Tuesday, May 31, 2011

How Many of YOUR Liberties Are You Willing To Give Up?

Senator Rand Paul tells Congress: "We're told we won't be able to capture terrorists without giving up some of our liberties.."



  We Know This to be a LIE yet we allow it to go on..

Wake Up America! 

 Do not tolerate those empowered BY YOU to dismantle YOUR Freedoms as provided by the wisdom of our Founding Fathers!

Demand of your elected officials to abide by The U.S. Constitution or you will promptly elect them out of office!

Those Who Sacrifice Liberty For Security Deserve Neither 
- Benjamin Franklin

Monday, May 30, 2011

God Bless Our Troops!!

Thank Each and Every One of You
  
 Your Service Is Not Forgotten!

God Bless Our Troops 
and 
God Bless America!!

Saturday, May 28, 2011

According To US District Judge, All Men (And Corporations) Are Created Equal


Is it possible that our Founding Fathers actually intended for wealthy corporate lobbyists and special interests groups to have a financial say-so in determining who is elected by way of their deep pockets? U.S. District Judge James Cacheris thinks so.
Wake Up America.. You are being outbid for your choice of elected leadership!!

A U.S. judge has ruled that the campaign finance law banning corporations from making contributions to federal candidates is unconstitutional, saying that a recent Supreme Court decision gives companies the same right to donate as individual citizens enjoy.

In a ruling issued late Thursday, U.S. District Judge James Cacheris tossed out part of an indictment against two people charged with illegally reimbursing donors to Hillary Clinton's 2006 Senate and 2008 presidential campaigns.

Cacheris says that under the Supreme Court's landmark Citizens United decision last year, corporations have the right to give to federal candidates.

The ruling from the federal judge in Virginia is the first of its kind. The Citizens United case had applied only to corporate spending on campaign activities by independent groups, such as ads run by third parties to favor one side, not to direct contributions to the candidates themselves.

Cacheris noted in his ruling that only one other court has addressed the issue in the wake of Citizens United ruling. A federal judge in Minnesota ruled the other way, allowing a state ban on corporate contributions to stand.

"(F)or better or worse, Citizens United held that there is no distinction between an individual and a corporation with respect to political speech," Cacheris wrote in his 52-page opinion. "Thus, if an individual can make direct contributions within (the law's) limits, a corporation cannot be banned from doing the same thing."

In court papers, federal prosecutors defending the law said overturning the ban on corporate contributions would ignore a century of legal precedent.

"Defendants would have the court throw out a century of jurisprudence upholding the ban on corporate political contributions, by equating expenditures — which the Court struck down in Citizens United — with contributions. This is, however, equating apples and oranges," prosecutor Mark Lytle wrote in his argument to keep the indictment intact.

In the count that was tossed out, defendants William P. Danielczyk Jr. and Eugene R. Biagi were charged with helping funnel corporate funds to the presidential campaign of Clinton, now the U.S. secretary of state. Specifically, they were charged with using money from the corporation they controlled, Galen Capital Group, to reimburse individuals who made contributions in their own names.

Peter Carr, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney in Alexandria, which is prosecuting the case along with the Justice Department's Public Integrity Section, said Friday that the office is reviewing the ruling. Prosecutors have the option to appeal the ruling to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond.

Defense lawyers, though, said the implications of the Citizens United case are clear.

"Corporate political speech can now be regulated, only to the same extent as the speech of individuals or other speakers," Biagi's lawyer, public defender Todd Richman, wrote in court papers. "That is because Citizens United establishes that there can be no distinction between corporate and other speakers in the regulation of political speech."

Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, a Washington-based group that supports campaign finance reform, said Friday that Cacheris overstepped his bounds and ignored Supreme Court rulings issued before Citizens United that explicitly upheld the ban on corporate contributions. If the Supreme Court had wanted to overturn the ban, it could have done so directly in Citizens United.

"This decision ought to be appealed, and it ought to be overturned," Wertheimer said.

University of Virginia law professor Daniel Ortiz said the ruling "pushes the outer limits of the Citizens United logic." He said he does not expect it to stand.

The Citizens United case makes a distinction, Ortiz said, between independent expenditures by corporations that are not coordinating with a federal candidate's campaign, and direct campaign contributions.

As a practical matter, Ortiz said that even if Cacheris' ruling stands, its practical effect may be negligible because corporations would be subject to the same contribution limits imposed on individuals — $2,500 per candidate per election. Cacheris himself makes a similar point in his ruling, saying in a footnote that "this finding hardly gives corporations a blank check."

