Here’s a possible example of corruption in one of our nation’s police departments. The city of Oak Hill, Florida, has eliminated its entire police department last night.

The police chief and some other officers were accused of illegal and other weird behavior while on police duty. The city council was so mad that they just eliminated the entire police department. That’s corruption.

The mayor had called a special session Monday night, and started off by bashing the police chief and terminating her contract. The board, in a public meeting with citizens in the room, talked about it more and decided to dump the entire department. The citizens were shocked as officers handed in their guns and equipment.

Officer Manny Perez says that the past year working at the police department had been awful. “One of the first things they tell you is this is a thankless job and today that really hits home.”

He was accused by town citizens of stealing gas earlier this year, and he was suspended from the police department. An eventual investigation found no evidence of illegal activity. He was back on patrol last month.

Both sides admitted there’s been trouble brewing between city hall and the police department for many years now.

Just last week, the mayor says somebody planted pot plants in her yard. The police chief climbed a ladder and took a picture of it over the fence, which angered the mayor.

It was investigated and it was determined the plants were not the mayor’s. It seems like everything in this town has to be “investigated.”

The Volusia County Sheriff’s Office will handle all calls in Oak Hill, and the mayor says it will cost the same amount to have the sheriff’s office cover the area 24-7 as it does to have a city police department.

That shows that there is corruption all around our country. Even the area’s finest are getting into the corruption. This also shows that jobs are being lost, and this corruption is causing more onto the unemployment line.

(Credit to My Fox Orlando for the info.)

The Mississippi primary is tomorrow. The primaries will be held for all statewide elected offices (excluding Senators), the state legislature, and other offices, with the most prominent being the gubernatorial primary to replace term-limited governor Haley Barbour (R), who pondered running for president earlier in the year, but, eventually decided against it.

The candidates for the Republican nomination are:

James Broadwater

Lieutentant Governor Phil Bryant

Businessman Dave Dennis (tea-party backed)

Pearl River Supervisor Hudson Holliday

Ron Williams

Look up their campaign websites to support one of them, and all of the other Republican candidates for statewide office, the state legislature, and other offices around Mississippi. Go to thegreenpapers.com or politics1.com as they have great candidate lists and links to each candidate’s website.

BTW-The gubernatorial nominee for the Democrats has no chance in this increasingly Republican state. The likely Democratic nominee is Hattiesburg Mayor Johnny DuPree, although Bill Luckett is a credible challenger.

(Credit to TheGreenPapers and Politics1 for their candidate list.)

A former aide to former House speaker Newt Gingrich, a candidate for the 2012 Republican nomination, has come out and said that most of Newt’s followers on Twitter are fake.

Gingrich likes to gloat about the fact that he has over 1.3 million followers on Twitter, which is more than Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Mitt Romney, and Ron Paul.

Well, now, information has been leaked by the staffer that 90% of his Twitter followers may be fake.

The former staffer from Gingrich’s campaign has told the website Gawker that Gingrich hires companies which “procure Twitter followers for people who are shallow/insecure/unpopular enough to pay for them.”

“About 80 percent of those accounts are inactive or are dummy accounts created by various ‘follow agencies.’ Another 10 percent are real people who are part of a network of folks who follow others back and are paying for followers themselves,” the former aide added. “The remaining 10 percent may, in fact, be real, sentient people who happen to like Newt Gingrich.”

Gingrich even mentioned the size of his Twitter following during a meeting with the editorial board of the Marietta Daily Journal in Marietta, Georgia on Sunday. He also complained about the media coverage of his campaign.

“I have six times as many Twitter followers as all the other candidates combined, but it didn’t count because if it counted I’d still be a candidate; since I can’t be a candidate that can’t count,” Gingrich said on Sunday.

Gingrich’s former aide said it is clear just by looking at the list of followers that Gingrich has on Twitter that many are fake as they “have odd usernames and no profile photos, which has to do with the fact that they were mass generated.”

If this is true, I wouldn’t be surprised. The media has already been giving Gingrich’s campaign bad press since the beginning, and this just shows that it is time to drop out and returning to trying to help get Republicans get elected around the country. If the aide is right, Gingrich would really be hurting.

