Ryan B calls for Investigations and Accountability of TARP Funds

Investigations and Accountability – WHERE DID THE MONEY REALLY GO

VOTE BRIAN “RYAN B” FOR INVESTIGATION AND ACCOUNTABILITY

I am calling on Congress and the Department of Justice to investigate former Treasury Secretary Paulson and the Corporations that received TARP Funds.

It seems that we and the Federal Reserve gave trillions of tax payer dollars to wealthy corporations only to have it disappear without any benefits being realized by us.  We gave away enough money to pay off every home mortgage in the country.  Now that would have been a stimulus.  The banks would be paid, the “derivative” problem would be solved and the American people and our economy would have a real stimulus.  Families who don’t have a mortgage to pay off could receive an income tax credit so they would be stimulated too.

The executives are still getting their huge bonuses, with our tax money.  I want to see an investigation concerning how much of the TARP money made its way back into the pockets of the same greedy politicians who gave away in the form of campaign contributions and other “pac” money. We have seen hard working citizens’ retirement savings and benefits disappear overnight.  People worked hard every day for their life saving only to see executives on Wall Street and banks and mortgage companies motivated only by greed cause one of the greatest collapses in American history.

Now where I’m from to mislead and steal from people is a crime!  I notice that our now Treasury Secretary has yet to call on the Justice Department to investigate how and why Americans were “raped” at the hands of Executives.

My first day in office I will call for investigation to see where, when and how these funds were used and why tougher restrictions were not issued controlling where our money went.   Geithner has failed us.  He has allowed the American people’s money to be stolen and given to big executives’ as a flat out gift in the form of undeserved bonuses and he has failed to turn this over to the Justice Department for a full investigation of Executive wrongdoing.

CTI Corporation received $2 billion dollars of our money with no accountability only to come back to the treasury to ask for more before filing bankruptcy after being denied additional funds.

Where is the accountability for the $2 billion dollars?  WHERE DID IT GO???   Where are the independent audits and investigations into the spending of taxpayers’ money by these banks and investment groups?  Where is our Treasury Secretary? Who’s guarding the hen house? It’s clear to me that the bankers are guarding the bankers.

I will not stand for the misuse of the our tax dollars and I demand full and complete investigations.  I hope that none of our elected officials in Washington are embarrassed when it turns out they received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the very people who got our money and did nothing to help us with it.

www.briandoyleforcongress.com

Percy Sutton, A World Leader, dies at 89

NEW YORK (AP) – Percy Sutton, the pioneering civil rights attorney who represented Malcolm X before launching successful careers as a political power broker and media mogul, has died. He was 89.

Marissa Shorenstein, a spokeswoman for Gov. David Paterson, confirmed that Sutton died Saturday. She did not know the cause. His daughter, Cheryl Sutton, declined to comment Saturday when reached by phone at her New York City home.

The son of a former slave, Percy Sutton became a fixture on 125th Street in Harlem after moving to New York City following his service with the famed Tuskegee Airmen in World War II. His Harlem law office, founded in 1953, represented Malcolm X and the slain activist’s family for decades.

The consummate politician, Sutton served in the New York State Assembly before taking over as Manhattan borough president in 1966, becoming the highest-ranking black elected official in the state.

Sutton also mounted unsuccessful campaigns for the U.S. Senate and mayor of New York, and served as political mentor for the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s two presidential races.

Jackson recalled Sutton talking about electing a black president as early as 1972. Sutton was influential in getting his 1984 campaign going, he said.

“He never stopped building bridges and laying the groundwork,” Jackson said Sunday. “We are very glad to be the beneficiaries of his work.”

In a statement released Saturday night, Gov. David Paterson called Sutton a mentor and “one of New York’s and this nation’s most influential African-American leaders.”

“Percy was fiercely loyal, compassionate and a truly kind soul,” Paterson said. “He will be missed but his legacy lives on through the next generations of African-Americans he inspired to pursue and fulfill their own dreams and ambitions.”

