over-valued homes with no equity and no free cash to maintain the home. One source poked fun at Obama's requirement that stimulus money must go to "shovel ready" projects to ensure the most immediate effect, calling the mortgage modification plan "not shovel ready." Secy Geithner plans to...

EAST STROUDSBURG — A dollar on eBay makes a pricey classroom trailer go away. In 2006, East Stroudsburg Area School District bought a portable classroom for $62,000. In December, the same unit sold online for $1. Now, board members, taxpayers and administrators are fuming, and wondering how it could have happened... It was the winter break, and Brad Fitzpatrick, a member of the district's technology staff, placed the trailer on eBay, according to board minutes. Typically, sellers on eBay place reserves on their merchandise. That means they set a minimum acceptable level at which their item can sell. If no...

In the long run, when we are all dead, historians will be debating the root causes behind the global financial meltdown of 2008. They will join up multiple dots, just as they did after the September 11 terror attacks. Among the precipitating factors, toxic mortgage debt securities grossly inflated banks’ balance sheets and investors’ portfolios. Credit rating agencies blessed those assets’ illusory values. Real estate tumbled in a vicious downward spiral, while steep oil prices helped reverse the business cycle. Inadequate regulation, in America and elsewhere, clearly exacerbated all the other drivers. Specifically, when regulators permitted major American investment banks...

Excerpts from a 4 part New York Times article intended to lay the total blame for the financial collapse on Alan Greenspan, Phil Gramm and deregulation, but what it really does is show that the government is filled with crooks and is totally incompetent regarding running the economy. The sooner control is wrested from government's corrupt hands the better. Taking Hard New Look at a Greenspan Legacy Excerpt from part 3: In 1997, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, a federal agency that regulates options and futures trading, began exploring derivatives regulation. The commission, then led by a lawyer named Brooksley...

WASHINGTON – On a single day filled with staggering sums, the Obama administration, Federal Reserve and Senate attacked the deepening economic crisis Monday with actions that could throw as much as $3 trillion more in government and private funds into the fight against frozen credit markets and rising joblessness. "It's gone deep. It's gotten worse," President Barack Obama said of the recession at a campaign-style appearance in Ft. Myers, Fla., where unemployment has reached double digits. "The situation we face could not be more serious." If any more emphasis were needed, Wall Street investors sent stocks plunging, objecting that new...

The longer BART’s investigation goes on trying to explain why an unarmed passenger laying face down on the Fruitvale station platform was shot to death by an on-duty officer, the more embarrassing it becomes. By now, BART police administration looks like the Keystone Kops, and the 236-officer department looks like one of those boutique police forces that should be taken over by the nearest county sheriff, who might have better resources for proper training and oversight. A climactic embarrassment came when a new cell phone video belatedly surfaced showing a second BART officer punching a seated and unresisting Oscar Grant...

Emporer Hussain Obanker has offered us the biggest boondoggle in the histoir of this great Country. The trough is full and his Hogs are lining up for their fill. This SlopocRat plan has less chance of stimulating the economy than if they would have just gotten some big snow blowers and fed cash into them. We will be fortunate to see $1 in a 100 after it winds it through the Graft and Corruption Rat Holes. After you bankrupt Fannie/Freddie and Wall St you may as well finish the job w/the rest of the economy. Never mind that he is...

You never get a second chance to make a first post-inaugural impression. Less than three weeks into his first 100 days, Barack Obama has left an indelible mark on his nascent presidency: the mark of incompetence and hubris. Despite the administration's much-touted wealth of bright minds and high bars, the transition has been a complete disaster. In a double whammy on Tuesday, tax troubles and ethical clouds forced the withdrawal of not one but two high-profile Obama nominees. These come on the heels of former Commerce Secretary-nominee Bill Richardson's withdrawal due to a pay-for-play probe in New Mexico and Treasury...

Some of us have been warning that it was not healthy for the U.S. media to have deified rather than questioned Obama, especially given that they tore apart Bush, ridiculed Palin, and caricatured Hillary. And now we can see the results of their two years of advocacy rather than scrutiny. We are quite literally after two weeks teetering on an Obama implosion—and with no Dick Morris to bail him out—brought on by messianic delusions of grandeur, hubris, and a strange naivete that soaring rhetoric and a multiracial profile can add requisite cover to good old-fashioned Chicago politicking.

