The White House must tell the truth about Sestak job offer - did Rahm Emanuel offer a bribe?

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One of the talking points Joe Sestak, surprise winner of the Democrat primary in Pennsylvania used to defeat White House backed Arlen Specter in Pennsylvania was that the White House tried to get him out of the race by offering him a job. He even hinted during the campaign that it was the position of Secretary of the Navy, appropriate for a retired Admiral.



However, if what he said was true, then someone in the White House violated a federal law by making the offer and if they offered it to keep him out of the Senate race it was a blatant bride. It seems as if this White House is never far from controversy when it comes to Senate races.



There was a lot of controversy over what happened to Obama's own Senate seat when he was elected president. The Illinois Democrats and ill-fated Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich made a joke of the process and left lingering questions of whether that seat was up for sale and what role White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel played in it, answers that may very well come out in court.



Even long before these potential illegal matters there is the unanswered question about how Obama got his Senate seat in the first place back in 2004. In the Democratic primary he was the underdog and his opponent suddenly withdrew just before the primary. Supposedly he received a multi-million dollar buyout of his business and was in personal trouble for having an affair. By the way, the buyout came through Goldman Sachs. Again in the general election Obama's Republican opponent dropped out of the race before the election because of personal problems, meaning an affair, and he reportedly worked for Goldman Sachs.



I have raised these questions since the campaign for president but none of the traditional media have ever followed up on the stories. One of these days I hope someone in Washington media of Congress has the guts to fact check the earlier Senate race and get to the bottom of the Sestak and Blagojevich senate race bribes.

In the meantime, if there is no misconduct by the White House, and both Robert Gibbs, press secretary and David Axelrod, political director have been on television saying a report was made in the White House and "nothing inappropriate" happened. If that is the case, then release the report. Either the White House or Sestak lied and the truth needs to be released. The last thing we need is another liar in the Senate.

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Congressional Investigations - When does Congress Investigate Itself?

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This has been the year of intense Congressional investigations as the bankers, auto people, housing and oil people have been paraded in before a packed and stacked House or Senate Committee and derided, ridiculed and disgraced in full view of the world.

Who are these holier than thou House and Senate members who preach to the bad guys about ethics, special interests, conflicts of interest, bribes and a host of other problems that helped bring down the economy, wipe out home values, and even help destroy the environment?



About the only positive result of the hearings is that we are discovering it was not the lack of rules and regulations that was behind most of these problems, it was the lack of enforcement of the laws, rules and regulations that were already on the books.

Now last time I read the Constitution it was Congress that passed the laws and approved the regulations, yes the same ones that got us in trouble. That must mean Congress might just be the primary party that did not do it's job to protect the people.



Of course Congress knows this, they just forget to mention it. They also know the reason Congress has allowed rules and regulations to be flawed or not enforced is that special interests control Washington. And yes, these are the same special interests that spend hundreds of millions of dollars filling the very campaign coffers of the people sitting at the hearings acting as if they are holier than thou.

The most important hearing Congress could hold to fix ALL the problems facing America is a hearing of itself, and the relationship between the hundreds of millions of campaign dollars they get from special interests and their performance in office.



The people are not stupid. They know Congress is the best money can buy. But when it is the best money can buy then it is also serving the wrong master. Congress is addicted to special interest money and that money has compromised the ability of our elected representatives to serve the people.

It is almost like a Saturday Night Live skit watching Congress lambast the witnesses in the hearings about the corruption, conflicts of interest, immorality and disregard for the public interest while they are filling their campaign accounts with money from these same special interests.



Campaign reform, especially finance reform, is the only solution for the malaise that has enveloped our nation's government. While all of our leaders are blaming special interests for our problems, not a single person in the White House, Congress, leaders of the house or senate, or even our president is talking about taking on the biggest special interest in Washington, the politicians addicted to the special interest money.

They could fix this problem overnight if they had guts and the interest of the people in mind but they are not about to shut down the money spigot that has enabled them to get and stay elected. They are nothing but hypocrites and have made a mockery of their oath of office to defend the Constitution and protect the Republic and the people of the Republic.



The Washington establishment serves no one but itself and has demonstrated over and over that it has no interest in changing. Only the people can force the change through the electoral process and if the early elections this year have demonstrated nothing else, they have shown the people are sick and tired of the status quo. "Throw them out, throw them all out" seems more and more the theme for this year's election and it cannot come a day too soon.

The Shootout at the Capitol Corral - Congress versus Goldman Sachs

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After two weeks of pre-meditated murder by Obama, the SEC, Senator Carl Levin, Senator Chris Dodd and the Democratic leadership in Congress, in which the president and his gang pilloried the Demons from Wall Street, the heavy weights from Goldman went before Congress in a 10 hour marathon Tuesday for a public shootout.

