Former Maryland lieutenant governor Michael Steele, with the Republican National Committee's Linda Ackerman, was elected RNC chairman Jan. 30. (By Pablo Martinez Monsivais -- Associated Press)
Steele’s Campaign Spending Questioned
Agents Contact Sister After Ex-Aide’s Claims
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 7, 2009; Page A01
Michael S. Steele, the newly elected chairman of the Republican National Committee, arranged for his 2006 Senate campaign to pay a defunct company run by his sister for services that were never performed, his finance chairman from that campaign has told federal prosecutors.
Federal agents in recent days contacted Steele’s sister, a spokesman for Steele said yesterday.
The claim about the payment, one of several allegations by Alan B. Fabian, is outlined in a confidential court document. Fabian offered the information last March as he was seeking leniency for himself during plea negotiations on unrelated fraud charges. It is unclear how extensively his claims have been pursued. Prosecutors gave him no credit for cooperation when he was sentenced in October.
A FINANCIAL REVOLUTION PART III
A Modern day “Boston Tea Party”, Americans all over America are mad as hell and are not going to take our government’s bad policies and radical decision making anymore.
Here is the American publics’ response to government bailouts; stimulus packages and the putting us back to work to spend—and the continuous urgings of us, to keep Wall Street alive. Code names: credit crunch, stimulus, TARP bailouts, un-freeze credit markets, consumer relief funds, tax credits…
The wizards of Government and Wall Street, through their greed and corrupt practices, have given us the people very few options: risk destitution, foreclosure and bankruptcy or save. We’ve chosen to save. To save, save, save ourselves. This is what the internet is all about! Put eleven million (some citizens are no longer receiving unemployment or never have and are), unemployed, pissed off people with computers ready to work so stand back!
1. Is this outrage coming from the orchestrated collapse of the world economy? The old must be removed in favor of a new world order, which has its foundation squarely built upon Banking. No doubt banks receive cash bailouts, not tax credits.
2. Our government and lawmakers have dickered and dawdled us all off a cliff; we are now trying desperately to resist the realization that there is no ground beneath us.
3. The government is responsible for the root cause of this mess. It drove up consumerism and promoted the financial industry—and distorted mortgage risk on a national scale. Private corporations simply DO NOT work for public good. They look for maximum profits at any costs. These same government-corporate partnerships subverted our republic and brought us TARP the biggest give-the-rich a party legislation in history. It was Wall Street companies who conceived an economy built on debt, along, with public policy and enlisted an army of felons, tax evaders, liars, cheaters, imposters, extortionist, and smooth talkers. With the economy slaughtered they lobbied government into cooperation, to act as mortgage brokers making them complicit in passing the bad debt onto taxpayers.
4. Partisan posturing created this self-fulfilling prophecy. Delivering a hard blow to citizen confidence and survival. And, Wall Street just shrugged of the jobless numbers. “Despite the growing numbers of U. S. jobless citizens. Continuing on strongly with all three major exchanges up more than 1.5 percent”, after, hearing the worst jobless report in 34 years.
5. Republicans and Democrats putting a gaping hole below the appropriations water line for political gains, regardless, of the consequences to the country. Record homeless, record home foreclosures and record bankruptcies; Congress fiddles while Rome burns.
6. You cannot run on change and honest government, then propose government control, unionization of business, hire tax cheats, ignore government errors and complicity, and have employers and citizens follow you off the cliff.
7. When are the poor and middle class people of this country going to hit the streets in indignation over what is going on in congress and start fighting for what is in OUR best interest?
8. It’s time for citizen action! Don’t buy anything except essentials.
9. Congress refuses to acknowledge that the people of the country need a bailout. They are content to overlook the people “for bankers”. Of course, Banks and financial companies get saved, immediately, allowing for endless down sizing, endless job reductions, complete lack of core full employment – full utilization of productive minds and a human resource value system.
10. The Golden Goose of the United States, consumerism. Don’t they know? Low paid people don’t buy, they just get by.
11. As small business owners we can say… that there is very little in the current stimulus bill that will help our companies or our employees. Tax cuts are not the answer. Understand this, we are losing money and won’t be paying any taxes.
