Showing posts with label Barack Obama. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Barack Obama. Show all posts
The D.C. offices of Vivek Kundra, President Barack Obama’s pick to be the White House’s first-ever chief information officer, were searched by FBI agents Thursday, reports the Associated Press.The raid led to the arrest of a city government employee and another man. According to an agency spokeswoman, the FBI searched the offices as part of an ongoing investigation.
Kundra recently left his position as D.C.’s chief technology officer to take the position at the White House. A spokeswoman for D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty would only say that an investigation is in progress, but would not elaborate on its nature.
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama, sounding weary of criticism over federal earmarks, defended Congress' pet projects Wednesday as he signed an "imperfect" $410 billion measure with thousands of examples. But he said the spending does need tighter restraint and listed guidelines to do it. Obama, accused of hypocrisy by Republicans for embracing billions of dollars of earmarks in the legislation, said they can be useful and noted that he has promised to curb, not eliminate them.On another potentially controversial matter, the president also issued a "signing statement" with the bill, saying several of its provisions raised constitutional concerns and would be taken merely as suggestions. He has criticized President George W. Bush for often using such statements to claim the right to ignore portions of new laws, and on Monday he said his administration wouldn't follow those issued by Bush unless authorized by the new attorney general.
White House officials have accused Bush of using the statements to get around Congress in pursuing anti-terror tactics.
Obama signed the bill in private, unlike a number of recent signings that took place with fanfare, but he raised the issue of earmarks in public remarks playing down their scope and possible harm in the measure. They comprise about 1 percent of the spending package, which will keep the government running through September, he told reporters.
"Done right, earmarks have given legislators the opportunity to direct federal money to worthy projects that benefit people in their districts. And that's why I've opposed their outright elimination," he said.
Still, the president acknowledged the storm of criticism from watchdog groups, talk show hosts and many Republican lawmakers — including some who have obtained earmarks — who call them wasteful and politically motivated. They are special provisions earmarking money in spending bills for specific projects.
Obama, too, has criticized them as overused and subject to abuse.
Proposing new safeguards, he asked Congress to require that any earmark for a for-profit company be subject to competitive bids. He also said he would work with Congress to eliminate earmarks or other specific items in spending bills that he believes serve no legitimate purpose. But he did not specify how.
Critics were unmoved. Obama "naively asked earmark addicts to police themselves," said Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C. Lawmakers "trumpet their pork on their Web sites," he said, "and nobody believes we will have public hearings on pet projects."
Presidents can ask Congress to rescind various spending items. But the authority has little bite because lawmakers tend to ignore requests to undo their work.
Sen. John McCain, Obama's GOP opponent in last year's election, wants to require Congress to vote on a president's rescission requests. Obama is open to such a change, spokesman Robert Gibbs said, but has not proposed it.
"It doesn't do anybody any good to send up a rescissions package," Gibbs said, if it "becomes a piece of paper in somebody's file drawer."
Congress has wrestled for years with how to regulate earmarks, the targeted spending items for construction projects, weapons systems, research grants and thousands of other programs sought by Senate and House members. Voters tend to disdain earmarks in the abstract, but they often embrace the money and jobs that earmarks produce close to home. Many lawmakers base their re-election bids on the goodies they steer to constituents, and efforts to eliminate earmarks have repeatedly met strong resistance in both parties.
Nearly all earmarks serve some public purpose, even the so-called "bridge to nowhere" in Alaska. But abuses have included tying earmarks to kickbacks, including those that sent former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, R-Calif., to prison in 2006.
Congress tightened regulations after that, including requirements that requests for earmark be made public and subject to scrutiny. The number has decreased since then, but they still totaled 7,991, costing $5.5 billion, in the "omnibus" spending bill Obama signed Wednesday.
The president called the bill imperfect and recommended further earmark changes "to ensure that the budget process inspires trust and confidence instead of cynicism."
For a time, President Bill Clinton enjoyed line-item veto power, which allowed him to strike specific projects, including earmarks, from massive spending bills. But the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional in 1998. Since then, presidents have had to accept or veto entire spending bills, often packed with thousands of items, some of them earmarks.
Congress' Democratic leaders issued statements Wednesday praising Obama's remarks and defending earmarks in general. The House Appropriations Committee announced said it would submit every future earmark to the appropriate executive branch agency for a review.
But a statement issued by the committee's chairman, David Obey, D-Wis., hinted at irritation with the public's focus. "With all of the hyperventilating over the 1 percent of the omnibus appropriations bill that is made up of earmarks," he said, "Washington has mostly glossed over the important results it has achieved with the other 99 percent of the bill."
