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Bush's Third Term
TheCityEdition.com
Politics is a fishy business. Just ask John McCain's top economic policy adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who told a news anchor at PBS recently that Sen. Barack Obama, if elected, would guarantee a Bush third term.
"It is Barack Obama's budget plan, not Senator McCain's, that resembles Bush's policies," Holtz-Eakin explained to Judy Woodruff.
It may be the kind of vague, unsubstantiated criticism we've come to expect from the staff of this year's presidential campaigns, but you'll find more than a grain of truth to the comparison. While the inane budget reference comes straight out of right field, there's plenty of evidence to suggest Obama will do a far better Bush impersonation than even Bush himself, assuming he's inaugurated next January. In fact, the Illinois senator's proximity group and voting record paint a much different picture of the presumptive Democratic nominee than the one portrayed in the media.
And the proof, my friends, is in the hyperlinks:
1. Obama's presidential campaign is supported by corporate lobbyists and investment banks tied to the market speculation of oil prices. Why?
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Obama's top ten campaign contributors include the investment firms Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, J.P. Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, and UBS Securities. Most of these firms have been propping up the hope and change candidate for some years now, even when he was a relative unknown with no grassroots network or any real resume to run on. Other banks topping the donor heap very early in the campaign: Lehman Brothers, Credit Suisse and Citadel Investment Group.
http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/contrib.php?cycle=2008&cid=N00009638
Now four of the big banks have surfaced as players in the scheme to vault the cost of crude to over $140 a barrel. By utilizing their tremendous purchasing power, they've taken massive quantities of oil futures out of the market via a company formed by Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley called ICE Futures. As in the case of wheat, rice and other global food commodities, this hoarding has generated a shortage on paper, thereby driving up prices.
Pretty clever, huh? Also coldblooded. It's similar to what Enron did to California in 2000. By ordering power plants offline to create rolling blackouts, Ken Lay's company could charge the state inflated rates to buy electricity from other plants. That same year, a piece of legislation, Commodity Futures Modernization Act, was slipped into an 11,000 page appropriation bill to make the speculation and hoarding by big investment firms possible. Senator Richard Lugar sponsored the measure.
http://www.northplattebulletin.com/index.asp?show=news&action=readStory&storyID=14690&pageID=3 (ICE Futures scheme)
To make the Illinois senator's oil slick even stickier, in March his handlers began running an ad that claimed he didn't take money from the oil companies. Was it a pre-emptive strike in the face of rising gas prices? According to factcheck.org, the TV and radio spots failed woefully in the accuracy department, although CNN incessantly repeated a clip of the candidate himself making the statement in the lead-up to the Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Indiana primaries. Obama has received nearly a quarter million dollars from gas and oil industry executives, their employees and spouses this year. And those donations were rolling in through the course of the ad buy.
The Annenberg Public Policy Center (which maintains the Factcheck site) also noted in its analysis that "two oil industry executives are bundling money for Obama – drumming up contributions from individuals and turning them over to the campaign. George Kaiser, the chairman of Oklahoma-based Kaiser-Francis Oil Co., ranks 68th on the Forbes list of world billionaires. He's listed on Obama's Web site as raising between $50,000 and $100,000 for the candidate. Robert Cavnar is president and CEO of Milagro Exploration LLC, an oil exploration and production company. He's named as a bundler in the same category as Kaiser."
http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/obamas_oil_spill.html
This behind-the-scenes gravy train may explain why Obama's response to the price spikes has been lukewarm at best. While Sen. Clinton was demanding a D.O.J. inquiry into the market scam, asking Congress to close the Enron loophole, and pressing for the release of oil from the country's strategic reserve, Obama was ridiculing a proposal by her and McCain to make oil companies pay the gas tax this summer. He called it "a political stunt". Due to his objections, Clinton's bi-partisan bill was never discussed in the senate. Obama also snubbed the Stop Excessive Speculation Act, filibustered by Republicans this past July. He was absent for the 50-43 cloture vote, and unlike the FISA/Telecom immunity measure (see below), he made no effort to promote the bill's passage.