On the other hand, individuals can form an unlimited number of corporations, which could create a significant loophole in the law if unchecked.

Under existing law, corporations that want to contribute directly to federal candidates must form a political action committee — 1,683 corporate PACs existed at the start of the year, according to the most recent count from the Federal Election Commission. PACs are allowed to contribute to a candidate at twice the amount of an individual — $5,000 per election instead of $2,500 — but those PACS must use segregated funds and face strict limitations on how much they can raise and from whom.

In the pending case, Danielczyk, 49, and Biagi, 76, who live in the Washington suburb of Oakton, Va., allegedly reimbursed $30,200 to eight contributors to Clinton's 2006 New York Senate campaign, and reimbursed $156,400 to 35 contributors to her 2008 presidential campaign.

Cacheris, an appointee of President Ronald Reagan who is also the brother of prominent defense lawyer Plato Cacheris, allowed most of the indictment against Danielczyk and Biagi to stand. If the government does not appeal Cacheris' ruling on the constitutionality of corporate contributions, the case is scheduled to go to trial in July. 

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Los Angeles Shows Some Cajones and Gets Tough with Banks for Foreclosure Blight

They're At It Again! Big Banks Acting As Though They Are Not Subject To The Same Rules As Everyone Else. Now They Don't Want To Take Responsibility For the Properties They Have Foreclosed On. Bankers Are Pushing Their Weight Around and Collecting Huge Profits While Expecting Others To Pay Their Bills. 

This Insanity Has To Stop! Wake Up America!!

Lenders say they're owners "in name only" and don't have to pay for upkeep.

A dead dog lies among the knee-high weeds, a sign to Guillermo Elenes that the burned out, boarded up house is being used as a dump. Inside, soiled diapers, fast-food trash and the strewn beer and vodka bottles indicate squatters have been living there.

The dumping ground-crash pad serves as a squalid symbol of how the foreclosure crisis is riddling communities with blight because no one wants to shoulder the responsibility of maintaining foreclosed homes.

"There's one on every block," said Elenes, a community organizer with the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment in Watts, a low-income South Los Angeles neighborhood pockmarked with foreclosed homes. "All we want is for the banks to step up and be good citizens."

Communities across the nation have made little progress in getting banks to maintain foreclosed properties, and as the ongoing crisis matures and bank-owned homes fall into advanced stages of disrepair, cities and residents are getting desperate. In a keenly watched move this month, Los Angeles forged a new strategy — it sued one of the world's major financial institutions, Deutsche Bank, to force it to take care of 166 properties, both vacant and renter-occupied, charging the blue-chip German giant has turned into the city's largest slumlord.

"The buck stops with the owner of record. We're saying, 'You are an owner like any other owner,'" said Julia Figueira-McDonough, deputy city attorney.

Not according to Deutsche or other banks. They say they aren't really the owners, despite the fact that their name appears on the property title. They also say they are not responsible for maintenance.

Representatives of Deutsche, as well as U.S. Bank, BNY Mellon and HSBC — three other major lenders that Los Angeles is investigating with an eye to suing, all said that loan servicers are responsible for property upkeep, as well as tasks such as sending default notices, modifying loans, selling homes, and collecting rent and mortgage payments.

"We're there in name only," said Teri Charest, spokeswoman for U.S. Bank. "We're trustees. We have a very limited role."

The real owners, the banks say, are the holders of the mortgage-backed securities — financial instruments comprising a pool of mortgage loans that are held in a trust and sold. The banks maintain they are simply distributors of the proceeds from the securities — the payments of a homeowner's loan principal and interest — to the investors.

Although the bank contracts the loan servicer, the bank's role does not include pressing servicers to properly maintain the trust's assets on behalf of its beneficiaries, bank representatives said. U.S. Bank, however, has sent notices to loan servicers that they must maintain properties in accordance with applicable laws, a statement said.

Loan servicers, however, usually have a contract loophole that allows them an easy out from the maintenance burden.

Typically, they're only required to spend money on upkeep if they believe the outlay is recoverable, according to Laurence Platt, a Washington D.C. lawyer who has represented banks in foreclosure-related litigation.

"Who pays for a pig in a poke?" he said. "This is a collateral issue of the whole foreclosure crisis."

