January 1st was the 100th birthday of our beloved Barry Goldwater, expressed at another site as AuH2O, happy birthday Barry.

Bill Richardson has decided to spare president-elect Obama anymore embarrassment and preemptively resign as Secretary of Commerce.

But a grand jury in New Mexico is currently looking into charges of “pay-to-play” in the awarding of a state contract to a company that contributed to Richardson.

The importance of the inquiry was apparently dismissed when Richardson was first nominated. But it may have taken on more weight in light of the “pay-to-play” allegations involving Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

Perception is politics. Pay-to-play is cool until it isn’t. Unfortunately for Richardson this will do little to make the scandal go away and it seems another Democrat governor is heading down in flames. I am going to enjoy this so much, though not as much if Richardson had been forced to testify before a Senate committee.

In addition to Eric Holder (who greased the pardon of corrupt commodities trader Marc Rich while serving in the Clinton Administration and worked with Blagojevich on gambling regs in IL) and Bill Richardson another potential member of Obama’s cabinet has come under fire for corrupt dealings in their past. I’ll give you three guesses . . . Hillary Clinton was your first one huh? Imagine that.

Hillary Clinton is facing scrutiny for . . . pay-for-play!

A developer in New York state donated $100,000 to former President Bill Clinton’s foundation in November 2004, around the same time that Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton helped secure millions of dollars in federal assistance for the businessman’s mall project.

Hillary Clinton helped enact legislation allowing the developer, Robert Congel, to use tax-exempt bonds to help finance the construction of the Destiny USA entertainment and shopping complex, an expansion of the Carousel Center in Syracuse.

If it weren’t for this simple little money making machine what would Democrats do once they were in office? I mean how else would they make any cash? If she sits down in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee this has a 100% chance of coming up. She has the votes to make it through, but she won’t make it through unscathed.

Barrack Obama intends to boost the economy by adding 600,000 workers to the government’s payroll. How much more he will need to squeeze out of the taxpayer to accomplish this is unknown but there is no problem that a Democrat can’t solve by expanding the government. The economy is up? Increase the size of the government. The economy is down? Increase the size of the government. The government is too big? Increase the size of the government. If only we had some track record of success and failure by which we could measure whether or not increasing the government worked . . .

Now for some good news: Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina is standing up to the welfare bureaucracy in his state. He is demanding that no more government checks be mailed to the unemployed until some basic due diligence is conducted by the state Employment Security Commission.

Last month, South Carolina reported the nation’s third-worst unemployment rate at 8.4 percent. Forecasters have said the jobless rate could reach an unprecedented 14 percent next year.

Sanford says he won’t request a $146 million federal loan to pay unemployment benefits through March until the commission agrees to his demands that include an audit by the state’s watchdog agency.
. . .
Sanford has some things he wants first before he signs the request, such as an independent, third-party audit to review operations and performance of the commission.

Among other things, Sanford wants to have certain things collected, like unemployment insurance data, details, such as reasons for getting unemployment and dates of employment benefits, and quarterly employment numbers and wages.

The idea that unemployment checks are being handed out right now in South Carolina without this information is simply damning.

“I cannot provide information that I don’t collect and this is what’s being asked,” Ted Halley, executive director of the commission, said.

Specifically, Halley says his agency doesn’t collect specifics about why people are out of work.

The state already has borrowed $15 million to pay benefits through the end of this year.

“We’re paying out more money than we’re taking in to the trust fund and you do the arithmetic,” Halley said.

The best part though is this:

In a memo to Sanford, Halley agrees to some but not all the governor’s requests.

Halley agrees to a performance audit to be done by the Department of Labor, but not an independent, third-party as the governor requests.

After receiving the counter-offer, the governor’s office released a statement, saying:

“We are disappointed by the updated agreement. It shows that the Employment Security Commission is afraid of the scrutiny an outside audit would provide. We are insisting on an independent audit before we sign anything.”

The very idea of a public official refusing to allow the governor to conduct an independent, third-party audit should be grounds for immediate dismissal. Mark Sanford is going to war with government spending and isn’t taking prisoners.