U.S. Department of Justice funds spent on “Bingo Nights” in Ohio

Who wants $1.5 million in stimulus funds? Apparently, no one.

$25,000 stimulus grant will provide a week of “free” concerts in Sacramento

Less than one percent of Columbus commuters ride bikes, but more than a half-a-million dollars of federal stimulus funds to add downtown bike facilities

Hollywood’s Elegance International makeup school getting a $80,000 stimulus grant and Wild Boar Media, which “writes and dreams up new animation, stories, comics and toys” receives $50,000 in stimulus assistance

Congress long ago earmarked $87 million for a commuter rail line in Georgia, but the state has spent little of the money

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It appears one of the few things standing between SEIU and government-run health care is U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman.  That may be the most dangerous place to stand in Washington these days.

The SEIU issued an e-mail screed a few days ago, entitled “Joe Lieberman will hate this,” exclaiming: “Joe Lieberman is at it again. Jockeying for attention.”

Something tells me SEIU fell all over themselves when Lieberman was on the cusp of being elected vice president in 2000, but that was a long time ago I suppose.

Anyway, Lieberman, along with Democratic Sens. Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana are named in the e-mail as “targets” that may join a “Republican filibuster” of a Senate health care reform bill that tops the length of Pelosi’s monster 1,990 pager.

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H.RES.911 –

From The Hill:

ACORN and its affiliates received $200,000 in Justice Department grants between 2002 and 2009, according a report issued today by the department’s Inspector General.

No DOJ grants went directly to ACORN, but a handful of grants were awarded either to ACORN affiliates or to other organizations that sub-contracted with ACORN.

The report, requested by House Judiciary Committee ranking member Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), also found a few instances of ACORN mismanagement of federally contracted work.

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Earlier this week, we brought you the story of SEIU’s alleged ballot fraud during a union election in Fresno, CA. SEIU’s fraud wasn’t against political opponents or some evil capitalist. No, SEIU’s fraud was against a brother/sister labor union.

SEIU has been engaged in a fire-fight with the National Union of Health Workers. For SEIU, it isn’t enough that workers are unionized, but they must be unionized AND their dues flow into the purple political machine. The video features SEIU official David Regan, who ran the union’s voting campaign. Keep in mind, again, the “opponents” he mentions aren’t Republicans or businesses, but another labor union.

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Illinois can be extra proud of its Democratic elected officials these days as they have joined to create a perfect storm of stupidity resulting in the possibility that terrorist detainees may be transferred to an unopened new prison in the rural northwestern corner of the Prairie State.

Favorite son Barack Obama has so muddled his administration policy on terror detainees that we are left with an approach that nearly everyone eight years ago agreed was to be avoided.  That is, incarcerating terrorists on American soil.

An issue like this is always bound to elicit histrionics from both sides of the partisan divide—and no one has disappointed.  This new policy won’t lead to mass escapes of terrorists who will roam the heartland bombing at will.  Jihadist camps won’t spring up along the Mississippi River and Al Qaida is not likely to launch an assault on a rural Illinois prison.  But neither is this a simple economic development project that will create jobs and boom times for rural Illinois.  It is not an inconsequential relocation away from the politically charged Gitmo to a morally superior prison that  will win favorable international opinion.

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I am not able to fully digest all of the relevant material just this moment, but check out what Anthony Watts at “Watts Up With That” among others have posted. Anthony is a meteorologist who blew the lid on the scandalous placement of official U.S. government thermometers  – even movement to — asphalt pads, Arizona parking lots, next to hot air vents, above barbecue grills, and so on with the convenient result of a warming bias.

I will put all of this in full context as more analysis of the revelations and their meaning emerge, but just know this was described to me as “the closest thing you’re ever going to come to a ’smoking gun.’”

If you’re not a global warming geek, the point of the material is that we have apparent — and I only say apparent at this point — written admissions of cooking the books, among other nastiness, by the leading names in the global warming alarmist movement.

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As the Bank of America (BofA) CEO, one of the first phone calls that Jon Corzine might receive could come from Service Employees International Union (SEIU) President and White House frequent guest Andy Stern asking Corzine to forgive SEIU’s $88 million debt or at least to renegotiate the BofA terms. As former head of the Democrat Senatorial Campaign Committee and a Democrat governor from New jersey, Corzine knows all too well how much the Democrat party owes SEIU bosses. Corzine as head of Bank of America could create interesting opportunities for Stern.

