The Respectfully Republican Conversation

moody, thanks for the pics.  it's nice to have a face to go with the name and voice.  i pray that today will give you the answers you need to get olivia on the road to recovery.  stay strong and keep us posted when you can.  love, maria

Folks, everytime the government takes over an industry they will assume power over that segment of our economy.

Sherri - Geesh...this is a tough one... I agree with you, but on the other hand...if they want federal assistance then they have to play by federal rules. jmo And... I wish someone could come up with a better way of dealing with this. 

Yes, you know they want to do this salary capping ... they know they can't bring the poors' income up too much through welfare but they can slash salaries and bring down incomes from the top echelons.  With salaries lowered, there is more room for unions? higher business taxes?  Oh higher taxes? Then we can have more gov't programs. 

The problem is that if you slash the executive at one bank, either the other banks not accepting TARP will lower their salaries or the good executives at TARP banks will go elsewhere leaving that capped salary job for a less qualified individual. 

We see that all the time ... when one company starts changing the wages -- higher or lower -- the other companies follow suit.  Everyone will try to get the job with the highest wage, people migrate to that company.  If the competition wants to keep his good workers, he'll have to pay commensurate wages.  So these TARP bank can expect that any of the executives that are worth their salt will be leaving for greener pastures. And 2nd rate execs will be left to fill their shoes and grab that 500K ..  OR the other banks are jumping up and down with big grins and going to start lowering their salaries --- because where is everyone gonna go?

Kel - good points...so what's the solution? This is all very scary!

Do any of you read The Huffington Report?

The very reason I asked if anyone read it - was because of today's story! lol I soooooooo agree with her too!

Ok, somebody help me ... why would the taxpayers fund over $2billion to weatherize public housing?  At first you would say to me that we will save money in electricity!  No, we won't. They pay their own bills and already discounted rates --- Edison, telephone companies all have low income baseline service.  My mom, a retiree, only has to pay a certain amount because her income is below the required level.

Again, let me ask why?  Does the government own any of these home the people live in?  Really, I don't know.  I know that most are held by individual landlords that receive checks from the gov't.  Section 8 housing ...  So, if these properties are held by private owners, why should tax payers approve a spending bill to improve their property?????  They are supposed to keep up their buildings and not be slum lords.  How about enforcing the already existing laws and make the slumlords clean up their lot! 

Or does the state or city where you guys live own these public housing developments??? 

(((((Moody))))))  Olivia is beautiful - sure hope they can get her feeling better soon.

This is great:

Lawmaker says SEC hindering House's Madoff probe

By MARCY GORDON, AP Business Writer Marcy Gordon, Ap Business Writer - 4 mins ago

WASHINGTON - House lawmakers on Wednesday accused the Securities and Exchange Commission of impeding their probe into the agency's failure to uncover the alleged $50 billion Bernard Madoff fraud.

The clash between lawmakers and high-ranking SEC officials at a House Financial Services subcommittee hearing came after the man who waged a decade-long campaign to alert the regulators to problems in Madoff's operations denounced the agency for its inaction. Whistleblower Harry Markopolos also said he had feared for his physical safety and would turn over new evidence that Madoff had not acted alone.

In loud, angry exchanges, lawmakers threatened to issue subpoenas to SEC officials to compel their testimony in the case.

Pennsylvania Democrat Paul Kanjorski, the panel's chairman, vented frustration after the SEC's acting general counsel said the five officials appearing at the hearing couldn't answer lawmakers' questions about the Madoff case because it's under investigation. The five SEC commissioners voted earlier to assert a privilege in not having officials answer lawmakers' questions.

Kanjorski accused the agency of impeding the panel's investigation, calling it a "lack of cooperation" and an "abuse of authority."

Linda Thomsen, the agency's enforcement director, said the SEC takes the Madoff case very seriously, but asserted there were confidential areas related to the ongoing investigation that could not be publicly discussed.

The SEC officials said the agency is looking at possible changes in the wake of the scandal, including more frequent examinations of investment advisers and improving its process for assessing risk.

