This'n'That; March 23rd[Charities;TeaParty;Fluff;CorpControl]

Remember The "Little" Charities The large, national and international charities seem to "hold their own" in good times and bad; most have endowments and trust funds to draw from when public donations wane. The "little guys-" the small local or regional charities-rely almost exclusively on public donations and funding activities to maintain their levels of benefit to the needy and deserving.

During my trucking career, my only "relationship" to Roanoke, Va., was to stop at the Super Walmart in Salem, a few miles south. After I found, met and became friends with "Slam" Duncan, did this "relationship" develop further [read entry of 12/24/007]. I [and the "Young Miss Lovely"] furthered my friendship with "Slam," met the charity's president "Miz Linda" and attended one of their fund raisers at that same Salem Walmart!!

I'm sure that your local charity is "far more local" than mine, with 560+ miles between here and Roanoke, Va. For the past couple of years, we've only been able to send checks. After that first visit to the fundraiser, we've been unable to visit the area. We rarely fail to share our financial blessings with the charity.

Orlando Tea Party

[The time has come for Americans to stand up for their principles!! Those folks in Orlando, Florida, did just that-BUT it needs to spread nationwide, ON A HUGE SCALE!! I'm ready-Are you?? Actually, it's time the various media resumed their role as an unofficial watchdog over the executive branch!! Where have all the investigative reporters like Woodward and Bernstein gone?!?! {Hint: Protest items available at http://www.fubowear.com/ and http://www.flagstuff.com/ }]

Singer Lloyd Marcus told the crowd assembled in Lake Eola Park on Saturday that he was going to give them his take on the first days of the Obama administration.Then he shrieked.That pretty much summed up the mood in the park Saturday afternoon, when more than 4,000 people attended the Orlando Tea Party, a conservative rally aimed at expressing discontent with Washington. "This is maybe the greatest single gathering of God-fearing patriots in the history of Orlando, Florida," local conservative radio host Bud Hedinger, who emceed the event, told the crowd. The attendees, many of whom said they'd heard about the rally on Hedinger's radio show, brandished flags and homemade signs bearing slogans such as "Repeal the pork or our bacon is cooked" and "Obama lied, liberty died.""We're really scared about what's happening in our country," said Debby Whisenand, 71, of Largo in Pinellas County. She waved a sign that read "The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money" on one side, and "You can't blame Bush anymore" on the other.Her feelings were shared by Lisa Feroli, one of the event's organizers, who said that a similar fear motivated her to e-mail Hedinger with the idea for the Orlando Tea Party."The goal was to get people united, to let people know that they aren't alone in their feelings on despair," Feroli said. "We want to speak out against the push toward socialization that we feel is taking place in our country."Several speakers addressed the crowd, estimated by Orlando police and event organizers at 4,200, on a variety of topics, including gun rights, freedom of speech, the dangers of communism and, most prevalently, the economy, especially the Obama administration's bailout plan."We have had enough of massive government-driven bailout using our money," Hedinger said, prompting the crowd to start chanting "U.S.A." over and over.The country's economic woes weighed heavily on attendees, such as Ed Squire, 52, of Winter Springs. Holding a sign that read "Obama — he's robbin U.S. not Robin Hood," he said that he was worried about the current rate of government spending."There's absolutely no way as a nation that we can sustain that kind of spending," Squire said.Several members of the crowd said they'd recently been laid off, including Ross Iannarelli, 66, of Port Orange, who said he'd just lost his job at an electrical-equipment company."They need to shove that bum out," he said, referring to President Obama. "I hate seeing them spend my grandchildren's money."Glenn Austin, 52, and his wife, Frankie, 43, of Oviedo, also said they were anxious about the economy. They chose to express their worries, however, in a rather novel way: They wrapped banners calling for the end of the Federal Reserve around the tiny waists of their Chihuahua, Pepper, and miniature pinscher-Chihuahua mix, Peanut."Everything's gone to the dogs," Frankie Austin said.

Remember The "Campaign Of Fluff?"

That was when Candidate Fluffy chided then President Bush for having a $1Trillion deficit. Now, The Fluffmeister's budget proposal added to all the porkulus, will increase the deficit $1Trillion PER YEAR for 10 years!!! [SEE ABOVE!!]

Now They've Done It!

[It started with Fluffy's handlers getting "their noses under the tent flap" with the porkulus bailouts and giveaways. Now The Fluffer is set to limit compensation for all executives of any company whose stock is publically traded..... Now the executives will be left with "change they can believe in-" ...the change Fluffy leaves in their pockets!!]

