Conyers Wife Sentenced for Bribery

AP via Breitbart.com

Ex-Detroit councilwoman gets 3 years for bribes

by Ed White

DETROIT (AP) - A federal judge has denied ex-Detroit councilwoman Monica Conyers' request to withdraw her guilty plea in a corruption case and sentenced her to three years and one month in prison.

As guards cleared the courtroom Wednesday, Conyers yelled that she planned to appeal.

Conyers suggested that she was the victim of "badgering" last summer when she acknowledged a conspiracy to take bribes for her support of a Houston company seeking a sludge contract. U.S. District Judge Avern Cohn says her plea deal was voluntary.

Conyers is the wife of Democratic U.S. Rep. John Conyers. She quit the council in June.

VDH asks Who is Afraid of Big Government?

Victor Davis Hanson in Pajamas Media.
You need to read it all but here are some parts to whet your appetite for more:

There is no reason to review all the standard reasons why the American people are terrified of an all-powerful federal or state government. The case has been made in thousands of elegant treatises and books, and is best reflected in the Constitution and the written work of the Founding Fathers.

But let me list a few other, less elegantly expressed worries, many anecdotal in nature.

1) Juvenal’s “Who will police the police?”

One of the scariest things about government is its exemption from laws by virtue of its monopoly on lawmaking and enforcement. I see this every day, from the mundane to the profound.

Go to any downtown in America, and one can see how some supposedly efficient, job-creating con-artist once promised a new hotel, stadium, or enterprise zone, then convinced the city council to steal land from some and hand it over to others (e.g., him)—and left an ungodly mess in his wake.....

.....On the more mundane level, this week I saw the following examples of government exemption. A local police car randomly did a running stop at a 4-way intersection (should I have called 911?); a city bus driver (very common) cell phoning against California law (report him to the cop running the intersection?); a city garbage truck spewing trash out its top as it sped down freeway 41 (call his cousins at the state EPA?)....

2) The Power of Envy

Government service offers veritable tenure and steady wages for the price of bypassing the American dream of “getting rich” in the private sector. Most follow the odds and realize that a federal bird in the hand is better than two in the private bush.

Yet legions of government (and often union) employees by needs must audit often far richer others, whether at the IRS, the county planner’s office, the zoning authority, or the state regulator. And here the public auditor can, by virtue of his unassailable position, quite easily stymie his private sector upstart counterpart.....

....I am all for codes, building inspectors, and plant regulators, but an excess of such investigators quickly creates a priestly class who take their own frustrations out on supposedly better off others.

3) Patronage

In California there are hundreds of worthless state boards with six-figure, governor-appointed officials. We assume that in our term-limited state, these sinecures are the refuges of former state assembly and senate politicians. In fact, as soon as we elect our state officials, we accept that they will cut deals with state executives to provide for their upcoming retirements—“I’ll vote for this, if in 4 years I get that spot on the state water board or the state fair practices committee”.....

4. The Greek four-step

I once lived in Greece for over two years, and visit there every other summer. Any casual observer could have predicted its present fiscal meltdown, which is emblematic of big government socialism....

5. Ministry of Truth

Government has the power of symbols to create alternate, scary realities. This week driving to and from the coast, I crossed several stretches of “The Honorable Joe Blow” freeway, and saw dozens of signs that essentially said “this project brought to you by big government stimulus.”....

....We all need government for defense, security, and infrastructure. But the more of it, the more dangerous—and creepy—our lives become.

Obviously I have left much of his essay on the cutting room floor, this is just a taste of all he had to say. Read it all here.

A Story That Needs Telling

Today Arianna Huffington blogs about how the Tea Partiers have a point --Washington hasn't been listening to them -- Congress has gotten arrogant and deaf -- with representatives beholden to their special interests masters.

Of course she had to insult and degrade the Tea Party first...

Well, irony or ironies in this ironic world... there is a post a few inches below her blog on her site by Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Florida) who is bragging about "The Story That No One Will Tell." In his blog he goes on to brag about how he has more campaign contributions than anyone else and the media "refuses" to cover this earth-shattering news. He even puts a link to the Federal Election Committee website where you can look it up.

So I looked it up.

And it allows you to download all his contributors and their contributions in a very tidy spreadsheet.

He's running for office in Florida.

73% of all his contributors are from outside of Florida.
23% of all contributors are from California.

Anyone else see a problem here?

Grayson, like the deaf and dumb senators Huffington blogs about right on top of Grayson's pompous rant, is a part of the Left-Coast, Left-Wing political machine. 300 Californians and 600 people for other states are trying to get him elected in Florida with their money. Of course he did have 354 Floridians contribute -- which is 27% of the people that contributed.

Guess who he will represent... the people of Florida? Why would he, they aren't funding his election.

Grayson is just part of the machine. A machine that is broken and needs replacing.

See for yourself, go to http://www.fec.gov/, click on house and senate, put Grayson in the search box.

And they wonder why we're so @#$%! cynical.

PS -- you can go read the Huffington blog and Grayson's childish rant.

Ron Burris is Guilty of Something, But That's Ok...