Because of the SEC's inaction, "I became fearful for the safety of my family," Markopolos said.

"The SEC is ... captive to the industry it regulates and is afraid" to bring big cases against prominent individuals, Markopolos said. The agency "roars like a lion and bites like a flea" and "is busy protecting the big financial predators from investors."

While the SEC is incompetent, the securities industry's self-policing organization, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, is "very corrupt," Markopolos charged. That organization was headed until December by Mary Schapiro, President Barack Obama's new SEC chief.

Markopolos discovered additional funds that funneled money to Madoff - whose managers he said willfully turned a blind eye to his improprieties because they were paid generous fees. Markopolos said he will present his findings to the SEC's inspector general. If proven, they would substantiate the assertions of many analysts that the alleged fraud was far too large for Madoff to have conducted alone.

In New York, a trustee liquidating Madoff's investment firm told a federal judge Wednesday that nearly $950 million in cash and securities has been recovered for investors. Trustee Irving Picard said $111.4 million in cash had been recovered from financial institutions and about $300 million in securities were identified although it was unclear what they were worth.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Bank of New York Mellon Corp. last week said they would transfer a combined $534.9 million from Madoff's investment firm accounts to Picard. Investors have until July 2 to place their claims.

European investors who feared they lost millions investing with Madoff have a chance to recoup some or all of their money from the banks that marketed the stricken funds, according to lawyers in Europe who are preparing a possible U.S.-style class-action lawsuit.

Back in Washington, the SEC has been sustaining volleys of criticism from lawmakers and investor advocates over its failure to discover Madoff's alleged $50 billion fraud, which could be the biggest Ponzi scheme ever, despite the credible allegations brought to it over years. Against the backdrop of the worst financial crisis since the 1930s, the SEC is being accused of further eroding investor confidence and lawmakers of both parties are calling for a shake-up of the agency.

Madoff, a prominent Wall Street figure, was arrested in December after allegedly confessing to bilking investors in what the authorities say was a giant Ponzi scheme, possibly the largest ever. His repeated warnings to SEC staff that Madoff was running a massive pyramid scheme have cast Markopolos as an unheeded prophet in the scandal.

"The SEC was never capable of catching Mr. Madoff. He could have gone to $100 billion" without being discovered, Markopolos testified. "It took me about five minutes to figure out he was a fraud."

Markopolos, a former securities industry executive and fraud investigator, brought his allegations to the SEC about improprieties in Madoff's business starting in 2000 after determining there was no way Madoff could have been making the consistent returns he claimed using the trading strategy he touted to prospective investors.

Markopolos and his team of four investigators fruitlessly pursued the quest through this decade with agency staff from Boston to New York to Washington, raising 29 specific red flags regarding Madoff's operations. But the SEC never acted.

Now thousands of victims who lost money investing in Madoff's fund, which was separate from his securities brokerage business, have been identified. Among them are ordinary people and Hollywood celebrities - as well as big hedge funds, international banks and charities in the U.S., Europe and Asia. At least one investor apparently was pushed to commit suicide.

Markopolos disclosed that he anonymously conveyed a package of documents on Madoff to former New York attorney general Eliot Spitzer, but noted Spitzer took no action. Spitzer's family trust was among the victims that lost money investing with Madoff.

Markopolos also suggested that senior editors at The Wall Street Journal may have prevented a reporter from pursuing leads he provided because the newspaper "respected and feared" Madoff.

Madoff, who was at one point chairman of the Nasdaq Stock Market and sat on SEC advisory committees, was "one of the most powerful men on Wall Street and in a position to easily end our careers or worse," Markopolos said.

Markopolos recommended ways to revamp the SEC, including replacing its senior staff and establishing a central office to receive complaints from whistleblowers.

In December, Christopher Cox, then the SEC chairman, pinned the blame on the agency's career staff for the failure over a decade to detect what Madoff was doing. He ordered the SEC's inspector general, H. David Kotz, to determine what went wrong. Kotz has expanded his inquiry to examine the operations of the divisions led by Thomsen, who has been the enforcement chief since mid-2005, and Lori Richards, who has headed the inspections division since mid-1995.

