Newly appointed White House counsel Bob Bauer is “perfectly positioned to be tasked with erasing the tracks between Obama and ACORN,” one Republican lawmaker charged Friday.

The lawyer’s hiring, announced this morning shortly after Greg Craig officially resigned the post, was also an attempt by the White House to deflect any fallout that may arise from an ACORN investigation currently underway in Louisiana, Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) added in a statement.

“Bob Bauer has a public record of defending Barack Obama’s relationship with ACORN, the congressman told supporters. “Bauer’s hiring appears to be a tactical maneuver to strategically defend the White House exactly one week after Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell raided ACORN’s national headquarters in New Orleans and seized paper records and computer hard drives that may lead to the White House.”

However, the link between Bauer, the president and ACORN’s Louisiana office is long, winding and confusing, at best.

According to King, Bauer — who worked for Obama during his 2008 presidential campaign — was they key player in a politicized fight between the campaign and President George W. Bush’s Justice Department over an investigation of suspected ACORN voting fraud.

While Bauer, for the most part, signaled in a letter he was unconvinced that ACORN had committed any wrongdoing, he compared the investigation itself to the partisan battle over the firing of a number of U.S. attorneys in 2008 because of their political inclinations. Consequently, he asked the Justice Department shortly after to appoint the same special prosecutor who made the attorney determination to look into the ACORN matter.

“With this voter fraud [investigation], we’re seeing an unholy alliance of law enforcement and the ugliest form of partisan politics,” Bauer said in October.

For the rest of the Story and Comments please go here:

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/67695-rep-steve-king-bauer-was-hired-to-erase-tracks-between-obama-acorn

ObamaCare endorsements: What the bribe was

 Dick Morris and Eileen McGann

As the suicidal Democratic congressmen proceed to rubber-stamp the Obama healthcare reform despite the drubbing their party took in the ’09 elections, the president trotted out the endorsements of the AMA and the AARP to stimulate support. But these — and the other endorsements — his package has received are all bought and paid for. Here are the deals:

· The American Medical Association (AMA) was facing a 21 percent cut in physicians’ reimbursements under the current law. Obama promised to kill the cut if they backed his bill. The cuts are the fruit of a law requiring annual 5-6 percent reductions in doctor reimbursements for treating Medicare patients. Bravely, each year Congress has rolled the cuts over, suspending them but not repealing them. So each year, the accumulated cuts threaten doctors. By now, they have risen to 21 percent. With this blackmail leverage, Obama compelled the AMA to support his bill … or else!

· The AARP got a financial windfall in return for its support of the healthcare bill. Over the past decade, the AARP has morphed from an advocacy group to an insurance company (through its subsidiary company). It is one of the main suppliers of Medi-gap insurance, a high-cost, privately purchased coverage that picks up where Medicare leaves off. But President Bush-43 passed the Medicare Advantage program, which offered a subsidized, lower-cost alternative to Medi-gap. Under Medicare Advantage, the elderly get all the extra coverage they need plus coordinated, well-managed care, usually by the same physician. So more than 10 million seniors went with Medicare Advantage, cutting into AARP Medi-gap revenues.

Rahm and Barack the right and left hand of political intimidation

Presto! Obama solved their problem. He eliminates subsidies for Medicare Advantage. The elderly will have to pay more for coverage under Medigap, but the AARP — which supposedly represents them — will make more money. (If this galls you, join the American Seniors Association, the alternative group; contact sbarton@americanseniors.org This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .)

· The drug industry backed ObamaCare and, in return, got a 10-year limit of $80 billion on cuts in prescription drug costs. (A drop in the bucket of their almost $3 trillion projected cost over the next decade.) They also got administration assurances that it will continue to bar lower-cost Canadian drugs from coming into the U.S. All it had to do was put its formidable advertising budget at the disposal of the administration.

· Insurance companies got access to 40 million potential new customers. But when the Senate Finance Committee lowered the fine that would be imposed on those who don’t buy insurance from $3,500 to $1,500, the insurance companies jumped ship and now oppose the bill, albeit for the worst of motives.

The only industry that refused to knuckle under was the medical device makers. They stood for principle and wouldn’t go along with Obama’s blackmail. So the Senate Finance Committee retaliated by imposing a tax on medical devices such as automated wheelchairs, pacemakers, arterial stents, prosthetic limbs, artificial knees and hips and other necessary accoutrements of healthcare.

So these endorsements are not freely given, but bought and paid for by an administration that is intent on passing its program at any cost.