SEIU Debt Ceiling

Debts are increasing at every level of the SEIU purple conglomerate. SEIU’s national headquarters reported that at the end of 2008, its total liabilities grew to $156 million, a total debt increase of $36 million from the prior year. And, about $60 million of its assets are receivables owed to it by SEIU affiliates.

Even though SEIU’s national headquarters reports receiving $247 million in dues revenue called “per capita taxes”, much coming from workers who would be fired if they did not pay, its combined “Representational,” “Political,” “General Overhead,” “Union Administration,” “Benefits,” and “Gifts” activities cost the union $285 million.

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Negative interest rates finally materialize, Tim Geithner falls on his face at Congress, and the House moves forward with their policy of gutting the authority of the Federal Reserve. That’s three big stories to talk about on today’s Coffee and Markets, a daily podcast from The New Ledger on politics, policy and the marketplace with Francis Cianfrocca, brought to you by BigGovernment.com.

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You can subscribe to the podcast by following the links above, and if you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Related Links:

WSJ: House Attacks Fed, Treasury
MarketWatch: Panel Votes to Audit Fed Balance Sheet
WP: Threatening the Fed’s Independence
Bloomberg: Geithner Resignation Calls Increase
Ryan and Hensarling: Why No One Expects a Strong Recovery

The dead apparently really can rise from the grave.

Though Congress voted to kill federal funding for ACORN in September, funding for the disgraced group could resume as early as December 18th, when the Continuing Resolution, which provides funds to run government while the final budget is complete and contains the funding ban, expires.

The question isn’t whether federal funds will flow again to the ethically-challenged group, but possibly when and how much money will flow.  If cap-and-trade legislation now making its way through Congress becomes law, the flow could be enormous.

In June, the U.S. House passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act (better known as Waxman-Markey), ostensibly to alleviate global warming by mandating an 83% reduction in U.S. carbon emissions by 2050.  A similar bill, introduced in the Senate by Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and John Kerry (D-MA), has been approved by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.  Buried in both bills are provisions that would allocate vast amounts of federal money to community development organizations such as ACORN.

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Americans are hurting – there is no doubt.   Unemployment is at a record high and since Speaker Pelosi has been in the Speaker’s chair, 8.7 million more people are unemployed.  What’s even more frightening is that 3 million of those jobs have been lost just since the misnamed stimulus was shoved through Congress less than a year ago.  So where are the jobs?

Earlier this week, we learned that Recovery.gov, the official Administration website charged with reporting abuse was its own worst offender.  It is full of fake stimulus jobs in fake Congressional districts.   It also shows that $3 million couldn’t even produce a single job in South Carolina’s fake 43rd district.  Somehow, $1.8 million was spent for 1.4 jobs in the fake 00 district.  This would be funny, but the money belongs to taxpayers, not the government.

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Below is the best picture we’ve seen of the Air Force Jet that shuttles Speaker Pelosi between DC and San Fran:

The Speaker of the House historically hasn’t been assigned a special government plane. That changed after 9-11, when the government decided that the individual who was third in succession needed secure travel. The Speaker at the time, Dennis Hastert, was assigned a small military jet, although he rarely used it. When Nancy Pelosi became Speaker she…well…upgraded,  to a Boeing 757. Consider this as you plan your holiday travel next week.

Earlier tonight Andrew Breitbart, James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles discussed the final chapter of the ACORN L.A. saga on “Hannity,” but more interestingly, Breitbart disclosed where the story goes from here.  Transcript (below) starts from 3:50 into the clip:

Breitbart: There’s a lot of hypocrisy and the dust has settled for ACORN and at the end of the day they’ve recognized that Eric Holder, the Attorney General, has not initiated an investigation into ACORN after we now have seven tapes.  There were five initially that came out, ACORN was defunded by the Senate, was defunded by the House, lost it’s link to the Census; while all that damage occurred, Congress didn’t come in to investigate them, obviously not the Attorney General’s office, and they’ve now realized let’s get back into business because they realized that the dust settled and they were not being investigated, it was Hannah, James, and me who were being investigated, that’s why we’ve been forced to offer this latest tape.

Hannity: Are you saying, Andrew, that there are more tapes? (more…)

The story of Kenneth Gladney may finally be getting somewhere. County Counselor Patricia Redington, after waiting three months, has been forced to come out and defend her office in emails and in an interview with KMOX, a local St Louis radio station.  We’d say it was quick work, but waiting to look into charges of political violence until after healthcare reform comes to a vote seems to be the plan.  In previous columns, we identified a time difference for assault charges of 3 months versus 2 days.  3 months to start looking if you’re a black man beaten by union thugs and 2 days if you’re a Republican running for Congress against Dick Gephardt.