Let’s get it straight. This isn’t sour grapes and it isn’t business as usual. We’re not opposed to Obama because he’s a Democrat or a Liberal. If our disagreements with him were just political, we could join the others in wishing him well and hoping he steers the ship right. We can’t. Because this isn’t a matter of political disagreement, this is a national catastrophe, a threat to the lives of millions and the survival of America itself. Here is why. Obama was Not Elected through a Legitimate Democratic Process but through Fraud Obama has No Stake in Democracy Obama...

That didn't take long. During his first full day in office, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. made a jarring verbal gaffe, shooting a public dig at the Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. that left President Obama grim-faced. When asked by Mr. Obama to administer the oath of office to White House senior staff, Mr. Biden, who is known for saying things he shouldn't, asked, "Am I doing this again?" Appearing in need of a cheat sheet off of which he could read the oath, Mr. Biden then said, "My memory isn't as good as Justice Roberts'."...

BEDFORD HEIGHTS, Ohio – President-elect Barack Obama made a pitch for his massive economic stimulus plan at a Midwestern factory that makes wind turbine parts, saying Friday his plan would make smart investments in the country's future and create solid jobs in up-and-coming industries. "Renewable energy isn't something pie in the sky. It's not part of a far-off future. It's happening all across America right now," Obama told workers at the Cardinal Fastener & Specialty Co. in this Cleveland suburb. "It can create millions of additional jobs and entire new industries if we act right now." Just days before taking...

In one of the biggest heists in American history, the Daily News "stole" the $2 billion Empire State Building. And it wasn't that hard. The News swiped the 102-story Art Deco skyscraper by drawing up a batch of bogus documents, making a fake notary stamp and filing paperwork with the city to transfer the deed to the property. Some of the information was laughable: Original "King Kong" star Fay Wray is listed as a witness and the notary shared a name with bank robber Willie Sutton. The massive ripoff illustrates a gaping loophole in the city's system for recording deeds,...

Five passengers are injured as the eastbound commuter train hits the end of a westbound, 102-car freight train pulling onto a siding. The crash raises new rail safety concerns. November 21, 2008 For the second time in less than three months, a Metrolink train and a freight train heading in opposite directions collided Thursday morning, raising fresh concerns about the commuter rail line's ability to navigate tracks it shares with other carriers. The Rialto crash was far less serious than the catastrophic head-on collision in September between a Metrolink train and a Union Pacific train in Chatsworth that killed 25....

<p>The White House on Friday threw its support behind a plan to speed release of $25 billion in existing loans to the Big Three automakers but rejected a Democratic proposal to use money from a financial bailout to help the troubled industry.</p>

PHOENIX — With the election behind him and no transition to plan, Sen. John McCain woke up Wednesday and walked to Starbucks for his morning coffee — alone. Friends and advisers who joined him and his wife at their condo later said he was relaxed, joking and looking forward to getting back to work in the Senate after the bruising, two-year campaign. McCain and his close friend, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., have already begun talking about legislative initiatives they want to tackle, and they're planning a trip to Afghanistan, aides said.

It did not take long for Summer Spencer to learn how highly her boss, Mayor Adrian M. Fenty, valued the D.C. summer youth jobs program. Shortly after she was hired last year to run the city's employment agency, Fenty (D) gave her a directive: Turn no student away. To the mayor, the work-training program was a linchpin in his bid to improve the education system and decrease crime. (snip) But over the past several weeks, Fenty's push to rapidly expand the program has backfired, with a $31 million cost overrun and organizational chaos resulting in one of the most high-profile...

The Supreme Court ended its term this year by making a mistake in one of its most controversial cases--the case in which it held unconstitutional a Louisiana law authorizing capital punishment for the rape of a child under 12 years of age.

Samantha Baskin gets paid to be patient. One of thousands of students across the District who had pay problems in the summer youth jobs program last week, Samantha, 14, said that she doesn't actually do anything at the Washington East of the River Academy. "We don't do nothing," she said. The director "holds us in a room for hours." Although she was owed several hundred dollars, Samantha was paid a nickel Friday and was finally paid in full yesterday. (snip) At least 200 of the 800 students in the academy indicated by a show of hands that they had not...

Terminal 5 came in for renewed criticism yesterday after it emerged that passengers transferring between planes at Heathrow's troubled new £4.3bn building are losing more than 900 bags a day. "Passengers will be surprised and disappointed to learn that there is still a one in 12 chance of losing their bags,"

Millions of dollars behind in raising money and unlikely to meet a fast-approaching final deadline, the Denver committee hosting the Democratic National Convention is considering spending cuts. Committee sources say they are working with the Democratic National Convention Committee to consider lowering the $55 million in private cash and donated services that must be raised to bring the convention to town. The cuts would be made to the many parties the host committee is obligated to throw for the delegations and the news media, and other hospitality functions not tied to production aspects inside the convention hall. "There have been...

