January 6, 2009
*** Media Advisory for Tomorrow ***
Republican Leaders Announce Bill to Ban Fairness Doctrine

Congressmen Pence and Walden join Senator DeMint in a press conference to highlight the introduction of the Broadcaster Freedom Act on the floor of the U.S. House. The Broadcaster Freedom Act would prevent the Federal Communications Commission from implementing the Fairness Doctrine without an act of Congress.

Participants: Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC)
Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN)
Rep. Greg Walden (R-OR)

Date: Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Time: 12:30pm
Location: Senate Press Gallery, S-316, The Capitol

Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, announced today that it has obtained documents from the office of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich through the Freedom of Information Act related to Blagojevich’s contacts with President-elect Obama and his transition team. The documents include a December 3, 2008, letter from Barack Obama following his December 2, 2008, meeting with Blagojevich as well as a November 17, 2008, letter signed by Presidential Transition Team co-chairs Valerie Jarrett and John Podesta providing Blagojevich with a list of transition team contacts.

The following are excerpts from the letter signed by President-elect Obama on December 3, 2008, less than one week before authorities arrested Blagojevich for attempting to “sell” Obama’s now-vacant Senate seat, among other corruption charges …

“These documents tend to undermine Obama’s claims that he had no contact with Blagojevich and suggest his transition is hiding documents about such contacts,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “Why did President-elect Obama not release this letter? What else is he hiding?”

An Israeli official says Palestinian militants fired on Israeli soldiers from the courtyard of a U.N. school where dozens of people died in fiery explosions.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he said the army is still drafting the country’s official response to the incident.

Palestinian medics said 34 people were killed in an Israeli strike outside a U.N. school in the northern Gaza town of Jebaliya. The United Nations confirmed 30 were killed and 55 injured.

The Israeli official said “hostile fire” was directed at the soldiers from within the school. He said soldiers returned fire and multiple explosions went off, presumably emanating from munitions stored there.

Of course, it wouldn’t be the first incident of terrorists using innocents as human shields. Hamas members were reported to have been dressing up as doctors and nurses in hospitals in order to protect themselves. Michelle also links to this from the 2006 war.

As for today’s incident, here’s what the Israeli embassy has to say:

The staffers said the tenor of the Burris-Reid meeting on Wednesday will depend on Burris’s actions on Tuesday. Some Democrats have become exasperated by Burris’s aggressive approach and repeated references to race…

“If you embarrass someone in public and cause a scene one day, your meeting with that person typically doesn’t go well the next day,” one senior aide said. “How can he expect to be a respected legislator who will get help with his agenda if he’s using threats and lawsuits to force his way into the chamber?”…

Meanwhile, a senior Democratic aide said efforts by [Rep. Bobby] Rush to win support for Burris behind the scenes seem to have met with limited success, as the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) does not appear to be rallying behind Burris. One aide said Rush’s use of racial rhetoric at Burris’s press conference last month hurt the effort more than it helped.

“There is a sense that Rush is largely alone,” the aide said. “He kind of sealed his fate with his incendiary talk.”

Of course, I already mentioned how i found it odd that none of the 3 black candidates that were considered for the seat would be allowed by racist pig Harry Reid. Now the race issue is heating up. Jesse Jackson Junior, who should be very familar with racism, because his father is a racist is starting to about the issue becoming “racialized.”

Nothing’s easy anymore.

While I will always have more than fond memories of my years in public office and was humbled by the outpouring of support I received over the last few weeks, now is not my time to be running for office. To sum it up, in the words of Dr. Stephen Covey, I have decided to put “First Things First”.

I will continue to stay involved in the advocacy of a vibrant, growing Republican Party and with it, 21st Century conservative solutions to the challenges we face.

All the best,

Jeb

Denials all around, but eyebrows still raised:

Gov. Christine Gregoire is out of state, but her office won’t say where she is or what she is doing — other than to say she’s not going to work for President-elect Obama.

Gregoire’s mysterious absence left local political blogs buzzing this afternoon with speculation that she could be in Washington, D.C., preparing to accept a job with the Obama administration.

Gregoire was on a plane to D.C. on Sunday morning. But Marty Brown, Gregoire’s legislative liaison, said the governor’s trip has nothing to do with a job in the new administration.

Speculation about Gregoire’s whereabouts started after her office called The Associated Press on Monday afternoon to cancel her planned speech Tuesday at a pre-legislative session forum sponsored by the news agency.

Some kind of announcement is expected tomorrow. Maybe she’s just playing coy until Obama’s crack staff of vetters finishes shuffling through the paperwork. Or maybe it’s part of a bigger Obama initiative to fork over federal aid to states.

Wishful thinking: Maybe she’s going to recommend that other governors do as she’s doing and consider quicker criminal alien deportations that will make their states safer and save them money in hard economic times.