12. How logically can, we, expect our people in charge to solve our problems?
13. We need another civil war but call it financial warfare this time instead.
14. What good is it for the U.S. to be considered the most powerful nation on the face of the earth if there are millions of its citizens who are hungry, under insured, under employed and under educated?
15. Job losses were once again spread across both manufacturing and services industries. Due to the corporate criminals running this country and our government. Layoffs will continue unabated. Layoffs are an indication of the lack of confidence that businesses and consumers have about the future.
16. 13.9% unemployment, folks. Coming to America? Why are we not outraged at those whose greed and condescension, within and outside of government, continue to bring our economy and our people’s ability to care for themselves to its knees?
17. Wall Street, government and the Banking Institutions are no more different than a Mafia organization that corrupts the minds of fools into believing its giving them security and protection. Like with every mafia organization, its godfather and his family members, take all!
18. This escalating unemployment trend… what sets it apart from the First Great Depression? Corporations will use this time of mass-layoffs to hire overseas low-wage and sweat-shop foreign workers to replace laid-off American workers.
19. The future of automation is 100% unemployment. Our task is to design/develop a society in which the goods and services produced by automation are equitably distributed among the members of elite society.
20. Just because you personally have not lost your job (with fewer each day out there to replace it by design) or your house has not dropped by half its value (while you owe 90%) does not mean that you are not affected or will not be affected by this crisis.
21. Americans, we cannot simply under react.
22. We need decisive and aggressive action to stem the tide of the real estate, and small business collapse. Direct incentives for companies to maintain employment levels. With the Republicans’ screaming for more tax cuts and the Democrats stalling to fund programs of yester-year, I’m afraid it’s time to start the consumer melt down which has been coming for a long time now.
23. We all need a reality check and to treat other American’s as if they are us.
24. There are millions of people who are not construction workers; thus, this bill will not put them back to work. The bill’s provisions for the unemployed are mere tokens compared to the amount being proposed to spend to continue the bailout of banks. Here’s a reason why these banks were in trouble–poor management.
25. Necessity really is the mother of Invention. Those who know the rules…know how to play the game.
26. Dig in people, ignore media and government’s cries—of, we will create jobs and put you all back to work. Translation: So you can keep aiding in feeding the system. You know how it goes…they need you to help, the rich get richer.
27. “fear not, the people may be deluded for a moment but cannot be corrupted”
28. Wake up, folks. It’s the government that’s the problem.
American people while the old way of “storming the fort” was applicable in that day and age to signal revolt, this is modern America’s way, by us staging a “financial revolution”. Not buying into the consumerism that keeps the cycle of abuse going.
We have no representation, no free press, and no recourse of any kind, except, not spending. So, by golly, we are not spending. It’s practice for when we won’t be able to spend anyway, because the government will end up with every last cent that we ever earn anyway and they just give it away freely to Wall Street as bailouts while they make us beg for help.
Congress, American government, consider yourself notified. Americans are no longer “buying” the swampland, of buy, buy, buy, or, consume, consume, consume. It is now save, save, save ourselves. Unless you start mailing out checks directly to the American people to help bail us out, to get us through this depression, expect it to go on for as long as it takes, to bring down the system of the elite. You left us no other recourse. We are no longer going along with the program (stimulus, relief, bailout, TARP or whatever you decide to call the next pacification); you heard it, first, from us…
It’s bound to happen — socialism. The bankers of this country, with the help of the Republican party, have destroyed faith and confidence in the Capitalist system. And money that was supposed to help the banks stay afloat is now safely in the pockets of the bankers. And now Republican lawmakers are fighting any attempts by the Obama administration to save capitalism. Sound familiar? It’s exactly what happened in 1933 when Franklin D. Roosevelt tried to save capitalism from itself. The Republicans obstructed and pocketed millions.
The American people are liable to get so disgusted with the selfish and stupid obstructionist tactics of big business, of the capitalists, and of the Republican party, that they might just insist that we, the people, take over all the banks and all the industries, put people back to work, and appoint our own people to run things without transferring billions of tax dollars to bankers and capitalists.
What’s that called? You guessed it: Socialism.