Schapiro has said that because Madoff carried out the scheme through his investment business and FINRA was empowered to inspect only the brokerage operation, it wasn't possible for the organization to discover it.

Gee Moody, I got emotional just reading what you said. I can't imagine how tough this is for you. Okay GOP girlfriends, I think prayers can be even stronger if sent en masse. So lets all stop and pray together at the same time tonight for Moody and her family. Let's say at 9:00 pm central time. Moody can join us and know that her sisters are thinking of her at the exact same time.

Can someone write a prayer that we can all recite together at the same time? How about a bible verse Rock?

Don't forget!!!!!!!!

Vivre ... I won't get home til after 6 --- and if you want to make it later, I can post some scriptures that have to do with healing, with sickness and also with comfort ...  Our God is the God of all comfort and they need that as well as being able to claim healing and wellness for Olivia.

As for the Chicago projects: A few years ago da Mayor decided it was time to start to take down the projects and put the people in mixed income housing with some people on public aid, mixed in with others who would pay for their own townhouses. Sounded like a good idea, except no one could figure out how to get people to buy into it. The project was led by Obama's chief cook and bottle washer, Valerie Jarrett and one of the biggest developers was the infamous Tony Rezko. Who else? Well millions of state, federal, and local funds went into this new "project". The work was done by sloppy contractors and a lot was never completed. No one knows where all the money went, but it ran out long before things were completed. Meanwhile, a lot of the people who were displaced from the projects never got new homes(no reports on where they went), and those that were placed into the "finished" homes have had to deal with all kinds of problems. The few people who did invest in townhomes are left holding the bag. Where is the outrage!!! Why is no one pointing fingers as Jarrett for the inept way she managed the whole thing? ( I think her hubby was up to his neck in it too). Most importantly, why the hell didn't the MSM investigate Obama's ties to this woman, who is often credited for being the person most responsible for taking an unknown to the WH. Why can democrats get away with having all these crooks in the family? Why do dems get to have tax cheats in the cabinet? Why do dems get to have sex scandals, and get a little slap on the wrist, and republicans are tarred and feathered. I am so sick of the hypocracy!

WHO!WHO!WHO! $$$$$

vivre - WHO WHO WHO!

I AM REALLY PANICKING - And honestly feel the White House is full of thugs! All it takes is 2 roaches - a male and a female and then there's trouble! We need Orkin!

Valerie is an Iranian born lawyer...OMG - HELP ME! Here's what one source wrote:

Mrs Jarrett has no Washington experience but is regarded as a strong contender for a cabinet post, possibly in charge of housing or transport, or else as a senior White House advisor. Mrs Jarrett, a Chicago property investor, and John Rogers, the founder of Ariel Capital Management, a Chicago-based finance house and a prominent donor to the Obama campaign.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/barackobama/3393132/Valerie-Jarrett-leads-Barack-Obamas-influential-black-advisers.html

Another source:

I will have plenty to blog about in the next four years, because Chicago is invading Washington.

That's not change I can believe in.  

http://marathonpundit.blogspot.com/2008/11/about-valerie-jarretta-member-of-obamas.html  

(DISCLAIMER - If I ever post quotes from "bad" sources - please let me know... so I will know who they are.)

Sorry we keep forgeting to mention you BRO!!

Thinking about the whole Jarrett thing, I wonder how long it will take for the MSM to lose some of their adoration for the ONE and finally start reporting the facts. Here is another one that would be a big deal if it had been about one of Bush's buddies:

LaHood slithering in under governor cover

John Kass

January 23, 2009

As Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich plays the dancing monkey for America's journalists, another Illinois political story is being ignored:

Ray LaHood, the Republican Combine congressman from Peoria, has been smoothly installed as secretary of transportation in the reform administration of President Barack Obama.