But a statement issued by the committee's chairman, David Obey, D-Wis., hinted at irritation with the public's focus. "With all of the hyperventilating over the 1 percent of the omnibus appropriations bill that is made up of earmarks," he said, "Washington has mostly glossed over the important results it has achieved with the other 99 percent of the bill."
It was unclear how Congress might prevent earmarks from being directed to specific for-profit companies. House Appropriations staffers said the process will be changed to prevent "sole-sourcing" of contracts through earmarks and to require an open bidding process instead.
Obama's signing statement said he wouldn't be bound by provisions of the bill in five areas. They involved negotiations with foreign governments, limits on using U.S. troops in U.N. missions, protections for government whistleblowers, a congressional claim of authority over the spending of money already approved by Congress and congressional demands that the administration submit budget requests in certain forms.
Source: Yahoo Associated Press writers Andrew Taylor and Jennifer Loven contributed to this report.
President Obama ain’t f*kin around ya'll:In one area — Iraq — President Barack Obama has found the bipartisanship that has eluded him so far with his economic plan and domestic agenda. Obama muted his critics and found support among congressional Democrats and Republicans over the timetable for troop withdrawal that he announced last week.
The president committed to pull out nearly all combat troops by August 2010. He listened to the recommendations of the military and then roughly split the difference between what the generals requested and what he promised during the campaign.
Obama not only wants to get the troops out of Iraq, he needs to in order to meet two other commitments: lowering the federal deficit and transferring 17,000 more troops to Afghanistan. In six years at war, America has spent more than $700 billion in Iraq. It costs nearly $400,000 per year to keep each soldier there. But the president doesn’t want to be accused of blowing the gains made since the surge in troops that President George W. Bush ordered and, more significantly, the successful counter-insurgency strategy of Gen. David Petraeus.
Most of the 142,000 troops there now will leave between December and August 2010. Up to 50,000 personnel will remain, as trainers, advisers and combat troops doing anti-terrorist work — an unclear mission.
Finally with an end in sight, Washington can work on diverting the gajillions of tax payers dollars to serve the actual tax payers for a change.
Police arrested an Ethiopian man for allegedly sending HIV-tainted blood to President Barack Obama before his inauguration, reports CNN.Saad Bedrie Hussein, who is HIV positive and has a history of mental health issues, told authorities that he admired Obama and that he sent the letter, which included his picture, a ticket to Obama’s party in Chicago’s Grant Park and six index cards with red stains, to see if he could secure tickets to the inauguration.
In an affidavit by a U.S. Postal Inspection Service investigator, the man admitted that he “purposely cut one of his fingers with a razor so he could bleed on the letter.”
The letter was written in an Ethiopian language and was postmarked Dec. 27. It was sent to Obama at the Illinois Department of Aging and was opened a couple of days later by an employee, who also found an orange powder in the note. Tests later determined that the powder was a drink mix.
While Hussein told investigators that he didn’t send any other letters, the state’s Department of Revenue told the investigator about two similar letters, one addressed to the Illinois Department on Aging, the other to “Emanuel,” presumably Obama’s chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, reports the news service.
The complaint filed against Hussein accuses him of “knowingly” mailing the infected letters “with the intent to kill or injure another.” A federal judge ordered that Hussein undergo a mental evaluation in January. “There is reasonable cause to believe [Hussein] may … be suffering from a mental disease or defect rendering him mentally incompetent [and] unable to understand the nature and consequences of the proceedings against him.”
This isn’t the suspect’s first run-in with the law. He was arrested in 2006 for setting a fire in the middle of a Chicago street and yelling, “Allah is great” in Arabic while flailing a Quran.
Racist jokes are still in style with some white folks:Los Alamitos Mayor Dean Grose has stepped down as Mayor of Los Alamitos, CA after sending out this fake photo of watermelons on President Barack Obama’s White House front lawn. Grose’s email included the heading, “No Easter Egg hunt this year.”
“I think he’s saying that since there’s a black president, there will be no need to hunt for eggs since they’re growing watermelons in the front yard this year,” said Keyanus Price, an African American who was among those receiving the email. Price told Fletcher that she considers the email rascist and offensive.
“What I’m concerned about is how can this person send an e-mail out like this and think it is OK?” Price said. “He’s putting the city into a bad place and he is a liability.”
Grose apologized to Price, city council members and others.
“It was just poor judgment on my part and I am deeply sorry,” he said.
SMH. Well, we know who he voted for. Although a move in the right direction, Barack Obama as President won’t automatically kill the racism and ignorance that’s embedded in America.
