Monday, April 16, 2012
CRONYISM SCANDAL
80% OF DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY GREEN LOANS WENT TO "OBAMA-RELATED COMPANIES"
Under the guise of "investing" in so-called green energy, the Obama Administration is perpetrating yet another massive scam on the American people. It has now been documented that Obama is using your hard-earned tax dollars to line the pockets of his biggest campaign donors.
But don't take our word for it...
According to research done by Hoover Institution Fellow Peter Schweitzer, the hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer-backed loans handed to Solyndra - the now bankrupt company that was run by Obama campaign bundler George Kaiser - is just the "tip of the iceberg."
In fact, a staggering 80% of the federal grants and loan guarantees made to green-tech firms by Obama's DOE since 2009 were made to companies whose chief executive or chief investors were major contributors and big money men to Obama's 2008 presidential campaign.
TELL CONGRESS - STOP THE "GREEN ENERGY" SCAMS - SELECT HERE
Schweitzer's research reveals a devastating picture of corruption in Washington, D.C. Democrats, Republicans, Congressmen, Senators, administration officials and bureaucrats - the corruption is widespread.
Billions upon billions of dollars literally have poured into the coffers of Obama's biggest campaign donors whose quasi-green products, like bankrupt Solyndra's solar panels or the exploding Finnish eco-car, were not only questionable, but very clearly doomed to failure from the beginning.
Given the number of reports warning the Obama Administration against many of the "green" loans and government handouts, it is now obvious that the money transfers were never meant to rescue the American economy or create jobs... Rather, the program from the very beginning was about nothing more than lining the pockets of loyal Obama supporters.
TELL CONGRESS - STOP THE "GREEN ENERGY" SCAMS - SELECT HERE
Even the non-partisan Government Accountability Office (GAO) has chastised the Obama Administration for the manner in which DOE loans and handouts were granted. According to GAO:
•Many of the loans lacked adequate documentation and performance measures.
•Obama's DOE granted many loans based on favoritism while denying or disadvantaging other equally and often more qualified potential borrowers.
And DOE's own inspector general, Gregory Friedman, has testified that many of the contracts have been steered to "friends and family."
Yet despite all this, Barack Obama wants to double down on the program. In fact, Obama's Department of Energy has announced its intention to issue even more "green energy" loans. How many major Obama 2012 donors do you think will be on the receiving end of those new loans and grants?
Let's not wait to find out. It's time to be proactive and demand that Congress - holder of the purse strings - immediately step in and STOP ALL "GREEN ENERGY" LOANS and HANDOUTS NOW! Furthermore, we must demand a more complete and full investigation into the Obama Administration's green scam.
We must act now, before yet another taxpayer dollar is flushed down the green scam toilet.
TELL CONGRESS - STOP THE "GREEN ENERGY" SCAMS - SELECT HERE
Yours In Freedom,
Jeff Mazzella, President
Center for Individual Freedom
917-B King Street, Alexandria, VA 22314
Phone: 703-535-5836 Fax: 703-535-5838
Showing posts with label Department of Education. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Department of Education. Show all posts
Monday, April 16, 2012
Friday, March 23, 2012
OBAMA’S EDUCATION DEPT. PARTNERS WITH SOROS
OBAMA’S EDUCATION DEPT. PARTNERS WITH SOROS--Seeks world where 'each person on Earth can contribute to sum of all knowledge'
The Department of Education has partnered with billionaire George Soros’ Open Society Institute to promote a global education initiative that seeks “a world where each and every person on Earth can access and contribute to the sum of all human knowledge.” Education Secretary Arne Duncan kicked off a $25,000 “Why Open Education Matters” competition that will give a cash prize for the best short video explaining the benefits of what is known as Open Educational Resources, or O.E.R., for students, teachers and schools.
CONTINUED:http://bwcentral.org/2012/03/obamas-education-dept-partners-with-soros/
The Department of Education has partnered with billionaire George Soros’ Open Society Institute to promote a global education initiative that seeks “a world where each and every person on Earth can access and contribute to the sum of all human knowledge.” Education Secretary Arne Duncan kicked off a $25,000 “Why Open Education Matters” competition that will give a cash prize for the best short video explaining the benefits of what is known as Open Educational Resources, or O.E.R., for students, teachers and schools.
