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Eric Thayer / Reuters
Republican presidential candidate and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich handles a .306 Ruger American Rifle during a tour of the Sturm, Ruger & Co., Inc. factory Friday in Newport, N.H.
NEWPORT, NH -- Presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich was forced to answer many questions Friday that have been looming over his campaign for several weeks now.
Gingrich was forced to address his $1.6 million consultant fees from Freddie Mac after the mortgage giant said Thursday that he could disclose his contract with the group.
"I'm perfectly happy" to have the contracts released, the former House speaker told reporters before an event at Sturm, Ruger & Co. But, he said, he does not have the power to make that decision.
"I don't work there and I don't own it. It's not up to me. Nancy Desmond is the president" of the Center for Health Transformation (CHT) and The Gingrich Group, both of which had contracts with Freddie Mac.
As of May 10, 2010, Gingrich sold his ownership shares in CHT and the Gingrich Group, the campaign said.
Gingrich's role with Freddie Mac came under scrutiny after the federally chartered corporation, which buys mortgages from lenders and repackages them as investment securities, was blamed for helping cause the housing market crash and whether Gingrich himself was lobbying on behalf of the group.
The speaker has denied doing any type of lobbying and said he was a consultant paid roughly $35,000 per year by Freddie Mac.
Another point of contention, Gingrich was asked to clarify his comments about food stamps and the African-American community. He first made the link last month but his remark was seen in a critical eye Thursday by many on the internet.
"There’s no neighborhood I know of in America where if you went around and asked people, would you rather your children had food stamps or paychecks, you wouldn’t end up with a majority saying they’d rather have a paycheck," Gingrich said Thursday morning in Plymouth, N.H. "And so I’m prepared, if the NAACP invites me, I’ll go to their convention to talk about why the African-American community should demand pay checks and not be satisfied with food stamps."
But Gingrich told reporters Friday at the gun-manufacturing company that his comments have been taken out of context.
"I think you would have to be nuts," Gingrich said of people who felt he was being racially offensive. "I was saying that every young American deserves the right to pursue happiness, every young American deserves the right to get a job. Every neighborhood in America deserves a chance to get paychecks instead of food stamps."
But even the NAACP believes Gingrich’s comments were inappropriate, issuing a statement accusing the speaker of getting his facts about African-Americans wrong.
"It is a shame that the former speaker feels that these types of inaccurate, divisive statements are in any way helpful to our country," NAACP president Benjamin Todd Jealous said in a written statement.
And Gingrich was also asked to address questions about his GOP rival Mitt Romney, whose Super PAC is coming out with new ads against the speaker and whom he will see for the first time in person Saturday during the debate since all the negative ads began in December.
"There’s a point when you just have to say to somebody – get real. He's a Massachusetts moderate," Gingrich fired at Romney after describing the two candidates' differences.
"Well I'm basically going to focus my message on the American people," the speaker said about Saturday night’s debate – the first debate in three weeks. "I don't focus my messages on other people on the stage."
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Now we get to see who has the glass jaw, Newt or Romney. Wonder how much they will damage each other, and if so, who will benefit?
A Newt vs Romney slap fight? We will all benefit from the hilarity.
I can see Santorum, Perry & Huntsman crying out "Hit him again, hit him again, harder, harder!" Shaking their pom poms!
Gromit better be wearing his safety undies.
Romney will get slapped by one and all
Paul will get dissed by one and all
Huntsman will be ignored by one and all
Gingrich will self-detonate
Santorum will self-inflict several wounds
The GG was founded by him as a consulting company. Gingrich has said, in essence, that when he left the group he either forgot, could not, or refused to clean up the government connections he left in there.
How often, as President, would he set up (e.g.) bureaus, set up shady deals with (e.g.) contractors, then leave them for (e.g.) some lowly staff member or the next President to clean up, so that he can shift blame on them? Will he send a battalion to war and then sell it (as the soldiers fight abroad) to some friendly company to be their personal mercs?
He wants to be the President, the Chief Executive and Commander-in-Chief, etc., of this place. This sounds like Leading From Behind, and my GOP friends say that's a Bad Thing. He should've released (or better yet, ripped up) those contracts before starting a campaign, and he should say whether he still earns any money (with ownership stake or without) from them and the Group.
Newt is clinging to his gun and the others are clinging to their religion.
2nd Amendment is a religion sandy.
Little background on the place for debate tomorrw night.
It will be held at St. Anselm College in Manchester NH. They have hosted these Primary debates before.
On their website, they state that tickets were given out as part of a lottery. There was a lot if interest in getting a seat. Watch for a lively audience.
I predict that Newton or Santorum will make refence to St. Anselm , Bishop of Canterbury, who the school is named after, sometime in the debate... They want to score brownie points with the Catholics. And Jon Huntsman will receive a warm welcome.