(Credit to Newsmax for the info.)

Our Secret Service has been known to be the toughest group of agents in the world; protecting our leaders at every moment of the day.

Now, the Secret Service does more than protect our nation’s leaders; they pay our own Vice President rent.

Joe Biden has collected more than $13,000 from the agency which protects him and his family. Since April, he has collected the rent for use of a rental cottage near the waterfront home he owns in a suburb of Wilmington, Delaware. The Secret Service recently moved into the cottage after the previous owner moved out.

Biden isn’t listed as vice president in federal purchasing documents, though. He is listed as a “vendor.” He is eligible to receive up to $66,000 by the time the government contract for the cottage expires in the fall of 2013.

Edwin Donovan, the agent in charge at the Secret Service’s Office of Government and Public Affairs in Washington, says the agency pays $2,200 in rent per month. It is the same amount a previous tenant had paid before moving out. Why does the Secret Service have to pay Biden for it? Biden will figure out a way to get money out of anyone, even the people that protect his life.

He says the close location provides a level of security for the Biden family. When asked if the Secret Service pays rent to the people it protects, he said, “It’s a rental property so we pay rent there.”

“He should be afforded every single protection available to him and his family, as should every vice president and president,” said Leslie Paige, who is the spokeswoman for the Washington-based Citizens Against Government Waste.  I believe the rent is government waste!

“But this arrangement seems bizarre to me,” she added. “You’d think the vice president, who shepherded the deficit committee, would think twice about charging the Secret Service rent. Why would he need the money? I don’t get it.”

The VP’s mother lived in the cottage until January of last year, when she died. Biden then asked the Secret Service if they wanted to rent out the cottage. They declined, and Biden had a private tenant move into the cottage and pay rent. I wonder if the VP had his own mother pay rent to him. That would be greed.

When the tenant moved out in April, the SS approached Biden and wanted to rent it out. Now they do.

Last year, the Bidens listed $11,000 in rental income, according to their tax returns.  There is no rental income listed in their 2009 tax returns.

The first purchase order to Biden, which was for $2,200, was signed April 1. The second, which was for $11,000, was signed June 2. The records both list Biden as the vendor under a section of the purchase order called “contractor information.” The purchase order says Biden is a sole proprietor with no employees and no annual revenue.

As the vendor on a fixed-price contract, Biden is technically now a federal contractor. Our VP is a contractor…..

Biden has been outspoken in calling for greater accountability in federal contracts. When Biden and President Obama started the “Campaign to Cut Waste” last month, Biden said, “The President and I are committed to changing the way government works and we are stepping up the hunt for misspent dollars.” Well, apparently, Biden’s not living up to his own words and views.

Though the overall rental contract for Biden has a total value of up to $66,000, the agreement was approved through more simplified receiving procedures that do not require bidding, as Biden and Obama both wanted to end abuse of no-bid contracting and now require all federal contract orders over $25,000 to have competitive bidding.

“To an outside observer who pays the taxes that help fund protective services, this might seem like an odd arrangement, but apparently there’s some law or administrative procedure that facilitates it,” said Pete Sepp, the vice president of the National Taxpayers Union in Alexandria, which monitors federal spending. Apparently, he monitored this federal spending well.

Mr. Sepp also had an idea on what Biden could do with the rent money he collects: “Every elected official can do the same thing average Americans can, which is to write a check to the Bureau of the Public Debt to bring down the national debt.” That’s something he could do.

I have a proposal: freeze all federal employee salaries for one year and give the money to bring down the national debt.

Good job, Mr. Biden. You have given government transparency a new name: government contracting that needs to be discovered by the people.

(Credit to the Washington Times for the great info.)

The stimulus has failed its country one again, showing that it was just a waste of money that didn’t help our country get out of the recession and just added more to the national debt.

Central Falls, Rhode Island has filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy, which is rare. It is one of many cities and towns around the country facing a financial collapse after the recession.

The bankruptcy filing is a risky and potentially costly move that may take the city out of the U.S. municipal bond market.

It is the smallest city in the Rhode Island. It made the filing as it has an $80 million unfunded pension and retiree health benefit liability that’s almost quadruple its annual budget of $17 million.