Calls to two of the country's largest loan servicers — Ocwen Financial Services of West Palm Beach, Fla., and Statebridge Co. of Denver, Colo. — were not returned. Houston-based Litton Loan Servicing declined to answer questions from The Associated Press. Many servicers are also owned by Wall Streeters such as Wells Fargo.

The issue of loan servicers is an attempt to dodge responsibility, Figueira-McDonough said, because the banks are the owners of record, plus have a fiduciary duty to their trust beneficiaries.

Officials in Los Angeles and other cities say they're infuriated with the back-and-forth finger-pointing while an epidemic of eyesores is devastating neighborhoods.

"We're left holding the bag. Someone has got to be held accountable," said Robert Triozzi, law director for the city of Cleveland, which unsuccessfully sued Deutsche Bank over different foreclosure-related issues three years ago. "Not only have these institutions caused this mess, they have continued to perpetuate it."

Silvia Lobato of South Los Angeles just wants repairs to the one-bedroom apartment she's been renting for the past 14 years — named as one of the neglected Deutsche Bank properties in the city's lawsuit.

The kitchen sink plumbing has a leak that has caused the unit to rot and breed worms. The bathroom ceiling is covered with mildew. A city inspector told her the gas connection to the water heater is dangerous. Mice scramble in the walls.

Everything was fine until the owner lost the duplex two years ago, said Lobato, who lives in the apartment with her three kids and another mother and her three children. Since then, she's been unable to get the landlord to make repairs.

"I call and call. They say they don't have the money. I pay $680 a month in rent," she said. "I worry about the kids in these conditions."

Governments have tried various tactics.

Los Angeles, like many cities, last year enacted an ordinance mandating that banks register defaulting properties and pay a $155 fee so the city can track the property and collect funds for expenses.

But despite the penalty of $100,000 fines for non-registration, the ordinance hasn't worked because it relies on banks to self-report the properties. "There's been minimal compliance," said Figueira-McDonough.

Other cities, including Fort Lauderdale, Fla., have tried to crack down by declaring unkempt homes "public nuisances," and charging owners, including banks, with the cost of boarding up windows and mowing lawns. In cases where no owner can be found or bills are unpaid, a lien is placed on the property.

Residents, incensed about homes on their blocks turning into drug dens, gang hangouts and vermin nests, are galvanizing.

Watts resident Lynn Mottley drives around her neighborhood looking for telltale signs of foreclosure, such as chain link fences with no trespassing signs, jotting down the addresses in a notebook she keeps in her car.

Mottley, an activist with the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment and the Home Defenders League, reports the addresses to the city and to lahoodwinked.com, an activist website that encourages residents to list foreclosed properties so the city can pursue owners for upkeep.

Her notebook keeps filling up. "Wow, there's another one," she said, driving by a ramshackle bungalow with broken windows and an overgrown, junk filled yard. "Who wants to live next to this? Something has to be done."

Article by Christina Hoag, Associated Press

Monday, May 16, 2011

Bin Laden's Burial and Other Religious Frauds

 Can mass murderers be considered religious? If (and we do mean IF) Osama bin Laden was buried at sea according to Islamic law, are we acknowledging that premise?

The bizarre burial of Osama bin Laden at sea -- an action necessitated by our government's need to accommodate Islamic law requiring that a Muslim be buried within 24 hours of death -- raises urgent questions about the definition of faith in America. Can a mass murderer be said to be religious? Can there be religious ritual without religious values? And should Western governments participate in this definition of religion as something that is preached as opposed to practiced?

For years US government officials as well American Muslim leaders have been saying that Osama bin Laden is not a Muslim but a charlatan, a man who ostensibly lived in accordance with Islamic ritual but whose actions violated the Islamic prohibition against killing civilian non-combatants. At his death the Islam Society of North America released a statement noting, "The ideology of bin Laden is incompatible with Islam. Bin Laden was not a Muslim leader; he was a mass murderer of Muslims." A spokesperson for the Muslim Public Affairs Council echoed the sentiment. "He basically hijacked Islam and became a disgrace to Muslims." Why then if bin Laden did not live as a Muslim did it our government rush to bury him as one?

This unfortunate endorsement by the United States of faith as a collection of spiritual ritual unattached to basic laws of morality feeds a growing perception of faith-based hypocrisy that is alienating large numbers from religious tradition.
Religious truth is notoriously difficult to gauge given the competing claims of the world's great faiths. For Jews the deification of any man is an act of sacrilege yet the divinity of Jesus is central to Christian belief. Likewise, Christianity affirms that Christ is the sole path to salvation. Yet Islam insists that Muhammad was a prophet who lived after Jesus and paved a new and exclusive road to heaven. Religious truth, therefore, is established by a different criteria entirely, namely, its ability to shape and mold righteous character in its adherents.

