Archives for April 2010

April 14th, 2010, Fairfax, VA—Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson today decried what he called “Barack Obama’s job-loss recovery.”

Today, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke testified that although the economy was recovering from the financial crisis, “a significant amount of time will be required to restore the 8-1/2 million jobs that were lost during the past two years.”

According to Bernanke that “a recovery in economic activity appears to have begun in the second half of last year.”

“However,” said Wilson, “since July of 2009, unemployment has increased by 543 thousand and underemployment has jumped by 826 thousand.”

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in July 2009, headline unemployment stood at 9.360 percent (14.462 million) and U-6 underemployment stood at 16.3 percent (25.184 million).

Today, it has risen to 9.749 percent (15.005 million) and 16.9 percent (26.011 million), respectively.

Said Wilson, “Obama has not even given the American people a jobless recovery. He has given them a job-loss recovery.”

“Unfortunately for the American people, he has done nothing to enable a speedy recovery in the employment situation, and instead has only placed heavy burdens on the economy and American families,” Wilson added.

Bernanke warned that government spending was out of control: “maintaining the confidence of the public and financial markets requires that policymakers move decisively to set the federal budget on a trajectory toward sustainable fiscal balance.”

Obama economic advisor Paul Volcker has proposed a new national sales tax to address steepening federal budget deficits. Wilson called it a “jobs killer.”

Wilson said that instead Congress must slash entitlement spending, saying that “No amount of new taxes, which will destroy jobs, will be able to sustain the unsustainable: the unbridled growth of federal welfare spending.”

In its ten-year budget plan, the White House projects that the national debt will grow by $10.6 trillion. Wilson said that “will mean less opportunities for private job creation, as government sucks much-needed resources from the economy to finance its unsustainable trajectory that threatens to forever wreck the nation’s finances.”

“Obama is recklessly driving up the national debt, destroying the dollar, taking over health care, taking over the financial system, proposing to raise taxes and punish wealth creation, artificially drive up the cost of energy with a punitive tax on carbon emissions, and all the while continuing the easy money monetary policies that caused the financial crisis to begin with,” Wilson concluded.

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April 13th, 2010, Fairfax, VA—Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson today urged the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to reject the nomination of Mari Del Carmen Aponte for the post of Ambassador to El Salvador.

The committee will be considering Aponte’s nomination in a hearing at 2:15PM.

In Wilson’s letter to the committee, he wrote, “Aponte’s nomination is permanently tainted by her 1990’s close, personal relationship with a man whom U.S. counterintelligence considered a Cuban DGI agent, according to a confidential intelligence memo that was obtained by Insight magazine.”

The letter continues, “Aponte’s failure to cooperate with a 1994 FBI investigation into the allegations, and her refusal to participate in a polygraph test after some of the answers to FBI questions showed minor inconsistencies serve as automatic disqualifiers for this nominee.”

An Insight on the News story detailed Aponte’s alleged recruitment by the Cuban spy agency, including receiving a loan which was never paid back that originated from Cuban sources. According to the a confidential intelligence memo delivered to Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms and obtained by Insight, “When the FBI questioned her about her involvement with Cuban intelligence, she reportedly refused to cooperate, saying that since she was not seeking a permanent White House position she was not subject to a background check.”

After she failed to take a lie detector test in 1994, Aponte withdrew herself from consideration of Ambassador to the Dominican Republic after committee questions about her suitability continued.

Yesterday Wilson had said Aponte is “unsuitable to represent the United States in El Salvador or anywhere else in the world. Aponte’s subsequent resume also casts considerable questions about where her loyalties lie, and she should be rejected by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,” said Wilson.

From 2001 to 2004, Aponte served as the Executive Director of the Puerto Rico Federal Affairs Administration. In this cabinet-level role, she represented the governor of Puerto Rico in the United States, where she, on at least one occasion, referred to Puerto Rico as a “country,” and her office issued at least one press release calling her office in D.C. an “embassy.”

In his letter Wilson stated, “While [Aponte’s] allegiance toward an independent Puerto Rico is part of the legitimate political discussion on the island, this allegiance combined with her previous unresolved ties to the Cuban spy agency show that she cannot be trusted to serve the interests of the United States.”

In a statement, Wilson concluded, “It is critical to the security of the United States that potential loyalty risks do not escape scrutiny by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when they are nominated, especially for high posts such as ambassador.”