The city of just 19,000 people is located six miles from the state capital of Providence. Residents were surprised at the bankruptcy.

“I’d be curious as to who’s going to take it over. Someone has to, but no one wants to,” said Dan Mercure, an auto parts store worker. “It’s going to hurt business, it’s all mom and pop stores here.”

Central Falls has $21 million of outstanding debt, Moody’s said. It has been under state control since July of last year.

State officials have worked hard to avoid a municipal bankruptcy filing, saying that it may “upset” Rhode Island’s other municipalities.

“The current situation is dire and it necessitates decisive steps to put the city back on a path to solid financial footing and future prosperity,” Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chafee said in a statement.

Wall Street analyst Meredith Whitney predicted mass municipal defaults late last year, but, that prediction has not come yet.

The Central Falls bankruptcy filing is not the start of a “huge nation-wide trend”, said Adam Stern. He is a vice president at Boston-based Breckinridge Capital Advisors, a municipal bond investment firm.

“A bankruptcy filing is sort of an endgame over years and years of economic distress, so it’s not something your typical U.S. town or city is likely to experience anytime soon,” he said.

According to James Spiotto, a municipal bankruptcy expert at the law firm Chapman and Cutler, there have been 624 Chapter 9 bankruptcy filings since 1937, including five last year.

Alabama’s Jefferson County is currently trying to fix the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history. It comes from its $3.2 billion sewer bond crisis.

Pennsylvania’s capital, Harrisburg, which has about $300 million incinerator debt, is also considering bankruptcy. Harrisburg’s bankruptcy would really show that our nation is in trouble, as it is a large city.

Those cases have leaded some people to obtain a pessimistic view on future municipal bankruptcies in the United States.

The case at hand in Central Falls, Rhode Island is another example of the stimulus package being just money wasted and more money to add to our national debt.

The stimulus’ failure, the bankruptcy of Central Falls and Jefferson County, Alabama, and the potential bankruptcy of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, a large city, shows that this nation may still be far from getting out of this recession.

(Credit to Reuters for the info.)

Just to show more evidence of how the bailout plan didn’t work and how it just added more money to the federal deficit, banks in Indiana, Virginia, and South Carolina have closed there doors.

Integra Banks in Indiana had its doors closed on Friday by federal regulators. Integra is the first bank in Indiana to fail this year and it is the first FDIC-insured bank to fail in Indiana since 2009, when Irwin Union Bank and Trust Company, of Columbus, was taken into receivership.

Carol Rice came to her Integra Bank on Sunday only to find that she’s now a customer of Old National Bank.

“No concerns,” said Rice after she stopped at her ATM on Sunday morning. “I just trust them. I don’t know why but I do.”

I wouldn’t trust them because you never know what they may do with your old accounts at your old bank. What if Old National fails? That’s another bank failure, and another example of the stimulus failure.

Integra Bank received $83.6 million in taxpayer funds in February 2009 under the government’s bailout program, Treasury Department data shows. The data also shows that those funds haven’t been repaid.

What a surprise! That money hasn’t been repaid to the government. The government expected that all of the bailout money would be repaid back to the government and the banks would be bailed out.

Well, that isn’t the case, as 61 banks have now closed its doors this year alone, with hundreds more closing in the past two years. That shows that the bailout plan failed, the government was wrong in its thinking, and money was wasted.

According to a statement from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), it reached a purchase and assumption agreement with Old National Bank, a part of Old National Bancorp. The agreement states that Old National will pay the FDIC a 1 percent premium that allows them to take all $2.2 billion in assets and $1.9 billion in deposits. The FDIC and Old National Bank will share Integra’s losses.

Integra Bank’s 52 branches, spread across Southern Indiana, Southern Illinois and Western Kentucky, were scheduled to reopen during their normal hours as Old National Bank branches to Integra’s locations.

Integra was lucky Old National was there to fall back on and purchase it. The FDIC was able to get Old National, another bank in Intregra’s area (both are based in Evansville), to purchase it and assume all of its assets.

The FDIC estimates that this (Integra’s failure) will cost the Deposit Insurance Fund $170.7 million. Compared to other possible alternatives, the statement said that the acquistion was the least costly resolution.