In political terms, Blagojevich is a pimple compared with LaHood, who will have billions of federal dollars to dole out in state grants for contracts for roads, bridges, airport modernization-all the sugarplums the guys behind the guys dream about.

One such guy is the indicted Republican boss of Springfield, William Cellini, a wealthy developer and executive director of the Illinois Asphalt Pavement Association. LaHood is a Cellini guy.

John Kass Bio | E-mail | Recent columns

Jay Hansen, vice president of government affairs for the National Asphalt Pavement Association, praised LaHood. But Hansen cooled when we asked if he knew about Cellini.

"Yes, of course," said Hansen. Will LaHood's connections to Cellini be a problem?

"I don't know. No comment," Hansen said.

It is not illegal for LaHood to know Cellini. LaHood hasn't been charged with a thing. People know people, don't they?

"I've known LaHood for years, I didn't have a closer friend than Ray LaHood," oozed Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Big Jim) as he introduced LaHood to the Senate Transportation Committee on Wednesday, bragging that he lobbied Obama for LaHood, just before LaHood was approved.

Though Durbin is quite the speechifier, Cellini doesn't make speeches, which is why he has fascinated me for years. Until Cellini's federal indictment in the Operation Board Games case involving Blagojevich and the bipartisan Illinois Combine, he was hardly ever mentioned in news stories.

Cellini has made hundreds of millions through politics, from state casinos to government subsidized developments, and his sleazy Renaissance Hotel deal in Springfield that cost taxpayers millions. He's often partnered with another top developer with an equally low media profile, Michael Marchese.

What Cellini is to the Republican half of the Combine, Marchese is to the Democrats, nurtured by his greatest ally, Chicago Democratic machine boss Mayor Richard Daley.

Politicians want us to focus on their fancy dancing, on their speeches, but it is their connections that count.

LaHood is something of an enabler, having shoveled millions in congressional earmarks Cellini's way. And Cellini made sure that LaHood had no real opposition. Cellini is the Republican boss of Sangamon County, and those votes, along with LaHood's Peoria County, make up almost half of the Republican ballots in LaHood's district.

Many of the senators on the Transportation Committee were around in 2000 when Sen. Peter Fitzgerald (R-Ill.) held a dramatic filibuster complaining about the LaHood-backed $50 million funneled to build the Abraham Lincoln Library, which is right next to Cellini's white elephant of a hotel and near his other properties.

LaHood, Durbin and Cellini's wife, Julie, are all board members of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission, overseeing the yearlong festivities honoring Lincoln's 200th birthday this year. And on a mural in the Lincoln Library-in a period crowd scene at the end of the Civil War-there's Julie Cellini, as if she'd been there with U.S. Grant.

Fitzgerald fought to prevent Cellini from having influence in construction of the library, which added value to his other holdings. In response, Cellini said Fitzgerald was engaging in "McCarthyism." LaHood said Fitzgerald "more befitted the senator from his high school class, than the senator from Illinois."

It was Sen. Fitzgerald who brought politically independent federal prosecutors to this state. So Cellini and LaHood teamed up with others to run Fitzgerald out of politics, paving the way for Democrat Obama to take Fitzgerald's senate seat.

As Gov. Dead Meat entertains us by dancing on his string, let's remember that real politics isn't about dancing monkeys. Real politics is being able to pick up a phone and talk to those in government who deal out the billions.

If Cellini calls the secretary of transportation, just to chat, you think LaHood will take the call?

jskass@tribune.com

Don't you wonder where they find these projects?  Who would think of weather stripping?  And wouldn't that be a project that would go into other gov't spending?  Money that was already allocated? Who keeps up the buildings in the first place? 

They have to get real.  Make this a stimulus package that creates real jobs.  Handy work that should be in some other bill?  Come on already. 

I keep remembering Pelosi saying she wanted this bill to be on Obama's desk on Jan. 20th for his signature.  Doesn't she ever look the fool today. Money for condoms, Hollywood, weatherstripping, Endowment for the Arts, hardly enough money for infrastructure repair, hardly any business tax relief.  What where they doing in the House?