President Barack Obama called Sutton “a true hero” to African-Americans across the country.

“His life-long dedication to the fight for civil rights and his career as an entrepreneur and public servant made the rise of countless young African-Americans possible,” Obama said in a statement.

In 1971, with his brother Oliver, Sutton purchased WLIB-AM, making it the first black-owned radio station in New York City. His Inner City Broadcasting Corp. eventually picked up WBLS-FM, which reigned for years as New York’s top-rated radio station, before buying stations in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Detroit and San Antonio between 1978-85.

The Texas purchase marked a homecoming for the suave and sophisticated Sutton, born in San Antonio on Nov. 24, 1920, the youngest of 15 children.

Among Sutton’s other endeavors was his purchase and renovation of the famed Apollo Theater when the Harlem landmark’s demise appeared imminent.

“The Apollo and its staff stand on the shoulders of Mr. Sutton as the theater continues to flourish,” said Jonelle Procope, president and CEO of Apollo Theater Foundation Inc. “(He) will be greatly missed and will always be an integral part of the Apollo legacy.”

Sutton’s father, Samuel, was born into slavery just before the Civil War. The elder Sutton became principal at a segregated San Antonio high school, and he made education a family priority: All 12 of his surviving children attended college.

When he was 13, Percy Sutton endured a traumatic experience that drove him inexorably into the fight for racial equality. A police officer approached Sutton as the teen handed out NAACP pamphlets. “N—–, what are you doing out of your neighborhood?” he asked before beating the youth.

When World War II arrived, Sutton’s enlistment attempts were rebuffed by Southern white recruiters. The young man went to New York, where he was accepted and joined the Tuskegee Airmen.

After the war, Sutton earned a law degree in New York while working as a post office clerk and a subway conductor. He served again as an Air Force intelligence officer during the Korean War before returning to Harlem in 1953 and establishing his law office with brother Oliver and a third partner, George Covington.

In addition to representing Malcolm X for a decade until his 1965 assassination, the Sutton firm handled the cases of more than 200 defendants arrested in the South during the 1963-64 civil rights marches. Sutton was also elected to two terms as president of the New York office of the NAACP.

After Malcolm’s assassination, Sutton worked as lawyer for Malcolm’s widow, Betty Shabazz. He represented her grandson, 12-year-old Malcolm Shabazz, when the youth was accused of setting a 1997 fire that caused her death.

Sutton was elected to the state Legislature in 1965, and quickly emerged as spokesman for its 13 black members. His charisma and eloquence led to his selection as Manhattan borough president in 1966, completing the term of Constance Baker Motley, who was appointed federal judge.

Two years later, Sutton announced a run for the U.S. Senate seat held by Jacob Javits, although he pulled out of the Democratic primary to back Paul O’Dwyer.

Sutton remained in his Manhattan job through 1977, the same year he launched a doomed campaign for mayor that ended with Edward I. Koch defeating six competitors for the Democratic nomination.

Sutton was among the first voices raised against the Vietnam War, surrendering his delegate’s seat at the 1968 Democratic convention in protest and supporting anti-war candidate George McGovern four years later against incumbent President Richard Nixon.

In addition to his radio holdings, Sutton also headed a group that owned The Amsterdam News, the second largest black weekly newspaper in the country. The paper was later sold.

Sutton’s devotion to Harlem and its people was rarely more evident than when he spent $250,000 to purchase the shuttered Apollo Theater in 1981. The Apollo turned 70 in 2004, a milestone that was unthinkable until Sutton stepped in to save the landmark.

Sutton “retired” in 1991, but his work as an adviser, mentor and confidante to politicians and businessmen never abated. He was among a group of American businessmen selected during the Clinton administration to attend meetings with the Group of Seven (G-7) Nations in 1995-96.

