This could be seen as hypocritical, because here are four ‘old white men’ holding up funding to a program that serves a predominately minority constituency of CHILDREN, while these same four ‘old white men’ are NOT PUSHING FOR REFORM on the hundred million dollar bonuses of their ‘old white men’ Wall Street buddies.
Chuck Grassley, R-IA, Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla, Jon Kyl R-AZ and John Cornyn, R-TX have joined together to block further federal funding of Boys & Girls Clubs of America.
Roxanne Spillett, president and CEO of the Boys & Girls Clubs of America, received a total compensation of $988,591 in 2008, according to the charity’s tax filings. She got a base salary of $360,774, a bonus of $150,000 and other compensation of $83,152, for a total of $593,926. She also received $385,500 in deferred compensation, most of which went to a retirement plan, and $9,165 in nontaxable benefits.
the chief executive of a charity that has been closing local clubs for lack of funding was compensated nearly $1 million in 2008. They also questioned why in the same year officials spent $4.3 million on travel, $1.6 million on conferences, conventions and meetings, and $544,000 in lobbying fees.
Hmmm, excessive travel and conference expenses, conventions and meetings and LOBBYING FEES? Sounds like the typical life of a POLITICIAN. What these men do not tell you is how many officials were included in that $4.3 million travel spending, whether the $1.6 million spent on conferences were to put on one conference or fifty, and why in all fairness a childrens’ organization NEEDS to spend $544,000 to LOBBY for funding…
Locations in all 50 states, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands and on U.S. military bases around the world
More than 50,000 trained professional staff
Boys and Girls Clubs of America have helped millions of kids across America, including R&B singer, Usher.
From academic failure and gang violence to poverty, drugs and obesity, America’s youth face a daunting array of problems – with serious consequences and fewer safety nets at home and in the community. According to a 2007 BGCA alumni survey conducted by Harris Interactive, 57 percent of alumni reported, “The Club saved my life,” while another 28 percent credited Boys & Girls Clubs with keeping them in school.
“Growing up in the Club, I had the chance to experience a lot of positive things; it helped reinforce the values I learned at home including good character, leadership and giving back to my community, my country and my world,” said Usher. “It’s where I developed my love of singing and performing, received help with my homework, and it’s where I found a safe place to go after school.”
So how do we begin to have constructive change, when the complainers do exactly what they’re trying to stop?
And why do our kids need lobbyists to fight for money that is channeled to Big Banks whose CEOs’ crazy annual incomes are NEVER LIMITED?
How can Americans ask our young men and women to indiscriminately kill a shadowy enemy and then return to their ordered Coca-Cola lives Stateside? “It’s even worse for our troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan,” Hanks says. “At least the Pacific-war soldiers coming back from World War II decompressed on ships for weeks. And then once the troops arrived portside, it was often a long train ride home to Peoria. Today these guys in Afghanistan fight in bloody hell and are flown back in 18 hours. How can they cope with that? How can they suddenly go from Tora Bora to Peyton Place?” Even the legendary Audie Murphy, the most decorated soldier in World War II, suffered posttraumatic stress disorder after his return from the European theater. During one meltdown, a deranged Murphy held his wife hostage at gunpoint.
Recently, an angry Ft. Stewart soldier, Spc. Marc A. Hall, wrote a rap song about his rage at having been ’stop lossed’, forced again and again to re-enlist into dangerous war zones even though his contracted time in service had expired. In the song, he describes revenge and vengeful acts on his Commanding Officers for betraying him and forcing him back into combat.
It turns out that writing about your rage, or your sorrow, or fear, or brokenness actually helps you PROCESS the unthinkable things you might have seen or done in wartime. Author Maxine Hong Kingston has a writers group for US soldiers that has been helpful in their re-entry into their home environments. An anthology, Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace was published with these writings.
Drugs and addiction account for a significant percentage of veterans’ crimes: nearly half of vets in federal prison, for example, are locked up on drug charges. Fully 61% of veteran prisoners are dependent on or abuse alcohol or drugs. Meanwhile, cases of post-traumatic stress disorder — many left untreated — only compound the problem.
The Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America organization’s tagline is ‘For America’s Newest Generation of Veterans and the People Who Support Them’. They offer a hand to help veterans re-acclimate to their families and their jobs and their lives.
We need to UN-BOOT CAMP our brave men and women in the Military, especially if the Military will not do so.
Just one question: didn’t the GOP just have 8 years?
Newsweek’s title is: IF THE REPUBLICANS WERE IN CHARGE… Well they got voted out of the majority, and the Presidency. So countering Obama’s agenda might seem like its their job as the opposition party, but its not. When GWB was President, Dems were told to be patriotic and follow their President, which many did. They followed him into a trillion dollar war, trillion dollar deficit and a housing implosion and lobbyist/insurer/banking explosion.
So why, one year in to a Democratic Presidency, are we wondering what the Republicans would do if they were in charge?
We see it every day, the detritus, the lost jobs, the massively increased credit card charges, the $500 million bonuses to bankers who destroyed the world (yes, Goldman Sachs, people still blame you).
Newsweek shows its death knell: NEWS and WEEK are supposed to be going together, not guesstimating what the 8 year veterans have up their sleeve. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see the obstructionism, the lack of reform in the financial arena and the refusal to provide Americans with reasonable health care reform.
If you’re part of the white privilege world, you might not notice something strange about this photo, the cover of Vanity Fair extolling HOLLYWOOD! 2010.
They’re all white! And SUPER SKINNY. Utterly lacking in diversity. They do not represent Hollywood’s future. But Vanity Fair thinks they do!
Hmmm, patrician looks? That’s code for ‘white’. ‘Button nose’? That’s what most plastic surgeries are trying to create, also code for ‘white’. ‘Ivory-soap’? Its a white bar of soap.
Totally lacking creativity, Vanity Fair has missed out on these lovely young women:
Zoe Saldana, from both blockbusters AVATAR and STAR TREK,
and they forgot Gabourey Sidibe from PRECIOUS,
and they forgot Freida Pinto from SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE.
Seriously, he entered a Senator’s office to ‘alter’ her phones to prove that she was refusing to take calls contrary to her opinion on health care reform… He got caught dressed like a telephone repairman. One of his accomplices had a listening device. He tweeted about his case, and there’s a possible gag order. He’s up against SERIOUS Criminal Charges. At 25, he was released to LIVE WITH HIS PARENTS, which many feel is laughable, as in ‘hahaha the 25 year old boy has to live with his parents’. Then he was interviewed as an activist on FOX News. That’s ‘white’ justice. Not true justice. Did FOX interview beaten-on WTO protestors, or people stealing food in New Orleans after the levees broke and the US Government didn’t respond with food?
Now he’s on FOX News saying ‘This was all a HUGE misunderstanding’. He says its investigative journalism. Yeah right, just like David Letterman’s extortionist is saying he was simply asking for a ’silence payment’ similar to that paid to Tiger Wood’s ho’s… We live in a world of murky interpretation of ethics and these ‘Jedi mind wipes’ provided by FOX News, ‘this wasn’t a felony trespassing, this was conservative activism’ are now considered a legal defense.
Do the crime?
Do the time, buddy.
But let’s watch what justice prevails for him, the white boy ‘conservative filmmaker’ who dressed like THIS
thinking he was a Pimp. Pimp? He looks like a drunken FRAT BOY thinking he’s all that. He’s so lucky he found ‘easy to dupe’ employees at ACORN, where he said he was bringing in underage prostitutes and wanted business advice.
He’s arrogant, has an unhealthy sense of entitlement and his own righteousness. That’s not criminal, but it is annoying. It is, however, criminal to trespass onto a Federal Building, a Senator’s office space, have listening devices and tamper with phones.
Let’s see if he does any hard time. Then let’s compare that to non-white, lesser known, low-income sentencing for similar crimes committed by less media-savvy perps, minus the felony wiretapping charges that he thinks he’ll squiggle out of. He’s the poster boy of ‘anti-corruption’ for the right wing pundits now. I bet this boy gets off, and his real brethren, other criminals, do hard time.
