Politically Connected GSA Contract Recipient Raises Big Bucks For Obama

Just so you can avoid playing … And understand how Crony Capitalism works.

NOBAMA

President Obama is raising significant campaign cash from a company that received a federal contract worth nearly $30 million just months after a top White House official signed on as a senior vice president.

During his Wednesday trip to California, Obama met with a group of 25 high-powered donors who paid $35,800 each for the pleasure at the headquarters of cloud computing company Salesforce.com.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has bundled at least $500,000 for the Obama campaign. He hosted Obama at his palatial San Francisco-area home last year for another $35,800-a-head fundraiser.

In October of last year, Salesforce landed a $28 million contract with the General Services Administration for cloud computing services.

That contract fit with a new government-centered strategy at the company. “If we look at the government opportunities that are emerging in cloud computing, there’s no reason we can’t be a billion-dollar business in four to five years,” Dan Burton, Salesforce’s senior VP of strategy, told the Washington Business Journal.

Part of that strategy involved hiring Vivek Kundra as senior vice president of emerging markets just months after securing the GSA contract. In fact, Kundra was in charge of the Obama administration’s $80 billion technology budget at the time of that contract award.

While Benioff has been a frequent donor to both Democrats and Republicans for years, he appears to have stepped up his political activities since last year with the two fundraisers and his campaign bundling. That may also play into Salesforce’s attempts to land more business with the federal government.

Vacation backlash: Blue collar Dems jealous, angry at Obamas

It’s a tempting target against a demagogue who insists on making “fairness” an issue in every speech he makes, but will attacking Barack Obama over the costs of his family’s 17 vacations in three years resonate with voters?

Blue collar Democratic voters, stuck taking depressing “staycations” because they can’t afford gas and hotels, are resentful of the first family’s 17 lavish vacations around the world and don’t want their tax dollars paying for the Obamas’ holidays, according to a new analysis of swing voters.

Who does? How about it.

“They view everything through their own personal situation and if they can’t afford to do it, they can’t enjoy it, they don’t like Obama using their tax dollars to benefit himself,” said pollster John McLaughlin. “In this case, they see him as out of touch. While they are struggling he’s not sharing in that struggle and he’s basically doing what they can’t do on their tax dollars,” added the GOP pollster.

He and several other top-tier Republican pollsters, organized by Resurgent Republic, traveled to 11 battleground states to host focus groups of independent and swing voters, mostly Democrats, who voted for President Obama in 2008 but who are now on the fence.

McLaughlin handled blue collar and Catholic voters in Pittsburgh on April 3 and Cleveland on March 20. He found that they are very depressed about the economy and feel that their tax dollars are being sucked up by both the rich and those living on government assistance.

During the focus group discussions about debt and spending cuts, many in his group volunteered criticism of the presidential vacations as something that should be cut. Among the lines McLaughlin wrote down was one from a Democratic woman who said, “Michelle Obama spends $1 million to take the kids to Hawaii,” and another who said, “President Obama was the only president to take so many trips.”

The theme, said McLaughlin, is that the first family “is out of touch” with working class voters. Is that a surprise? Obama despises them, working class voters, and openly shows his disgust for them.

I think, the economy will make more of an impact than Obama’s vacations.  The only impact this might have would be to blunt Obama’s attacks on Romney as an out-of-touch rich man, because I’d bet that even the Romneys haven’t taken 17 vacations in the last three years — and theirs would have been funded out of their own pockets.

GSA Executive Asserts Right To Remain Silent

Facing criminal charges … What’s wrong with Obama’s big government folks? They think they are above the law? He can’t save them all, now can he. Here is a tale about stealing $823,000 in taxpayer funds for one big government hootenanny. Easy work as well, for do nothing government employes.

Took the 5th, your government servant takes the 5th. GSA Official Declines to Testify on $823,000 Las Vegas Event

The General Services Administration investigator who revealed a wild agency spending spree said Monday he’s investigating possible bribery and kickbacks, and has already recommended criminal charges to the Justice Department. The key figure in the scandal invoked his right to remain silent at the House hearing.

Inspector General Brian Miller made clear that he’s not done investigating GSA current and former officials, following his lengthy report April 2 on an October 2010 Las Vegas conference that cost taxpayers $823,000.

The regional executive who hosted the Western Regions Conference, Jeffrey Neely, invoked his Fifth Amendment rights and his chair remained empty the rest of the House Oversight and Government Reform hearing. He could face a criminal investigation.

“We do have other ongoing investigations including all sorts of improprieties, including bribes, possibly kickbacks but I’d have to check on precisely kickbacks,” Miller told the committee.

He added later, “We have recommended criminal charges.”

