Sucks To Be Him

We here at Blue Crab Boulevard diligently try to follow up on the urgent news we have previously reported. We can now report the outcome of a story we first reported about last year. We now know the penalty for obtaining  – ahem – personal services at a car wash: 90 days in jail. Although it is not completely clear from this article whether the crime itself was being punished or the effect the crime had on the municipality in question:

Late-night television’s “The Tonight Show” with Jay Leno and the “Late Show” with David Letterman have poked fun at Saginaw, Circuit Judge Fred L. Borchard told Savage before sentencing him to 90 days in jail for indecent exposure.

Borchard said he’s also had an inquiry from the London Globe newspaper about the incident.

“I believe you owe the community an apology for what you’ve done,” Borchard said.

Original post here.

We would be remiss if we did not point out to the judge that it could have been worse.  It could have been a judge involved with vacuum.

Yet Another Obama Nominee Withdraws

Via Memeorandum comes this item. It seems that the Obama nominee for deputy director of the EPA has withdrawn. The EPA itself questioned the use of some $25 million in taxpayer money that was mismanaged by a foundation that the nominee, Jon Cannon, once acted as a board member for.

Jon Cannon, nominated to be the deputy director of the Environmental Protection Agency, pulled his name from consideration today, citing questions over a non-profit where he once sat on the board — and which EPA auditors accused in 2007 of mismanaging $25 million in taxpayer funds.

Cannon sat on the board of America’s Clean Water Foundation, which won some $25 million in federal contracts to identify environmental risks at beef, poultry and pork plants, and to help states and tribes comply with the Clean Water Act. EPA auditors questioned the accounting on almost all that money, charging that the group could not support some costs, included duplicate transactions on others, and did not complete several required audits. The IG report, which does not mention Cannon, also alludes to allegations of embezzlement in the foundation, which dissolved in 2006.

Cannon was not accused directly of doing anything wrong. But this does, yet again, call into question the team Obama vetting process.

There is a huge amount of malfeasance by America’s Clean Water Foundation detailed in the report by the EPA. So much so that one wonders why some of it was not investigated for criminal behavior. Just skimming the report calls into question why some “environmentalists” appear to be so good at grabbing taxpayer money for themselves, not their causes.

Rearranging The Deck Chairs

Dick Polman calls it “Tension on the ocean liner”. I’d put it as more like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. No matter, the result is the same:  cap and trade legislation appears to be sinking.

In Obama’s ideal world, the cap-and-trade program would be folded into the budget; under Senate rules, the budget can be passed with a mere 51 votes…and, remember, the Senate Democrats on paper have 58 votes. But because so many Senate Democrats have signaled that they want cap-and-trade removed from the budget – eight of them, including Pennsylvania’s Bob Casey and Indiana’s Evan Bayh, have already put this in writing – that would appear to put the kibosh on easy passage of Obama’s signature environmental idea.

The alternative scenario is for cap-and-trade to move along as separate legislation, but that would require a filibuster-proof 60 votes for passage. Good luck to that. Translation: Cap-and-trade is probably dead this year, if not next year as well.

Polman takes enough shots in this piece to indicate that he favors cap and trade and hates Republicans in general.

Regardless, the far left is trying to slam Democrats who do not lean far enough to the left by having groups like MoveOn run attack ads in conservative Democrat’s districts. So I suspect Polman’s right here.

UPDATE: Thanks to Maggie’s Farm for the link. Folks who come over from there might also like this item.

Who has Congress And Obama Been Beating Up On?

Meet Jake DeSantis, an executive vice president of the American International Group financial products unit. He is also a private citizen who has had enough of being the whipping boy of a bunch of political thugs.

After 12 months of hard work dismantling the company – during which A.I.G. reassured us many times we would be rewarded in March 2009 – we in the financial products unit have been betrayed by A.I.G. and are being unfairly persecuted by elected officials. In response to this, I will now leave the company and donate my entire post-tax retention payment to those suffering from the global economic downturn. My intent is to keep none of the money myself.

I take this action after 11 years of dedicated, honorable service to A.I.G. I can no longer effectively perform my duties in this dysfunctional environment, nor am I being paid to do so. Like you, I was asked to work for an annual salary of $1, and I agreed out of a sense of duty to the company and to the public officials who have come to its aid. Having now been let down by both, I can no longer justify spending 10, 12, 14 hours a day away from my family for the benefit of those who have let me down.

….

Many of the employees have, in the past six months, turned down job offers from more stable employers, based on A.I.G.’s assurances that the contracts would be honored. They are now angry about having been misled by A.I.G.’s promises and are not inclined to return the money as a favor to you.

The only real motivation that anyone at A.I.G.-F.P. now has is fear. Mr. Cuomo has threatened to “name and shame,” and his counterpart in Connecticut, Richard Blumenthal, has made similar threats – even though attorneys general are supposed to stand for due process, to conduct trials in courts and not the press.

Congress passed the law that required AIG to honor the contracts it had with people like DeSantis. Barack Obama signed it into law. Then they and the press spent weeks screaming, hollering, threatening and vilifying the recipients of the contracted payments. In other words, the spent the time diverting attention from their own behavior.

Cuomo and Blumenthal have used their positions to run nothing less than an extortion plot against private citizens. “Give the money to us or we’ll publish your names” is extortion.

When AIG finally collapses, (and, at this point I’m guessing it will) it will be because of these political thugs. They will have succeeded in driving away the very people they need to perform an orderly wind-down of the company.

The thugs will, of course, blame the private citizens. But those paying attention here will know who really caused it.

Congress Giveth, Congress Taketh Away

Well, if you thought the retroactive vindictiveness of Congress toward bankers was the only thing they are up to these days, you’re wrong. Remember that much-vaunted middle-class tax cut passed as part of the “stimulus bill”?

Democrats are taking that away.

Key Democrats such as the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, Kent Conrad of North Dakota, said some of Obama’s most ambitious ideas must be jettisoned to reduce the deficit, including extending tax cuts of $400 for most workers and $800 for couples that were approved in the stimulus package.

“We’ve tried to deal with the reality that we confront,” he said. “You have to pay for things. You have to cut things. And that’s what we’ve done.”

Lawmakers also are dropping $250 billion requested for future bank bailouts.

So they are planning on taking away the tax cut for the middle class while still enacting a massive spending increase. As I and many others have warned, it isn’t the “rich” who are going to be paying for this massive spending spree. It is you and I who will pay for it.

Treacherous, aren’t they?