PayPal cuts WikiLeaks from money flow

BERLIN – Online payment service provider PayPal says in a company blog it has cut off the account used by WikiLeaks to collect donations.

The company said in a blog posting the move was prompted by a violation of its policy, "which states that our payment service cannot be used for any activities that encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal activity."

The short notice was dated Friday, and a spokeswoman for PayPal Germany on Saturday declined to elaborate and referred to the official blog posting.

Donating money to WikiLeaks via PayPal on Saturday was not possible anymore, generating an error message saying "this recipient is currently unable to receive money."

PayPal is one of several ways WikiLeaks collects donations. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101204/ap_on_re_us/wikileaks_donations

City Workers To Get Raises on Taxpayer Dime

City Manager Rashad Young let the City Council know last week that he planned to give 155 city employees raises on Jan. 1, 2011.

This week President Barack Hussein Obama declared a moratorium on raises for civilian federal employees and is being asked by some Democratic leaders to include military employees. State employees didn't get a raise last year and have almost no chance of getting a raise this year.

In the private sector companies continue to lay off employees and use tricks like requiring employees to take furlough days – where employees cannot come to work but, unlike vacation, are not paid for those days. Being furloughed one day a month results in about a 5 percent pay cut.

The city, instead of looking at pay cuts, is giving raises and has plans to give a lot more.

The raises are preliminary to a compensation study that the City Council, by a 7-to-2 vote, approved when it authorized the 2010-2011 budget in June. The budget was primarily the work of Mayor Bill Knight and Councilmember Danny Thompson. Councilmembers Trudy Wade and Mary Rakestraw voted against the budget because of the water rate increase – which they said was unnecessary and has now been cut in half – and other items, including the $250,000 compensation study and the $200,000 diversity study. http://greensboro.rhinotimes.com/Articles-c-2010-12-01-206635.112113-City-Workers-To-Get-Raises-on-Taxpayer-Dime.html

Bailey: If you think that this crap is only happening in someone else's city, try checking out the city where you live. This is happening everywhere in the country!

Federal Employees Continue to Prosper

Posted by Tad DeHaven

The Bureau of Economic Analysis has released its annual data on compensation levels by industry. The data show that the pay advantage enjoyed by federal civilian workers over private-sector workers continues to expand. This state of affairs is a thumb in the eye of the private sector, which continues to struggle with high unemployment. Many private sector employees have been forced to take pay and benefit cuts while continuing to fund generous federal employee compensation with their taxes.

Figure 1 looks at average wages. In 2009, the average wage for 1.95 million federal civilian workers was $81,258, which compared to an average $50,462 for the nation’s 101 million private sector workers (measured in full-time equivalents). The figure shows that the federal pay advantage (the gap between the lines) continued its steady increase over the past decade.http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/federal-employees-continue-to-prosper/

King: WikiLeaks Should Be Declared Terrorists

WikiLeaks, the group that released the sensitive documents on U.S. military, intelligence and diplomatic policy, may end up causing the deaths of Americans and our allies through its actions. So it stands to reason that the government must do something to punish the organization. Rep. Pete King, R-N.Y., the incoming chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee calls for a strong response, The Hill reports. 

"I am calling on the attorney general and supporting his efforts to fully prosecute WikiLeaks and its founder for violating the Espionage Act. And I'm also calling on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to declare WikiLeaks a foreign terrorist organization," King told 1010 WINS radio in New York.

"By doing that, we will be able to seize their funds and go after anyone who provides them help or contributions or assistance whatsoever," King explains. "To me, they are a clear and present danger to America."

Whistleblower website Website WikiLeaks

WikiLeaks is one example of why the American people are sick and tire of the government politicians. The first time these wikileak idiots let our classified information be known to the world someone in our government should have put a stop to it! What are the people in Washington waiting for? More of our soldiers, citizens, and friends to be killed before they act on this? The guy that runs this website should be shut down and arrested for murder & treason.
It's fine and dandy to tell the world about companies or countries that are doing things to harm human beings! But when you put out information that produces the same results, it's time your website should be shut down!

Sharpton Wants FCC to Ban Limbaugh

Liberal firebrand Rev. Al Sharpton is telling audiences that the Federal Communications Commission should take Rush Limbaugh off the airwaves because of perceived offenses toward racial minorities and other groups.

The attack was only the latest in a series of attacks by Democrats, including President Obama, who suggest that America's political discourse is being crippled by talk radio and cable news shows.

Specifically, Sharpton suggested that the FCC should establish "guidelines" or "standards" to regulate speech.

"You've got to remember that those stations that Rush Limbaugh is on and others are regulated by FCC, granted by FCC; they go back to them to get waivers," Sharpton said on his own radio show on Nov. 19th

"They go back to them to get consolidation," Sharpton continued. "They have the right to set standards. That does not impair your right to speak what you believe, but it does say that you are not going to do that to offend groups of Americans based on their race, their gender, their sexual status - none of that."