CONTINUED:http://bwcentral.org/2012/03/obamas-education-dept-partners-with-soros/
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
How Conservatives Can Limit the Scope and Size of Government
By Chris Gacek
Published January 18, 2011, FoxNews.com
With a new, conservative House of Representatives and a legislatively checked Senate, the question is no longer whether to scale back the size and scope of government, but how. Yet even if the era of big government is on a downward trajectory, reducing the size of government will require a long, dogged and savvy effort. “Abolish the Department of Education” has been a rallying cry for conservatives since the Reagan administration, but simply eliminating the Department of Education (DoE), and other agencies, is not enough.
To stop big government, the laws that empower agencies must also be eliminated.
The Department of Education was created in 1980. Before that, a Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW), managed the federal education functions the U.S. Congress enacted. Interestingly, DoE has the fewest employees of any cabinet department (4,200), yet its reach is huge, touching “approximately 56 million students attending some 97,000 schools and 28,000 private schools,” and its programs “also provide grant, loan and work-study assistance to about 11 million postsecondary students.”
Laws make a bureaucracy. If a conservative Congress “abolished the Department of Education,” the only thing that effectively would change is the name on the building and stationary. Federal education laws and regulations would still have to be enforced – somewhere.
DoE is governed by a mesh of laws that includes: Elementary and Secondary Education Act (1965); Higher Education Act of 1965; Education for All Handicapped Children Act (1975); Equal Access Act (1984); No Child Left Behind Act (2001); the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (2004); and, Race to the Top (2009). Each one of these laws permits the lawyers amongst those 4,200 DoE employees to write regulations that have the force of law.
Consider No Child Left Behind: As noted by education analyst Lindsay Burke, “As a result of No Child Left Behind, states were burdened with nearly seven million man-hours of paperwork in order to comply with new federal mandates, costing states an estimated $141 million. And while the federal government provides just nine percent of funding for public education, it is the source of an estimated 41 percent of the administrative compliance burden for states.”
After a while the statutes and regulations become so arcane that only legal specialists can hope to understand them. Medicare regulations are a great example. Eventually, the government employees enforcing laws and writing regulations become special interests dedicated to fighting any simplification that would limit their Gnostic powers and high-paying legal jobs.
The result of this blizzard of law and rules has been a major cause of federal and state government employment – stretching across states and agencies and burdening Americans.
As a statute’s support industry and special interest beneficiaries accumulate, changing government becomes increasingly difficult. And attempts to provide corrective regulations by conservative administrations have generally failed.
First, regulations cannot override statutes, so they cannot eliminate a statute-created program or mandate.
Second, agency bureaucrats who know the law better than the political appointees will draft the regulations and implement them to impede deregulation.
Third, regulations can be reversed or rescinded by the next liberal president.
Thus, the only effective way to eliminate programs or reduce government is to repeal the statutory language that creates agency power.
In many cases, the statutes would not be hard to identify. Take the EPA for example: Amend the statute that has allowed the EPA to run amok regulating that “pollutant” carbon dioxide. With one stroke, EPA’s economy-strangling global warming regulations would be nullified. As the Obama administration moves to govern by regulatory fiat, conservatives will have to limit government by using the new weapons of statutory fixes and eliminating agency funds for specific actions.
Repealing existing laws will be difficult. President Obama will veto such legislation, which requires a two-thirds majority in the House and Senate for an override. That won’t happen often. Thus, it is critical to elect a president dedicated to limited government, and senators who will give conservatives a 60-vote majority to overcome filibusters.
Finally, those dedicated to limited government – especially law students, lawyers and administrative experts – must lay the groundwork for such actions by learning what key provisions in various laws, if removed, would cut the heads off these various regulatory snakes.
This will take years of effort and innovative thinking. Public policy organizations and their donors will need to devote substantial resources to laying the groundwork for limited government by producing leaders who know how to bring it about. Our Bunker Hill will be Capitol Hill.
Conservatives are generally uninterested in the nitty-gritty aspects of government. This is understandable, given how aggravating the study of such minutiae can be. However, that must change if we are to win this long war against entrenched statism and preserve liberty in America.