“He was a great man,” said Charles Warfield Jr., the president and chief operating officer of ICBC Broadcast Holdings Inc., when reached early Sunday. He declined to comment further out of respect for the wishes of Sutton’s family.

The Rev. Al Sharpton said he last visited Sutton in a nursing home Wednesday. He recalled meeting Sutton for the first time at age 12; Four years later, Sutton paid for his trip to a national black political convention because the teenage Sharpton couldn’t afford to go.

“He personified the black experience of the 20th century,” Sharpton said. “He started the century where blacks were victims. We ended as victors.”

Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced Sunday that flags on city buildings would be lowered in Sutton’s honor.

___

Associated Press writers Jennifer Peltz in New York and M.L. Johnson in Chicago contributed to this report.

A Request for Congress to review NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell’s Powers and Policies

www.umbn.net

Ryan B, Host of Water Cooler Moment

 

Syndicated Radio host Ryan B, asks all his listener to contact the House Government Reform Committee and House Judiciary Committee to investigate the unlimited and unfair powers of NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell.

 

“I don’t understand why or how NFL commissioner Roger Goodell should enjoy unlimited arbitrary unitary executive power with no written rules for players or owners.” said Ryan B.

 

Goodell can impose any ruling or handle an issue anyway he feels without any appeal.  The players might as well be innocent prisoners in Guantanamo subject to torture under the Bush administration remarked Ryan B.

 

“It reminds me of the good ole days of slavery whatever the slave master said was the law,” said Ryan B.   Goodells’ bizarre behavior is reflected by the conditions he has imposed on Michael Vick in order to return to the Slave Master’s Playing Field. The things he requested of Vick are outrageous. It’s as if Goodell still has a slave deed on Vick.

 

“Michael Vick will have to live  his private life the way Master Goodell wants him to live it as if Goodell has a slave deed somewhere that we the ticket holders and buyers don’t know about” says Ryan B.   There are no written rules for punishment but only what comes from the mind of Goodell and considering that it does not appear that any similar punishment has ever been inflicted on a Caucasian player this looks like a racist thing to me. Ryan B goes on.

 

Since April of 2007 Master Goodell surf ruling hand shows that his personal conduct policy has no checks or balances it is what he wants when he wants it.  “It scares me it reminds me of the stories my grand mother and great grand mother told of the slave master” said Ryan B.

 

I would hate to have to say in this case of Michael Vick it seems like to me Mr. Goodell has removed his suit in exchange for the white suit and let’s not forget that white hat of course with that fully being my personal opinion.

 

There are no guidelines that state exactly what punishment a specific violation will bring.  That gives Master Goodell an excessive amount of leeway.  Remember back in the day in the fields?  Goodell also hears every appeal made by the suspended party rather than an arbitrator in what would be a much fairer process. 

 

 

 

So I will be asking the House Government Reform Committee and the House Judiciary Committee to take a close look at self ruling NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell Powers over team unions, player and owners.  I’m asking all my listeners and readers to do the same call there congress person and contact the House Government Reform Committee and Judiciary Committee to put an end to modern day slavery of all players of any race.  

 

We have enough czars making our decisions for us and taking away what should be individual rights and ability to contract.  He is as bad as Ben Benecki.  Give away trillions of dollars and refuse to tell us about it. 

 

Give anyone unlimited and unchecked power and it will be abused.  The whole system of checks and balancers that used to protect citizens has vanished and this is just another symptom of it.

 

 

“Did we all forget that Michael Vick served jail time for his crime and was punished I don’t remember anyone being punished for slavery or being a slave master or for stealing trillions of dollars and giving it away to their buddies…  I guess some people would like to see him down in a line asking for food stamps and a check.

 

If the man is good enough to play ball and people are willing to pay to see him and a team is willing to pay him to play whose business is it what he does with his money and who lives with him as long as he obeys the law?

 

“I don’t think Martha Stewart nor Rush Limbaugh had to wait any specific amount of time or be place under a slave deed for their transgressions which were in reality more serious than Vicks.  But then they are of the privileged caste.