Orbusmax and Sound Politics are tracking. The Tacoma News-Tribune says it’s related to federal money for Seattle’s Alaskan Way Viaduct and possibly more federal stimulus money:

One of my sources said he couldn’t tell me where Gov. Chris Gregoire is now, but assured me she would still be my governor in March. “She’s not going to take Bill Richardson’s place as Commerce Secretary. So you can kill that story.”

But he wouldn’t tell me anything else. And the governor is supposed to announce “something big” at 10:05 a.m. tomorrow.

Another source speculated that Gregoire has lined up a big chunck of federal money for Seattle’s Alaskan Way Viaduct, and she’s going to announce it Tuesday. (And it would have to be a big chunk because that project keeps getting more and more expensive.)

It could be broader than that. Democratic governors are set to meet again with Obama this week about the stimulus package. Gregoire has been active in pushing for a large boost to state’s with shovel-ready projects but there is no word as to whether she will be part of any meeting.

QVC is traveling to Washington to mark President-elect Barack Obama’s inauguration this month — and is bringing along plenty of coins, stamps, jewelry and even a small handbag to sell.

The retail network has already sold more than 100,000 items related to Obama’s election and sees the inauguration as an opportunity to reach far beyond the group of people regularly interested in political collectibles.

“Frankly, if we were not at the inauguration, we would feel like we were not doing our job,” said Doug Rose, vice president of multichannel programming for the retail giant, which is available in 94 million American homes and had sales totaling $7.4 billion in 2007.

QVC will show portions of the parade and conduct interviews with spectators, then air live on the night of Jan. 20 from the Creative Coalition’s inaugural ball. Host Leah Williams will be decked out in an inaugural gown.

Obama’s inauguration has attracted plenty of interest from TV networks, not only the traditional broadcast and cable news outlets, but specialized venues such as BET and Nickelodeon that don’t normally pay attention to live political events.

“We’re trying to give the audience a flavor of what the event is like, from the event,” Rose said. “We will try to give them a sense of the electricity in the air.”

Among the items QVC has been selling since the election are a Barack Obama stamp collection, with stamps from Liberia, Sierra Leone, Grenada, St. Vincent and The Grenadines ($38.88). One set has an Obama-Biden half dollar coin and a 1939 stamp depicting George Washington taking the first oath of office ($23.75). An Obama throw blanket is marked down from $41 to $36.84.

No word on whether they’ll be selling La Obama Soda or those Obama memorial plates, a version of which I spotted next to the batteries and bubblegum at Walgreen’s the other day.

Banned for life!

“We are just not going to have her on any more, it’s over,” a top network source explains…

“We are just not interested in anyone so highly critical of President-elect Obama, right now,” a TODAY insider reveals. “It’s such a downer. It’s just not the time, and it’s not what our audience wants, either.”

Media Matters pushed them to cancel but there was no nutroots groundswell that I’m aware of. They knew what they were getting when they booked her considering what happened the last time she was on and her tendency to refer to The One in interviews as “B. Hussein Obama.” Scheduling her put them in a spot where they’d either have to go through with it and spoil their new liberal Olber-brand or cave and be ridiculed endlessly for lefty pandering by O’Reilly and Fox. So, er, why’d they do it? And why would someone at the show give a quote that juicy to Drudge knowing what he’d do with it, given that he’s a friend of Coulter’s and dependably promotes her books whenever a new one drops? Anyone else find this strange/stupid, even by NBC’s standards?

Update: Stranger still.

Late today, NBC News denied the story with this statement: “We’ve had Ann Coulter on ‘Today’ many times, but because of the news in Washington and the Middle East, we decided to cancel her appearance tomorrow. Understanding the media as well as she does, we are sure she knows this happens from time to time. We look forward to welcoming her back in the future.”…

The Drudge story says NBC “replaced Coulter with showbiz reporter Perez Hilton,” who also has a book being released tomorrow. NBC tells TVNewser Hilton is just appearing in the fourth hour and had been booked far in advance.

“The news in Washington and the Middle East” is sufficiently dire to leave no time for Coulter but some time for Perez Hilton?

.Via NYT. Damned scary:

President-elect Barack Obama has selected Leon E. Panetta, the former congressman and White House chief of staff, to take over the Central Intelligence Agency, an organization that Mr. Obama criticized during the campaign for using interrogation methods he decried as torture, Democratic officials said Monday.

Mr. Panetta has a reputation in Washington as a competent manager with strong background in budget issues, but has little hands-on intelligence experience. If confirmed by the Senate, he will take control of the agency most directly responsible for hunting senior Al Qaeda leaders around the globe, but one that has been buffeted since the Sept. 11 attacks by leadership changes and morale problems.

Given his background, Mr. Panetta is a somewhat unusual choice to lead the C.I.A., an agency that has been unwelcoming to previous directors perceived as outsiders, such as Stansfield M. Turner and John M. Deutch. But his selection points up the difficulty Mr. Obama had in finding a C.I.A. director with no connection to controversial counterterrorism programs of the Bush era.