The Pentagon cannot account for nearly 15 billion dollars in payments for goods and services in Iraq, according to an internal audit which members of Congress blasted Friday as a "shocking" accountability failure. Of 8.2 billion dollars in US taxpayer-funded defense contracts reviewed by the defense department's inspector general, the Pentagon could not properly account for more than 7.7 billion dollars. The lack of accountability of the funds, intended for purchases of weapons, vehicles, construction equipment and security services, amounted to a 95 percent failure rate in basic accounting standards, according to the report. "We estimated that the army made...

Attorneys in the case of a 91-year-old Palisade man accused of sexual assault spent Wednesday morning in court trying to determine whether the aging man was fit to stand trial. It turns out he wasn’t. He died nearly a month ago and has been cremated, according to a relative who contacted The Daily Sentinel. Ralph Ridenour died Feb. 22 at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center, said Jim Snell of Snell-McLean Funeral Home in Palisade, which handled arrangements for Ridenour. VA officials said they couldn’t comment on Ridenour. “That’s a relief for public safety,” Mesa County District Attorney Pete Hautzinger said...

WASHINGTON - The top U.S. military commander for the Middle East resigned Tuesday amid speculation about a rift over U.S. policy in Iran. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said that Adm. William J. Fallon, whose area of responsibility includes Iraq, had asked for permission to retire and that Gates agreed. Gates said the decision, effective March 31, was entirely Fallon's and that Gates believed it was "the right thing to do." Fallon was the subject of an article published last week in Esquire magazine that portrayed him as opposed to President Bush's Iran policy. It described Fallon as a lone voice...

SACRAMENTO -- — The state's ability to protect children, renters, workers and the elderly as well as California's wildlife and its land would be impeded under Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposals for closing a $14.5-billion deficit, state agency reports show. The proposed budget reductions, which Schwarzenegger submitted this week to the Legislature, would erode public protection programs across state government, according to hundreds of pages of assessments that agencies submitted along with the budget this week. Schwarzenegger decided to spread the pain across all areas of government, forcing most agencies to prepare to cut a tenth of their spending. Advocates for...

The Army Corps of Engineers came to the District in the late 1990s on an expensive mission: launch a massive overhaul of decrepit school buildings, which eventually included spending $80 million to replace ancient heating systems with brand-new boilers to last 25 years or more. Since then, 40 of the 55 renovated heating systems have broken down or needed major repair. Public schools officials failed to maintain the new equipment, leading to problems such as damage from mineral deposits that built up because the water was not properly treated...It would have cost just $100,000 a year to remove harmful minerals...

Tuesday/Wednesday, November 13/14 - about 4 a.m. Sources inside and outside Iran. A series of explosions rocked the Parchin Military Site (where missiles, including "cruise" type missiles, are manufactured) at Varamin south of Tehran. The Shahab 3, 4 and more recently Shahab 5 solid fuel missiles at the site are hidden in old salt mines in the mountain face in the area, further excavated and furbished for development and manufacture. The main purpose of this Ministry of Defense site, established by the late Shah's father - Reza Shah Kabir - in the early 1900's and taken over by the IRGC,...

...I've been following the trail of the Chahine Hezbollah organized crime family for years, I've learned a lot more about Hezbollah spy and FBI/CIA Agent Nada Nadim Prouty. ...she and her sister Elfat El-Aouar Chahine are not the only members of their family to defraud the federal government in immigration, tax, and Hezbollah related matters. Another sister, an OB-GYN, Rula Nadim Al Aouar {different spelling to confuse/evade U.S. authorities--a common Muslim and Arab practice), also engaged in a sham marriage and immigration fraud. ...Prouty is not Muslim. She is Druze, a secretive offshoot of Islam...her entire family is Druze. Her...

WASHINGTON (AP) — A stockpile of plutonium and other nuclear weapons materials stored at Los Alamos National Laboratory hasn't been fully accounted for in 13 years or more, a government audit has found. The northern New Mexico lab's workers have done regular, partial inventories of the material, which the government considers to be at high risk of theft, the audit by the Energy Department's inspector general, Gregory Friedman, found. Yet an inventory of all the material hasn't been done in "perhaps 13 years or more," Friedman wrote. It wasn't even done when the lab's management contract changed last year, investigators...

