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Secret Agenda Fed Email: Maximize Sequester's Impact - Judge Napolitano - Impeachable Offenses?

2013-03-26T07:13:54.886Z

A leaked email from an Agriculture Department field officer adds fuel to claims President Obama's political strategy is to make the billions in recent federal budget cuts as painful as possible to win the public opinion battle against Republicans.

The email, circulated around Capitol Hill, was sent Monday by Charles Brown, a director at the agency’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service office in Raleigh, N.C. He appears to tell his regional team about a response to his recent question on the amount of latitude he has in making cuts.

According to the partially redacted email, the response came from the Agriculture Department’s budget office and in part states: “However you manage that reduction, you need to make sure you are not contradicting what we said the impact would be.”

The response noted that the administration had already told Congress that the APHIS would “eliminate assistance to producers in 24 states in managing wildlife damage to the aquaculture industry” without additional funds.

Arkansas Republican Rep. Tim Griffin said the administration’s response to Brown’s email shows a bid to undermine efforts to replace the cuts, known as sequester, with less onerous ones.

“This email confirms what many Americans have suspected: The Obama administration is doing everything they can to make sure their worst predictions come true and to maximize the pain of the sequester cuts for political gain,” Griffin said in a statement.

Griffin told Fox News on Wednesday that the bosses effectively said, “You can’t do anything that is inconsistent with the negative impact that we’ve told everybody these cuts are going to have.”

An Agriculture Department spokesperson told Fox on Wednesday that the email "has been completely taken out of context. The spokesperson said it references "cuts and impacts communicated to Congress as part of the FY2013 budget, not as part of a sequester plan."

Under the 2011 deal reached by Obama and Congress, the cuts are supposed to be across the board, meaning government officials have limited flexibility in moving around money.

The administration in recent weeks has made doomsday predictions about the impact of the cuts. And the White House so far has appeared unwilling to accept a Republican offer to give the president more autonomy in making the cuts, covering $85 billion this fiscal year, to help reduce the impact on some of the most essential or hardest-hit programs or agencies.

Some political strategists say the president hopes the cuts hurt enough to compel Republican lawmakers seeking re-election next year to end them by agreeing to more tax increases.

On Sunday, Gene Sperling, the White House’s top economic adviser, suggested Republicans would indeed make this decision.

“Our hope is, as more Republicans start to see this pain in their own districts, they will choose bipartisan compromise over this absolutist position,” he said.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, during a House hearing Tuesday, was asked by South Dakota Republican Rep. Kristi Noem about the Brown email.

Vilsack said he was unaware of the email, but denied the administration has a policy of being inflexible and maximizing the cuts’ impact.
“I wouldn’t say that we’ve said no to flexibility,” Vilsack said. “But there are certain circumstances where we don’t have flexibility.”
“I’m hopeful that isn't an agenda that has been put forward," Noem said.

NOTE: Redacted Email may be accessed at - http://griffin.house.gov/sites/griffin.house.gov/files/email.pdf

Fox News Says Sequester Will Lead To Murder By Freed Immigrants

2013-03-09T01:46:48.204Z

Fox has been fanning the flames of fear lately that dangerous criminal immigrants have been let loose by the Obama administration as a response to pending sequester spending cuts. But the propaganda took a new turn for the worse as Fox & Friends presented anti-immigrant extremist Lou Barletta (R-PA) as an unquestioned authority to discuss what is in reality ICE's supervised release of some undocumented immigrants. As he made the McCarthy-esque warning that he had "been told" dangerous criminals were now on the loose, he also accused the Obama administration of preferring to endanger Americans rather than to lay off any federal employees.

It started with Steve Doocy making the unsubstantiated announcement in his introduction, "Hundreds of illegal immigrants charged with big crimes freed from jail."

After playing a clip of Jay Carney saying the decision to release the detainees was made by "career officials at ICE without any input from the White House," Gretchen Carlson asked, "So are we to believe the White House now?" For the answer, she brought on Barletta who, she said, "I know is skeptical." She forgot to tell her viewers that Barletta, was described by Right Wing Watch as a "one-issue firebrand," a "hero to anti-immigrant and nativist groups," and one of the Ten Scariest Republicans Heading To Congress in 2010.

A quick Google search turned up the facts of the ICE release. Here, for example, is an excerpt from yesterday's The Hill:

Republicans have begun hammering the administration for answers as to why earlier this week ICE released "several hundred" illegal immigrants into a supervised monitoring program.

An ICE spokeswoman said the move, which targeted only illegal immigrants deemed to be a low public safety risk, was in preparation for the $85 billion in automatic spending cuts, widely expected to go into effect on Friday, which would limit the number of detainees ICE could pay to house.

A DHS official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told The Hill on Wednesday that career detention facility administrators release low-risk illegal immigrants into a less costly supervision program on a nearly daily basis. Administrators make the call based on their budgetary and infrastructure constraints, without the need for sign-off approval from administration officials, the official said.

CBS News noted yesterday, that those who are released "are required to wear electronic tracking devices, regularly call immigration officials or visit ICE offices."

But somehow neither Doocy nor Carlson, the two hosts for this segment, were able to find that information. Or else they deliberately decided not to impart it. Instead, they accepted without question Barletta's assertion, "I was told" some of those released "may have been high level criminal aliens" who are "so bad that their own countries didn't want to take them back."

Shades of Breitbart Ben and the Friends of Hamas, eh? But neither host showed the least bit of interest in finding out who told Barletta or what information he had about "high level" criminals. Even worse, Carlson gave credence to the allegation by saying that she had been posing the same question, too. She said she has been wondering, "What if these were high-level criminals who would go out and commit another crime? Who would be responsible? What if somebody dies?"

And yet, rather than have a Fox News reporter try to find the answer, she and Doocy were all ears as Barletta demonstrated what put him on RWW's 10 Scariest list:

This is a federal government that has grown so big and so expensive that they would rather let criminals go than federal employees. ...This reminds me of when Fidel Castro released the criminal prisoners in the Mariel boatlift in 1980. To go to that level, that this is the only cost savings we could do is to put Americans at risk by any criminal alien regardless of what the crime was, is inexcusable.

Obama Admin - Another Sequester Lie Exposed - CDC Dir Called Out On Vaccine Shortage Claim

2013-03-09T01:33:14.494Z

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The Trickle Down Effect From Devastating Sequester Cuts : 32 Of The Worst Cuts

2013-03-02T22:12:10.298Z

The 32 Dumbest And Most Devastating Sequester Cuts http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2013/03/02/1662271/the-dumbest-and-most-devastating-sequester-cuts/ "Cop...