Attachments:

Letter to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, April 13th, 2010

“Aponte: A Loyalty Risk for Ambassador?”, Richard McCarty for ALG News, March 8th, 2010

ALG Nominee Alert, Mari Del Carmen Aponte, March 2010.

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April 12th, 2010, Fairfax, VA—Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson today urged the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to reject the nomination of Mari Del Carmen Aponte for the post of Ambassador to El Salvador.

Bill Wilson, President of Americans for Limited Government called Aponte, “unsuitable to represent the United States in El Salvador or anywhere else in the world.”

Aponte’s past relationship with someone U.S. counterintelligence officials identified as a Cuban intelligence agent led to her withdrawing from consideration as the Ambassador for the Dominican Republic in 1998 under a cloud of suspicion.

An Insight on the News story detailed Aponte’s alleged recruitment by the Cuban spy agency, including receiving a loan which was never paid back that originated from Cuban sources. Most significantly, Aponte refused at the time to allow the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation to give her a polygraph test to clear her name, and withdrew from consideration after Committee questions about her suitability continued.

“Aponte’s subsequent resume also casts considerable questions about where her loyalties lie, and she should be rejected by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,” said Wilson.

From 2001 to 2004, Aponte served as the Executive Director of the Puerto Rico Federal Affairs Administration. In this cabinet-level role, she represented the governor of Puerto Rico in the United States, where she, on at least one occasion, referred to Puerto Rico as a “country,” and her office issued at least one press release calling her office in D.C. an “embassy.”

Bill Wilson concluded that, “It is astounding that anyone who has refused to explain close, personal ties to Castro’s spy network and declared Puerto Rico’s independence from the United States would be nominated to represent our nation in El Salvador which has been a lynchpin nation in Central America.

“The Senate Foreign Relations Committee should cut this nomination off at the knees by voting no on confirmation, and failing that, placing holds to demand a recorded, up-or-down vote.”

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee will be considering the Aponte nomination on Tuesday, April 13th.

Attachments:

“Aponte: A Loyalty Risk for Ambassador?”, Richard McCarty for ALG News, March 8th, 2010

ALG Nominee Alert, Mari Del Carmen Aponte, March 2010.

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April 8th, 2010, Fairfax, VA—Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson today urged Representative Scott Garrett (NJ-CD5) to demand the House majority convene hearings to investigate contradictory “guarantees” made by the federal government after Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were nationalized in 2008.

According to Wilson’s letter, “Somebody has lied, and he must be held accountable for misleading the American people.”

The letter also urged Garrett to recommend that Barack Obama appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the matter.

In a letter to Garrett, Secretary Timothy Geithner wrote that the “corporate debt of the GSEs is not the same as U.S. Treasuries, nor should it be considered sovereign debt.” The letter continued, “By statute, all obligations and securities issued by the GSEs must include a statement that makes clear that such obligations and securities are not guaranteed by the United States and do not constitute a debt or obligation of the United States.”

But, wrote Wilson, “Unfortunately, Secretary Geithner’s letter directly contradicts then-Federal Housing Finance Agency director James Lockhart’s 2008 Congressional testimony.”

Lockhart had testified that “the conservatorship and the access to credit from the U.S. Treasury provide an explicit guarantee to existing and future debt holders of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,” as reported by Bloomberg News.

At the time, the agency distinguished between “an explicit guarantee” and the “full faith and credit of the United States”, and Lockhart clarified that he meant “an effective guarantee because there’s $100 billion backing their equity provided by the U.S. Treasury…That does give them effectively a guarantee of the U.S. government.”

Wilson’s letter continued, “Adding complexity to this issue, according to the New York Federal Reserve’s website, the Federal Reserve is not guaranteeing the securities nor Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac by extension either with its purchase of $1.25 trillion of mortgage-backed securities from investors.”

According to the website: “Assets purchased under this program are fully guaranteed as to principal and interest by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Ginnie Mae, so the Federal Reserve’s exposure to the credit risk of the underlying mortgages is minimal.”

In the letter, Wilson wrote, “either then-Director Lockhart was misleading Congress in 2008, Secretary Geithner is misleading Congress today, or the Federal Reserve really is guaranteeing the GSEs’ debts and obligations.”

