GARY PETERS IMPLICATED IN EXPOSE BY PULITZER PRIZE WINNING NEWS GROUP

Despite His Mega-million-dollar ad campaign to the contrary, Gary Peters is not as he seems. In his bid to hold on to his first-term congressional seat in a race that’s been handicapped as one of the closest, most competitive in the nation, Mr. Peters is projecting himself to be the champion of Main Street and the tough watchdog protecting our interests against big banks, Wall Street and other assorted “sinister” outside influences.
But Mr. Peters is not as chaste as he would have you believe. Just in time for Halloween comes an expose (http://www.propublica.org/article/new-democrat-coalition) from the Pulitzer Prize-winning news organization, ProPublica that is ripping off his masquerade as the guardian of mainstream America against the excesses of greedy banks, Wall Street, Big Pharma and special interests.
ProPublica published a blockbuster investigation of the 69 New Democrats, of which Peters is a member. The expose documents how the New Democrats have raked in millions from the very same “fat cat” lobbyists they decry in public and how they have wielded their congressional clout as payback, weakening important financial and consumer reforms.
“In the past year and a half, New Democrats have pulled in more than $18 million in campaign contributions from their lobbyist fundraising network. The lobbyists, in turn, have mingled with lawmakers and their staffers at least 850 times during fundraising events and informal get-togethers,” ProPublica reports. In the past two years, since the start of the 2008 election cycle, the financial industry has donated $24.9 million to members of the New Democrats, according to a Business Week profile of the New Democrats. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34644156/ns/business-businessweekcom//.
Peters himself has profited handsomely from his membership in the New Democrats, pulling in close to half of his PAC donations (from 1/1/2009 through 09/30/2010) from interests which also donated to the New Democrats. Peters and his New Democrat colleagues refused to be interviewed for the story, the reporters note.
At the bidding of these special interests, according to the articles, the members of the New Democrats Coalition, several of whom, like Gary Peters, sit on the House Financial Services Committee, have watered down financial regulatory reform, fought to ensure that banks receiving TARP money didn’t have to trim executive bonuses and helped block a proposal to allow bankruptcy judges to adjust home mortgages — a move many experts say could have mitigated the wave of foreclosures. Records show The National Association of Realtors PAC donated more than $403,000 to the New Democrats according to ProPublica.
The New Democrats tapped Peters because he had the perfect resume, having made his living as a Wall Street insider with 23 years combined experience as an executive at Merrill Lynch and Paine Webber. But nowhere is this background to be found in Peters’ ads or on his campaign website where his focus paradoxically is “cracking down on Wall Street.”
Peters was also named as one of three House conferees selected to hammer out the final financial reform bill while the leadership of the New Democrats “worked behind the scenes to make sure the interests of the New Democrats and their allies were represented” ProPublica reported.
Both the ProPublica and Business Week accounts chronicle how the New Democrats also played a decisive role during the healthcare reform debate, delivering a win for Big Pharma and biotechnologies on a class of medicines called biologics used to treat cancer, anemia and arthritis. At stake was the period of patent protection during which cheaper generics would be prevented from competing. The biologics industry wanted to keep the patent window at 12 years; the Administration pressed for seven years following a Federal Trade Commission report concluding that the 12-year monopoly was “too long.” Ultimately, the New Democrats threw their “full weight” lobbying their party leadership and prevailed for Big Pharma, sliding through the 12-year patent protection.
The New Dems were also instrumental in shaping regulations for over-the-counter derivatives, the largely unregulated, complex financial products that were at the epicenter of the global financial meltdown. According to the Business Week report, a full-court press by the major investment banks and a consortium of businesses leaned hard on the New Democrats to ease up on the Administration’s insistence that derivates be moved to regulated trading platforms to prevent “reckless behavior on Wall Street.” The recommendations advanced by the New Dems “created a loophole that would allow risky and unregulated derivates trading” the head of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission warned, ProPublica reported.
Despite pitched back-room dealing, the New Dems’ derivatives exemptions were scrapped in House/Senate conference. And while the New Dems didn’t produce for Wall Street as it had hoped on this particular issue, “the group helped make the overall bill more palatable to the financial industry by forcing concessions on multiple fronts,” ProPublica reports.
So, even though the New Democrats — including Gary Peters — “helped block or water down measures proposed by the White House and Democratic leaders, many of its members are receiving cash infusions and strong support from party institutions like the DCCC,” ProPublica explains. It’s no wonder that the DCCC has just dumped $497,000 in last minute advertising buys for Peters, making him among the top 10 recipients of the DCCC’s 11th-hour giving.
It is troubling indeed that Peters, who portrays himself as a crusader for “Main Street” against the excesses of “Wall Street” is himself compromised by these apparent conflicts of interest, as exposed by ProPublica. Mr. Peters needs to come clean to his constituency immediately about his role in the New Democrats bloc.

