Soaps.com - MESSAGE BOARDS

we should all be hoping for obama to succeed, that is the only thing that makes any sense to me

ok, i wanted both of your opinions actually, so i can think about all of it, i apologize to both of you, i should have started a separate thread

i was just looking some stuff up and came upon this, i thought it was interesting

what do you think about burris? i think he should resign

i read today that 20 road and bridge projects in erie and niagara counties were submitted for federal funding under the stimulus legislation signed last week, this will create thousands of jobs in nys this is great news!!!!!

also a man wrote an article in everybody's column in the buffalo news, he defined bipartisanship and i think he did a fine job

"common sense, integrity, and the ability to put your country ahead of your political party" i say well said

Awesome Presidental Address. Even the Republicans where giving standing ovations. Excellent job!!!! APPLAUSE!!!This is what we have been needing to hear for the last 8 years. I am happy and I am filled with optimism and hope!

from factcheck.org...interesting

Do some of the Republican claims you've heard about the stimulus bill sound too awful to be true? We find a few that are wildly exaggerated or downright false.

* It's not true that the bill contains spending for "golf carts." It has $300 million to buy fuel-efficient vehicles, some of which may be electric cart-like utility vehicles like those already in use on military bases and at other government facilities.

* Money claimed to be for "remodeled federal offices" is mostly designated for upgrading buildings to "green" status through such things as thicker insulation and highly efficient lighting, not new drapes or paneling.

* A widely repeated claim that $8 billion is set aside for a "levitating train" to Disneyland is untrue. That total is for unspecified high-speed rail projects, and some of it may or may not end up going to a proposed 300-mph "maglev" train connecting Anaheim, Calif., with Las Vegas.

* There's no money in the bill specified for butterfly parks, Frisbee golf courses or water slides, despite a GOP congressman's claim that the bill "will fund" those projects. He culled those silly-sounding items from a list of 18,750 city projects that the U.S. Conference of Mayors cobbled together as examples of "shovel-ready" projects.

just another false e mail going around


Did Nancy Pelosi get wage breaks and tax credits for the American Samoan operations of a company in which her husband owns $17 million worth of stock?
I received this e-mail. Is it true?

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's home House District includes San Francisco.

Star-Kist Tuna's headquarters are in San Francisco, Pelosi's home district.

Star-Kist is owned by Del Monte Foods and is a major contributor to Pelosi.

Star-Kist is the major employer in American Samoa employing 75% of the Samoan workforce.

Paul Pelosi, Nancy's husband, owns $17 million dollars of Star-Kist stock.

In January, 2007 when the minimum wage was increased from $5.15 to $7.25, Pelosi had American Samoa exempted from the increase so Del Monte would not have to pay the higher wage. This would make Del Monte products less expensive than their competition's.

Last week when the huge bailout bill was passed, Pelosi added an earmark to the final bill adding $33 million dollars for an "economic development credit in American Samoa".

Pelosi has called the Bush Administration "corrupt".

She should know.
A:

This widely e-mailed claim is false. Pelosi's husband doesn't own that stock, despite what a bogus Wikipedia entry briefly claimed. Furthermore, American Samoa never got the minimum wage exemption it sought.
This is the latest version of a falsehood that's been circulating since January 2007, when Congress was debating a minimum wage increase. The central claims are all wrong.

No $17 Million in Stock

To start, it's simply not true that Pelosi's husband owns $17 million worth of Del Monte stock, giving her a "corrupt" motive to aid the company. (Nor does he own such an interest in Del Monte's primary shareholder, Heinz, as alleged in some versions of this message.)

We traced this false claim back to a 2007 article in the conservative NewsBusters blog, which attributed it only to a single, unsupported sentence in Wikipedia's article on Del Monte. That's hardly an authoritative source. Wikipedia articles may be written or edited by any user, making the site notorious for its vulnerability to false entries, pranks and vandalism. NewsBusters editors later admitted that its claim "has not otherwise been verified" and that "there is reason to believe that the claim of such ownership interest on the part of Paul Pelosi is suspect." Actually, NewsBusters fell for a Wikipedia hoax.

The sentence about Paul Pelosi was added to the Del Monte Foods article on Jan. 12, 2007, the same day that the NewsBusters article was published. Within six hours, a Wikipedia editor flagged it as "not verified" and "unsourced" and then quickly deleted it altogether. Pelosi's 2007 financial disclosure statement, which lists between $9 million and $11 million in stocks owned by her husband, shows no StarKist, Del Monte or Heinz stock holdings. Neither do her 2006 or 2005 reports. Filing a false disclosure statement is a serious offense, carrying a fine of up to $10,000, and we've seen no evidence that Pelosi's report is inaccurate.

No "Major Contributor"

It is also untrue that Del Monte is a "major contributor" to Pelosi, or a contributor at all. The company doesn't rank among her top contributors in any year, and neither does the National Food Processors Association PAC, to which Del Monte contributes. A search of contribution records covering the last 18 years shows that Pelosi has not received any contributions of $200 or more from Del Monte or StarKist employees.

No Evidence of Favoritism

Stripped of the false claims that Pelosi stood to profit personally from her action, or that she was acting to favor a campaign donor, the e-mail's claim amounts to nothing more than accusing her of doing favors for a company located in her home district. That's pretty much what House members are elected to do. But even this claim rests on flimsy evidence.