It was no contest. The Democrats had virtually persecuted the Goldman gang in the days leading up to the hearing before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations with civil charges from the SEC, a public scolding from former Goldman poster boy Obama, and charges of misconduct by the two Senators in their haste to get a financial reform bill through the Senate.



The court of public opinion was swayed, but not convinced, that the Obama style of liberal spending and bigger government was needed, but it was not over yet. That had to be decided in the outcome of the hearing. But this shootout was a rerun of the most famous shootout in the history of the wild west, the gunfight at the O.K. Corral.



The gunfight at the O.K. Corral has been portrayed in numerous Western films. It has come to symbolize the struggle between law-and-order and open-banditry in frontier towns of the Old West, where law enforcement was often weak or nonexistent. The fateful battle took place in Tombstone, Arizona, where Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, Virgil and Morgan Earp fought the Clantons and McLaurys.

One group of fighters represented rural Democrats from Texas who were involved in the cattle-trade in a remote area of Arizona territory which had been desert just a few years before. The other faction, (the Earps) had come from the East with the frontier, and represented the very different city interests of Yankee Republican capitalists and businessmen who were attempting to manage a silver-mining boom-town with Eastern expectations of behavior.



The battle left three rural Democrats dead and the Yankee Republican capitalists in control and the outcome of the shootout at the Capitol Corral had just about the same outcome. Before the dust had settled the Democrat Senators with their thousands of pages of briefings, tons of staff and seats behind the elevated bench were outfoxed, outclassed, outsmarted and out to lunch. The Yankee capitalists had won again.

Now I worked on the hill a couple of times and have been to many a hearing and I do not remember a time when the Congress ever looked so disheveled, disoriented, ill-prepared and out matched than this particular hearing. The politicians, well they looked every bit the good old boys and the Goldman gang the city slickers. This battle turned out no different than the last shootout back in 1881.



Of course the liberal media are sure to paint a different picture because the Democrats are their champions of the far left redistribution of wealth philosophy and Heavens knows the media may soon be out of work and in need of a redistribution of wealth to take care of them. But the outcome of this battle was never in doubt to any honest observer.



Three levels of Goldmanites testified with the junior executives first, the senior executives second, and the CEO Lloyd Blankfein last. Committee Chairman Carl Levin started out the attack, and his effort soon withered into a constant repetition of the same old question because a socialist thinker clearly has no clue how a capitalist system works. The juniors executives had him so flustered he constantly was searching through the thousands of pages of documentation trying to figure out where in the world the emails he quoted were to be found.

Like good junior execs, the Dapper Dans from Goldman seemed to be taking forever to find whatever the Senators were talking about. There was little continuity in the questions and no follow up questions, even when the opportunity presented itself. As the hearing droned on and on with each Senator grilling the Goldman gang the interrogators got more and more confused until one might have asked what they were doing at the hearing.

When the senior executives took the floor and started explaining the complex and highly complicated world of Wall Street high finance, as played by the biggest and best in the world, the look of utter confusion was in all the Senate faces. One by one they acknowledged defeat when they admitted they did not understand the intricacies nor mind set of Wall Street.



By the time Blankfein took the center seat even John McCain, with all his years of experience, was left befuddled and dazed. The white flag of surrender was raised and finally the hearing was brought to a close. Perhaps the power of Goldman was most obvious by the fact the New York Stock Exchange, and every foreign stock exchange in the world, crashed when the hearing started and the Dow was down over 200points before it was through.

When the actions against Goldman can cause world stock markets to tumble one can only surmise Congress might have underestimated their standing. But Goldman went further as the Goldman stock was about the only publicly traded stock to gain in value on this day. It was an exclamation mark on the power of the money changers.

To be honest, I have done many critical articles about the activities of Goldman over the past few years and was hoping some of my questions would be answered. They were not to be. Our Senators seemed to lose their minds when attempting to extract guilty pleas or inside information to prove how dastardly Goldman had acted during the economic meltdown.



By the end of the hearing Goldman was assuring Congress they would help the committee with new provisions of the financial reform bill that would have a chance of meeting the needs of America while bringing some sort of discipline, ethics and transparency to the Wall Street wagering in the markets.

That's a good thing since no members of the Committee seemed to comprehend what was going on. Obama is certain to have no comment as what is there for him to say? Tuesday was a big victory for Goldman. They demonstrated that no matter how intense their opposition may come after them, they are up to the challenge.