Gary Peters doing the Tango with Fancy Nancy

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http://sendables.jibjab.com/view/H2aDEEHhEPGBvDSA

Part 4 of my Diary, HR 1, HR 384, HR 7110, HR 2454

After further digging into Gary Peters voting record, I found the following:

-----Voted YES on additional $825 billion for economic recovery package. H.R.1

Good intentions don't always deliver desired results especially when there is no documentation of where the money is going.  Why not retrieve the money sent to bogus congressional districts.  Where is the accounting?

-----Voted YES on monitoring TARP funds to ensure more mortgage relief (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac ). H.R.384

The government is rewarding bad behaviors and any parent can tell you that you will get more bad behavior.   A private FDIC would never permit this massive malinvestment.

----- Voted YES on $60B stimulus package for jobs, infrastructure, & energy.  HR7110

-----Voted YES on enforcing limits on CO2 global warming pollution. H.R.2454

We do not support this kind of suicide for the American economy. Unfortunately, cap and trade legislation would only further cripple our economy.

It's a fantasy that this legislation will turn down the thermostat of the world by reducing CO2 gas emissions when China & India & other nations are pumping more CO2 gas into the atmosphere all the time.

A study showed that 522,000 jobs, yes, more than half a million jobs could be lost by 2015 if Congress approves this legislation favors unfettered extreme government control

-----Voted YES on $2 billion more for Cash for Clunkers program. (Jul 2009) H.R. 3435

Stay tuned, more to come. Gary Peters was not bashful spending our hard earned money.

PART 3 of my Diary on Gary Peters HR 1106, Bankruptcy Rules & Mortgage Foreclosures

HR1106&S896

-----He Voted YES on modifying bankruptcy rules to avoid mortgage foreclosures.

This amendment would allow bankruptcy judges to modify home mortgages by lowering the principal and interest rate on the loan or extending the term of the loan.  Why would a lender make a 30-year loan if they fear the powers of the Federal Government will violate the very terms of that loan?  Would you want the govt to modify a contract that you entered into and are bound to? Gary Peters thinks that is just fine.

H.R. 1106 would have forced responsible U.S. taxpayers and homeowners to compensate delinquent borrowers and irresponsible lenders that took out and made the bad loans in the first place.

It would have forced banks to eat the costs when the principal owed on the mortgage is reduced, and then the banks facing insolvency would have had to then turn to the government for more bailout funds.

The taxpayers then would have wound up paying twice: first to bail out the borrower who couldn’t afford their house, and then the bank that was forced by government to make the bad loans in the first place.  Lenders must charge for that added risk, and experts estimate that the additional costs would raise mortgage rates by as much as two full percentage points or substantially increase required down payments.  Way to go Gary.  Your kind of accounting has gotten us in the mess we are in.

