the underside of Obama's bus has to be getting crowded.
Daschle
Wright
Pflager
Whitey Grandma
Bill Richardson
Blago
Rezko
Wesley Clark
Samantha Power (she's sort of half under)
Wouldn't you love to see
Panetta on that list???
Panetta, whose nomination to be CIA director will go before the Senate Intelligence Committee Thursday afternoon, last year earned $250,000 on the speaking circuit and another $790,000 in fees from consulting fees and board directorships, according to a disclosure statement he filed with Office of Government Ethics.
In all, Panetta, who developed a reputation as a bipartisan policy and budget expert in government, reported earning more than $1.2 million last year from various private sector activities and investments.
Economic meltdown victims Merrill Lynch paid him $56,000 for a pair of talks one of which came after Bank of America had moved to buy the struggling financial services firm. Wachovia also paid for Panetta talks, as did the defense firm Carlyle Group.
The Pacific Maritime Association paid him $60,000 as governmental adviser, which an Obama aide said was for advice on port security issues, not for lobbying.
Panetta, who reported assets worth between $1.5 million and $3.7 million, served on a hodgepodge of high-powered corporate boards last year, including international energy giant BP Corporation (which paid him $125,000 last year) and public relations behemoth Fleishman Hilliard ($120,000).
He also sat on the boards of two insurance companies: Blue Shield of California, which paid him $93,000 and Zenith National Insurance, which paid $170,000 and in which he owns as much as $350,000 in stock. And he pulled down $11,500 for being a director of Corinthian Colleges, a chain of colleges accused of misleading students.
Sylvia Panettas salary comes from a company called Leon Panetta & Associates, according to the financial disclosure report. Her husband reported receiving consulting fees of $150,000 from the chancellors office at California State University, which houses the institute at the schools Monterey Bay campus.
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"In April 1985
[Leon] Panetta joined with 13 of his leftist congressional colleagues including Ron Dellums, Don Edwards, George Miller, Christopher Dodd, and Les Aspin in sponsoring a 20th anniversary fund-raising gala for the pro-Marxist Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), which had been described by Brian Crozier, director of the London Institute for the Study of Conflict, as the "perfect intellectual front for Soviet activities which would be resisted if they were to originate openly from the KGB." The IPS was originally funded with millions of dollars from the Faberge perfume magnate and Communist Party member Samuel Rubin and his wife."
"Readers who recall the movement to impeach Bill Clinton remember that one of the charges raised by Clinton's critics was the conflict of interest created when individuals connected with the Chinese Overseas Shipping Company (COSCO) such as John Huang, Charles Trie, and James and Mochtar Riady helped funnel contributions to the Clinton reelection campaign. Afterwards, the Clinton administration lobbied for granting COSCO a 10-year lease on the former Long Beach Naval Shipyard in California.
During a March 1997 edition of CNBC's Equal Time program, California Republican State Senator Dick Mountjoy noted that COSCO-linked arms dealer Wang Jun had been granted personal access to President Clinton, and that Wang's business associates had smuggled illegal assault weapons into California for delivery to street gangs by making use of a ship owned and operated by COSCO.
Mountjoy then stated:
The next thing you know, (then-Chief of Staff) Leon Panetta is down here negotiating that port for the Chinese.
There is much more to the COSCO-Long Beach connection than we have room for here, but a good summary of the threat the arrangement made to U.S. security may be found in an item inserted into the Congressional Record by Rep. Gerald B.H. Solomon on May 20, 1997.
Even the most unbiased of observers may legitimately ask: Why on Earth is an individual who helped negotiate the turnover of the Long Beach Naval Shipyard to the communist Chinese, thereby creating the threat to U.S. national security described in the Washington Times article by Rowan Scarborough and inserted into the Congressional Record by Rep. Solomon, being considered for a top position at one of our nation's most critical intelligence agencies?"
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The 2009 IV Peoples Summit in Trinidad and Tobago
On April 17-19, 2009, the IV Peoples Summit will be taking place in Port of Spain, Trinidad (while heads of state are simultaneously meeting at the V Summit of the Americas).The message of a "change agenda" for the hemisphere will be brought to the island nation by social movements coming from all points in between Alaska and Tierra del Fuego. A key focus for discussions during the Peoples Summit will be the economic meltdown hitting the capitalist system, and the opening that this provides for the implementation of a peoples agenda promoting sustainable development, social justice, equity, and peaceful coexistence.[ie, communism/socialism -etl]
In conjunction with the Hemispheric Social Alliance, social movements present in Trinidad and Tobago will be providing a "change agenda" that, in large measure, will likely be echoed by representatives from many of the newly elected governments in Latin America and the Caribbean. The V Summit of the Americas will be an ideal setting for Obama to signal a new respectful and consultative role for the US in the Americas as well. Will Obama avail himself of the opportunity to take this courageous step forward? Ojalá!
(source, IPS)
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All these kids who said Obama wasn't a marxist need to speak up and tell us how wrong we were again.
"Liberalism is communism sold by the drink."
P. J. O'Rourk