So what is Obama's solution to this crisis? Detroit should start building more fuel-efficient cars and Americans need to do a better job of conservation. Car and Driver has criticized his hypocrisy on both scores, pointing out that the Clintons and John McCain drive hybrids, while the change candidate opted to buy a gas-guzzling Chrysler 300C this year. Writer Jared Gall bristled with derision, exclaiming "... every time he starts that V-8, he's choking dolphins and using the corpses to club baby seals."
http://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/hot_lists/high_performance/features_classic_cars/what_would_barack_obama_drive_feature
As for Obama's long-range commitment to alternative energy, you might want to take another look at that donor list.
Nuclear giant Exelon was his fourth biggest contributor in 2006 and remains in the top 15 this year. It's money well spent, too. The firm got its quid pro quo a couple years back when Obama took the teeth out of a bill requiring public disclosure of radiation leaks.
The year before, Obama supported the Cheney energy boondoggle, a measure that caused such heartburn for environmentalists, they sued the Veep over his secret meetings with coal, oil, and gas producers. (McCain, Clinton and most other Democrats opposed the legislation.) And in 2007, he co-sponsored a bill to direct $8 billion worth of subsidies for the conversion of coal to liquid fuel. The process generates twice the emissions as regular gasoline and was opposed by the enviromental movement.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/03/us/politics/03exelon.html?
Five large corporate law firms registered as lobbyists on behalf of their clients also ranked among Obama's top 15 donors as of last February. They include Sidley Austin LLP; Skadden, Arps, et al; Jenner & Block; Kirkland & Ellis; Wilmerhale, aka Wilmer Cutler Pickering. What's interesting about them is that Obama regulary states in his stump speech that “Washington lobbyists haven’t funded my campaign, they won’t run my White House, and they will not drown out the voices of working Americans when I am president”.
To the contrary, the firms got a big payback his first year in office when Obama voted for a tort reform bill that made class action suits more expensive to pursue and harder to win.
According to an article in Counterpunch, "This legislation, which dramatically impaired labor rights, consumer rights and civil rights, involved five years of pressure from 100 corporations, 475 lobbyists, tens of millions of corporate dollars buying influence in our government, and the active participation of the Wall Street firms now funding the Obama campaign."
Called the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005, it was opposed by Senators Biden, Boxer, Clinton, Durbin, Feingold, Kerry, Leahy and most other Democrats.
http://www.counterpunch.org/martens05052008.html
2. Obama's economic advisers come from the University of Chicago, where the Milton Friedman/Alan Greenspan model of free markets run amuck is paving the way for an age of neo-feudalism.
.........................Read it all at The City Edition here.
F.Y.I. ****** update on the Bill Gwatney murder in Arkansas
After publishing a story on the Bill Gwatney murder in Arkansas last
week, new information surfaced in an email to TheCityEdition.com. On
the day before the killing, Gwatney may have told the group
petitioning DNC delegates for Sen. Clinton's name to appear in a
roll-call vote that he would sign on to the drive. Evidently he is
the only state chair to do so, Most other members of the Arkansas
delegation were also indicating to organizers they would support her.
Sen. Clinton won the state on Feb. 5th by 44 points, her biggest
margin nationwide. Significantly, in a roll call vote at the
convention, Arkansas is one of the first states called, with a
potential for starting a bandwagon effect.
So the timeline goes like this: 8/12 Gwatney agrees to back Clinton
nomination - 8/13 Gwatney shot - 8/14 DNC announces Clinton will be
nominated.
In addition, on Tuesday, Little Rock police announced that the keys
found in the killer's home attached to Gwatney auto dealership
keychains were old and did not fit anything, suggesting that this
might have been diversionary, if not planted, evidence. The article
has been updated to reflect all the latest facts. If anyone has info
on this case, please get in touch.
Here's a link to the story:
http://www.thecityedition.com/Pages/
Archive/Summer08/BillGwatney.html
--
Rosemary Regello
Editor & Publisher
The City Edition of San Francisco
News, Health, Arts and Marketplace
239 - 16th Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94118
(415) 762-3600
http://www.thecityedition.com
Politics is a fishy business. Just ask John McCain's top economic policy adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who told a news anchor at PBS recently that Sen. Barack Obama, if elected, would guarantee a Bush third term.