 

I haven’t figure out those people who believe dogs are more important than human beings.  We are giving the homeless one way tickets to other cities.  Who do we put in jail for all those who sleep under trees or bridges and don’t have a place to live because crooked bankers and politicians have stolen the country?

 

Let’s give the NFL back to the people the players and the teams.  Let’s give the country and the money back to the people.  Write to your congress people and senators.  If they don’t want to do what is right for the people and the Country lets get rid of all of them.  And lets and start with Goodell.

Federal Deficit Tops $1 Trillion For First Time

AP, July 13, 2009 · Nine months into the fiscal year, the federal deficit has topped $1 trillion for the first time.

The imbalance is intensifying fears about higher interest rates and inflation, and already pressuring the value of the dollar. There’s also concern about trying to reverse the deficit — by reducing government spending or raising taxes — in the midst of a harsh recession.

The Treasury Department said Monday that the deficit in June totaled $94.3 billion, pushing the total since the budget year started in October to nearly $1.1 trillion.

The deficit has been propelled by the huge sum the government has spent to combat the recession and financial crisis, combined with a sharp decline in tax revenues. Paying for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan also is a major factor.

The country’s soaring deficits are making Chinese and other foreign buyers of U.S. debt nervous, which could make them reluctant lenders down the road. It could force the Treasury Department to pay higher interest rates to make U.S. debt attractive longer-term.

“These are mind-boggling numbers,” said Sung Won Sohn, an economist at the Smith School of Business at California State University. “Our foreign investors from China and elsewhere are starting to have concerns about not only the value of the dollar but how safe their investments will be in the long run.”

Government spending is on the rise to address the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression and an unemployment rate that has climbed to 9.5 percent.

Congress already approved a $700 billion financial bailout and a $787 billion economic stimulus package to try and jump-start a recovery, and there is growing talk among some Obama administration officials that a second round of stimulus may be necessary.

This has many Republicans and deficit hawks worried that the U.S. could be setting itself up for more financial pain down the road if interest rates and inflation surge. They also are raising alarms about additional spending the administration is proposing, including its plan to reform health care.

President Obama and other administration officials, including Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, have said the U.S. is committed to bringing down the deficits once the country has emerged from the current recession and financial crisis.

Illinois meat firm recalling beef on e.coli threat

Mon Jul 13, 2009 11:39am EDT

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Illinois-based meat company E.S. Miller Packing Co was recalling about 219 lbs of ground beef products amid concerns it could be contaminated with E.coli 0157:H7 bacteria, USDA said in statement on Monday.

No illnesses have been reported related to the recalled beef, which was distributed to consumers and several local restaurants in north central and northeast Illinois.

(Reporting by Bob Burgdorfer; Editing by Walter Bagley)

GOP weapon against health reform

In political combat, there are few more potent weapons than a single word or a catchy phrase that can be used to target a proposal and drive it into the ground.

For Republicans, “rationing” could be that poison-tipped arrow for the Democratic-led health care bill, much as “amnesty” was the club with which conservatives beat President Bush’s attempt at immigration reform into a bloody pulp in 2007.

“Governments ration care to control costs, and we’ve got stories from other countries where disabled children wait up to two years for wheelchairs. We’ve got a story that we found: a 76-year-old retiree pulled out their own teeth,” said Rep. Dave Camp, Michigan Republican and the ranking member on the House Ways and Means Committee.

“Government rationing is a scary proposition,” he said.

Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, echoed this point during a conference call Wednesday, warning that the government could get into the business of rationing health care, deciding how much Americans can get or can spend on it and denying people health care that exceeds some rationed amount.

“The rationing problem is very real in all this and I think that as the American people learn more and more about the proposals as we are now being allowed more time for them to engage on this issue, they are very, very much concerned,” he said.

