People wonder why the professional grievance industry is so powerful and apparently untouchable for reform.   Consider how much money they have manipulated from the trough.   Pigford 1, Pigford 2,  and now this…  $700 million unaccounted for (and that’s just in ONE program).

Yahoo – Where did all the money go?

“Your guess is as good as mine,” David Montoya, the inspector general of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, says of $700 million in missing taxpayer money that Louisiana homeowners were given in the wake of Hurricane Katrina to elevate and protect their homes from future storms.

A new report released from the inspector general’s office shows that more than 24,000 homeowners who received grants of up to $30,000 to elevate their homes either misspent or pocketed the money.

“The fact of the matter is that the money they received was for a specific purpose and the specific purpose was to elevate these homes to avoid future catastrophes,” Montoya tells Power Players.

He rates the home elevation program as little more than a complete failure. (more…)

Another one of those ‘PASS THE BILL TO SEE WHAT’S IN IT’ manuevers.  The last time did not work out too well.  [See: Obamacare] 

WASHINGTON DC – Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy vowed to move swiftly on immigration  legislation despite calls from conservatives, including Sen. Marco Rubio, to  slow the process.

Reacting to a Rubio (R-Fla.) letter over the weekend calling for extensive  hearings on the soon-to-be-unveiled immigration bill by a group of eight  senators, the Vermont Democrat said his panel would “consider” holding a hearing  on the measure once it was introduced. But Leahy raised concerns that waiting  too long could undermine the larger effort to pass the comprehensive bill,  calling the matter “urgent.”

Senate “Gang of Eight”

“While you have conducted the process of the ‘gang of eight’ behind closed  doors, I can assure you that it has always been my position … that the work of  the Committee should be open to the public,” Leahy said in a Tuesday letter, (more…)

I just realized something….. it’s not “Our House”.   From their perspective it’s “Their House”.   No-more White House tours, which the water-carrying media appear to accept, for anyone….  Unless they want to throw a party.

I’m reminded of what the Clinton team did to the White House when Al Gore lost the 2000 election.

WHITE HOUSE – Next week Justin Timberlake, Al Green, Queen Latifah, and many others will perform at the White House in a “Memphis Soul” concert, the White House announced today.

“As part of their ‘In Performance at the White House’ series, the President and First Lady will invite music legends and contemporary major artists to the White House for a celebration of Memphis Soul music. The program will include performances by Alabama Shakes, William Bell, Steve Cropper, Al Green, Ben Harper, Queen Latifah, Cyndi Lauper, Joshua Ledet, Sam Moore, Charlie Musselwhite, Mavis Staples and Justin Timberlake, with Booker T. Jones as music director and band leader. The President’s remarks will be pooled press and the entire event will be streamed live on  www.whitehouse.gov/live starting at 6:55 PM ET.  (read more)

The impacts are real….  swear.   Parents and babies are dying…. school children are crying every morning….  dogs and cats are howling daily….  the animal kingdom is crying out for more government – more government….  people are really suffering because the government cannot spend more next year than this….  or something. 

WASHINGTON DC – White House spokesman Jay Carney lamented during a press conference Tuesday that the media are not covering the sequester’s “impacts on real people.”

“The impacts are real,” Carney insisted during an exchange with Fox News’ Ed Henry, “and they effect real people. And I know that there hasn’t been a lot of coverage of the impacts on real people.” (more…)

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY – Former Weather Underground radical Kathy Boudin — who spent 22 years in prison for an armored-car robbery that killed two cops and a Brinks guard — now holds a prestigious adjunct professorship at Columbia University’s School of Social Work, The Post has learned.

Boudin, 69, this year won another academic laurel — being named the Sheinberg Scholar-in-Residence at NYU Law School, where last month she gave a lecture on “the politics of parole and re-entry.” (more…)

The following article is a highlight submitted to the mailroom and presented by reader/contributor “Ackbarsays” Such a great job was done in presentation that we’ll just present it as it was submitted, including commentary by Ackbarsays, and you can determine for yourself the agenda at play.   This example cuts to many of the central issues surrounding stories you are seeing under current headlines.

Ackbarsays (ABS) Writes: This article concerns Bethune Cookman University. You’ll remember them because a group of BCU students famously marched from downtown Daytona Beach to Sanford during the height of the whole Zimmerman lynch-fest last year.   This private university of less than 3600 students is asking (demanding?) they be allowed to establish their own police force, answerable to the school president rather than the local police chief. Note that they try to cover their real intentions by saying that this is about student safety (an “added layer of protection” from “violent shooters”).  I highlighted a few things and added a few notes:

DAYTONA BEACH — Bethune-Cookman University could have its own independent police force in about five months, an autonomous law enforcement agency that would report to the school’s president — not the city’s police chief.

That’s the hope of top B-CU officials who have been talking to city officials and working on a proposed agreement they would like city commissioners to vote on within the next month.

“As we looked across the country at the number of violent shooters, the Board of Trustees felt we needed an added layer of protection,” said Cheryl Lawson-Young, B-CU’s crime prevention and compliance manager. (more…)

The BACKSTORY HERE. (more…)

Priorities?

Vacations to Aspen Colorado, Golfing with Tiger Woods, but yet he can’t get a budget finished and submitted to Congress?    Federal Law requires the President’s budget be submitted by the first Monday in February.   Consequently, it’ll be the most tardy, and unlawful, submission of Presidential Budget Priorities in the history of Budget Proposals.

We are so broke Obama needs to close the White House, our house, from our visits, yet Vice-Prez Biden can spend $600,000+ on one day limo rides, and now this….

(CNSNews.com) – The National Science Foundation awarded a grant for $876,752 to the University of Iowa to study whether there is any benefit to sex among New Zealand mud snails and whether that explains why any organism has sex. (more…)

Same sex marriage supporters are confindent the federal law defining marriage between a man and a woman will be struck down, (DOMA).   It appears the general sense is that each state will define their own marriage laws and recognition thereof….  Which opens up another whole set of issues regarding “reciprocity”. 

GAY MARRIAGE – Midway through a National Organization protest in front of the US Supreme Court building, punches flew. One, which landed on the face of a marcher, was thrown by gay marriage advocate Sergei Kostin, a former Occupy DC member whom a source in the Washington, DC Metropolitan Police Department described as a ‘professional activist.’

The other was a gut-punch that Kostin told MailOnline provoked him – one that no one else saw. If that punch flew, one observer countered, however, it’s not clear how hard it could have been. (more…)

That noise you hear from the State Dept and White House?….  Yep, it’s the sound of crickets chirping....

Cairo: Egypt’s prosecutor general on Monday ordered the arrest of five prominent political activists accused of inciting violence against President Mohamed Mursi’s Muslim Brotherhood, a step the opposition decried as a reversal for democracy.

The move seemed certain to deepen mistrust in an already polarised political landscape, further complicating Mursi’s efforts to build bridges with his opponents before parliamentary polls the opposition has threatened to boycott.

Those ordered arrested included Ahmed Douma and Alaa Abd El-Fattah, a leading blogger who became a symbol of the uprising that overthrew President Hosni Mubarak in 2011. Also ordered arrested were Karim al-Shaer, Hazem Abdel Azeem and Ahmed al-Sahafi. (more…)