Dear Congress -- in case you're still wondering why your approval ratings are so incredibly low, this is just another example of why: you're a bunch of criminals who refuse to police each other. You refuse to convict each other, to weed out the bad people. So guess what, you're all a gang of criminals.

And this letter from the Senate ethics committee says so. Read it. He lied, he decieved and he basically conspired with then-Governor Blagojevich to buy Obama's Senate seat. This letter basically says he's guilty but they aren't going to charge him with bribery. Too bad, because that's what happened. Corruption. This letter (which is signed by Barbara Boxer and the other committee memebers) says that's what happened.

But he gets away with it. Thanks Senator Boxer, et al. Great precedent you're setting.

http://ethics.senate.gov/downloads/pdffiles/burris_112009.pdf

Answers? You want Answers?

From ABC News blog The Note:
Key House Dem Wants Answers on Recovery.gov Errors

Hours after ABC's Jonathan Karl reported on government data showing hundreds of created jobs and millions of dollars spent in congressional districts that don't exist, House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, D-Wis., late Monday issued a blistering statement demanding an immediate fix to "ludicrous mistakes" on the Recovery.gov Website.
Continue reading:

This issue was raised on Monday with this post:

The Magically Appearing Stimulus Jobs
ABC News’ Rick Klein reports: We’ve long been wondering what taxpayers would get for their$18 million Website redesign at Recovery.gov. ABC’s Jonathan Karl is reporting on one thing we never guessed might have been purchased: Jobs created in congressional districts that do not exist.
Continue reading:

Obama’s Judicial Appointment

Former ACORN fund raiser gets Obama judicial nomination. Yes, you read that right

By: Mark Tapscott

Too important to post just a portion, so go read it here.

Check out the Accuracy in Media site

Controversial New Video of Obama’s Pastor
By Cliff Kincaid November 1, 2009

An Accuracy in Media investigation determined that, like Free Press, Van Jones’ career was carefully assisted by a lot of George Soros cash.

A new video of Jeremiah Wright has surfaced, showing Barack Obama's pastor of 20 years praising Marxism and discussing his ties to communists in El Salvador and Nicaragua and the Libyan government. Equally important, Wright is being introduced in the video by Robert W. McChesney, co-founder of Free Press, an organization which has come under scrutiny for its links to the Obama Administration and dedication to the transformation and control of the private media in the U.S.

In an article in the socialist Monthly Review, "Journalism, Democracy, and Class Struggle," McChesney declared, "Our job is to make media reform part of our broader struggle for democracy, social justice, and, dare we say it, socialism."

In the video, which captures Wright's appearance at a September 17, 2009, anniversary celebration of Monthly Review, Wright said that while the "corporate media" provide a "binary lens" of the world, in such terms as "communist versus Christian," Monthly Review offers what it calls "no-nonsense Marxism."

He added: "You dispel all the negative images we have been programmed to conjure up with just the mention of that word socialism or Marxism."

He called America "land of the greed and home of the slave."

Read the whole column and bookmark the site for a check everyday.

How Does this Relate to My Previous Post?

Hmmmm... This post from Politico makes you wonder.

Nervous W.H. intervened in N.J. race; top Obama adviser now in charge

Go read it at the above link, I'm not posting it here, just wondering......

New Jersey Dems Advance Preparation

From National Review Online's Campaign Spot:Democrats Ask New Jersey Secretary of State to Ignore Mismatched Signatures on Absentee Ballot Requests

This year, New Jersey’s registered voters can request a mail-in ballot for any reason. Before 2005, voters needed to provide a reason for why they needed an absentee ballot. The state received about 150,000 absentee ballot applications this year.

On about 2,300 of those applications so far, the signature on the request form did not match the signature on the voter’s registration forms with the state.

In a development that is depressingly predictable, the New Jersey Democratic Party is asking the state to provide provisional ballots for all these voters. Those ballots, could, presumably, be used to overcome any narrow lead by Republican Chris Christie over Democrat Jon Corzine on Election Day.

There is more, read it here.

You Know how I Admire Victor Davis Hanson

In fact I admire him so much I am not even going to quote here... I want you to read it all for yourself. This man is very wise. His latest:
What We Are Learning About the Era of Obama
Now, click on it and go read it.

More New Mexico Polictical Corruption

What do you expect when they used the old LBJ trick for their balloting.
From the Wall Street Journal Online comes this report:
New Mexico Roiled By Fresh Graft Case
By STEPHANIE SIMON

Elected officials in New Mexico are renewing calls for an ethics overhaul after the state's attorney general this week unveiled the latest in a long string of political-corruption cases.

Longtime Secretary of State Rebecca Vigil-Giron, who left office in
2006, has been indicted on 50 felony counts of embezzlement, tax evasion and money laundering in an alleged scheme to siphon off at least hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal election funds.

Ms. Vigil-Giron, a Democrat who served three four-year terms as
secretary of state, is accused of colluding with a political consultant and two Democratic lobbyists -- also under indictment -- to profit from grants intended to educate voters and boost turnout in the 2004 election.

Read the whole sorry story. It shows that the Democrats have always accused the Republicans of exactly what they were themselves doing.