So Congressman, about your YES vote on HR 1106, allowing a bankruptcy judge to modify the principle and interest on a mortgage.  Have you thought through this one?  Why would a lender make a 30-year loan knowing the Federal Government could violate the very terms of that contact?  Would you loan someone a large sum of money under these conditions?  So you voted to allow the government to come in and change the rules in the middle of the game Gary?  Modifying the contract like this just delays the inevitable and puts the banks in jeopardy… then they may need to be bailed out…oh wait, you’ve done this before. So you voted that it was OK to put yet another burden on responsible taxpayers forcing them to pay for delinquent borrowers and then we pay to bail out the banks when it all doesn’t work out.   I’m glad the senate didn’t go for this bad legislation, but your inability to see the damage it would do in your district really concerns me.  In fact the whole 111th congress concerns all the taxpayers seeing as we are about to get the biggest tax increase in history this January.  We are not looking forward to the bill you will be sending us for all your bad legislation, Gary.  Finally I’m wondering that since lawyers would have been the big ‘winners’ of this legislation (who have heavily contributed to your campaigns), if that may have influenced your poor judgment at all.   You are doing a good job representing your campaign contributors, but what about the voters of MI 9th who can’t pay for those favors,? You made the taxpayers of the 9th district the big losers, and maybe you should lose in November because of this.

Gary Peters goes silent on Obamacare

A few weeks ago, liberal Democrats began making a full-blown retreat from their core arguments about cost and deficit reductions in the new health-care law because “they are not resonating with voters.” Based on advice from prominent liberal politicians and health care activists, Democrat candidates are being advised to discontinue messaging that focuses on health-care costs and deficit reduction, and to move instead to the use of anecdotal support for the bill’s passage while also promising to “improve it”.
Well, Gary Peters appears to have wasted no time in saluting Speaker Pelosi and submitting to this disingenuous change in direction from Democratic message makers: his campaign website is devoid of all references to health care reform, including his highly touted and largely ignored, self-imposed “principles” for voting in favor of Obamacare (which are still displayed, however, on his official House website at http://peters.house.gov/uploads/Peters%20principles%203%2022%2010.pdf
For those of you who missed it, last year Gary Peters published a set of principles for health care reform, standards by which he promised he would judge health care reform legislation when it was debated on the House floor. In fact, Gary said that if a health care reform bill met these principles he would vote for it and — if it did not — he would vote against it.
So, how did Gary stack up against his own standards, the so-called “Peters’ Principles,” in what now appears to have been a bit of political theater? Not well at all. Seems Obamacare widely missed the mark on a number of his key principles, but Gary took his marching orders from Nancy Pelosi and Henry Waxman anyway and voted in favor of the bill.
Is there any doubt why Gary Peters seems to have taken the advice of his leadership and is now attempting to cover his tracks while going silent in his campaign on his support for Obamacare? Any politician who could violate his own self-imposed principles in this way and is not above ignoring the fact that 60 percent of all Americans as well as a likely majority of his own constituents oppose this bill needs all the political cover he can find.
Clearly, Gary Peters does not work for us — he works for Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama. Vote for Rocky in November and begin to repeal and replace Obamacare!

H/T www.Rockyworksforus.com/blog

Stand with Rocky and help him get elected by donating here: http://www.rockyworksforus.com/

GARY PETERS FAILED THE SENIORS

In Nevada's hotly contested Senate race, Majority Leader Harry Reid is attacking Republican Sharron Angle, saying she wants to "gut" Medicare. But Mr. Reid has already gutted it. He and his colleagues, including  Nancy Pelosi along with Gary Peters did so by passing ObamaCare.
In the analysis accompanying the recently released Annual Report of the Medicare Board of Trustees, Richard Foster, Medicare's chief actuary, noted that Medicare payment rates for doctors and hospitals serving seniors will be cut by 30% over the next three years. Under the policies of ObamaCare, by 2019 Medicare payment rates will be lower than under Medicaid. Mr. Foster notes that by the end of the 75-year projection period in the Medicare Trustees Report, Medicare payment rates will be one-third of what will be paid by private insurance, and only half of what is paid by Medicaid.
Altogether, ObamaCare cuts $818 billion from Medicare part A (hospital insurance) from 2014 - 2023, the first 10 years of implementation, and $3.2 trillion over the first 20 years. Adding in cuts from Medicare Part B (physicians fees and other services) brings the total cuts to $4.95 trillion over the first 20 years.
Mr. Foster reports that two-thirds of hospitals already lose money on Medicare patients. Under ObamaCare it wil get much worse. Many doctors, surgeons and specialist providing critical care to the elderly will cease serving Medicare patients.
Source: Mr. Larry Hunter, President of the Social Security Institute and Mr. Peter Ferrara, Director of entitlement and budget policy at the Institute of Policy Innovation. Sept. 8, 2010.