Looking at the cover of today’s online Huffington Post, one could wonder just how ‘asleep’ Americans really are. Is there no one in charge who can connect the dots and shout from the rooftops how unfair our systems are towards working American Taxpayers? The oligarchy continues to siphon off huge profits from the top, walk away from debts they don’t wish to pay and pay themselves billions in bonuses for their hubris.
Meanwhile, you live within your means, juggle your credit debt, try to keep your home and go to work today so these a**holes can languish in the sun somewhere.
and finally, the piece de resistance,
and this is NOT dated December 2009 or January 2010 but February 1st, 2010…
Yep, they’re gonna pay out $100 Million to the guy who bet AGAINST YOUR FINANCIAL SAFETY.
The U.S. Supreme Court just lifted restrictions on election donations from CORPORATIONS, labor unions, etc. Corporations? They already own the House and the Senate. When was the last time you saw something positive for the American Taxpayer actually pass out of those halls?
We still have high Unemployment? Check
There are still massive Foreclosures nationwide? Check
Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs Profits hit $4.8 BILLION,
Bank of America (capitalist when it comes to profits, socialist when it comes to not taking its lumps) lowered his credit to close to his outstanding balance and raised his interest rate, right when he asked for an increase in his credit.
His argument?
Bank of America has taken billions in taxpayer money, is still paying itself and its people billions in bonuses, AND in turn is screwing its customers with increased interest rates and lowered credit limits.
Here’s a thought:
Banks have destroyed the economy,
Banks have further harmed the economy by taking billions of bailout dollars
taxpayers suffer from the resulting economic slowdown,
banks re-offend by harming customers, jacking up interest rates and fees
If we were talking about a physically violent bully, we’d throw the bum in jail and lock him up for a very long time, ensuring no return to society and no recidivism.
Instead, banks make money coming and going and no one (but the occasional brave person like Pavone) dares to stop it.
The good thing is he’s willing to brawl with Goliath. The bad thing is it takes a special background like a law degree, to be able to fight off Goliath’s abuses. Most customers suffer deep loss in their credit scores, higher interest rates and no borrowability to get them thru the bad economic times.
Hope he takes B of A to court and prevails. The mighty can fall, you know… The tobacco industry used to be protected from lawsuits and now they are fair game. Lets hope banks become vulnerable to self-defense attacks by their customers.
“Any healthy system needs a way to correct error and remove waste. Nature has extinction, the economy has loss, bankruptcy, liquidation. Interfering in this process lengthens feedback loops. Error and waste are allowed to accumulate, and you ultimately get a massive collapse.
Capitalism is primarily attacked by two groups: utopians who wish to impose a more “compassionate” system, and political capitalists who want to enjoy the fruits of success without bearing the pain of failure. They use the coercion of the state to gain privileges, at the expense of everyone else.
As a country we’ve become less tolerant of economic failure. The result has been a series of interventions, such as meddling in the credit markets, promoting homeownership and creating a variety of safety nets for investors. Each crisis leads to an even greater crisis. The solution is always greater doses of intervention. So the system becomes increasingly unstable. The interventionists never see the bust coming, then blame it on “capitalism.”
-Kevin Duffy, Bearing Asset Management. (highlights are SchizoAmerica’s)
A $290 billion increase in the federal debt ceiling narrowly cleared Congress on Thursday, giving Treasury just enough leeway to pay the government’s bills into February and setting the stage for a showdown over fiscal policy early next year.
Senate Republicans insisted that 60 votes be required for passage and then held back their own members in order to force as many Democrats as possible to walk the plank on what has never been a popular or easily explained decision back home.
The same issue returns with a vengeance Jan. 20th when senators will be asked to vote on a still larger, long-term debt increase within days of President Barack Obama’s new budget and State of the Union address.
Treasury’s daily statements this week indicate it is still about $65 billion under its current $12.1 trillion ceiling, and conservatives argued that special measures could be invoked still to avert default over New Year’s. But with Congress leaving for the holidays, Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) said that failure to act would have been “catastrophic” for the U.S. internationally. And Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) said that payments to Social Security recipients were also at risk.
“The bottom line is we have no choice,” Baucus told his colleagues. “We have to approve it.”
So 2010 begins, much farther down the rabbit hole…