Michelle Malkin has a great idea. How about Janet Reno to replace El Pollo Richardson for Commerce Secretary!

CNN’s Susan Roesgen reports that Burris has filed a motion, a “writ of mandamus,” with the Illinois Supreme Court to force the Illinois secretary of state to sign the certificate. There court has not yet issued a ruling on the issue.

Whether it’s Ron Paul Republicans or movement conservatives or moderates, my message to all is one and the same: the RNC is not a policymaking body — nor should it be. It cannot make Republicans in Congress spend less, worthy a goal as that might be. The RNC’s job is to win elections — period. That means the RNC is made up of good political people — not policy wonks — who with all due respect, you wouldn’t want making policy.

All the candidates for RNC Chairman are good conservatives. RNC members should choose the one who will win elections. As I’ve written over the last few days, technology, strategy, and tactics are not the only things — and success in these areas is inextricably linked to having a Republican message “we can believe in.”

Taking a closer look at the ledgers, Chetly at Outside Lansing writes:

The question becomes - what is the real value of the property? We don’t begrudge anyone the right to challenge taxes when the government overvalues a property - but here the union itself has asserted the higher value. As County drain commissioner Lennox pointed out - these taxes fund local roads and education - and as LaborPains calculated, the taxes on the $19 million difference translate to $770,000. That’s a big chunk of money.

Discrepancy in Pension/medical insurance ratios between golf subsidiary and education center.

Here’s where our eyebrows really go up.

The International United Auto Workers is a 501c3, non-profit. Such entities are allowed to organize separate c2 (chapter 2) “title holding companies”. UAW has had a title holding company since 1949, called Union Building Corporation (UBC). In addition to the $33 million in Black Lake property, it has another $90 million in property (see here for the UBC 990 form utilizing Guidestar.com). It is UBC that filed the petition against the township in the Michigan Tax Tribunal. Neither UAW or UBC have filed “unrelated business income tax” (UBIT) forms (990-Ts), but UBC has formed two for-profit subsidiaries (a valid alternative to the 990-T). One is UBG (think G for golf course) and one is UBE (education center). Naturally, if you’re running for-profit business and don’t make a profit, you won’t pay taxes. Both organizations have “carryover” losses now exceeding $25 million, not including the losses on this year’s LM-2s.

Laborpains.org notices that the “biggie” in terms of UBE’s losses is pensions (again, photo from laborpains.org). The two key documents, already published by laborpains.org here and here, contain a clip.

Yes, its clear that pensions are the largest reason for the losses, which laborpains.org suggests (paraphrasing) “isn’t unusual for UAW pensions” which have been in “disarray” even for the larger union itself and with GM and Chrysler, which recently went through a pension buyout among the rank-and-file.

But its not JUST that the pension fund above is the largest part of the UBE losses - that in itself isn’t a surprise. Pensions are a big cost any large business - particularly when they are the old defined-benefit pensions which are not funded on a pay-as-you-go basis.

It’s that the pension fund expenses appear to be really out-of-line with overall wages. So far out of line that you have to wonder exactly who is doing the work to get pension fund contributions. There’s a key piece of context here - the $5.91 million in pension fund contributions compares $3.25 million in wages (above the page not pictured by laborpains.org’s graphic). Normally, you’d expect the wages to be much higher than the pension contribution - 10 times or perhaps as little as 5-6 times. But not the other direction. And of the 3.25 million, 2.6 million is “general labor” - there is no way the room custodians and general labor are getting that gold-plated of a pension deal. The other half million is “administrative” wages - but even the hotel administrators are unlikely to be able to get away with such a self-dealing (unless they are something more than that to the union leadership).

The only explanation in my mind for this kind of pension fund investment is that the pension contributions are for SOMEONE ELSE other than the workers at the hotel. Just who might be receiving the long-term benefit of those contributions? It’s not big enough to pay the pension debt of any serious number of rank-and-file union members - but it is big enough to sauce up a few individual’s or union leadership. Or perhaps the UAW is using multiple vehicles like this one to cover larger pension fund problems.

Will there be cheating?

Who knows, but as the murderously astute Joseph Stalin once remarked, “The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything.”

“I firmly believe that there are streaks, and that political scandals happen in clusters,” Carville said, in a posting on CNN.com.

There are several burgeoning scandals right now in Democratic circles:

* Blagojevich is accused by federal prosecutors of conspiring to sell Barack Hussein Obama Jr.’s former Senate seat to the highest bidder.

* Former low-rated talk show host Al Franken is being accused of stealing an election — with the help of Obama’s ACORN organization — in Minnesota.

* Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.) is alleged to have not paid his taxes.

* Former Rep. Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s White House chief of staff, is accused of shenanigans regarding his property taxes in Chicago.

* Obama himself was alleged in the U.K. press to have had an ongoing affair, which, just like the John Edwards scandal, has not yet been covered by the U.S. media.