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration will call for increased oversight of executive pay at all banks, Wall Street firms and possibly other companies as part of a sweeping plan to overhaul financial regulation, government officials said. The outlines of the plan are expected to be unveiled this week in preparation for Fluffy's first foreign summit meeting in early April. Officials said the proposal would seek a broad new role for the Federal Reserve to oversee large companies, including major hedge funds, whose problems could pose risks to the entire financial system. It will propose that many kinds of derivatives and other exotic financial instruments that contributed to the crisis be traded on exchanges or through clearinghouses so they are more transparent and can be more tightly regulated. And to protect consumers, it will call for federal standards for mortgage lenders beyond what the Federal Reserve adopted last year, as well as more aggressive enforcement of the mortgage rules. The administration has been considering increased oversight of executive pay for some time, but the issue was heightened in recent days as public fury over bonuses spilled into the regulatory effort. The officials said that the administration was still debating the details of its plan, including how broadly it should be applied and how far it could go beyond simple reporting requirements. Depending on the outcome of the discussions, the administration could seek to put the changes into effect through regulations rather than through legislation. One proposal could impose greater requirements on company boards to tie executive compensation more closely to corporate performance and to take other steps to ensure that compensation was aligned with the financial interest of the company. The new rules will cover all financial institutions, including those not now covered by any pay rules because they are not receiving federal bailout money. Officials say the rules could also be applied more broadly to publicly traded companies, which already report about some executive pay practices to the Securities and Exchange Commission. During the presidential campaign, Fluffy repeatedly urged regulators to adopt new rules to give shareholders a greater voice in setting executive pay for all public companies. And last month, as part of the porkulus package, Congress barred top executives at large banks getting rescue money from receiving bonuses that exceeded one-third of their annual pay. The regulatory plan is being put together ahead of the meeting of the Group of 20 industrialized and developing nations in London. The meeting, which begins April 2, is expected to be dominated by the global financial crisis and discussions about better oversight of large financial companies, whose problems could threaten to undermine international markets. An important part of the plan still under debate is how to regulate the shadow banking system that Wall Street firms use to package and trade mortgage-backed securities, the so-called toxic assets held by many banks and blamed for the credit crisis. Officials said the plan would also call for increasing the levels of capital that financial institutions need to hold to absorb possible losses. In a sign of the economic system’s fragility, officials said the administration would emphasize that those heightened standards should not be imposed now because they could discourage more lending. Rather, they would be put in place after the economy began to rebound. “The argument some are making is that they don’t want to be stepping on the gas pedal and the brake at the same time,” said Morris Goldstein, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and a former top official at the International Monetary Fund. Administration officials are also debating how tightly to supervise hedge funds. A broad consensus has emerged among regulators and administration officials that hedge funds must be registered and more closely monitored, probably by the Securities and Exchange Commission. But officials have not decided how much the funds will have to disclose about their investments and trading practices. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the regulatory plan was still being formulated and they did not want to upstage Fluffy or "Turbo-Tax Tim" Geithner, who will describe the plan when he appears before Congress on Thursday. A central aspect of the plan, which has already been announced by the administration, would give the government greater authority to take over and resolve problems at large troubled companies not now regulated by Washington, like insurance companies and hedge funds. That proposal would, for instance, make it easier for the government to cancel bonus contracts like those given to executives at AIG, which have stoked a political furor. Under the proposal, the Treasury secretary would have the authority to seize and wind down a struggling institution after consulting with the president and upon the recommendation of two-thirds of the Federal Reserve board. Long before he became Treasury secretary, "Turbo-Tax Tim" sought broader authority for the government to resolve problems at financial institutions not under bank regulators’ supervision. The government now has the power to take over only the banking unit that controls federally insured deposits of large troubled institutions, not the parent company — a limit that could pose problems if large financial conglomerates like Citigroup or Bank of America continued to spiral downward. In unveiling the regulatory plan, Mr. Obama would signal to Europe that he intended to crack down on the risk-taking and other free-wheeling practices by the financial industry that resulted in the global economic meltdown. France and Germany especially have suggested that the better response is not more government spending but tighter regulation. The Fluffy administration has urged European nations to do more to restart their economies through financial stimulus. The Fluffmeister is hoping that by showing a serious commitment to tighter regulation he can more easily persuade other countries to increase government spending and stimulate demand by consumers and businesses that would help pull the global economy out of a serious decline. But the administration’s efforts, especially on tighter regulation of hedge funds, are not expected to assuage some European countries. Moreover, the hedge fund industry has significant influence on Capitol Hill and has shown that it can defeat proposals it finds onerous. From the outset of the Fluffy administration, officials and European leaders have disagreed over how much to limit pay. And "Turbo-Tax" has discouraged the administration from imposing across-the-board limits on compensation of all employees at troubled companies receiving federal assistance and more burdensome pay restrictions at healthy institutions that the administration is trying to encourage to take government money so they can increase lending. Last week, Ben Bernanke the Fed chairman, also called on regulators to supervise executive pay at banks more closely to avoid “compensation practices that can create mismatches between the rewards and risks borne by institutions or their managers.” Much of the plan would require the approval of Congress, where divisions are forming over how best to overhaul financial industry oversight. Representative Barney Frank, the Massachusetts Democrat who heads the Financial Services Committee, said he believed giving the government new authority to take over troubled companies could be adopted by the House relatively quickly, particularly after the furor over the AIG bonuses. But Mr. Frank and other lawmakers said other elements of the plan could take more time, like expanding the authority of the Federal Reserve to become a systemic regulator. In a hearing Thursday, Senator Chris Dodd, the crooked Connecticut Democrat who is chairman of the banking committee, expressed skepticism about that proposal. “Whether or not those vast powers will reside at the Fed remains an open question,” said Mr. Dodd, pointing out that the Federal Reserve had failed to apply tough oversight of the companies it now regulates.