Landrieu’s Ugly Exit

Senator Mary Landrieu comes from a political dynasty in Louisiana — her father was mayor of New Orleans, and her brother is the current mayor. But as she heads into Saturday’s runoff election as a clear underdog, she is tarnishing her political inheritance by fighting ugly. She is resorting to lies and distortion to accuse her GOP opponent of backing the impeachment of President Obama and endorsing a documentary that, as she describes it, says slavery was better for blacks than welfare.

“Landrieu has flailed, veering from one issue to another,” concluded a Washington Post article this Thursday. When it hasn’t been haphazard, her campaign has been, at best, factually challenged.

Take the following radio ad airing on African-American stations, approved by Landrieu and paid for by the Democratic State Committee of Louisiana:

Man: News flash — Bobby Jindal endorses Bill Cassidy 100 percent. That troubles me. Jindal, our absentee governor, and Doc Cassidy, a medical doctor, oppose affordable health care for working families. These millionaire Republicans are against equal pay for women and have opposed the Violence against Women Act. And can you believe, Doc Cassidy has endorsed a documentary that claims slavery was better for black folks than welfare.

Man: Yeah, well he sure did, my friends. But worse than that, Cassidy and Jindal are trying to impeach our president. Back in the day, there was a TV cowboy named Hopalong Cassidy. I don’t know if they’re related, but why don’t you just hop along, Doctor Cassidy, to wherever your No, 1 supporter, Bobby Jindal, is headed this week, and let Senator Landrieu continue doing a great job for the people of Louisiana?

A Landrieu campaign aide told BuzzFeed.com that the slavery analogy was based on Cassidy’s appearance in the 2010 film A New America. Cassidy didn’t address slavery, but African-American syndicated columnist Star Parker did. A former single mother who spent years on welfare, Parker appears in the film and attacks the “government poverty plantation.” “With slavery, people generally want out,” she said. “But with welfare, folks are comfortable.”

Tough words, but hardly an endorsement of slavery. Parker is appalled at how Landrieu “dug into the gutter” to try to save her Senate seat. “I did not say slavery was better. I did say that the same political party that enslaved blacks 150 years ago is now full of overseers who ensure that no discussion of freedom from welfare is conducted in African-American communities.”

As for impeachment, another radio ad approved by Landrieu claims that Governor Jindal and Cassidy have “disrespected” President Obama. “If Cassidy wins, they will impeach him.” Neither man has embraced impeachment, but facts are immaterial to Landrieu. Her evidence for Cassidy’s “disrespect” of Obama is that “he refers to him by his last name, constantly.” Instead, he should always refer to him as President Obama.

The desperation of Landrieu’s campaign doesn’t stop there. Donald Cravins Sr., the mayor of Opelousas and the father of Landrieu’s chief-of-staff, was caught on videotape last month addressing a crowd just before the first round of voting in the Senate race: “If you early-voted, go vote again tomorrow. One more time’s not going to hurt.” Just in case anyone doubted that Cravins was serious, he told the crowd they had an insurance policy: The local prosecutor would look the other way: “Tomorrow we’re going to elect Earl Taylor as the D.A., so he won’t prosecute you if you vote twice,” he assured the crowd. When criticized for these remarks, Cravins says he was “joking.”

It’s ironic that the issue of voter fraud should enter Louisiana’s Senate race in 2014, given that in Landrieu’s first election in 1996 it also played a role. She won that year by 5,788 votes over Republican Woody Jenkins. Journalist Quin Hillyer noted that she was helped by “boatloads of gambling money turning out liberal voters to support a referendum for a land-based casino.”

Morris Reed remembers the 1996 casino cash well. A former judge, the African-American Reed was one of two Democrats on the same ballot running for district attorney in New Orleans. Reed, who crusaded against corruption, lost to the longtime incumbent, a white man who was nonetheless backed by the local black political machines. Reed claimed that gambling interests financed the use of dozens of vans to pick up New Orleans voters, pay them, and then haul them from one voting precinct to another to vote. Then New Orleans mysteriously became the only one of 64 parishes to violate state law in that election by opening all of its voting machines without any candidate present as a witness. Reed told me in 1996 that there was no doubt Landrieu’s victory was questionable given the dozens of irregularities, some of which led a New Orleans assistant city attorney to resign in protest.

Senator Landrieu began her Senate career under a cloud in 1997 — she was seated only provisionally owing to the controversies swirling around the New Orleans vote. Now, nearly two decades later, it appears she will be leaving office under a different cloud — an ugly, dark campaign that invents facts, stirs up racial animus, and distorts reality. If she loses, it will be a shame that she couldn’t have exited stage left with more grace and less vitriol.

"Cassidy didn’t address slavery, but African-American syndicated columnist Star Parker did. A former single mother who spent years on welfare, Parker appears in the film and attacks the “government poverty plantation.” “With slavery, people generally want out,” she said. “But with welfare, folks are comfortable.”

I think it's time to take Barack, Holder and Al Sharpton up on their desire for a dialogue on race in America. In fact, I'd like to start with the comments made by Pat Buchanan back when Obama first started talking about a world in need being run by white man's greed.

From Buchanan:
Barack says we need to have a conversation about race in America.

Fair enough. But this time, it has to be a two-way conversation. White America needs to be heard from, not just lectured to.

This time, the Silent Majority needs to have its convictions, grievances and demands heard. And among them are these:

First, America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known.

Wright ought to go down on his knees and thank God he is an American.

