That 20%, or approximately $400,000 of KY Gov Steve Beshear’s current primary dollars comes from state employees and appointees doesn’t help as whistle-blowers have come forward to allege strong-arm tactics were used to solicit campaign dollars on his behalf.

FRANKFORT—The Republican Party of Kentucky and an employee of the Justice and Public Safety Cabinet are alleging Gov. Steve Beshear’s administration strong-armed some state employees for contributions to Beshear’s re-election campaign.

Dr. Rodney Young, a 27-year state employee who works for the Department of Juvenile Justice, delivered a signed letter Monday to RPK Chairman Steve Robertson claiming the Cabinet’s Deputy Secretary, Charles Geveden, pressured him and other state employees for contributions to Beshear’s re-election campaign. The letter was also delivered to Attorney General Jack Conway’s office and Robertson filed complaints with the Executive Branch Ethics Commission and the Kentucky Registry of Election Finance.

The complaints cite a December 2010 CNHI News Service story about similar complaints by non-merit — or politically appointed — state employees that they felt pressured to attend a Frankfort fundraiser for Beshear shortly before Christmas. A spokesman for Beshear’s campaign told CNHI News at that time no state employees should feel any pressure to contribute to Beshear’s campaign which “strictly follows all campaign laws.”

There have been similar previous reports involving Beshear, one going back as far as December 2010.  This time, however, there is a whistle-blower involved, one who has named other individuals who reportedly suffered the same strong-arm tactics in a quest for campaign cash.

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President Barack Obama could use Sarah Palin about right now.  With oil gushing into the Gulf and no end in sight, Palin appeared on Fox News Sunday demanding an answer why President Obama is “”taking so doggone long to get in there, to dive in there, and grasp the complexity and the potential tragedy that we are seeing here in the Gulf of Mexico.”

It is no surprise Palin should grasp the BP disaster better than Obama.  She was Chair of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, overseeing the state’s oil and gas fields for safety and ethics.  Palin was a whistleblower on the commission, turning in a fellow Republican who was leaking information to oil insiders.  As a former governor of Alaska, she presided over 20 percent of America’s domestically produced oil production – big, unforgiving outposts like Prudhoe Bay, North America’s largest oil field.  In fact, it is her knowledge of big oil that thrust her into America’s living rooms.

During the summer of 2008, as Americans grappled with record high gas prices, Palin had a practical appeal to John McCain’s Presidential campaign.  Palin may not have had international savvy, but she had something to say about energy and how to handle the big oil companies.

Scan the skyline of downtown Anchorage and nearly every tall building reads like an interstate pit stop – Shell, Exxon, BP.   A governor here must learn the oil business, while being mindful not to become a shill for the international conglomerates who play high stakes. What’s more, the Exxon Valdez was a hard learned lesson in Alaska that taught generations of Alaskans a hard lesson about co-existing with oil in your backyard.

So, when Sarah Palin was governor, she was no pushover.

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The United States government has shelled out huge sums of money to universities, think tanks, and businesses to study global warming climate change.  The government is poised to dole out even more money for climate-change “solutions” like the cap-and-trade scheme.  With the revelations about the lengths to which the leading group of global warming doomsayers went to “hide the decline” in temperatures in their seminal studies – studies that themselves spawned an avalanche of government spending – the world is seeing that the entire enterprise may be based on a fraud.

In a normal scandal where the government appears to have been ripped off, someone in the legislative or executive branch can usually be counted on to investigate the alleged fraud, if for no other reason than advancing their own political career.  In the case of this scandal, however, the Obama administration and congressional Democrats have calculated that their political interests are best served by ignoring ClimateGate.  This is sure to continue as new scandals emerge.

That leaves only the judicial branch as a place where climate change fraud can be unmasked in a government forum.

Individuals with inside knowledge about scientists, businesses, or any organization who knowingly used false statements to get (or keep) government money to perpetuate the “climate change” machine should consider a lawsuit under the federal False Claims Act.

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The internal report issued by former Massachusetts Attorney General is out. Clearly, here’s what the headline will be.

The high-profile lawyer hired to investigate ACORN has found no pattern of intentional illegal conduct in the community organizing group — a finding that was dismissed as “damage control” by one of the two filmmakers who, posing as a pimp and prostitute, videotaped staffers offering advice on how to operate a brothel .

This was immediately mocked by conservatives in the media.

Harshbarger has determined — wait for it — that ACORN engaged in no wrongdoing
depicted in the nationwide undercover stings conducted by BigGovernment.com / James O’Keefe III and Hannah Giles.

In fact, everyone is getting into word games here. ACORN did in fact engage in no criminal wrongdoing by offering advice to a “pimp” and “prostitute” about how to hide assets and their business practices. Simply offering such advice is not illegal. If that’s what Harschbarger was brought in to do, I could have saved everyone plenty of time. In fact, if that’s what he was investigating, then it’s clear they gave him a scope that would lead to a conclusion that would maximize their positive press. In fact, these videos occurred at no less than five offices. That’s a pattern of behavior for which management, and not merely those on the videos, must take some responsibility. That’s at the heart of the series of exposes by Giles and O’Keefe. It’s not about whether or not the behavior on the videos is or is not technically legal. It’s about what it says about an organization when a “pimp” and “prostitute” can so routinely walk into just about any office and be offered advice that the advisor knows is illegal if implemented. That reality is barely acknowledged and not really addressed.

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SEIU has made a good living off the law of unintended consequences.  Or so the labor union would have you think. The reality is, there’s nothing unintended about the consequences they reap.  And when it comes to local, state and federal lawmaking, SEIU banks on the propensity of the American people to respond to emotion rather than logic, and orchestrated concern that becomes a popular mantra.  Even some SEIU members (those brave enough to say so) plead for the public to investigate the union’s true intentions. But if you’re just an average citizen disengaged from the issues, before you know it, you’re ignoring the consequences staring you right between the eyes.

This past September Lisa Snyder, a 35 year old Michigan mother,  made the news when she received a disturbing letter from the Michigan Department of Human Services.  In it, the letter warned her that she was in violation of the law.  Her offense?  Watching a handful of neighborhood kids  each morning for about 20 minutes as they waited at the end of her driveway for the school bus to arrive, with the blessing of their parents. State law in Michigan prohibits the home supervision of unrelated children for more than four weeks in a year without a child care provider license.  Turns out a neighbor had complained and the Michigan Department of Human Services, the watchdog for home child care licensing, intervened by sending the warning letter.  In Michigan, state employees for the DHS are represented by the United Auto Workers (UAW) labor union.  Coincidentally, the union that represents the state’s home child care workers?  Also the UAW.

AFSCME: American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees
FCC: Family child care   |   FNN: Family, friend and neighbor
” Building a Union of Family Child Care and FFN Providers”
by SEIU & AFSCME members to the National Women’s Law Center

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Wall Street Journal is reporting that Bank of America will cut off funding to ACORN:

In response to questions from The Wall Street Journal, a spokesman for the banking company said it has “suspended current commitments” to Acorn Housing, an affiliated group, and “will not enter into any further agreements with Acorn or any of its affiliates,” pending assessments by the bank of the organization’s operations.

Last year, whistleblower documents revealed that in just 2005-2006, Bank of America had given over $1.3 million to ACORN. An internal ACORN memo even crowed:

B of A pays quartly. Chase when they feel like and are tired of getting bugged by me.

Full WSJ story here.