"It is Barack Obama's budget plan, not Senator McCain's, that resembles Bush's policies," Holtz-Eakin explained to Judy Woodruff.
It may be the kind of vague, unsubstantiated criticism we've come to expect from the staff of this year's presidential campaigns, but you'll find more than a grain of truth to the comparison. While the inane budget reference comes straight out of right field, there's plenty of evidence to suggest Obama will do a far better Bush impersonation than even Bush himself, assuming he's inaugurated next January. In fact, the Illinois senator's proximity group and voting record paint a much different picture of the presumptive Democratic nominee than the one portrayed in the media.
And the proof, my friends, is in the hyperlinks:
1. Obama's presidential campaign is supported by corporate lobbyists and investment banks tied to the market speculation of oil prices. Why?
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Obama's top ten campaign contributors include the investment firms Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, J.P. Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, and UBS Securities. Most of these firms have been propping up the hope and change candidate for some years now, even when he was a relative unknown with no grassroots network or any real resume to run on. Other banks topping the donor heap very early in the campaign: Lehman Brothers, Credit Suisse and Citadel Investment Group.
http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/contrib.php?cycle=2008&cid=N00009638
Now four of the big banks have surfaced as players in the scheme to vault the cost of crude to over $140 a barrel. By utilizing their tremendous purchasing power, they've taken massive quantities of oil futures out of the market via a company formed by Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley called ICE Futures. As in the case of wheat, rice and other global food commodities, this hoarding has generated a shortage on paper, thereby driving up prices.
Pretty clever, huh? Also coldblooded. It's similar to what Enron did to California in 2000. By ordering power plants offline to create rolling blackouts, Ken Lay's company could charge the state inflated rates to buy electricity from other plants. That same year, a piece of legislation, Commodity Futures Modernization Act, was slipped into an 11,000 page appropriation bill to make the speculation and hoarding by big investment firms possible. Senator Richard Lugar sponsored the measure.
http://www.northplattebulletin.com/index.asp?show=news&action=readStory&storyID=14690&pageID=3 (ICE Futures scheme)
To make the Illinois senator's oil slick even stickier, in March his handlers began running an ad that claimed he didn't take money from the oil companies. Was it a pre-emptive strike in the face of rising gas prices? According to factcheck.org, the TV and radio spots failed woefully in the accuracy department, although CNN incessantly repeated a clip of the candidate himself making the statement in the lead-up to the Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Indiana primaries. Obama has received nearly a quarter million dollars from gas and oil industry executives, their employees and spouses this year. And those donations were rolling in through the course of the ad buy.
The Annenberg Public Policy Center (which maintains the Factcheck site) also noted in its analysis that "two oil industry executives are bundling money for Obama – drumming up contributions from individuals and turning them over to the campaign. George Kaiser, the chairman of Oklahoma-based Kaiser-Francis Oil Co., ranks 68th on the Forbes list of world billionaires. He's listed on Obama's Web site as raising between $50,000 and $100,000 for the candidate. Robert Cavnar is president and CEO of Milagro Exploration LLC, an oil exploration and production company. He's named as a bundler in the same category as Kaiser."
http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/obamas_oil_spill.html
This behind-the-scenes gravy train may explain why Obama's response to the price spikes has been lukewarm at best. While Sen. Clinton was demanding a D.O.J. inquiry into the market scam, asking Congress to close the Enron loophole, and pressing for the release of oil from the country's strategic reserve, Obama was ridiculing a proposal by her and McCain to make oil companies pay the gas tax this summer. He called it "a political stunt". Due to his objections, Clinton's bi-partisan bill was never discussed in the senate. Obama also snubbed the Stop Excessive Speculation Act, filibustered by Republicans this past July. He was absent for the 50-43 cloture vote, and unlike the FISA/Telecom immunity measure (see below), he made no effort to promote the bill's passage.