Article taken From:

http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/healthcare/66717-obamacare-endorsements-what-the-bribe-was

Face Forward Comments:

I am an AARP member along with several people that I work with and know.  Except for me none are political and NONE are in favor of the bill.  It was so obvious that money did (or will exchnage hands).

From the American Spectator

For example, as it stands, Obama senior adviser David Axelrod’s firm, AKPD Message and Media, which employs his son, and which owes Axelrod money, is one of the contractors on the Chicago Olympics bid. Senior presidential adviser Valerie Jarrett has been deeply involved in the strategizing for the Olympics bid since before the 2008 election, and until accepting her job in the White House she was a deputy chairwoman of the Chicago Olympics Host Committee. Both have close ties to a number of Chicago 2016 committee members. 

Crain’s Chicago Business reported Monday that Jarrett and Chicago 2016 committee president (and recent chief of staff to Mayor Richard Daley) Lori Healey met with officials of the Department of Housing and Urban Development to discuss financing options for construction of the Olympic Village. According the HUD sources, the Obama Administration will seek to use low-income housing grant funding options to help the city build the Olympic Village, and when the Olympics are over, some portions of the village will be used for low-income rental and purchased residences.

Healey and Jarrett’s relationship goes back years to Healey’s times as a senior staffer on the city’s planning and development department in the 1990s, around the same time that Jarrett would have been running one of the city’s largest low-income housing projects. Healey was also vice chair of the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) Board of Commissioners, which would have overseen Jarrett’s company’s projects.

Another member of the Chicago committee is Martin Nesbitt, who the New York Times last December identified as one of President Obama’s “closest friends,” and whose wife is a close friend to Michelle Obama. Nesbitt, the godfather to one of the Obamas’ daughters, was also the Obama presidential campaign’s treasurer, and is credited with introducing Obama to Penny Pritzker, one of the most influential fundraisers for Democrats in the United States. His ties to Pritzker go back to a time when he worked for Pritzker’s real estate companies, and she later invested in Nesbitt’s airport off-site parking business, the Parking Spot, a company that stands to make millions from the Olympics bid. The Pritzker family, which holds a number of real estate properties in Chicago, also

I guess these people are not close enough to the Obamas to make money from the Olympics

stands to reap tens of millions from a successful Olympics bid. Nesbitt is also the chairman of the board of commissioners of the Chicago Housing Authority.

Nesbitt did not join the board of Chicago 2016 until March 2009, when he replaced … Valerie Jarrett, who resigned from the board to accept her post in the White House.

http://spectator.org/archives/2009/09/29/obamas-olympic-spirit

Face Fwd Comments:

You didn’t really think it was because Obama had the Olympic spirit did you?  Of course not.  It is more dirty Chicago style politics. And now you know why he flew to Denmark.

A bipartisan group of House lawmakers on Wednesday announced an effort that would force Democratic leaders to give members of Congress — and the public — 72 hours to review legislation before a bill is brought to the floor for a vote.

The lawmakers have begun circulating a discharge petition that would force House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to hold a vote on their bill, which has been stuck in committee for months.

GOP lawmakers in particular have hammered Mrs. Pelosi and other Democratic leaders for rushing long, complex bills through the House.

“The American people are angry that Speaker Pelosi didn’t allow the public and their elected representatives to read the trillion-dollar ’stimulus’ bill or the national energy tax before they were rammed through the House,” Minority Leader John Boehner, Ohio Republican, said Wednesday. “Congress can, and must, do better.”

Rushed floor votes on the stimulus bill and the cap-and-trade energy bill — both of which totaled more than 1,000 pages — have fueled calls from the public that lawmakers read bills before voting on them. The House resolution is supported by several public-interest groups, including the Sunlight Foundation, which point out that hasty votes can result in unintended consequences, such as the provision tucked into the stimulus bill that had the effect of authorizing executives of bailed-out insurance giant AIG to receive retroactive bonuses.

For the rest of the story:

http://washingtontimes.com/news/2009/sep/23/house-lawmakers-aim-push-back-against-hasty-votes//print/

Face Fwd Comments:

The sad thing is that they are having to fight for the chance to read the bills they are being asked to vote on and are begging to get bills on the floor to be heard.

Nancy Pelosi is running the House like a dictator. I was giving her the benefit of the doubt, thinking that possibly she was suffering from botox poisoning. However, I have come to realize that she is just plain evil.

I am going to sponsor a drive to get California to secede from the union and then close the border. That would rid of us several political problems, reduce the countries debt and keep the Hollywood nut jobs from interjecting themselves into national politics.