Bet You Didn’t Know: Washington Post, with a Straight Face: Too Much Happiness Can Make You Unhappy

Guilt tripping … Too much happiness will make you miserable, at least that’s how the Washington Post sees it. How about you?

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH:  I got it right here, folks.  It’s right here in the Washington Post.  And it fits, given what’s ahead of us.  Here’s the headline of the story in the Washington Post:  “Too Much Happiness Can Make You Unhappy,” according to studies.  That’s right.  “Too Much Happiness Can Make You Unhappy.”  Therefore, we’re gonna control happiness so that you don’t get unhappy.  And how we gonna control happiness?  We’re gonna keep the economy miserable so that you stay miserable.  This is a great indication of what the Washington Post thinks is in store for all of us.

It’s like during the nineties when Clinton was lying every time he opened his mouth and there were stories like, “Hey, lying is good for you.  Lying protects people’s feelings.  Lying prevents people from being hurt.  These little white lies are very good, and the better you are at it, the better our country is.”

Greetings, folks, great to have you here.  We are loaded.

Speaking of happiness, how about those people in the General Services Administration who apparently did not get the memo that we’re not supposed to get on our jets and go to Las Vegas.  They had a blast out there.  I guess they were at the Bellagio.  Well, I think it was the Bellagio because when I saw a TV story about it they had a picture of the Bellagio there, which is a great place.  I either stay there or at one of Steve Wynn’s places when I go out there.  But I tell you, too much happiness can make you unhappy.  Too much happiness is not a problem here at the EIB Network, folks.  We strive for it. It’s right in our founding documents, the pursuit of happiness. We pursue it. We find it. We share it.

END TRANSCRIPT

2012 – The Year the Can Kicks Back

Lurita Alexis Doan (born January 4, 1958), is an African American, conservative commentator discussing issues affecting the federal government. Doan was the host of the weekly opinion editorial, Leadership Matters, which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 2009. Doan is a regular contributor to The Arena at Politico.com and to Biggovernment.com, and has published opinion editorials in major U.S. daily newspapers, such as USA Today and The Los Angeles Times. Doan has also appeared as a guest contributor on Fox News, CNN and other cable networks with commentary on fiscal discipline, government contracting practices, the federal budget and current affairs.

Lurita served as the Administrator of the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) from May 31, 2006 to April 30, 2008. She is the first woman and the second African-American, to serve as chief executive of the U.S. General Services Administration.

Lurita’s tenure at the nation’s premier procurement agency was marked by a return to the fundamentals of business best practices and fiscal discipline that date to GSA’s creation in 1949, as well as a wave of award-winning, innovative ideas.

She writes in Townhall an insightful editorial:

President Obama may best be known as the president who took kicking the can down the road to new, unimagined levels. Obama has demonstrated an unusual ability to delay decision-making, to obfuscate issues, to divert attention from matters of critical importance, and his preference to take half measures when pushed to the brink is now well known. Obama is the Grand Master of Kicking the Can Down the Road.

But in 2012 that seems likely to change—the can is going to kick back.

The problems besetting our nation can only be ignored and obfuscated for so long—and the past three years of the Obama Administration shows that things have gone about as far as they can go.

Here are some likely can kicking back scenarios.

• Young adults and college-aged students get angry. Bad as matters may be for taxpayers, small businesses and minorities under the Obama Administration, matters are far worse for young adults who have the highest unemployment rates, both short-term and sustained, and little hope, in the short-term of improvement. College student loan rates have reached legendary highs and with parents who are also either unemployed, overextended credit-wise and facing diminished retirement savings, these young adults are facing a tsunami of debt in the upcoming years. Soon, these young adults are going to wake up to the realization that the added $4 trillion dollars in indebtedness, courtesy of the Obama Administration, must be paid back by their generation. Team Obama has falsely promised an ever-expanding set of entitlements that the country can’t afford and the young are left with the bill. The young adult population, which almost overwhelmingly voted for Obama in the last election, are going to wake up to the unhappy realization that Obama’s promise of “hope and change” is really just host and chains—a 21st century version of parasitic slavery—with young Americans enslaved by debt. That can will kick back fiercely and the inter-generational animosity, aware of Obama’s unfair wealth redistribution plan that forces the next generation (and most likely the one after that too) to pay the costs of this generations fecklessness–will be fierce.

While I truly hope the can kicks back, as this article says, I doubt it. Most people just take abuse without ever fighting back. The media, academia, unions, and powerful rich people like Soros and Hollywood celebs are for Obama. So are overwhelming percentages of blacks, Hispanics, Jews, and gays. And last, but certainly not least, the political Right is fractured as usual.

As horrible as he is, Obama stands an excellent chance of being reelected. Too many dumb people who believe there really is a pie in the sky, and it will eventually land in their plate.