Why is the most best European fighting army, the British, losing the battle for Basra in southern Iraq? Because the UK Ministry of Defense supplied its soldiers with the wrong equipment, having invested its shrinking budget in long-term European Ego Projects to keep the military bureaucracy happy. Given soft vehicles that are terrifyingly vulnerable to IEDs and car bombs, the Brits initially claimed that "soft power" would do the job -- just as the Dutch boasted that having tea with the Taliban would ensure peace and love in their area of Afghanistan. But the British MOD was just rationalizing its...

What makes a voter a "staunch" Republican or Democrat? The definition is a matter of opinion, but undoubtedly certain minimal traits apply. Obviously that person must vote in their state Party primary/caucus and for the elected candidate in the general election. The other requirement is how they financially support candidates as well as their Party. A week ago, the Chicago Sun-Times published an article by Jennifer Hunter, "GOP lawyer sold on Dems." In the piece, Hunter writes about "attorney Jim Ronca of Philadelphia, a staunch Republican." After attending a Trial Lawyers event with Democratic Presidential candidates, Gov. Bill Richardson, Sen....

A $1.2 billion program to deploy new radiation monitors to screen trucks, cars and cargo containers for signs of nuclear devices has been delayed by questions over whether Department of Homeland Security officials misled Congress about the effectiveness of the detectors. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced the contracts for monitors with cutting-edge technology a year ago. He said they would improve radiation scans at borders and ports, while sharply reducing the number of false alarms. Congress had allowed the five-year project to move ahead after Homeland Security assured appropriators that the $377,000 machines would detect highly enriched uranium 95...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Undercover investigators, working for a fake firm, obtained a license to buy enough radioactive material to build a "dirty bomb," amid little scrutiny from federal regulators, according to a government report obtained on Wednesday. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued the license to the dummy company in just 28 days with only a cursory review, the Government Accountability Office said in a report to be released on Thursday. The GAO, which set up the sting, said the NRC approved the license after a couple of faxes and phones calls and then mailed it to the phoney company's...

GREENSBORO, N.C. - Detailed schematics of a military detainee holding facility in southern Iraq. Geographical surveys and aerial photographs of two military airfields outside Baghdad. Plans for a new fuel farm at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. The military calls it "need-to-know" information that would pose a direct threat to U.S. troops if it were to fall into the hands of terrorists. It's material so sensitive that officials refused to release the documents when asked. But it's already out there, posted carelessly to file servers by government agencies and contractors, accessible to anyone with an Internet connection. In a survey...

WASHINGTON — Democrats pledged to take Congress in a new direction when it won control in November 2006, but less than six months after taking the reins, Americans aren't pleased with the results, giving lawmakers an all-time low public confidence rating. In a Gallup poll released Thursday, only 14 percent of Americans have a "great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in Congress, a Gallup poll reports. The poll shows an all-time lowest confidence rating and one of the lowest ratings for any institution in 30 years. The lowest confidence rating for Congress was 18 percent during 1991 to...

Politics: When Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid calls America's top brass "incompetent," one wonders if he's not really using what psychologists call "projection" — attributing to others what you most fear about yourself. 'Incompetent" is how Reid, talking to liberal bloggers on Tuesday, described outgoing Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman and Marine Gen. Peter Pace. He should talk.

Judge Charles Elloie, the embattled jurist at Orleans Parish Criminal District Court who was temporarily suspended from the bench eight months ago over his practice of reducing bail bonds for felons accused of violent crimes, is retiring July 1 for health reasons. In two sentences written to the Louisiana Secretary of State in a letter dated Tuesday, Elloie ended both his decade-long, checkered judicial career and the state investigation into his pattern of freeing suspects from the confines of the Orleans Parish Prison -- even one man accused of raping his own 10-year-old sister. Elloie received approval from the Louisiana...

Leadership: So Jimmy Carter calls the Bush administration "the worst in history." This from the man who wrecked the world's greatest economy and made a nuclear Iran and North Korea possible. Profile In Incompetence: First In A Series We didn't think we'd see the day when a president-elect of France would be more appreciative of America's role in the world than one of our own former presidents. But here is Carter telling the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that President Bush's "administration has been the worst in history," one that has "endorsed the concept of pre-emptive war even when our own security is...

When I was assigned to the U.S. Pacific Command in the mid-1980s, we military officers would often discuss the ambassadors in our theater of operations – a huge area embracing more than 30 countries and most of the Pacific -SNIP- One name came up constantly as one of the best -SNIP-: then-U.S. Ambassador to Indonesia Paul Wolfowitz. He understood the culture, the people and the special circumstances of the world’s most populous Muslim country, and he did a superb job in dealing with that country within the context of U.S. national-security interests. Understand, then, my wonder over the last few...

