The Obama administration meets every problem by doing what it does best: throw taxpayers’ money at it and then lean on private companies to ‘help out’.

From Administration plans new efforts on foreclosures :

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration, battling a foreclosure crisis that shows no signs of relenting, will step up pressure on mortgage companies to do more to help people remain in their homes, officials said Saturday.

The administration will announce its expanded program on Monday, Treasury spokeswoman Meg Reilly said.

“We are taking additional steps to enhance servicer transparency and accountability,” Reilly said. She said the goal was to increase the rate that troubled home loans were converted into new loans with lower monthly payments.

The companies will receive $1000/year/loan to refinance loans. High unemployment is extending the home mortgage default problem in previously-safe borrowers. One report said 14% of homeowners with mortgages are behind on their payments.

The Congressional Oversight Panel, a committee that monitors spending under Treasury’s bailout program, concluded in a report last month that foreclosures are now threatening families who took out conventional, fixed-rate mortgages and put down payments of 10 to 20 percent on homes that would have been within their means in a normal market.

Democrats love taxes and the greatest stealth tax of them all is the Value Added Tax: the VAT. According to Newsmax, it’s buried deep in the Senate version of ObamaCare.

From Value Added Tax Hidden in Health Reform:

The Senate bill’s “fee” on medical devices operates much like a VAT, and could end up being the model for future adoption of an unprecedented VAT on all goods and services in the United States.

Deep into the 2,074-page bill, on page 2,020, is “SEC. 9009,” the “Imposition of Annual Fee on Medical Device Manufacturers and Importers.” It orders that “Each covered entity engaged in the business of manufacturing or importing medical devices shall pay to the [Treasury] Secretary not later than the annual payment date of each calendar year beginning after 2009 a fee in an amount determined under subsection (b).”

The amount of tax would be based on “gross receipts from medical device sales.” Treasury bureaucrats would have the formidable power of “identification of medical devices” and the new tax would be retroactive, applying to “any medical device sales after December 31, 2008.”

The VAT is an insidious tax, extracting wealth from private companies and individuals each step of the production and marketing process of a product. It’s one of the primary reasons why Europe is essentially non-competitive in most industries.

The European VATs suck money from private enterprises into the gaping maw of inefficient governments–and does it in such a way that is hidden to the consumer.

That the Democrats would attempt to use the health care bill to set up the framework for such an odious tax is instructive. Hopefully, voters will remember the lesson come Election Day 2010.

Boston Police are touting a SnitchTexting program.

From Text-a-Tip programs allow tipsters to help police:

In Boston, the first city to heavily promote texting for crime tips, police have received more than 1,000 tips since the program began two years ago. Police credit text tips for providing them with key leads in at least four high-profile killings, including: the accidental shooting of Liquarry Jefferson by his cousin; an arson fire that killed two children; the shooting of a Boston teenager on her 18th birthday; and the fatal stabbing of a man during a bar fight.

The report goes on to say that the program is spreading in popularity among police departments all over the country. A software maker for the text program cites over “400 police departments across the country” including Tucson, AZ.

“People don’t want to be labeled as a rat,” [Springfield, MA Sgt. John] Delaney said. “This is breaking the barriers down.”

Other barriers that may also be broken down–though not mentioned in the report–are the right to face your accuser and using the tips as a sort of high-tech revenge hotline.

But civil libertarians don’t often get quoted in such stories as these. No information was available on how many of the anonymous tips have led to wrongful arrests. And who decides what tips get moved to the front of the tip line?

How do the police decide which tips on suspicious people get investigated? And if someone is anonymously texting false tips to police, how do they deal with that? How do the victims of false tips get made whole?

The report didn’t address these questions. And it’s understandable that police departments are not eager to discuss them.

A most amazing story out of east Africa, of up to “ten thousand” albino Africans “displaced” or “in hiding” due to a rash of albino murders in Tanzania and Burindi since 2007.