In a statement, Wilson said that “All these contradictory ‘guarantees’ do not add up, and the only way to get to bottom of it is for Congress to investigate the matter immediately. Are taxpayers guaranteeing Fannie and Freddie? Is the Federal Reserve? If neither, then who is backing up the GSEs’ $1.6 trillion in debt and $4.7 trillion in mortgage-backed securities?”

Wilson wrote that “Either taxpayers are backing up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, or they are not. If the Federal Reserve is not vouching for the GSEs’ debts and obligations, then only taxpayers can be.”

Interview Availability: Please contact Rebekah Rast at (703)383-0880 or at rrast@getliberty.org arrange an interview with ALG President Bill Wilson.

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April 7th, 2010, Fairfax, VA—Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson today condemned Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner for excluding Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s $6.3 trillion balance sheet, including $1.6 trillion in debt, from the current $12.6 trillion national debt despite 2008 testimony from a federal agency that the government was providing “an explicit guarantee” to the mortgage giants.

“Somebody has lied,” Wilson said, adding that “they must be held accountable for misleading the American people.”

In a letter to Congressman Scott Garrett, Geithner wrote that the “corporate debt of the GSEs is not the same as U.S. Treasuries, nor should it be considered sovereign debt.”

The letter continued, “By statute, all obligations and securities issued by the GSEs must include a statement that makes clear that such obligations and securities are not guaranteed by the United States and do not constitute a debt or obligation of the United States.”

In the same letter, Geithner wrote, the “Treasury is committed to supporting the GSEs while in conservatorship and to ensuring that the GSEs have sufficient capital to meet their debt obligations and honor their guarantees.”

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were placed under conservatorship by Congress in 2008 under the administration of the newly-created Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA). According to the agency’s website, “As of June 2008, the combined debt and obligations of these GSEs totaled $6.6 trillion.”

But that was not added to the national debt, despite the FHFA director James Lockhart’s Congressional testimony that “the conservatorship and the access to credit from the U.S. Treasury provide an explicit guarantee to existing and future debt holders of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,” as reported by Bloomberg News.

At the time, the agency distinguished between “an explicit guarantee” and the “full faith and credit of the United States”, and Lockhart clarified that he meant “an effective guarantee because there’s $100 billion backing their equity provided by the U.S. Treasury…That does give them effectively a guarantee of the U.S. government.”

“Geithner’s and Lockhart’s statements to Congress are in direct conflict with each other. One of them has lied to Congress. It is vital that the American people find out which one,” Wilson declared.

Wilson said the Treasury “is trying to have it both ways; they want to tell markets that they are guaranteeing Fannie and Freddie and tell taxpayers that they are not.”

Wilson also blasted what he termed “financial system takeover” legislation for not addressing the problems surrounding the GSE’s. “Fannie and Freddie underwrote almost every new mortgage in the country and sold their worthless securities all over the world, but neither Chris Dodd’s legislation in the Senate nor Barney Frank’s companion House legislation would do a thing about it,” Wilson said.

Wilson said “The Obama Administration wants to assume the power of controlling the mortgage market without assuming the risk of putting the $6.3 trillion mortgage giants on-budget.”

“The Treasury cannot have it both ways, and it only has two options at this stage: either the underlying assets of Fannie and Freddie are sold to privately-held institutions, or they are in effect guaranteed by taxpayers, as Lockhart stated,” Wilson added.

Those assets included, according to Bloomberg News, $4.7 trillion in mortgage-backed securities (MBS). Of that, $1.5 trillion had been sold to foreign investors, as reported by the New York Times.

Since that time, the Federal Reserve has purchased $1.25 trillion of the MBS, although they have not disclosed which securities it has purchased. According to the Federal Reserve, the securities are purchased at “Current face value of the securities, which is the remaining principal balance of the underlying mortgages.”

Wilson wants to know if foreign nations got bailed out, saying the exclusivity of the program was “cause for concern.” According to the NY Fed, “Initially, the investment managers will trade only with primary dealers who are eligible to transact directly with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Primary dealers are encouraged to submit offers for themselves and for their customers.”

Wilson noted that several of the primary dealers are foreign institutions. The so-called Troubled Asset Relief Program explicitly prohibited that foreign central banks or institutions owned by foreign governments from participating in the Treasury-administered program to purchase MBS, but Wilson said there was no such restriction on the Fed-administered MBS purchase program.