As a Jew I do not believe that Joseph Smith discovered golden plates written in Reformed Egyptian in 1823 which he translated with seer stones. But having had extensive exposure to the strong families and charitable communities that the Mormon Church has built worldwide, I do believe that in Western New York where he claimed to have found the plates Smith encountered universal religious truths that were incorporated into Mormonism and which account for the high ethical standards of his followers. Conversely, when a religious figure devotes his life not to compassionate acts but to a blood-filled apocalypse it is either him or his religion which is fraudulent.

Bin Laden never walked in the footsteps of Muhammad but worshipped a god of his own making. While the Koran expressly prohibits the taking of an innocent life in the strongest terms -- "We ordained for the children of Israel that if anyone slew a person, unless it be for murder or for spreading mischief in the land, it would be as if he slew the whole of mankind" (Sura 5:32) -- bin Laden told Al Jazeera in 2001 that those who say "killing a child is not valid" in Islam "speak without any knowledge of Islamic law" because murdering a child may be done in vengeance. Bin Laden subscribed not to Islam but to Osamaism, a satanic faith of his own making where he devised the rules.

Indeed, bin Laden and others who preach murder in the name of G-d are in no way analogous to the Pastor or Rabbi caught cheating with a congregant or the Priest found to be molesting a child, and not just because the taking of a life is more a more serious sin. For while the latter involves acts of religious inconsistency, however heinous, the former constitutes outright religious hypocrisy.

The difference is not merely semantic but cuts to the core of human nature. Few pastors believe that adultery is not a sin and few priests would argue that child molestation is a virtue. So why do so many religious people disgrace themselves by acting in contravention to basic morality? Because humans are fallible and selfish, weak and inconsistent, which is not to excuse their actions so much as to explain their failings. They mean what they preach but tragically cannot always live up to their own moral preaching.

The hypocrite, however, is he who professes a piety that he himself never believes in merely for public consumption. I was not surprised that the video trove captured by our Navy SEALs displayed bin Laden as a vain and shallow man obsessed with his celebrity and tinkering with his physical appearance. It confirmed the hypocrisy of a man who inveighed against Western corruption while enthusiastically embracing its emphasis on image to the exclusion of spiritual substance.

The same hypocrisy can be found in home-grown religious hate groups like Fred Phelps' Westboro Baptist Church who, with their loathsome slogan 'G-d Hates Fags', protests the military funerals of fallen soldiers claiming that their death is the revenge of a G-d angered by America's tolerance for homosexuality. Here is an ostensibly Christian Church whose very foundation -- whatever it thinks of homosexuality -- is in direct contravention of the Bible's core teachings of reward and punishment: "The soul who sins is the one who will die. The son will not share the guilt of the father, nor will the father share the guilt of the son. The righteousness of the righteous man will be credited to him, and the wickedness of the wicked will be charged against him." (Ezekiel 18:20)

But notwithstanding the larger point of the difference between inconsistency and hypocrisy, the growing chasm between faith-based teachings, on the one hand, and the actions of the faithful on the other, is the greatest cancer afflicting modern religion and accounts for the popularity of the new high priests of atheism like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. They exploit the duplicity of religious ritual unaccompanied by religious values and use it to make a wider point, that religion is itself a control-motivated fraud and faith a money-making scam.

It was not Martin Luther who in 1517 was responsible for the Reformation but rather the crooked indulgences of a then-corrupt Church that had become religious without being spiritual, more interested in the soaring spires of St. Peter's Cathedral than the moral elevation of its priests.

America is rapidly becoming a debtor nation of insatiable consumers whose unhealthy dependency on material objects for happiness three years ago collapsed down a $10 trillion economy. We are purveyors of an increasingly decadent culture whose exploitation of a fame-obsessed obsessed citizenry on television now passes for 'reality' and whose institutions of higher learning are often better known for drinking than for learning. We are in desperate need of the inspiration and moral realignment that only religion can impart. But it will not happen so long as we falsely define religion as a collection of empty ritual unaccompanied by moral behavior and values.

