At least I will NEVER lie to you, readers! If I buy a paper, I will TELL YOU I bought a paper! It must have been garbage, too, because I only got five items from them.
"State legislators will grapple with budgets in '09; Demands rise amid bleak economy" by Shannon McCaffrey and Julie Carr Smyth, Associated Press | January 1, 2009
ATLANTA - Worsening budget shortfalls will prompt many state lawmakers to ask a basic question when they return to work this month: What must government provide its citizens?
In all but a handful of states, that list is already growing shorter, resulting in fewer health benefits for the poor, the closure of parks and recreation centers, and more inmates being crammed into ever-more crowded prisons.
Demand is simultaneously on the rise for Medicaid, food stamps, and unemployment benefits even as the delivery of these and other services is complicated by recent layoffs or furloughs for tens of thousands of state employees.
Yup, the state employees getting laid off just when you need them! Pffft!
In addition to deep spending cuts, legislators are enacting or considering higher fees for public colleges, new tariffs on everything from soda to strippers, and other measures intended to offset shrinking revenues from sales, real estate, and income taxes....
That is there answer to everything: MORE TAXES!
Hey, we CAN'T PAY the ones NOW, so WTF?
In California, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration yesterday issued its latest plan to close the state's $41.6 billion budget deficit, calling the state's declining fiscal health "a major crisis." '
This the same asshole that recalled the former governor for such problems?
Go take a fucking walk, Arnie!
State finance officials say California will run out of money sometime in February and will have to start issuing IOUs to employees and contractors - and to taxpayers in line for refunds. The proposal calls for $14.3 billion in tax increases and other new revenue and $17.4 billion in spending cuts over the next 18 months. It also relies on borrowing and a plan the Legislature approved in early 2008 to sell bonds keyed to the future value of the state lottery.
In New York, which has projected $15.4 billion in deficits over two years, increased fees on sugary soda and Internet downloads are among the 88 new or increased charges Governor David Paterson has proposed. Paterson also has proposed slashing aid to schools and cutting the state work force by more than 3,000 jobs....
Well, Who TF is promoting the soda? How about TAXING THEM instead?
I know, I know, shit rolls downhill.... glad I never drink soda. I hate the stuff!
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Those dependent on services facing cutbacks are expressing feelings ranging from vulnerability to anger. Activists in South Carolina, where steep healthcare cuts already are being made, fear lawmakers will cut a $1 million HIV prevention program that pays for 39 church-based education initiatives.
"I know the state has to cut, and we're in a tough time, but . . . in 10 years, we're stuck with a problem that's unbelievable if they put that particular dilemma on the back burner," said the Rev. Thurmond Bowens Jr., whose 650-member Trinity Baptist in Columbia runs one of the programs.
In Washington, Governor Chris Gregoire wants to shrink a $5.7 billion budget gap projected for the next two fiscal years. Among the cuts Gregoire wants to make is $20 million in state funding for programs that provide part-time care to those with Alzheimer's and other chronic health conditions.
"I am astounded, just astounded that Governor Gregoire would eliminate it . . . these are the most vulnerable, the elderly, the ill," said 61-year-old Richard Lundgren, who used such a center outside Seattle twice a week for his wife who has Alzheimer's.
I'm not. Whether DemocraP or RepuGlican, they both seek to chop people off while maintaining taxpayer giveaways to corporations.
In Georgia, Taiye Oladipo, a senior at the University of Georgia, is scrambling to come up with an additional $100 spring semester fee tacked on by the Board of Regents to help with that state's budget shortfall. Officials are unsure whether the fee will continue, but that's no help for students such as Oladipo.
But we got TRILLIONS upon TRILLIONS for WAR LOOTERS and BANKS!!!!
"The danger of DNA: It isn't foolproof forensics" by Maura Dolan and Jason Felch, Los Angeles Times | January 1, 2009
LOS ANGELES - In 2004, a New Jersey prosecutor announced that DNA had solved the mystery of who killed Jane Durrua, an eighth-grader who was raped, beaten, and strangled 36 years earlier.
"Through DNA, we put a face to the killer of Jane Durrua, and that face belongs to Jerry Bellamy," prosecutor John Kaye said. The killer, however, turned out to be someone else. Two years after Bellamy's arrest, investigators discovered that evidence from the murder scene had been contaminated by DNA from Bellamy, whose genetic sample was being tested at the same lab in an unrelated case. He was freed. Another man ultimately was arrested.
What, in AmeriKa's crime labs? Your kidding?
DNA has proved itself by far the most effective and reliable forensic science. Over the past two decades, it has solved crimes once thought unsolvable, brought elusive murderers and rapists to justice years after their misdeeds, and exonerated innocent people. In courtrooms and in the popular imagination, it often is seen as unassailable.
But as the United States rushes to take advantage of DNA's powers, it is becoming clear that genetic sleuthing has significant limitations.... [Nevertheless] in the United States, authorities are plunging ahead with a dramatic databank expansion.
Yup, PLUNGING AHEAD anyway with the tyranny!!!
A California law passed in 2004 will permit authorities, starting this month, to store DNA from anyone arrested on suspicion of felonies and serious misdemeanors, even if they are not ultimately convicted.
Sig Heil!