“It’s a legitimate question: Did the Fed buy back the mortgage-backed securities from the foreign investors, including China, Japan, and other sovereign entities?” Wilson asked.

According to the NY Fed’s website, the Federal Reserve is not guaranteeing the securities nor Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac by extension either: “Assets purchased under this program are fully guaranteed as to principal and interest by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Ginnie Mae, so the Federal Reserve’s exposure to the credit risk of the underlying mortgages is minimal.”

Wilson said since Fannie and Freddie depends on the Treasury to keep up with its obligations, and the Federal Reserve will not guarantee it, “that can only mean taxpayers are the guarantors of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.”

“Essentially, the Federal Reserve printed $1.25 trillion to buy back the mortgage-backed securities from investors. So, if the Federal Reserve is not backing up Fannie and Freddie’s worthless securities, then it bought those securities back with the implicit if not the explicit backing of U.S. taxpayers, just as they were sold,” Wilson concluded.

Interview Availability: Please contact Rebekah Rast at (703)383-0880 or at rrast@getliberty.org arrange an interview with ALG President Bill Wilson.

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April 6th, 2010, Fairfax, VA—Obama Administration officials within the Labor Department were urged to not rescindunion disclosure rules in a letter released today from Americans for Limited Government (ALG).

ALG President William Wilson in the April 5 letter to the Labor Department’s Office of Labor-Management Standards blasted the Agency stating, “Rather than working feverishly to turn union financial transparency into a financial black hole the Department should get back to work investigating and bringing to justice those union leaders who steal from their members.”

The letter was prompted by Labor Department proposed rulemaking that would change two major Bush Administration labor disclosure requirements. Under the new Obama rules, labor unions with trust accounts would be allowed to hide both income and expenditures from those trusts from scrutiny by members, media and outside watchdog groups creating a whole new definition of “blind trust”.

The other major change would allow “intermediary” unions like the role the Alabama Education Association plays for the National Education Association, to not disclose their income or expenditures creating a dead end for those reporting on how the teachers unions influence the nation’s education policies.

Wilson concluded by stating, “When union leaders working with their former employees, who now function as Obama officials at the U.S. Department of Labor, eliminate the ability of the people to track the expenditure and collection of hundreds of millions of dollars by those very union leaders, it smells like the sewer of corruption that only DC politics can create.”

The Department of Labor has been charged with overseeing the financial activities of organized labor since the 1959 passage of the John F. Kennedy sponsored Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act (LMRDA). A law that was designed to provide for full disclosure of union finances. During the Bush Administration more than 900 union leaders were successfully prosecuted, with many as a direct result of financial reporting requirements.

A copy of the original letter to the Department of Labor is available from ALG at http://www.getliberty.org/files/T-1 Rescission NPRM ALG Comment 04_05_10.pdf.

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April 6th, 2010, Fairfax, VA—Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson today issued the following statement regarding the failure by Obama nominee to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Goodwin Liu to provide 117 items asked for by the Senate Judiciary Committee, including speeches, publications, and other background materials:

“Goodwin Liu’s lack of candor in filling out his application for employment as a Member of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals would disqualify him from consideration by any Human Resources office in America, and it should sink his confirmation to the federal court. This wanton disregard for the Constitutional process of Senate confirmation only confirms Professor Liu’s own writings that show he believes the U.S. Constitution is barely even a guideline for judicial rulings.”

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April 5th, 2010, Fairfax, VA—Americans for Limited Government today launched two new websites, SEIUMonitor.com and UFCWMonitor.com to, according to ALG President Bill Wilson, “help union workers keep track of how their union dues are being wasted by labor bosses.”

“Since Barack Obama took office, he has, almost from day one, rolled back earlier efforts that increased transparency in labor unions. Those regulations were crafted in accordance with the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act,” said Wilson.

Wilson said that Obama’s repeal of those regulations left a “big gap in union disclosure,” adding, “SEIUMonitor.com and UFCWMonitor.com are designed to enable union workers to once again keep track of the strong arm tactics used against their own locals and political activities that their dues often pay for.”