Article by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, HuffingtonPost

Saturday, May 7, 2011

Top US Government Insider: Bin Laden Died In 2001. States 9-11 A False Flag Operation (Videos)

Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State under three different administrations Steve R. Pieczenik says he is prepared to tell a federal grand jury the name of a top general who told him directly 9/11 was a false flag attack.


Top US government insider Dr. Steve R. Pieczenik, a man who held numerous different influential positions under three different Presidents and still works with the Defense Department, shockingly told The Alex Jones Show yesterday that Osama Bin Laden died in 2001 and that he was prepared to testify in front of a grand jury how a top general told him directly that 9/11 was a false flag inside job.

Pieczenik cannot be dismissed as a “conspiracy theorist”. He served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State under three different administrations, Nixon, Ford and Carter, while also working under Reagan and Bush senior, and still works as a consultant for the Department of Defense. A former US Navy Captain, Pieczenik achieved two prestigious Harry C. Solomon Awards at the Harvard Medical School as he simultaneously completed a PhD at MIT.

Recruited by Lawrence Eagleburger as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Management, Pieczenik went on to develop, “the basic tenets for psychological warfare, counter terrorism, strategy and tactics for transcultural negotiations for the US State Department, military and intelligence communities and other agencies of the US Government,” while also developing foundational strategies for hostage rescue that were later employed around the world.

Pieczenik also served as a senior policy planner under Secretaries Henry Kissinger, Cyrus Vance, George Schultz and James Baker and worked on George W. Bush’s election campaign against Al Gore. His record underscores the fact that he is one of the most deeply connected men in intelligence circles over the past three decades plus.

The character of Jack Ryan, who appears in many Tom Clancy novels and was also played by Harrison Ford in the popular 1992 movie Patriot Games, is also based on Steve Pieczenik.

Back in April 2002, over nine years ago, Pieczenik told the Alex Jones Show that Bin Laden had already been “dead for months,” and that the government was waiting for the most politically expedient time to roll out his corpse. Pieczenik would be in a position to know, having personally met Bin Laden and worked with him during the proxy war against the Soviets in Afghanistan back in the early 80′s.

Pieczenik said that Osama Bin Laden died in 2001, “Not because special forces had killed him, but because as a physician I had known that the CIA physicians had treated him and it was on the intelligence roster that he had marfan syndrome,” adding that the US government knew Bin Laden was dead before they invaded Afghanistan.

Marfan syndrome is a degenerative genetic disease for which there is no permanent cure. The illness severely shortens the life span of the sufferer.

“He died of marfan syndrome, Bush junior knew about it, the intelligence community knew about it,” said Pieczenik, noting how CIA physicians had visited Bin Laden in July 2001 at the American Hospital in Dubai.

“He was already very sick from marfan syndrome and he was already dying, so nobody had to kill him,” added Pieczenik, stating that Bin Laden died shortly after 9/11 in his Tora Bora cave complex.

“Did the intelligence community or the CIA doctor up this situation, the answer is yes, categorically yes,” said Pieczenik, referring to Sunday’s claim that Bin Laden was killed at his compound in Pakistan, adding, “This whole scenario where you see a bunch of people sitting there looking at a screen and they look as if they’re intense, that’s nonsense,” referring to the images released by the White House which claim to show Biden, Obama and Hillary Clinton watching the operation to kill Bin Laden live on a television screen.

“It’s a total make-up, make believe, we’re in an American theater of the absurd….why are we doing this again….nine years ago this man was already dead….why does the government repeatedly have to lie to the American people,” asked Pieczenik.

“Osama Bin Laden was totally dead, so there’s no way they could have attacked or confronted or killed Osama Bin laden,” said Pieczenik, joking that the only way it could have happened was if special forces had attacked a mortuary.

Pieczenik said that the decision to launch the hoax now was made because Obama had reached a low with plummeting approval ratings and the fact that the birther issue was blowing up in his face.

“He had to prove that he was more than American….he had to be aggressive,” said Pieczenik, adding that the farce was also a way of isolating Pakistan as a retaliation for intense opposition to the Predator drone program, which has killed hundreds of Pakistanis.

“This is orchestrated, I mean when you have people sitting around and watching a sitcom, basically the operations center of the White House, and you have a president coming out almost zombie-like telling you they just killed Osama Bin Laden who was already dead nine years ago,” said Pieczenik, calling the episode, “the greatest falsehood I’ve ever heard, I mean it was absurd.”

