Crossposted from No Quarters with permission
If you are looking for a gift that will mean something to the brave warriors wounded while serving their country then I would like you to consider making a donation to Combat Soldier’s Recovery Fund. Combat Soldier’s Recovery is the brain child of a good friend of mine who, five years ago, went with her next door neighbor (who happened to be a Doctor at Walter Reed) to visit some of the wounded soldiers.
Garland is your typical soft hearted weepy woman (okay, she actually is a very caring soul). She was so moved and shocked by the devastation she saw during her first visit to Walter Reed that she returned to her office resolved to do something to help those wounded kids. As a bookkeeper she was attuned to the need these kids had for spending money to cover personal activities, such as phone calls, plane tickets for relatives or car repairs.
Garland made a decision. She would collect money and give it directly to the soldiers. Drawing on her professional expertise as a bookkeeper (my company uses her) she quickly set up a Not For Profit (one of her lawyer clients did the work for free) and resolved to pass on 100% of the contributions. There is no overhead. She absorbs the costs herself and handles the taxes. There is no professional staff. It is covered by volunteers.
Here’s the news report about Garland’s program (thanks to Chris for getting this on YouTube): Read the rest of this entry »
Barack Obama’s ties to ACORN (see Memeorandum) are not incidental nor are they casual. Bill O’Reilly displayed his fundamental ignorance on the matter last night when he pooh-poohed the notion of an Obama tie simply because “ACORN previously worked” for his campaign. O’Reilly acted like this was ancient history. Sorry Bill, but you do not know what the hell you are talking about. The latest saga of ACORN as an enabler of child prostitution, illegal immigration and tax fraud is not new.
The money given to ACORN through one of its front companies–CSI–was not a simple clerical error. The Obama Presidential campaign deliberately tried to hide its relationship to ACORN and funneling almost $1 million dollars to ACORN by using a group with no experience doing the task that it was ostensibly hired to do. The story is pretty simple–it is about Citizen Services Inc., a Nigerian director of CSI living in Minnesota and false campaign financing report.
I first wrote this story last August (see here). We passed this information first to David Brown, a reporter in Pittsburgh, who broke the story publicly in early August. So far the mainstream press has failed to investigate this matter. Here are the key details.
The Obama team gave Citizen Services Inc. more than $800,000 ostensibly for “staging and lighting.” We reported (our own intrepid Eastan MacNeal) the following: Read the rest of this entry »
Crossposted from No Quarter with permission
Just got back from lunch at a Capitol Hill watering hole–the 116 Club. Private place that caters to lobbyists and Senators. I spent most of lunch looking at Tom Daschle’s wife, Linda, who was sitting at a near by table. She’s an attractive lady. I was with a lobbyist who is well plugged in with Democrats and Republicans. So he asked me, “Do you know the nickname the lobbyists have for the stimulus bill?”
“No, what is it,” I replied.
“FYGK, which means we’re going to f&#k your grand kids.”
The irony of the stimulus bill is that it is bringing business to lobbyists who are being asked to paw thru the garbage and figure out how to get folks money. When you put this news with the fact the current spending bill is going thru ladened with earmarks you might be a bit leery of Obama’s promise to bring a new day to Washington.
A senior official for a very prominent Democrat stopped by our table and gave my friend an update on the spending bill. He noted that many Republicans will back the bill because they have hefty earmarks in it as well.
Let’s face it–we have a culture of political corruption in Washington that is continuing unabated and Obama is catering to it despite grandiose promises to the contrary.
One other thing is happening–very few lobbyists are willing to take spots in the Obama administration. Like it or not, many of these lobbyists are the genuine experts on the issues they cover. So who is Obama tapping to take the jobs lobbyists might have been given in the past? Hill staffers. Earnest thirty year olds who have spent most of the post-college careers acting as butt boys and girls for various senators and representatives. They may know the Hill but they know very little about the America outside the beltway. Great!! Just what we need. Youthful exuberance tempered by ignorance.
There is an irony here. The lack of experience by these people will ultimately hurt the Obama presidency. His seemingly noble efforts to exclude lobbyists to improve government and reduce corruption actually is having the opposite effect. Unreal.
