(And I also posted here.)
According to CNN, the man arrested in connection with the failed car-bomb attack in Times Square, Faisal Shahzad, “will appear in a Manhattan federal courtroom Tuesday to face formal charges in the case.” While Attorney General Eric Holder did not address the question in his statement to the press last night, this would seem to indicate that Shahzad has been read his Miranda rights and given a lawyer.I realize that Marc Thiessen has been wrong on so many topics that it’s barely worth bothering to count any more, but the problem is that his ridiculous misinformation is being regurgitated all over the wingnutosphere and our corporate media.
Just four months after its disastrous handling of the Christmas Day bomber in Detroit, is the Obama administration repeating its mistakes all over again? One would think that the administration would have learned its lesson and held off on reflexively reading this terrorist his Miranda rights.
As Media Matters tells us here, this gives Thiessen and many, many others the opportunity to retell the fabrication that Christmas would-be “junk” bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was “Mirandized” before he provided actionable intelligence, a patently false assertion. In addition, Media Matters tells us that Bushco “Mirandized” would-be shoe bomber Richard Reid, and nobody had a complaint at the time.
As noted here, though (third bullet), and here (third item), this isn’t the first time that Thiessen has “brought on the stupid,” and I’m quite sure it won’t be the last.
Instead, Christie has decided to appoint product liability lawyer Anne Patterson; Blue Jersey tells us here of three decisions in which Patterson has represented corporate interests (Oh, and did I mention that Patterson has contributed about $23,680 to the Republican Party, as noted here? Not illegal I know, but it doesn’t pass the proverbial smell test either, people).
Blue Jersey has a few posts on this story that I would recommend; silly for me to try and paraphrase their great work on this story when you can just go to their blog and read for yourself.
There have been rumblings from the Obama Administration regarding efforts to create "Guaranteed Retirement Accounts" and impose new government mandates which would undermine 401(k) retirement savings plans and jeopardize employers’ willingness to continue offering them to their workers.I hate to put a crease or two in Bachmann’s tin-foil hat with the reality point of view here, but somehow I think this is more of what the Obama White House had in mind (here, from last September)…
Human Events reports that Vice President Biden mentioned this idea in February as part of the White House's "Annual Report on the Middle Class." They also report that "in conjunction with the report’s release, the Obama administration jointly issued through the Departments of Labor and Treasury a 'Request for Information' regarding the 'annuitization' of 401(k) plans through 'Lifetime Income Options' in the form of a notice to the public of proposed issuance of rules and regulations."
President Barack Obama announced a series of policy changes Saturday aimed at making it easier for Americans to save money for retirement.Also (from here)…
Among the changes are expanded access to 401k plans, small tax policy changes and a pledge to let workers convert vacation days into retirement savings.
The president framed the new policies as a response to the recession.
"I’ve heard from so many who’ve had to put off retirement, or come out of retirement, to make ends meet," Obama said in his weekly address.
But the president also suggested that the recession should be a wake-up call to structurally change the American economy.
I also think we need a whole new tier of retirement income, both for those people who have to rely solely on Social Security, and for those people who have 401(k) plans," (Alicia) Munnell (the director of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College) says.And as Wikipedia tells us here…
She thinks it should be government-mandated savings, but she says it would likely need to be managed by the private sector to be politically palatable.
"Her critique is absolutely right," says John Bogle, who founded the Vanguard Group, one of the nation's largest mutual fund companies.
Bogle says the government would have to set the structure of any new program and ensure that the fees charged by fund managers are reasonable. Retirement money managers should have a fiduciary responsibility and a legal requirement to act in the investor's best interests, he says, adding that this is something in short supply today. Bogle also says that it shouldn't be easy to withdraw funds from retirement savings.
In 1978, Congress amended the Internal Revenue Code by adding section 401(k), whereby employees are not taxed on income they choose to receive as deferred compensation rather than direct compensation.[4] The law went into effect on January 1, 1980…[4]So basically, if it weren’t for the “government,” 401(k) plans wouldn’t even exist! And John Bogle has forgotten more about retirement funds than Bachmann will ever know.
Besides, given this story of Bachmann’s office costs going up while she does less and less and misses more votes, I don’t think she has the right to preach to anyone about efficient use of taxpayer dollars.
WASHINGTON — The Justice Department has decided not to file charges against Alphonso R. Jackson, the former secretary of housing and urban development in the Bush administration, over allegations that he improperly steered federal contracts to friends, his lawyers said Monday.Yes, I know the fact that charges won’t be filed is supposed to be a presumption of innocence. However, I will never buy that concerning Jackson.
Mr. Jackson’s lawyers said that Peter Koski, a lawyer at the Justice Department’s public integrity unit, informed them late last week that it was closing its investigation into Mr. Jackson, who resigned under pressure in 2008.
“We presume that after a full, fair and comprehensive investigation that spanned over a three-year period, they came to the conclusion that their allegations were without support,” said one of the lawyers, Steve Cousins.
As noted here, he intervened in Philadelphia on behalf of his friend Kenny Gamble and Gamble’s company, Universal Community Homes. It seems that Gamble wanted the funds to develop 19 full-market-rate homes during what was then a housing boom, even though UCH had only built 80 of the 236 contracted homes. PHA director Carl Greene turned down Gamble’s request for $2 million to develop the 19 homes, so Gamble went to his pal ‘Zo Jackson; I’m sure you can guess what happened next.
Also, Jackson allowed a housing project in Katrina-ravaged New Orleans to be executed by his Hilton Head, S.C. golf buddy (and the Times tells us today that Jackson professed to apologize for stating in a public speech about how he killed government contracts if the owners of the companies in question didn’t support President Bush...uh huh)
And as georgia10 of The Daily Kos told us here, “HUD employee Richard W. Mallory was fired by Jackson for trying to expose the misuse of $1.8 million of federal funds by the San Francisco Housing Authority (in 2002).” And by the way, Mallory replaced another whistleblower on the job.
As I read this, I got a sinking feeling that, like NSA spying and torture by our prior regime, this is just another example of the Obama administration not wanting to look backward for reasons of political expediency.
And attorney General Holder once said this country was “a nation of cowards” for not confronting racism (here)?
Cowardice comes in all kinds of shapes and forms, Mr. Attorney General. And I believe yours is vividly on display at this very moment.
No comments:
Post a Comment