Dismissing the government’s account of the assassination of Bin Laden as a “sick joke” on the American people, Pieczenik said, “They are so desperate to make Obama viable, to negate the fact that he may not have been born here, any questions about his background, any irregularities about his background, to make him look assertive….to re-elect this president so the American public can be duped once again.”

Pieczenik’s assertion that Bin Laden died almost ten years ago is echoed by numerous intelligence professionals as well as heads of state across the world.

Bin Laden, “Was used in the same way that 9/11 was used to mobilize the emotions and feelings of the American people in order to go to a war that had to be justified through a narrative that Bush junior created and Cheney created about the world of terrorism,” stated Pieczenik.

During his interview with the Alex Jones Show yesterday, Pieczenik also asserted he was directly told by a prominent general that 9/11 was a stand down and a false flag operation, and that he is prepared to go to a grand jury to reveal the general’s name.

“They ran the attacks,” said Pieczenik, naming Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Stephen Hadley, Elliott Abrams, and Condoleezza Rice amongst others as having been directly involved.

“It was called a stand down, a false flag operation in order to mobilize the American public under false pretenses….it was told to me even by the general on the staff of Wolfowitz – I will go in front of a federal committee and swear on perjury who the name was of the individual so that we can break it open,” said Pieczenik, adding that he was “furious” and “knew it had happened”.

“I taught stand down and false flag operations at the national war college, I’ve taught it with all my operatives so I knew exactly what was done to the American public,” he added.

Pieczenik re-iterated that he was perfectly willing to reveal the name of the general who told him 9/11 was an inside job in a federal court, “so that we can unravel this thing legally, not with the stupid 9/11 Commission that was absurd.”

Pieczenik explained that he was not a liberal, a conservative or a tea party member, merely an American who is deeply concerned about the direction in which his country is heading.

Watch the video interview Dr. Pieczenik below. Note: They are broken down into 7 parts.




 




Friday, May 6, 2011

Big Oil Still Ripping Us Off At The Pumps, Congress Still Ripping Us Off As Our "Leaders"

The following article is by Sarah Hodgdon of the Sierra Club. Well worth the read. The message is clear. Congress is in the back pocket of big oil. They do NOT represent you... they only care about their monied "friends" and getting re-elected. 
Wake Up America!!


Shill, Baby, Shill: Big Oil Still Getting Big Tax Breaks

Yesterday I watched the U.S. House of Representatives shill for Big Oil again by passing a bill allowing more drilling in our waters with less oversight and accountability. At the same time, House leadership blocked a vote to end billions of dollars in government tax breaks for the industry.

Meanwhile, the oil industry just posted billions in profits in their first quarter reports, with Exxon reporting $10.7 billion in profit, Shell raking in $6.9 billion, Chevron posting $6.2 billion, Conoco Phillips announcing $3.03 billion and BP taking in $5.5 billion.

When is our country going to end special treatment for Big Oil and get serious about moving beyond oil?
Polls show that, overwhelmingly, Americans want to end Big Oil's tax breaks:
  • A recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found that 74 percent of voters support eliminating tax breaks to oil companies.
  • A March 2011 survey by polling firm Greenberg Quinlan & Rosner Research revealed almost 70 percent of Americans supported ending Big Oil subsidies even when they were presented with opposition arguments that it would increase the price of gas.
Big Oil is raking it in, and hard-working Americans are feeling the pain at the pump and then watching the oil industry benefit even more on tax day to the tune of $4 billion in subsidies.

But the House leadership continues the giveaways because they're getting something in return as well. Four of the five Big Oil companies have since given $280,000 in campaign contributions to their congressional benefactors - a small price to pay, considering their return on investment at taxpayers' expense. (Treehugger's Brian Merchant had a good piece on this yesterday, too).

We all thought House Speaker Boehner had a moment of clarity when he recently said he was willing to end the oil industry's tax breaks. He told ABC News that, "We're in a time when the federal government is short on revenues. We need to control spending but we need to have revenues to keep the government moving. And they [Big Oil] ought to be paying their fair share."

Boehner bravely held that position for about five minutes before recanting.

It's time to invest in 21st century clean, efficient vehicles and transportation. We need to build 21st century transportation infrastructure and make cars that get at least 60 miles per gallon by 2025, trucks with a 15 percent improvement in fuel economy, and we need to invest in electric cars. Domestic manufacturing of these cars and trucks and a modern transportation network will dramatically cut our dependence on oil, save consumers thousands of dollars at the pump, create jobs and restore America's manufacturing might.
One thing remains clear: we cannot afford the status quo.