Redington is now responding to emails saying she is looking into the events, the investigation is still under review, and her office is interviewing witnesses.  This is one of her responses to a St Louis county resident about the affair.

There were several incidents at this event which required police intervention, and our office is reviewing the police report and has been interviewing various witnesses before making a final decision on what charges may be issued.

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**Updated with Lavelle Stewart transcript**

Lavelle Stewart, of ACORN in South Central Los Angeles, tells us she thinks we have to hook up with “someone who’s on that international sex business level,” that “14 and 15 year olds been traveling overseas for years,” that she can do independent research for us, and that she has had meetings with Porn magnate Larry Flynt.  As for laundering the sex money into my faux political campaign, Lavelle says, “there are ways, people do it all the time.  Yeah there are ways, especially out here in California.”

Part I

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The continued attacks on Sarah Palin by campaign Aides to Senator John McCain are almost beyond belief. Continued attacks on Palin, and on her performance as the Vice Presidential candidate by McCain Aide Steve Schmidt, are particularly ridiculous given Schmidt’s track record of incompetence and missteps by the Senior McCain Aide during the Presidential campaign.

Schmidt is, after all, part of the gang that had McCain suspend his presidential campaign and rush back to Washington to take the exact same position as Barack Obama on the first Federal bailout bill which in the end, only bailed out Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street Bankers. With his endorsement of the bailout, McCain lost any chance to draw a contrast with Obama and wage a competitive race for the Presidency.

Schmidt, the political genius was also party to the late October announcement that the McCain campaign was writing off Michigan. Even if polling showed that Michigan was beyond reach, why would you announce it publically so the Obama campaign could shift resources from Michigan to another toss-up-state?

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Because it wasn’t painful enough to know that the “stimulus” money is heavily used to pay for the union-inflated salaries of thousands of bureaucrats in the states, or paying for jobs in phantom districts, or even better, going to recipients who happily spent it without creating any jobs, now we can see how much of the “stimulus” money is going to pay for picnic tables or to replace the motor of a government-owned boat.

For instance, I can see now that R. J. THOMAS MANUFACTURING COMPANY, INC received 4 different awards totaling roughly a $110,000 in exchange for picnic tables (because we know how stimulating these are)

Check out this website called Stimulus Watch. It allows you to search for contracts and grant awards by state and city, by awarding agency, or by recipient. And they will even have a keyword search soon. The really cool aspect of the site is that once you find an award that interests you, you can vote on whether you are satisfied with it or not, add to the wiki description of the project, and join in the conversation about the award in the comments section.

“Are caged chickens miserable?,” asks three-year study funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture

Party cruise ship receives $123,000 stimulus grant to protect it from terrorist attacks; “We feel that we’re really a low threat for a terrorist incident,” says owner, “but the stimulus was a nice perk.”

U.S. government made more than $98 billion in erroneous payments this year alone

Federal grant intended to prevent tobacco use spent on junkets, tribal elections, and publishing a newspaper

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The success of the Chicago-style politics of Dick Durbin, Rahm Emmanuel and Barack Obama, characterized by brass knuckles, intense bullying, finger pointing and public attacks has been mesmerizing.  Meanwhile, very  little attention has been focused on the California-style politics of obfuscation and intimidation practiced by Nancy Pelosi and her sidekick, Henry Waxman.  Ignoring California-style politics is a mistake: these guys are good!

The art of obfuscation is central to California-style politics.  Think back on Speaker Pelosi’s byzantine explanation of why she called career CIA employees liars.  Incomprehensible, deliberately vague misdirection characterizes the California-style of politics.  Never be precise; never say what you mean, and certainly, never let facts interfere with the spin.

Cumbersome, incoherent  legislation is another example of obfuscation, California-style: thousands of pages of  gobble-de-gook, the Stimulus, at 1000 pages, the Energy bill at 1100 pages and the Healthcare bill version #1 at 1300 pages and the latest House healthcare bill at a whopping 1990 pages.

Pelosi seems to have assembled these monstrosities so that few in Congress can read the legislation in its entirety before she calls the vote.   Deceptive executive summaries, with left wing talking points, attached to these gargantuan documents are yet another form of obfuscation.

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