So what is Obama's solution to this crisis? Detroit should start building more fuel-efficient cars and Americans need to do a better job of conservation. Car and Driver has criticized his hypocrisy on both scores, pointing out that the Clintons and John McCain drive hybrids, while the change candidate opted to buy a gas-guzzling Chrysler 300C this year. Writer Jared Gall bristled with derision, exclaiming "... every time he starts that V-8, he's choking dolphins and using the corpses to club baby seals."
http://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/hot_lists/high_performance/features_classic_cars/what_would_barack_obama_drive_feature
As for Obama's long-range commitment to alternative energy, you might want to take another look at that donor list.
Nuclear giant Exelon was his fourth biggest contributor in 2006 and remains in the top 15 this year. It's money well spent, too. The firm got its quid pro quo a couple years back when Obama took the teeth out of a bill requiring public disclosure of radiation leaks.
The year before, Obama supported the Cheney energy boondoggle, a measure that caused such heartburn for environmentalists, they sued the Veep over his secret meetings with coal, oil, and gas producers. (McCain, Clinton and most other Democrats opposed the legislation.) And in 2007, he co-sponsored a bill to direct $8 billion worth of subsidies for the conversion of coal to liquid fuel. The process generates twice the emissions as regular gasoline and was opposed by the enviromental movement.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/03/us/politics/03exelon.html?
Five large corporate law firms registered as lobbyists on behalf of their clients also ranked among Obama's top 15 donors as of last February. They include Sidley Austin LLP; Skadden, Arps, et al; Jenner & Block; Kirkland & Ellis; Wilmerhale, aka Wilmer Cutler Pickering. What's interesting about them is that Obama regulary states in his stump speech that “Washington lobbyists haven’t funded my campaign, they won’t run my White House, and they will not drown out the voices of working Americans when I am president”.
To the contrary, the firms got a big payback his first year in office when Obama voted for a tort reform bill that made class action suits more expensive to pursue and harder to win.
According to an article in Counterpunch, "This legislation, which dramatically impaired labor rights, consumer rights and civil rights, involved five years of pressure from 100 corporations, 475 lobbyists, tens of millions of corporate dollars buying influence in our government, and the active participation of the Wall Street firms now funding the Obama campaign."
Called the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005, it was opposed by Senators Biden, Boxer, Clinton, Durbin, Feingold, Kerry, Leahy and most other Democrats.
http://www.counterpunch.org/martens05052008.html
2. Obama's economic advisers come from the University of Chicago, where the Milton Friedman/Alan Greenspan model of free markets run amuck is paving the way for an age of neo-feudalism.
.........................Read it all at The City Edition here.
F.Y.I. ****** update on the Bill Gwatney murder in Arkansas
After publishing a story on the Bill Gwatney murder in Arkansas last
week, new information surfaced in an email to TheCityEdition.com. On
the day before the killing, Gwatney may have told the group
petitioning DNC delegates for Sen. Clinton's name to appear in a
roll-call vote that he would sign on to the drive. Evidently he is
the only state chair to do so, Most other members of the Arkansas
delegation were also indicating to organizers they would support her.
Sen. Clinton won the state on Feb. 5th by 44 points, her biggest
margin nationwide. Significantly, in a roll call vote at the
convention, Arkansas is one of the first states called, with a
potential for starting a bandwagon effect.
So the timeline goes like this: 8/12 Gwatney agrees to back Clinton
nomination - 8/13 Gwatney shot - 8/14 DNC announces Clinton will be
nominated.
In addition, on Tuesday, Little Rock police announced that the keys
found in the killer's home attached to Gwatney auto dealership
keychains were old and did not fit anything, suggesting that this
might have been diversionary, if not planted, evidence. The article
has been updated to reflect all the latest facts. If anyone has info
on this case, please get in touch.
Here's a link to the story:
http://www.thecityedition.com/Pages/
Archive/Summer08/BillGwatney.html
--
Rosemary Regello
Editor & Publisher
The City Edition of San Francisco
News, Health, Arts and Marketplace
239 - 16th Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94118
(415) 762-3600
http://www.thecityedition.com
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