Dozens of fire hydrants across the District are not in working order, including the two closest to Monday's fire at the D.C. public library in Georgetown. Fire and union officials say the faulty hydrants often aren't discovered until a fire breaks out, as was the case in Georgetown.... The city has struggled for years to keep hydrants in good working order, firefighters said. With nearly 9,300 hydrants citywide, keeping up with inspections can be difficult, they said. Some broken hydrants are clearly marked, but only those that have been identified as needing repair. The D.C. Water and Sewer Authority oversees...

SPENCER, Mass. (AP) -- Dozens of residents were taken to hospitals Wednesday with burns or rashes after the town's water supply was accidentally treated with too much corrosive lye, officials said. People in Spencer were advised not to use or touch the water until further notice, said Ed Coletta, a spokesman for the state Department of Environmental Protection. Residents started complaining of skin irritation and moderate burns after showering early Wednesday, police Sgt. John Agnew said. He said officials determined that a malfunction at the town's water treatment plant had released too much sodium hydroxide into the water supply. Sodium...

Dem leadership pulls DC voting bill from floor; conservative Dems were supporting DC gun repeal... Leader Hoyer seen yelling at staff on floor... Speaker Pelosi absent because she is desperately searching for Iraq supplemental votes... Holmes-Norton standing silently in disbelief..

Lee Celano for The New York TimesDylan Langlois, center, and Kasandra Larsen said goodbye to a friend as they prepared to move out of New NEW ORLEANS, Feb. 15 — After nearly a decade in the city of their dreams, Kasandra Larsen and her fiancé, Dylan Langlois, climbed into a rented moving truck on Marais Street last Sunday, pointed it toward New Hampshire, and said goodbye. Not because of some great betrayal — they had, after all, come back after losing everything in Hurricane Katrina — but a series of escalating indignities: the attempted carjacking of a pregnant friend;...

...There were 161 homicides in this city last year, and there have been 18 so far this year, making New Orleans by most measures the nation’s per capita murder capital, given its sharply reduced population. Many of the victims and the suspects are teenagers. About two-thirds of the deaths have gone unsolved: the killers, in many cases, continue to walk the streets and are likely to kill again, the police say. Other cities have plenty of murders. But only in New Orleans has there been the uniquely poisoned set of circumstances that has led to this city’s position at the...

David Paulin writes at The Big Carnival of the degeneration of the Chavez regime into a thug state. It has gotten so bad that some of Chavez's leftist supporters are now disowning him, as they see that socialism is just an excuse for power and riches being grabbed. ".... a remarkable news conference in Caracas [was] given by Luis Miquilena, 87, who guided Chávez to his first landslide election win. A long-time leftist, Miquilena left Chávez's cabinet five years ago, and at the news conference he savaged El Presidente. Miquilena thus joined a long list of former Chávez allies who...

Due to copyright constraints, I guess we can't post any excerpts from the Detroit News - here's a link to the article: http://cmsimg.detnews.com/apps/pbcsi.dll/bilde?Site=C3&Date=20070124&Category=AUTO01&ArtNo=701240402&Ref=V4&Profile=1148Q=100&MaxW=250

SACRAMENTO An arbitrator has ruled that state officials miscalculated wages and benefits for corrections employees, a mistake that will cost California taxpayers an estimated $440 million over two years and force cuts to other state departments. The ruling, made public Friday, means the state will pay $200 million for back pay and health benefits to about 30,000 prison guards, probation officers and other correctional employees, retroactive to July 1, 2005. In addition, the employees are due a 3.1 percent pay increase retroactive to the start of the year under a provision that ties their wages to those of other law...

The Home Office stumbled into another crisis last night when it emerged that a radical Muslim terror suspect placed under one of the Government’s control orders has absconded, the third to disappear from supposed house arrest under the controversial security measure. Police across Britain are hunting the unnamed man, who allegedly “wanted to travel abroad for terrorism-related purposes,” the minister for policing, security and community safety, Tony McNulty, told MPs. The man fled from a mosque in which he had taken sanctuary, after police called to check why he had failed to hand in his passport, according to reports. He...

BAGHDAD, Dec. 29 -- Two senior Iranian operatives who were detained by U.S. forces in Iraq and were strongly suspected of planning attacks against American military forces and Iraqi targets were expelled to Iran on Friday, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials. The decision to free the men was made by the Iraqi government and has angered U.S. military officials who say the operatives were seeking to foment instability here. Special Report Washington Post stories and multimedia reports about Iraq, Afghanistan, the War on Terror and more. • Faces of the Fallen • Veterans: In Their Own Words • Afghan...