Chris Gacek is Senior Fellow at the Family Research Council.
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/01/18/conservatives-limit-scope-size-government/
Published January 18, 2011, FoxNews.com
With a new, conservative House of Representatives and a legislatively checked Senate, the question is no longer whether to scale back the size and scope of government, but how. Yet even if the era of big government is on a downward trajectory, reducing the size of government will require a long, dogged and savvy effort. “Abolish the Department of Education” has been a rallying cry for conservatives since the Reagan administration, but simply eliminating the Department of Education (DoE), and other agencies, is not enough.
To stop big government, the laws that empower agencies must also be eliminated.
The Department of Education was created in 1980. Before that, a Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW), managed the federal education functions the U.S. Congress enacted. Interestingly, DoE has the fewest employees of any cabinet department (4,200), yet its reach is huge, touching “approximately 56 million students attending some 97,000 schools and 28,000 private schools,” and its programs “also provide grant, loan and work-study assistance to about 11 million postsecondary students.”
Laws make a bureaucracy. If a conservative Congress “abolished the Department of Education,” the only thing that effectively would change is the name on the building and stationary. Federal education laws and regulations would still have to be enforced – somewhere.
DoE is governed by a mesh of laws that includes: Elementary and Secondary Education Act (1965); Higher Education Act of 1965; Education for All Handicapped Children Act (1975); Equal Access Act (1984); No Child Left Behind Act (2001); the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (2004); and, Race to the Top (2009). Each one of these laws permits the lawyers amongst those 4,200 DoE employees to write regulations that have the force of law.
Consider No Child Left Behind: As noted by education analyst Lindsay Burke, “As a result of No Child Left Behind, states were burdened with nearly seven million man-hours of paperwork in order to comply with new federal mandates, costing states an estimated $141 million. And while the federal government provides just nine percent of funding for public education, it is the source of an estimated 41 percent of the administrative compliance burden for states.”
After a while the statutes and regulations become so arcane that only legal specialists can hope to understand them. Medicare regulations are a great example. Eventually, the government employees enforcing laws and writing regulations become special interests dedicated to fighting any simplification that would limit their Gnostic powers and high-paying legal jobs.
The result of this blizzard of law and rules has been a major cause of federal and state government employment – stretching across states and agencies and burdening Americans.
As a statute’s support industry and special interest beneficiaries accumulate, changing government becomes increasingly difficult. And attempts to provide corrective regulations by conservative administrations have generally failed.
First, regulations cannot override statutes, so they cannot eliminate a statute-created program or mandate.
Second, agency bureaucrats who know the law better than the political appointees will draft the regulations and implement them to impede deregulation.
Third, regulations can be reversed or rescinded by the next liberal president.
Thus, the only effective way to eliminate programs or reduce government is to repeal the statutory language that creates agency power.
In many cases, the statutes would not be hard to identify. Take the EPA for example: Amend the statute that has allowed the EPA to run amok regulating that “pollutant” carbon dioxide. With one stroke, EPA’s economy-strangling global warming regulations would be nullified. As the Obama administration moves to govern by regulatory fiat, conservatives will have to limit government by using the new weapons of statutory fixes and eliminating agency funds for specific actions.
Repealing existing laws will be difficult. President Obama will veto such legislation, which requires a two-thirds majority in the House and Senate for an override. That won’t happen often. Thus, it is critical to elect a president dedicated to limited government, and senators who will give conservatives a 60-vote majority to overcome filibusters.
Finally, those dedicated to limited government – especially law students, lawyers and administrative experts – must lay the groundwork for such actions by learning what key provisions in various laws, if removed, would cut the heads off these various regulatory snakes.
This will take years of effort and innovative thinking. Public policy organizations and their donors will need to devote substantial resources to laying the groundwork for limited government by producing leaders who know how to bring it about. Our Bunker Hill will be Capitol Hill.
Conservatives are generally uninterested in the nitty-gritty aspects of government. This is understandable, given how aggravating the study of such minutiae can be. However, that must change if we are to win this long war against entrenched statism and preserve liberty in America.
Chris Gacek is Senior Fellow at the Family Research Council.
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/01/18/conservatives-limit-scope-size-government/
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