Integra Banks is the third largest bank to fail this year, behind the First Community Bank of New Mexico, and Superior Bank of Alabama.

BankMeridean NA of Columbia, South Carolina, and Virginia Business Bank of Richmond, Virginia also failed and had there doors closed Friday by federall regulators.

BankMeridian had about $239.8 million in assets and $215.5 million in deposits with three branches as of March 31 of this year. SCBT Financial Corp.’s banking subsidiary, SCBT NA of Orangeburg, S.C., agreed to a purchase and assumption deal with the FDIC to take over BankMeridian. SCBT entered into a loss-share transaction on $179 million on BankMeridian’s assets and agreed to take all of its deposits. BankMeridean is the third bank in South Carolina to fail this year.

The one branch of Virginia Business Bank had about $95.8 million in assets and $85 million in deposits. Xenith Bank, also based in Richmond, took all of the deposits and agreed to buy all of its assets. The cost to the FDIC would be $17.3 million.

The FDIC estimated that the cost of the three failures to the Deposit Insurance Fund will be $253.4 million.

Those three banks were lucky to have three other banks to purchase them. The FDIC was a good negotiator in this process, and got in on the deals, but, I don’t really know why there is a need for the federal government to intervene in deals like these. These should be private deals to take over another bank, not the federal government purchasing the bank and be the mediator in everything.

(Credit to the Wall Street Journal, WISH TV 8, TheStreet.com, and the Princeton Daily Clarion for the info)

The Little League World Series is a prestigious event where kids 11-13 get to play baseball, and get to live their dreams of being on national television. Now, The Department of State is ruining one of those team’s dreams.

A team from Uganda would have been the first African team to ever compete in the Little League World Series, but, now, the US Department of State has denied visas for them, preventing them from entering the country.

The Department of State has denied to comment why they made this decision, but, they did say that the team’s documentation “contained discrepancies.” Contained discrepancies my butt. Are they racist? They deny to comment why they did this and give some stupid excuse.

They denied these kids the chance to live their dreams and play for something, but, now, they can’t. They live in a poor country, and by getting into the LLWS, they would have made their country proud. The DoS has denied their chance at glory.

“It is unfortunate, as we were very much looking forward to welcoming the first African team to the Little League Baseball World Series,” league president Stephen Keener said. “However, we have worked very closely with our State Department in recent years, and we very much appreciate their diligence in this matter.”

Little League VP Patrick Wilson said the State Department cited privacy issues in declining to reveal more details.

“We knew their documents were under review … but it’s been a couple days of back and forth.” That was before the decision was confirmed Friday, Wilson told The Associated Press in an interview by phone. He said the decision was considered final (which is stupid-they can’t reverse a decision like this in more than half a month?).

The Rev. John Foundation Little League team from Kampala won the Africa and Middle East region tournament, which was played in Poland on July 16, where they beat the Arabian American Little League, from Saudi Arabia, team 6-4. The Saudi Arabia squad was mostly made up of US citizens’ children who lived overseas.

The Ugandan team is rather new, playing in their first tournament in 2008. It’s sad to see the Department of State deny them.

(Credit to the USA Today for the info.)

It was the first time an Africa team has made it this far.

While most of the other presidential candidates are campaigning around Iowa in advance of the Ames Straw Poll, former Utah Governor and former US Ambassador to China under President Obama Jon Huntsman, Jr. is campaigning around the battleground state of New Hampshire.

Huntsman said stated that he will probably not compete in the Iowa caucuses, which may be a bad move for his campaign as all states matter and it isn’t out of the question that he can receive delegate votes at the caucuses.

He has hired more than 20 staff members, who are all paid, and will open several offices around New Hampshire this summer. He will be in New Hampshire all of next week, with eight planned events around the state.

He will tour FIRST, which is a science and technology youth mentoring program, along with founder and the inventor of the Segway Dean Kamen.

Huntsman will be attending many house parties, including one at the home of former New Hampshire GOP Chairman Fergus Cullen. He will also be attending many Republican committee events.

He will also be meeting with two Chamber of Commerce groups and be touring an electronics manufacturing company that was also visited by Tim Pawlenty in May.