Perhaps now the stock market can continue it's upward momentum. And one last point on the fading liberal power of the Obama Democrat machine. About midway through the hearing the committee took a recess so the Senators could go vote on the procedure to move the financial reform bill to the floor. It was the second straight day good old Harry Reid brought it up for a vote and for the second straight day the Republicans and a Democrat defeated the Obama initiative.

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Demon Pass and Reconciliation - Total Health Care Chaos in Congress - Who is the Fool?

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Okay, yesterday Nancy Pelosi finally posted the Obama health care demon pass rule or whatever the heck it is since it is not a bill that was approved by congress. It is a rather odd demon pass rule in the House that no two people in Washington explain in the same way, and it is also a reconciliation procedure in the Senate yet somehow it morphs into a bill.

The report from the Congressional Budget Office is in and they claim if we spend about a trillion dollars the first ten years we will reduce the deficit by around $134 billion. Then after ten more years we will save another $1.2 trillion. Strange math I think.



If you look at the fine print in the CBO instructions it may very well say the savings are not savings at all but a reduction in future increases, a technique congress has used often to confuse the public. Well a reduction in future increases is no savings and I don't care what school of economics you attended.

Now the financing of the first trillion dollars comes from increased taxes, a $500 billion reduction in Medicaid, taxes on a whole bunch of health expenses like wheel chairs, and who knows what else. I don't remember Obama promising to do any of those things during the campaign and debate over the bill.



Some of the bill does not even start until 2014 so don't expect overnight results. And those promised reductions in health care premiums, don't count on them either. As for punishing the insurance industry, don't you find it odd that with all their billions of dollars there is no evidence of lobbying against the bill or running commercials opposing the bill by those insurers? Wouldn't you think they would be fighting it tooth and nail if they were going to be disemboweled by it as Obama claims?

Fact is as the final action neared those devils on Wall Street, the ones who finance those bad insurance companies while taking million dollar bonuses, have not been driving down the stock market prices but have actually had eight straight days of driving up the market. Yet another sign the big, bad, rich guys are for the bill, not opposed. There is even an internal method to poll Wall Street which shows according to MSNBC the bet on Wall Street is 80% believe it will be approved.



So Wall Street, Obama and Pelosi agree it is best for America. Now we find out if the Democrats in the House first, and Senate second, agree. We know the Republicans oppose it and it seems as if the public is split or a majority oppose it.

Sunday just after 2 pm the House, under Pelosi, will take up the demon pass rule in order to avoid voting on the Senate bill which somehow they think will protect Democrats from being defeated in the elections this fall. Of course demon pass has never been used for this purpose. Then there will be a vote on the changes that Obama and the House want to the Senate bill which has not been approved by the House yet.



Nor will it ever be thanks to the Pelosi and Steny Hoyer rules that will be applied. So 216 votes are needed and it could be a cliffhanger. If they get them the bill thing then goes to the Senate because the House has now changed the Senate bill without voting on it and the Senate must agree to the changes to their bill that wasn't voted on. Still following me?

Now here is one thing the media, president and Pelosi are not talking about. You see, under the reconciliation procedure being used by good old Harry Reid and Obama in the Senate, every single proposal in the House bill must be directly related to the federal deficit or budget process. A Senate parliamentarian must rule on each section. There is no guarantee every section will meet the budget rule and if the Senate refuses to agree with any part of the bill, whoops, it goes back to the House for another round.



No matter what the White House and Democratic leaders say, there have never been votes on such broad bills like the health care reform bill using either the House demon pass rule or the Senate reconciliation procedure. That means it could also be subject to a Constitutional challenge. Add another year to the process for the courts to act.

The House will act on Sunday, but if the bill slips through don't start celebrating yet. It could take a week or more for the Senate to act. If they disagree on any part of it add a few more months. If they agree then we still have the court challenges. And even if we don't have court challenges remember much of the bill does not start until 2014.



Now if you understood everything I just said you should be running for president or moving to South America. If you could explain it, and remember, each thing I said is contested by either the Democrats or Republicans, then you are a better communicator than our president, congress and media.

So in summary, take every step the rest of the way with a grain of salt. No one really knows if it will add to our deficit or reduce it. Based on past government projections and promises, don't count on it reducing the national debt, reducing your health insurance premiums or get you better, if any, health care.



If the timing works out, the Senate could be voting about the same night NCAA March Madness ends with the National Championship game on April 5. Let's hope it doesn't end on April 1, April Fool's Day, because of the chaos node we are in we will have no idea who got fooled. Is it the president, congress, the Democrats, the Republicans, the public, the media or Wall Street who will be the biggest fool?

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