But Democrats say the insurance companies are already rationing care and that the reforms they want would cover all those who are being denied coverage under the current system, as well as keep down costs through an intensive focus on which medical procedures and products deliver care most effectively.

Republicans say that under a government-run system, which they argue will result from the proposed option to buy insurance from the government, cost will come to be the dominant factor that defines “efficient care,” and thus Americans will be denied care with no recourse.

House Democrats plan to introduce their health care overhaul measure Monday and consider amendments later in the week. On Sunday’s talk shows, there was disagreement on whether Congress will finish work on the bill before adjourning for the August recess.

Sen. Judd Gregg, New Hampshire Republican, said on CNN that meeting the deadline was “highly unlikely” because the Senate Finance Committee had not completed a draft. Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, the Senate Republican whip, said flatly there was “no chance.”

Demjanjuk charged over WWII killings

MUNICH (AP) — German prosecutors formally charged John Demjanjuk on Monday with 27,900 counts of being an accessory to murder at a Nazi death camp during World War II.

The charges against the 89-year-old retired auto worker, who was deported from the U.S. in May, were filed at a Munich state court, prosecutors in the city said in a brief statement.

Doctors cleared the way for formal charges earlier this month, determining that Demjanjuk (dem-YAHN’-yuk) was fit to stand trial so long as court hearings do not exceed two 90-minute sessions per day.

The court must now decide whether to accept the charges — usually a formality — and set a date for the trial. Court spokeswoman Margarete Noetzel said the trial was unlikely to start before the autumn.

Demjanjuk lawyer Guenther Maull had no immediate comment on the charges, saying he had not yet seen them.

Charges of accessory to murder carry a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison in Germany.

Prosecutors accuse Demjanjuk of serving as a guard at the Sobibor camp in Nazi-occupied Poland in 1943.

Demjanjuk, a native of Ukraine, says he was a Red Army soldier who spent the war as a prisoner of war and never hurt anyone.

But Nazi-era documents obtained by U.S. justice authorities and shared with German prosecutors include a photo ID identifying Demjanjuk as a guard at the Sobibor death camp and saying he was trained at an SS facility for Nazi guards at Trawniki, also in Nazi-occupied Poland. U.S. and German experts have declared the ID genuine.

Demjanjuk gained U.S. citizenship in 1958. The U.S. Justice Department moved to revoke the citizenship in 1977, alleging he hid his past as a Nazi death camp guard, and it was revoked in 1981.

Demjanjuk was tried in Israel over accusations that he was the notorious “Ivan the Terrible” at the Treblinka death camp in Poland. He was found guilty in 1988 of war crimes and crimes against humanity but the conviction was overturned by the Israeli Supreme Court.

That decision came after Israel won access to Soviet archives, which had depositions given after the war by 37 Treblinka guards and forced laborers who said “Ivan” was a different Ukrainian named Ivan Marchenko.

Demjanjuk’s U.S. citizenship was restored in 1998. However, a U.S. judge revoked it again in 2002 based on fresh Justice Department evidence showing he concealed his service at Sobibor and other Nazi-run death and forced-labor camps from immigration officials.

A U.S. immigration judge ruled in 2005 he could be deported to Germany, Poland or Ukraine. Munich prosecutors issued an arrest warrant for him in March.

They accused him in that warrant of being an accessory to murder in 29,000 cases. However, that number was reduced in the charges because, of the people transported to Sobibor, “many did not survive the journey,” said Anton Winkler, a spokesman for Munich prosecutors.

Efraim Zuroff, the top Nazi-hunter at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, welcomed the filing of formal charges.

“This is obviously an important step forward,” Zuroff said by telephone from Jerusalem. “We hope that the trial itself will be expedited so that justice will be achieved and he can be given the appropriate punishment.”

“The effort to bring Demjanjuk to justice sends a very powerful message that the passage of time in no way diminishes the guilt of the perpetrator,” Zuroff said.