California's database is expected to swell by about 300,000 DNA profiles next year, bringing the total to 1.4 million. The FBI's national database, which contains 6.4 million profiles, is projected to add about 1.3 million annually from federal arrestees and illegal immigrants alone.
When the California law, Proposition 69, passed, it widely was believed that the innocent had nothing to fear, said William Thompson, a criminology professor at the University of California, Irvine, who is considered the leading US authority on DNA laboratory error.
They ALWAYS say that and it is NEVER TRUE!!! As soon as they get the law through (like "terror" and the Patriot Act) it morphs into an ALL-ENCOMPASSING WEB for whatever government wants!
Now, he said, "when you look at all the errors that have come to light around the world . . . it really raises concerns about how many people you want to have in a database."
I say DO AWAY with them!
Same with this contemptible creature:
"Days winding down at Bush ranch; Texas home helped bolster political image" by Nelson Hernandez, Washington Post | January 1, 2009
CRAWFORD, Texas - The sun is setting on this rural corner of President Bush's empire....
Oh, is that the AmeriKan MSM LAUGHING and FARTING in your face or what, Amurkns?
It was here, set against a desiccated landscape and wide-open skies reminiscent of a frontier novel, where the CIA warned Bush of Al Qaeda's intentions in a memo titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US." Here the president made the decision to go to war against Iraq and learned about Hurricane Katrina drowning New Orleans. Here he made nice with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, kissed Saudi leader Abdullah, and married off his daughter Jenna. Here he refused to meet with Cindy Sheehan, who demanded to speak with him about the death of her son in Iraq....
Bush.... told reporters in 2001.... "It'll be the house where I live in for the rest of my life. I like my own home, and I don't mind the heat."
Well, when you come from hell I suppose you wouldn't!
Whether or not the property was bought for political reasons, there is little doubt that Bush enjoyed visiting. He is on his 77th trip to the ranch, and if he leaves today, as planned, he will have spent 490 of his 2,922 days in office there, said Mark Knoller of CBS News, an unofficial record-keeper of the president's travels.
David Greenberg, a historian at Rutgers University, suggested that the ranch offered Bush a place of stability in changing times, similar to Calvin Coolidge returning to his family homestead in Plymouth Notch, Vt., in the tumultuous 1920s.... But Bush will not spend the rest of his life there, contrary to the plans he laid out in 2001. He and his wife, Laura, will move to Dallas after he leaves office....
Hey, he is leaving office as he came in: LYING!!!
NEW YORK - .... Madoff's personal wealth is said to be substantial. He had mansions in the Hamptons in New York and in Palm Beach, Fla., a penthouse in Manhattan, and a handful of luxury yachts. His firm operated proprietary stock-trading desks in New York and London that were supposedly investing the family's vast fortune....
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Oh, and about that OVERSIGHT on the BAILOUT?
WASHINGTON - Government officials overseeing a $700 billion bailout have acknowledged difficulties tracking the money and assessing the program's effectiveness.
After those pukes in Congress said it had oversight, it had safeguards, etc, etc.
And wait until you see WHO is OVERSEEING the FUNDS!!!!
The information was contained in a document, released yesterday, of a Dec. 10 meeting of the Financial Stability Oversight Board. The panel, headed by Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, includes Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Securities and Exchange Commission chief Christopher Cox.
Oh, so the THIEVES of Wall Street and government are the ones TRACKING the MONEY? Congress just WRITES CHECKS, folks!! That's ALL THEY DO!!!!
While offering no details, the document also mentioned that officials at that meeting discussed "potential methods" of using the bailout program to help curb home foreclosures and ease problems in the housing market.
Yeah, NOW they are starting to TALK -- and that's all it is, TALK -- about HELPING YOU, 'murkn!!!!! But they had to get that bailout right through to save mortgages!!!!
More broadly, the officials discussed "the difficulty of isolating the effects" of the bailout program "given the variety of policy actions taken by the US government to support financial stability and promote economic growth."
FUCK YOU and your EXCUSES!!!
The reason they can't track the money is because THEY NEVER PLANNED TO!!
This was a LOOTING of the U.S. Treasury folks, just before this economy shits out and leaves the U.S. bankrupt!
The officials also noted the "difficulties associated with monitoring the use of specific funds" provided to individual financial institutions, according to the document. The bailout program, created Oct. 3, is designed to break through a debilitating credit clog and spur financial markets to operate more normally again....
I'm tired of repetitive horseshit coming out of the rectal canal the MSM calls its mouth.
Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren, chairwoman of a congressional oversight panel, has said she didn't understand why it's taken so long for the Bush administration to explain its plan.
Well, when you are planning on STEALING LOOT you don't come out and say, "hey, we gonna steal some loot here!"
You come up with a FRIGHTENING, WORLD-ENDING SCENARIO and SCARE the populace into doing what they didn't want done anyway!
The five-member panel has criticized Treasury for not saying exactly what problems they're trying to fix or how the investments will fix them.
I thought there were safe guards, etc.... sigh
Separately, Treasury said it will decide on a case-by-case basis whether other companies connected to the automotive industry should be provided emergency aid from the bailout pool....
So when does Paulson get the SECOND HALF of the $700 billion, readers?
Or has he already got it and the MSM just isn't telling us?
If they do, rest assured, it will be in a sentence in the middle of an article.
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