According to the International Federation for the Red Cross and Crescent societies, the “surge” of murders is due to “a kind of marketing exercise by witch doctors” where a complete set: the limbs, genitals, ears, tongue, and nose of a deceased albino can fetch upwards to $75,000. The buyers: wealthy Africans who use the “black magic” body parts as talismans to ward off “bad luck”.

10,000 East African albinos displaced, in hiding after rash of killings, report says

CAN YOU SAY “CONFLICT OF INTEREST”?

Undoubtedly overlooked in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s 2006 vow to “drain the swamp” of House corruption is Alan Mollohan’s conflict of interest.

Both the Washington Post (Justice probing lawmaker with oversight over department) and TPM Muckraker (Dem Rep Controls DOJ Budget While Under DOJ Investigation) noticed.

From WashPo: “For three years, Rep. Alan Mollohan has chaired the important Appropriations subcommittee that controls the Justice Department’s $65 billion budget. At the same time, he has been under a Justice Department investigation, according to documents and two sources briefed on the probe.”

Why is he still there? Readers may want to ask Nancy Pelosi. Though Mollohan was forced down from his chairmanship of the House Ethics(?!?) Committee, he retained his place at the Appropriations trough.

TPM Muckraker reports, “Republicans in his district are lining up to take on Mollohan next year, and his ethics issues will no doubt be a liability,” and cites Don Surber’s Charleston Daily Mail as the source.

Surber noticed last week: Justice Department investigates Mollohan.

Will this have any effect on whether Alan “Money” Mollohan, the Overnight Millionaire, is prosecuted?

Time will tell. But no time is needed to recognize a clear conflict of interest.

MORE: Alan Mollohan: Corruption, Cronies and Crocks of Earmarks in WV. Why Mollohan is being investigated in the first place. “Egregious” is the word that first comes to mind, though others may have other words.

What happens in Ventura County Jail, stays in Ventura County Jail, which is what Hollywood producer and Academy award winning screenwriter Roger Avary recently learned the “hard way”.

Avary, prisoner #34 at the Ventura County Jail, had his work furlough taken away after, while away at “work”, Avary “tweeted” about what “happened” inside the jail. Avary landed in jail after pleading guilty in September to gross vehicular manslaughter and drunken driving in a 2008 incident where, Avary, clocked at going over 100 mph, and an alcohol blood level of .11, crashed his car in Ojai, killing a passenger, a friend from Italy.

Move cuts off Oscar-winning inmate’s Tweets

MORE with UPDATES, pix of reputed mistress: Tiger Woods: Affairs, Fights, SUV Crashes and Wife with a Golf Club

From Tiger Woods’ Car Crash Came After Explosive Story Claiming Affair:

Tiger Woods’ bizarre overnight car crash outside his Florida home came only two days after the National Enquirer published an article claiming the golf champ was having an affair.

Police said they had no knowledge of a fight between Woods, 33, and his wife, Elin, before Woods left their house at 2:25 a.m. Friday — backing out of his driveway and plowing into a fire hydrant and a neighbor’s tree in a gated community near Orlando.

Police to talk to Woods about accident.

Police reports stated yesterday that Elin Woods took a golf club and knocked out the rear window of the car which contained Tiger. It was supposed this was a sign that Elin was trying to help her husband escape from the car.

In fact, one AP storied called Mrs. Woods’ actions “helpful”.

In light of the Enquirer’s story and others reports that the couple had had a “fight”, maybe Elin Woods had another motive for appearing with the golf club?

UPDATE: We may have hit closer to the mark than we realized. This just caught our eye: Tiger Woods: Injuries Caused by Wife, Not SUV

Read more: Tiger Woods: Injuries Caused by Wife, Not SUV.

“Tiger Woods did not suffer facial lacerations from a car accident. They were inflicted by his wife, Elin Nordegren — according to a conversation Woods had Friday after the accident.”

As was previously stated, wives with golf clubs in their hands after a fight might not be all that “helpful”–regardless of what the AP reports.

image: The Libertine