Firm disclosure rules for unions were put into place by the Bush Administration. Unions had to disclose on their LM-2 forms annual reports reflecting finances and any recipients of $5,000 or more in union funds. The first filings of these forms would have been due in late 2009, but the Obama Administration delayed the filings and withdrew the most recent changes to the requirements in October 2009.

SEIUMonitor.com and UFCWMonitor.com will provide information to the public on union membership dues and what they are used for. Union workers can access information about their pensions, union management and any potential scandals that may affect their relationship with their union.

“One critical component of the websites is the ability of union workers to provide tips on union corruption, which our research department will look into,” said Don Todd, Director of ALG Research, former head of the Labor Department agency responsible for union oversight.

“The Department of Labor is cutting down on information available to union members,” Todd said, and encouraged union workers to use the websites “and provide us with any tips of misappropriation of funds.”

The websites are regularly updated with news and information helpful to a union member. Focusing on two of the largest and fastest growing union organizations, Wilson said the site would “shed light on shady union tactics by labor bosses to influence their members, media, and politicians into supporting their agenda.”

Wilson said that “rolling back the union transparency rules was a top priority of Big Labor in 2008, and it is therefore unsurprising that Barack Obama became their top advocate once elected.”

Wilson noted that the SEIU was particularly influential. SEIU President Andy Stern has been the most frequent visitor of the White House from January through July 2009, visiting 22 times according to the White House visitor log published by The Wall Street Journal.

Todd suggest that Stern’s reoccurring visits may have strengthened the Administration’s decision to lessen the requirements of union leaders.

“The Administration has been rolling reforms back and not showing where the money is going since Obama took office,” Todd says.

Labor’s Office of Labor-Management Standards has indicted more than a thousand union officials, winning 929 convictions for a wide range of criminal activities from 2001 to 2009, including fraud, misrepresentation and embezzlement.The office also won $93 million dollars in restitution of union funds.

The goal of the ALG effort is that union employees, the media and policymakers will utilize these websites for information they are not getting from the unions themselves.

Wilson concluded, “These websites should close the gap of rescinded union transparency left by the Obama Administration.”

For more information, please visit the websites at: http://seiumonitor.com and http://ufcwmonitor.com.

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April 1st, 2010, Fairfax, VA—Michael Yon continues to question why he was arrested upon arrival at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) for his refusal to answer a question about how much money he makes.

Commenting yesterday on his Facebook page about the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) appeal filed with the USCBP by the group Americans for Limited Government (ALG), Yon wrote, “Does the United States government have a right to arrest people for refusing to say who they work for, and how much money they earn? They arrested me. Why were Customs (CBP) people reading my private documents at the border? Is it possible to have words written on paper that are illegal? My arrest at Sea-Tac airport remains unexplained.”

ALG filed its original FOIA request to CBP one day following the arrest of the acclaimed Afghan war journalist the day following the January 5th, 2010 incident. It was denied on March 1st, and an appeal was mailed on March 31st.

The ALG FOIA request seeks to determine the circumstances around the incident including any policies or instructions that are provided to agents related to appropriate questions that should be asked of incoming citizens.

Ironically, the initial FOIA was denied just two weeks before the Obama Administration’s self-proclaimed “Sunshine Week”, where they applauded themselves for the work that has been done to increase transparency.

ALG President Bill Wilson said that the CBP denial of the FOIA request was “unwarranted,” concluding, “The American people have a right to know if citizens are going to be locked in handcuffs as a matter of national policy for not disclosing their income to Customs and Border Patrol when entering their homeland.”

Attachments:

Mr. Yon’s original Facebook feed:
http://www.facebook.com/MichaelYonFanPage?v=feed&story_fbid=273914137066

Mr. Yon’s March 31st Facebook feed:
http://www.facebook.com/posted.php?id=207730000664#!/posted.php?id=207730000664&share_id=109086185781174&comments=1#s109086185781174

Obama Admin. release on FOIA’s and “Sunshine Week”
http://www.justice.gov/oip/foiapost/2010foiapost8.htm

Original Yon FOIA request
http://washingtonalert.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/ALG-CBP-Michael-Yon-FOIA-01-06-09.pdf

CBP Denial of FOIA
www.getliberty.org/files/CBP FOIA Denial 03_01_10.pdf

Yon FOIA request appeal
www.getliberty.org/files/CBP FOIA Appeal 03_26_10.pdf

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