Regina Benjamin, Obama’s Pick For Surgeon General

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama turned to the Deep South for the next surgeon general, choosing a rural Alabama family physician who made headlines with fierce determination to rebuild her nonprofit medical clinic in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

Dr. Regina Benjamin is known along Alabama’s impoverished Gulf Coast as a country doctor who makes house calls and doesn’t turn away patients who can’t pay _ even as she’s had to find the money to rebuild a clinic repeatedly destroyed by hurricanes and once even fire.

“For all the tremendous obstacles that she has overcome, Regina Benjamin also represents what’s best about health care in America, doctors and nurses who give and care and sacrifice for the sake of their patients,” Obama said Monday in introducing his choice for a job known as America’s doctor.

He said Benjamin will bring insight as his administration struggles to revamp the health care system:

Saying she “has seen in a very personal way what is broken about our health care system,” Obama said Benjamin will bring important insight as his administration tries to revamp that system.

Benjamin called the job “a physician’s dream,” and pledged to be a voice for patients in need _ and to fight the preventable diseases that claim too many lives each year, including nearly her entire family.

Her father died with diabetes and high blood pressure, her only brother of HIV, her mother of lung cancer “because as a young girl, she wanted to smoke just like her twin brother could” _ an uncle now on oxygen as a result, she noted.

Janet Jackson Speaks for Family at BET Awards 2009

Janet Jackson Speaks for Family on behalf of Michael at BET Awards 2009

Janet Jackson at BET Awards

click link above

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Janet Jackson has taken the stage at the BET Awards to speak on behalf of her grieving family and thank fans for their love and support.

It was Janet Jackson’s first public appearance since her brother died last Thursday. With a deep sadness on her face, she strolled to the microphone and began to speak.

She said: “My entire family wanted to be here tonight, but it was just too painful, so they elected me to be here.”

She noted that the King of Pop was an icon to all in attendance, but that to the Jacksons, “he was family.”

After her brief comments, Ne-Yo and host Jamie Foxx took the stage and sang a poignant “I’ll Be There” by the Jackson 5.

AP, BET

Michael Jackson: Victim of Extreme Celebrity

To the People,

I hung out with Michael Jackson (MJ) and his brothers during the recording of their TRIUMPH album, and I must say that MJ was very, very kind and brotherly-like to me.  (Mind you now, this was a secret and off-limits recording session, and his brother Jackie did not like the fact that I was there).

But MJ insisted that I stay, and he and I spent about 2 hours (while waiting for a piece of recording equipment to arrive) – just talking about beautiful world destinations like Hawaii, Africa and other places.

More importantly, I have been very critical of and dismayed by MJ’s physical transformation that from my view, disrespected the tens of millions of Black brothers worldwide and their bold and beautiful African features and hair.

My  verdict?  MJ was guilty of dissing his original Africa features for Europeans ones.

Min. Farrakhan blames MJ’s issues on “extreme celebrity” that negatively distorts a person’s clarity.

Still others say that the childhood “beatings” by his father Joe Jackson were too many and were too brutal causing MJ to carry this fear/hate/love of his father to places that afforded him an escape from his reality.

Maybe MJ physical change to “white” was his attempt to dare the world to love him (and everyone) despite his (their) skin color or physical attributes.

Or maybe MJ did not want his children to face the same racism and the multitude of other problems Black people have to deal with is another possible reason MJ only wed and befriended white women (some of whom supposedly mothered his three children).

In conclusion, I just want to confess that I love music.  But I also detest how music, sports, and celebrity are used to program the masses into a state of ignorance and servitude.

To his credit, MJ did leave the confines of the brutally racist entertainment industry to address world hunger, racism and the lack of basic human rights for various people of the world.

This, for me, is what makes MJ stand apart more than what any melody or lyric can ever do.

RIP my Brother.  And please scout out a place for me in the other world.

In Love With My People,

Fige Bornu, Chairman – Positive African Image Institute

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