It is true that StarKist Tuna was, until recently, owned by Del Monte Foods and headquartered in Pelosi's home district. On October 7, the company was bought out by South Korean conglomerate Dongwon Industries, which moved the headquarters to Pittsburgh. It's true that StarKist is a major employer in American Samoa, where tuna canning is a backbone of the economy. And it's true that American Samoa was exempted from the minimum wage increase that the House passed in 2007. But that's where the solid parts of this e-mail end.

It's not at all clear that Pelosi pushed to shield American Samoa from minimum wage increases. A spokesperson for Pelosi has said that the exemption was requested by delegate Eni Faleomavaega, who represents American Samoa in a nonvoting capacity. We can't say for certain that Pelosi had no hand in pushing the Samoan exemption. But there's no evidence that she did. For his part, Faleomavaega was vocal about his concerns regarding the impact that automatic minimum wage increases would have on the Samoan economy. Faleomavaega supported a minimum wage increase, but wanted Congress to work out a different way to improve wages in Samoa, one that would have less impact on the territory's economy.

Faleomavaega also criticized Del Monte for failing to respond to rumors that Pelosi was showing them favoritism because of their political contributions:

Letter to Del Monte president, May 11, 2007: Throughout the minimum wage debate, Del Monte has chosen to remain silent while Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has been unfairly attacked by Republicans who suggested that she received campaign dollars from you in exchange for lower minimum wages in American Samoa. As you know, neither Speaker Pelosi nor I have ever received or accepted one penny from Del Monte or Star Kist and a respectable company would have gone on record and made this known.

Once accusations of favoritism started circulating, House Democrats were under pressure to deny Samoa special treatment. In the end, a new bill was passed in which Samoa saw the same automatic minimum wage increases as the incorporated parts of the United States. In November 2008, StarKist laid off 20 workers and cut employee benefits at its Samoan cannery, citing "dramatically escalating costs" due in part to automatic wage increases.

Finally, the e-mail implies that Pelosi added a new credit for American Samoa's economic development to the bailout bill. In fact, the bill extended an existing development credit first established by the Tax Relief and Health Care Act of 2006. As Speaker of the House, Pelosi was instrumental in drawing up the House version of the bailout amendment, though records don't show exactly who wrote what. But the extension of American Samoa economic relief also appears in the Senate version, before it was sent to the House for consideration.

-Jess Henig

that's because you taught me where to look

The fact that the Conservatives had Rush Limbaugh as the key speaker of their CPAC conference this weekend I think shows how directionless the Republican Party is of late.
If that is the voice of Conservatism I think they have made themselves a huge joke, and I can't imagine anyone with a brain that has the ability for logic and reason to take conservatism seriously. I mean if you are a conservative who has the capacity for logic, you would have to be pretty embarrassed after that fiasco this weekend.

mediamatters.org/items/200903010007

During his February 28 speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference, Rush Limbaugh falsely claimed: "Congressman [Barney] Frank's [D-MA] definition of affordable housing is you get a house that you don't have to pay for, that everybody else in the neighborhood will pay for. And why? Well, because it's unfair that some people can have a house and some people can't. See, it's just unfair." In fact, as Media Matters for America has noted, Frank has advocated for the expansion of affordable rental housing, rather than advocating for, as Limbaugh suggested, universal home ownership.

Contrary to Limbaugh's claim that Frank's "definition of affordable housing" includes universal home ownership, in a 2006 speech on the House floor, Frank stated: "I always want to make it clear to people that while homeownership is very important, it should not be considered all of our goal in the housing area. A large number of people, for economic reasons and other reasons, will be renters." Similarly, during a February 13, 2002, hearing on the Housing and Urban Development budget for fiscal year 2003, Frank stated (retrieved from the Nexis database): "[H]ome ownership is a very good thing, and I want us to encourage it. It is a grave error to make that the central focus of housing policy from the standpoint of the government. .... [A]lmost by definition, the large majority of poor people are in rental housing, and we will never alleviate the terrible housing crisis that affects so many people in this country if we do not do a much better job of building decent, affordable rental housing."

Further, in a profile of Frank for the January 12 edition of The New Yorker, staff writer Jeffrey Toobin wrote: "According to Frank, at the root of the real-estate crisis was a misguided notion that homeownership should be available to all people -- what President Bush has called 'the ownership society.' " Toobin quoted Frank saying in a speech that home ownership "is not suitable for everybody." In the profile, Toobin also addressed Frank's efforts to preserve and expand housing for low-income renters.

As Media Matters documented, during the January 7 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show, Limbaugh falsely asserted that Frank "created the problem" of the subprime mortgage crisis. Limbaugh claimed that Frank's "definition of affordable housing was to make sure that people who couldn't pay the loans back got the loans, the mortgages. He forced Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to do this." Later in the broadcast, Limbaugh played a parody song titled "Banking Queen" featuring an impersonation of Frank by comedian and frequent contributor Paul Shanklin. In the parody, Frank, who refers to himself as "the banking queen," threatens banks to make loans or they'll "be fined," adding: "My friends at Fannie sure need it, do it my way or beat it."

In addition, during the same speech, Limbaugh claimed that President Obama's house in Chicago was "purchased by Tony Rezko." In fact, documents posted on Obama's campaign website indicate that Obama purchased the house himself.