Sharpton's broadside followed a similar attack last week by Sen. Jay Rockefeller. The West Virginia Democrat went after both right-leaning Fox News and left-leaning MSNBC.

Said Rockefeller during a Senate hearing: "There's a little bug inside of me which wants to get the FCC to say to Fox and to MSNBC, 'Out. Off. End. Goodbye.' It would be a big favor to political discourse; to our ability to do our work here in Congress; and to the American people, to be able to talk with each other and have some faith in their government and, more importantly, in their future."

And earlier this year President Obama himself lamented what he described as the sad state of political discourse hampered by iPods and cable TV shows.

"And with iPods and iPads; and Xboxes and PlayStations - none of which I know how to work - information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation," Obama said during a commencement address at Hampton University in Virginia. "So all of this is not only putting pressure on you; it's putting new pressure on our country and on our democracy."

Conservatives and civil libertarians are concerned by what they see as a growing tolerance by liberals to regulate and even censor the airwaves, especially as outlets like Fox News and shows like Limbaugh's grow ever more popular.

Limbaugh is the most listened to radio host in the nation with more than 15 million weekly visitors. Fox News continues to trounce its cable news rivals CNN and MSNBC in ratings.

"This is scary stuff," lamented an editorial in Investors Business Daily. "Strong speech has always been quintessentially American.

With the airwaves and cyberspace replacing soapboxes, it's more vital than ever to protect it against politicians favoring a new 'fairness doctrine' that would keep voters from being armed with the information and analysis that can be used to unseat them."

Crisis, What Crisis? Time For a New U.S. Strategy On the Korean Peninsula

North Korea assaulted its southern neighbor today, its latest act of war against U.S. treaty ally South Korea 

and fresh on the heels of news of a previously undisclosed uranium-enrichment facility. Last March, 

North Korea sank a South Korean naval vessel without provocation, killing 46 sailors.

Today’s incident involved sustained shelling of a South Korean island by Pyongyang’s military, and resulted in at least two deaths.

This is likely part of an effort by Kim Jong Il to bring the North Korean military closer to him as he works 

through the installation of family members to surround him in power and eventually succeed him. It is also 

North Korea’s tried-and-true method of scaring us back to the negotiating table, where Pyongyang has 

gotten so much largesse over the years in exchange for false promises to disarm.

The response taking shape in Washington is insufficient.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2010/11/23/crisis-crisis-team-obama-comes-short-korean-peninsula/#ixzz16Cm064e7

Bailey: Maybe Obama should meet with the North Korean Leader and bow down to him like he has to several of the other Communist Leaders!

Newsmax Poll: O'Reilly, Beck Could Rival Obama in Head-to-Head Presidential Race

By Jim Meyers

In a clear sign of voters’ disdain for President Barack Obama’s policies, several media personalities with no political experience, including Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck, would be within striking distance of defeating Obama in a head-to-head race, according to a new Newsmax/SurveyUSA poll.

Newsmax conducted the survey to find out how several well-known political and "dark-horse" celebrity figures, ranging from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to businessmen Bill Gates and Warren Buffett to O’Reilly and Beck, would fare if they ran against Obama for the White House.

The survey of 1,000 registered voters was conducted Nov. 3-4, after Republicans won the House and gained six seats in the Senate in the midterm elections — results widely interpreted as a rejection of Obama and raising questions about his chances for re-election in 2012.

In the Newsmax poll, respondents were asked: “If there were an election for president of the United States today, and the only two names on the ballot were Bill O’Reilly and Barack Obama, whom would you vote for?” They also were asked that question with other leading media figures in place of O’Reilly.

Overall, O’Reilly got 46 percent of the vote and his fellow Fox News Channel host Beck received 45 percent.

Those percentages are remarkable considering that a prominent political figure, Sarah Palin, got 48 percent of the vote in the Newsmax poll.

O’Reilly even outpolled Obama among men with 52 percent of the vote, among Republicans (79 percent), and conservatives (82 percent).Beck tied Obama among men at 50 percent, and won among Republicans (78 percent) and conservatives (80 percent).

Both Beck and O’Reilly received 49 percent of the vote among white respondents.

Radio talk show host and former CNN anchor Lou Dobbs got 44 percent of the vote in the hypothetical head-to-head race against Obama, and top-ranked radio host Rush Limbaugh got 42 percent.

Other media personalities in the poll were “Tonight Show” host Jay Leno, who got 40 percent of the vote, Comedy Central host Jon Stewart (39 percent), and Oprah Winfrey (37 percent).

But all of the media figures in the poll, including Winfrey, defeated Obama among Republicans and conservatives.

SurveyUSA is an independent research company that conducts public opinion polls for media and academic institutions, and conducts private market research for commercial clients and nonprofit organizations.