"Cpngressman, you have the nerve to go to Senior Centers and bash Rocky Raczowski who understands the ramification you put us in, and you tell those seniors how well they will be taken care of, when in reality they will be much worse off.  Tell me Congressman, how do you sleep at night or do you just stay up and count the contributions given to you to make this healthcare bill pass?

VOTED YES ON H.R. 3357 - ANTI-RECESSION STIMULUS SPENDING

The Democrats' economic policy has resulted in record job loss, record deficits, and none of the job creation they promised.  Democrats predicted unemployment would top out at 8% if the stimulus passed; instead, it's 9.5% and rising.  The Nation's public debt and unemployment, combined, has risen by a shocking 40% because of literally trillions of dollars in additional spending under the Democrats' stimulus, energy, and health plans.

The Congressional Budget Office–the legislative branch’s own analytical agency–figures the legislation will make us worse in the long-term

So, we are going massively into debt and mortgaging the future of the young for the purpose of … shrinking the economy!  Workers will find themselves paying higher taxes to fund wasteful spending while … earning less!  No wonder Washington is such an alien place to most Americans.

 The Wall Street Journal describes how  “stimulus dollars came with strings attached that are now causing enormous budget headaches . . . At the behest of the public employee unions, Congress imposed ‘maintenance of effort’ spending requirements on states. These federal laws prohibit state legislatures from cutting spending on 15 programs,” such as ”welfare, if the state took even a dollar of stimulus cash,” even if a state’s tax revenue has since fallen due to the recession.  “So when states should be reducing” their spending ”to match. . . lower revenue collections, federal stimulus rules mean many states will have little choice but to raise taxes.”

Obama claimed the stimulus package was needed to prevent the economy from suffering from “irreversible decline,” but the Congressional Budget Office admitted that the stimulus package actually would shrink the economy “in the long run.”  Unemployment has skyrocketed past European levels, as big-spending countries have fared worse than thrifty ones.

The Washington Examiner says that “75,000 jobs” Obama has claimed credit for are “clearly imaginary” or “highly doubtful.”  That includes thousands of jobs the administration claims credit for creating in nonexistent Congressional districts. As the Examiner notes:So now the stimulus books are being cooked to mollify an anxious public worried that real-world jobs continue to disappear and angry that Obama has thrown almost $1 trillion down the stimulus rathole.

The stimulus package has since spawned countless examples of government waste and corruption.  Recently, Obama fired an inspector general, Gerald Walpin, who uncovered millions of dollars of waste and fraud in the AmeriCorps program, including by a prominent Obama supporter, endangering the Obama supporter’s ability to administer federal stimulus spending in Sacramento.  Obama’s alleged justification for firing the inspector general turned out to be false.

Congressman Peters, Maybe you cannot see this from Washington where the party spin never stops but out here in reality things are tough.  The stimulus seems to have been a very expensive flop and just like the CBO said, the stimulus will shrink the economy and “will make us worse in the long term”.  Well Brad, the ‘long term’ is here already.  Our public debt and unemployment combined, has risen by a shocking 40% because of literally trillions of dollars in additional spending that you voted for under the stimulus, energy, and health plans. We are now looking at the biggest tax increases in history because of your votes.  I can understand sticking with your party on votes but in doing so you have hurt the people of your district and their children, and their grandchildren. Why have you plunged us into so much debt, Brad?  Couldn’t you have stood up for us and talked some sense into your colleagues.  We the people don’t want your unemployment handouts, we want you to stop regulating us, spending like crazy and then sending us the bill. I’m not voting for you this time.  You need to come back here to reality and see the damage the 111th congress has done. But apparently you prefer attacking Rocky Raczkowski with lies and spin.  In addition, you want us to believe that suddenly you got Religion because you are running from your party and your mentor Nancy Pelosi.  Sorry, we see through you.