Huntsman will have New Hampshire to himself next week as candidates like Rick Santorum, Michele Bachmann, and Pawlenty will be campaigning in Iowa because of the Ames Straw Poll, which is coming up.

Huntsman was also in New Hampshire this week to speak at Dartmouth College, talking about the US-China relationship.

I believe that this campaign move by Huntsman this week will introduce himself to more voters there and since he will be the only candidate campaigning in the small state, he will be able to probably pick up more support for his campaign.  

(Credit to the Boston Globe for the info)

More stupidity coming out of the Newt Gingrich presidential campaign today: he was asked to hold up a Newt 2012 t-shirt to the cameras at a press availability event at his campaign headquarters in Atlanta today, and got owned by an ABC producer.

“We asked for t-shirts to be sent to us and they were made in America,” the ABC producer said. “I just picked up that one and it’s made in El Salvador.”

“It was a big thing when we talked to your campaign people about how you wanted things to be made in America, do you have plans to change things?” the producer asked.

Here’s Newt’s very “smart” response: “I’ll have to ask the folks who ordered this,” Gingrich responded. “I don’t order it and I don’t do it.”

His campaign spokeswoman, Michelle Selesky, said “that it was a rush order made by some volunteers,” and that the prints on the t-shirts were done in Atlanta. Still, it doesn’t matter if you printed it in Atlanta; the t-shirt itself was made in El Salvador.

Newt always talks about not oursourcing jobs and making everything in America, but, here, another gaffe in his campaign comes along, and comes in the form of El Salvador.

“One of the challenges with a volunteer campaign is lots of volunteers do lots of different things,” Gingrich said.

Yeah, I know volunteers do lots of different things. But, shouldn’t volunteers know what your views are? They could have been smart enough to know his views, and quickly order the t-shirts from somewhere closer here in America. That’s smart.

He later changed the subject to avoid more criticism from the harsh media (I’m betting most were lefties). Newt couldn’t avoid the uncovering by the ABC producer. You gotta feel bad for Newt. He’s the candidate getting bashed out there big time, and is the candidate failing in his campaign. I think he should drop out.

(Credit to CNN for the info)

Do you think Newt should drop out? All comments are welcome.

Former New York Governor George Pataki is mulling a presidential run, and is a few weeks from deciding on whether or not to run for the presidency. He has visited the early primary states of Iowa and New Hampshire, and he himself has said he is considering a run.

He will visit New Hampshire on Thursday to have a discussion with leaders from around the area at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College to talk about the debt ceiling, the debt limit, and the debt crisis.

Pataki will also meet with former New Hampshire Governor John Sununu, who is also the former NH GOP Chairman. This will be Pataki’s third visit to the early primary state in the past two months.

Last week, he was in Iowa talking with local activists, legislators, and businessmen. He also delivered a lecture on the debt ceiling. He has talked about how having a balanced budget will help us avoid a debt crisis, and also to cut spending rather than raise taxes.

Pataki has convinced some people he will run, including Vicki Stodgill of Iowa. She says he sounds like he will run, and will likely enter after the Iowa Straw Poll, when it is likely that a couple of candidates will withdraw from the race basedon their results in the straw poll.

Pataki has stated in the past that there is a hole in the field because Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels decided not to enter the race, and that he is a candidate who can fill that hole. I believe that Pataki will try for a longshot bid at the presidency.

Pataki served three terms as Governor of New York from 1995-2006, and currently is the chairman of the group No American Debt, which is a group that raises awareness of our nation’s debt. Pataki is a moderate, but, not as moderate as Giuliani, and he could fill Daniels’ hole that he left by not entering the field.

Pataki initially considered a run back in April, and in May, decided not to run. When Daniels announced his decision not to run, Pataki decided to re-consider entering the field, like Texas Governor Rick Perry. Pataki may provide some interesting insight if he enters the race. The debt crisis will be an important issue during the campaign, and he may be the top candidate voters may look for when it comes to fixing the nation’s debt, since he runs this group.

(Credit to Newsmax, The Boston Globe, and Missouri News Horizon for the imfo.)

Do you think Pataki will run? All comments are welcome.