Second, no people anywhere has done more to lift up blacks than white Americans. Untold trillions have been spent since the ’60s on welfare, food stamps, rent supplements, Section 8 housing, Pell grants, student loans, legal services, Medicaid, Earned Income Tax Credits and poverty programs designed to bring the African-American community into the mainstream.

Governments, businesses and colleges have engaged in discrimination against white folks — with affirmative action, contract set-asides and quotas — to advance black applicants over white applicants.

Churches, foundations, civic groups, schools and individuals all over America have donated time and money to support soup kitchens, adult education, day care, retirement and nursing homes for blacks.

We hear the grievances. Where is the gratitude?

Barack talks about new “ladders of opportunity” for blacks.

Let him go to Altoona and Johnstown, and ask the white kids in Catholic schools how many were visited lately by Ivy League recruiters handing out scholarships for “deserving” white kids.

Is white America really responsible for the fact that the crime and incarceration rates for African-Americans are seven times those of white America? Is it really white America’s fault that illegitimacy in the African-American community has hit 70 percent and the black dropout rate from high schools in some cities has reached 50 percent?

Is that the fault of white America or, first and foremost, a failure of the black community itself?

As for racism, its ugliest manifestation is in interracial crime, and especially interracial crimes of violence. Is Barack Obama aware that while white criminals choose black victims 3 percent of the time, black criminals choose white victims 45 percent of the time?

Is Barack aware that black-on-white rapes are 100 times more common than the reverse, that black-on-white robberies were 139 times as common in the first three years of this decade as the reverse?

We have all heard ad nauseam from the Rev. Al about Tawana Brawley, the Duke rape case and Jena. And all turned out to be hoaxes. But about the epidemic of black assaults on whites that are real, we hear nothing.

Sorry, Barack, some of us have heard it all before, about 40 years and 40 trillion tax dollars ago.

O/Care is a huge money-laundering operation---everybody got a cut. From Michelle and her pal who made zillions botching the rollout web site using a phony computer company---to Obama admin insiders...Jonathan Gruber, and of, course, Dumbocrats.

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We still do not know where these billions went.

O/care allocated some $6 billion tax dollars----campaign money for loyal Dumbocrats)----which has yet to be traced.

The Untraceable $8 Billion ObamaCare PR Budget---truly govt fraud at its finest. Egged on by Pelosi, lock-stepping Democrats slavishly voted for Obamacare by an historic straignt-party line vote. But not one Democrat told Americans about Obamacare's Section 4002---which mandates an $8B untraceable fund to "promote" Obamacare (apparently b/c Boobamba had so little confidence in his signature legislation).

THE PAYOFF--WHO GETS THE MONEY? In 2010 Taxpayers are extorted $500 million, in 2011, $750 million, 2012, $1 billion, 2013, $1.25 billion, 2014, $1.5 billion, and, in 2015 and on, $2 billion

<><> Where is all that money going?

<><> Was cashing-in the incentive in getting the thing passed?

The sound of West Wing wire-transfers to states and to offshore banks is almost palpable.

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REFERENCE ACA SEC. 4002. PREVENTION AND PUBLIC HEALTH FUND.

(a) PURPOSE. It is the purpose of this section of the ACA to establish a Prevention and Public Health Fund (referred to in this section as the ‘‘Fund’’), to be administered through the Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Secretary, to provide for expanded and sustained national investment in prevention and public health programs to improve health and help restrain the rate of growth in private and public sector health care costs.

(b) FUNDING.—There are hereby authorized to be appropriated, and appropriated, to the Fund, out of any monies in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated—

(1) for fiscal year 2010, $500,000,000;
(2) for fiscal year 2011, $750,000,000;
(3) for fiscal year 2012, $1,000,000,000;
(4) for fiscal year 2013, $1,250,000,000;
(5) for fiscal year 2014, $1,500,000,000; and
(6) for fiscal year 2015, and each fiscal year thereafter, $2,000,000,000.

(c) USE OF FUND.—The Secretary shall transfer amounts in the Fund to accounts within the Department of Health and Human Services to increase funding, over the fiscal year 2008 level, for programs authorized by the Public Health Service Act, for prevention, wellness, and public health activities including prevention research and health screenings, such as the Community Transformation grant program, the Education and Outreach Campaign for Preventive Benefits, and immunization programs.

(d) TRANSFER AUTHORITY.—The Committee on Appropriations of the Senate and the Committee on Appropriations of the House of may provide for the transfer of funds in the Fund to eligible activities under this section, subject to subsection (c).

WHERE IS THE MONEY?

Nobody bats an eye b/c they’re all getting a cut..... pols known every shady MO to launder the zillions looted from the govt.

Contemplate how Madoff operated.

Money-laundering, tax evasion was part of the
Madoff mix-—aiding and abetting billionaires, foundations, and tax-exempts break the law in a seemingly legal way.
In the process, Madoff helped himself to the untraceable money.....and got nailed himself.

When he went to jail for 125 years, investigators found Ponzi King Madoff had stashed billions offshore-—into a labyrinth of financial entities.

Some $8.9 billion was funneled to Madoff through a dozen so-called feeder funds based in Europe, the Caribbean and Central America......a labyrinth of hedge funds, management companies and service

providers that, to unsuspecting outsiders, seemed to compose a formidable system of checks and balances.

But the purpose of this complex financial architecture was just the opposite: the feeder funds provided different modes for directing money
to Madoff in order to avoid scrutiny.

Dummycrats apparently took notes.

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