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Lonsberry "Rides Again"
[Bob's photo above, left; FUBO tee-shirt, right] The brilliant mind of Bob Lonsberry "rides again!!" During a newscast on his Thursday talk show, Bob 'wandered thru' the internet, mental gears a turnin'...... I'll let him tell the story-read it at www.lonsberry.com . The jist of the story is that he's come up with 'FUBO [pronounced: foo-BOW]' We can all guess what that might mean; you of military experience can relate-remember FUBAR?!?! On the lonsberry site one can order t-shirts; on the air, Bob originally came up with those oval stickers one sees on the backs of cars. They're used in Europe to indicate the country of origin of the driver/passengers. I'm orderin' mine; YOU orderin' yers??
Should The "Commie-Libs" Be In Charge?
[**The "title" is mine-NOT OOIDA's** I received this as a part of OOIDA's Daily Enews from Land Line Magazine, 02/19/009]
SPECIAL REPORT: Highway dollars wasted on luxury rentals, dinner parties
Wednesday, Feb. 18, 2009 – Transportation dollars are a precious resource that truckers and other highway users have fought to protect from those who want to siphon it away for other uses.
Calls for oversight and accountability are louder than ever as highway users learned this month that their fuel taxes and other user fees have fattened up engineering and design contracts for luxury rental cars, dinner parties, sporting events and trips to places like Atlantic City.
An oversight report conducted by U.S. Department of Transportation Inspector General Calvin Scovel revealed that of the $4 billion paid to engineering and design firms each year over a seven-year period ending in 2004, approximately $1.4 billion – or 35 percent – was spent on fringe benefits to executives and employees.
Such indirect uses are not authorized under Federal Highway Administration rules.
“That’s what you get when you push the federal oversight out to the states, but you don’t give the states a good understanding of how these firms should be complying with the law,” Mike Joyce, director of legislative affairs for the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, told Land Line.
“When nobody’s looking over your shoulder and the accountability requirements are lax, it’s not surprising we would find excessive expenditures that don’t live up to the requirements.”
Joyce said the oversight report should send a message to everyone in the chain that it’s not OK to use highway funding for any other purpose than to build and maintain highways.
The oversight report contained several examples of indirect uses of highway funding:
$301,667 for 45 automobile leases – including five luxury cars – with no stated business purpose;
$280,609 in executive compensation in excess of a federal cap;
$247,685 for social dinners; dining club memberships; outings to sporting events; theme and holiday parties; and trips to Atlantic City, a city zoo and a country expo fair;
$60,000 paid to a consultant based on verbal agreements only; and
$8,273 for employee Christmas gifts.
Green Bay Packers Have Rochester Connection
The Green Bay Packers, who went 6-10 in the 2008 pro football season, are bringing on Carestream Health Inc. The NFL team has installed a digital imaging system from the Rochester-based health imaging company at Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wis.
The Kodak Directview Classic CR system is intended to allow athletic trainers and physicians to quickly determine the severity of injuries by enabling them to see digital images of x-ray scans.Carestream's computed radiography systems also are in use by the Milwaukee Brewers baseball team and the NFL’s Miami Dolphins.
One democrat "Gets It"
Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.) blasted congressional democrats' handling of the stimulus package last week, calling his own party's rushing of the bill "an abomination."
Cooper, a centrist democrat and member of the Blue Dog coalition, supported the conference version of the stimulus bill after initially voting against the House version, but blasted democrat leaders for rushing the bill through Congress.
“It was an abomination, the procedure that they used to rush it through right before the President's Day recess,” Cooper told engineers gathered at the American Council of Engineering Companies of Tennessee luncheon, according to multiple reports. "I still didn't like the fact that we didn't have enough time to read it and go through it."
Cooper had earned the enmity of liberal bloggers and some House democrat leaders during the debate over the stimulus after saying the Nerobama administration had quietly encouraged him to vote against the House version of the stimulus. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) cooly brushed off questions about Cooper's dissent.
More Census SNAFU
White House political adviser David Axelrod says the Obama administration’s plan to put the U.S. Census Bureau under the control of top administration officials will keep the bureau in expert hands.
Axelrod, appearing on "FOX News Sunday With Chris Wallace," said that, despite the the West Wing's move to manage the bureau, the census would continue to “be in the charge of the professionals who conduct it."
Republicans, who oppose the move on the grounds that it will politicize the 2010 census, say supervision of it by the Democratic Party will taint the results and skew new congressional representative district lines for the 2012 elections.
Last week, U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., weighed in on the move by telling Newsmax TV she and her fellow Commerce Committee members are "terribly disappointed and very concerned" that Obama wants to end the traditional autonomy of the bureau by placing it directly under the control of the White House.
“This is a very dangerous move,” Blackburn said.
Blackburn and her GOP colleagues, including Rep. Jason Chafitz, R-Utah, who calls the move nothing more than a Democratic political grap, fear the takeover of the census is a not-so-disguised effort by White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel to pad the number of Democrats in the House.
“I think we all are concerned about that," Blackburn said, "because if you’re going to statistically alter or adjust the numbers, then you’ll have districts or states that may end up with more members of congress as opposed to areas that have seen a lot of growth that would have fewer members of congress.”
Axelrod, who was Obama's chief campaign strategist in the presidential election, told “FOX News Sunday” there are “great professionals” in the bureau. “We intend to bring in additional, impeccable people. The White House needs to ensure that the census is fair and accurate, and that's what we're going to do. But the way to do that is put professionals in those slots to run the census in the most advanced way they can."
Asked whether he or Emanuel, who was chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, intend to directly supervise the census, Axelrod said: "I am not an expert on the census, and neither is Rahm. We want the experts to run this program; we want to make sure that every American is counted."
Blackburn is calling on Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., to hold committee hearings to look into the decision to hand control of the census over to the Obama administration instead of the department of commerce.
“I just find that so very unfortunate,” Blackburn said, “and I’m tremendously disappointed and very, very concerned about this happening. We are terribly disturbed about the politics coming back into the census process.”
Blackburn is not alone in her criticism of the egregious move by the administration. Joining her in a letter sent to Waxman earlier this week calling for hearings were several other prominent Republicans.
"Any attempt by the Obama administration to circumvent the census process for their political benefit will be met with fierce opposition,” U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., wrote in a letter to Obama. The letter, co-signed by North Carolina Rep. Patrick McHenry, refers to the move by the administration as “an ill-conceived proposal [that] undermines a constitutionally obligated process that speaks to the very heart of our democracy."
The letter also targeted Emanuel, stating: “Requiring the Census Director to report directly to White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel is a shamefully transparent attempt by your Administration to politicize the Census Bureau and manipulate the 2010 Census.”
Blackburn says the bureau has come a long way toward ridding itself of politics infiltrating the ranks. “They have worked diligently to make certain that they have good people that are well-trained, and that they produce an honest count that we can work from."
Blackburn assures that she and other critics of the move "will continue to push forward and see what else we can do to make certain that the American people are fully aware that this is taking place. It is not being brought forward as a vote from congress, it is being done just as an executive action."
Til Nex'Time....
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