This will not be a audience made up of anti-science Tea Party or neo-cons.
game kid,
A little piece of information left out in Gingrich response: Nancy Desmond, CEO of CHT , was also his chief of staff from 1993-Jan.1999.
She was hired in 2004 to CHT and now is the CEO , and Gingrich is completely not involved in this companyy?!?
"CHT is a health research center. Companies pay membership fees of $20,000-$200.000 gaining various levels of staff associations.
Those paying more than $100.000. get Gingrich to speak at one of their private events."
http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-18/gingri
And as you say game kid, this guy wants to be president. A peddler of influence is all he is.
I would love to debate face to face with this little pudgy womanizing punk...I am sick and tired of him and his party insulting Americans on hard times because of their scorched earth capitalism..They have sold off the manufacturing base and telecommunications and call centers to Asia and the sub continent of India so they can exploit modern day slavery and then say it is our fault we don't have jobs,well we don't have insider trading info and lobbyists don't do us favors because we weren't in congress during the fire sale...And the little fat blowhard talks tough and smart.........Well I am tougher and smarter than him or any of the other racist bastards insulting people on foodstamps but un-like them I am not evil so I will never be rich because if I have extra besides the roof over my head and food on the table I give to those who don't...They make me sick when they act like God entitles them to their yachts and benzs and kobe steaks and if they serve food at a shelter once a year that pays it back or one of thier tax-deductible contributions to a charity that pays their cousin a seven figure salary to count the contributions that never really do any good except for the tax break for them and the employment for thier friends,family and or rich ass neighboors..........
I looked up the following words in the Dictionary:
garbage, filth, slime, gunk, scum, sewage, hypocrisy, excrement, dishonesty, dirt, muck, smut, trash, vomit, puke, barf, immorality, debris, manure, pretense, corruption, debauchery and depravity
Each one of them had picture of Newt Gingrich included in the definition.
In the above picture of Gingrich looking at that gun. The caption should read, Is this big enough to take Romney out.
What does Newt think would happen if all the people on foodstamps demanded paychecks instead of foodstamps? Does he think the job fairy will come down and give them all jobs?
Unexpected last few nights were the ABC television, NBC Facebook debates with no questions about a major issue, a complete disinterest in the issue of illegal immigration which cannot be disregarded? It is important today as any other ardent situation that is wrecking the economic recovery in America. This problem has been seen as gathering momentum since the beginning of the race to the White House, yet only certain social and foreign policy issues were bounced towards the candidates by the Narrators? Like millions of Americans and certainly the teeming members of the TEA Party want to know, what each contender will do about this gathering storm? We hear rhetoric everyday from the Liberal press, edged on by the hard left, but all the other side has done is divide the country. Nobody believes there is a slowing down of this foreign occupation, whether they appear here from airline flights or across our insignificant border.
Illegal immigration is far from insignificant—it is very significant and costing taxpayers billions of dollars. In the last few years according to the Hermitage Foundation, costs have risen to $113 Billion dollars a year, with $64 Billion dollars in illegal workers currency transferred to foreign banks. Each state is unfairly committed by the federal courts to subsidize their illegal residents; health care, children’s education must be paid for by taxpayers. This is average outlay to legal-natives and resident households of $1,117 annually. Since the burdens of illegal immigration are not equally dispersed, the costs are much higher in states with large illegal alien populations. Even with this major problem with this invasion, for decades the different administrations have been pouring in at least just over a MILLION LEGAL IMMIGRANTS per year. This should be reduced to the top occupations, based on ability and skills at the highest level. But the Dept of Labor is still allowing corporations, placing work permits on medium skilled, that should be unacceptable when there are 22 million Americans jobless?
The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) States:
1. Education: for the children of illegal aliens represents the single largest public expenditure at an annual cost of $52 billion. Nearly all of that cost is absorbed by state and local governments.
2. The federal government recoups about one-third of its share of the costs of illegal immigration in the form of taxes collected. States, which bear a much greater share of the costs, recoup a mere 5 percent of their expenditures from taxes paid by illegal aliens.
3. Granting amnesty to illegal aliens, as President Obama and others propose, would not significantly increase tax revenues generated by current illegal aliens. However, over time, amnesty would dramatically increase public costs as newly-legalized aliens become eligible for all means-tested government programs.
4. Arizona’s annual cost of illegal immigration is $2.5 billion.
President Obama has persistently promised that his aim is to pass any form of Amnesty, and that he is accomplishing this without the consent of Congress. It is obvious that this has been approved for the abundant votes for President Obama’s reelection, as this will accommodate all those here illegally and favorable to families with roots here. I just want to know how the Obama administration is going to add $2.6 Trillion dollars to arrange this covert amnesty, since Robert Rector of the prestigious Heritage Foundation has reported. For decades now the majority of Americans have been blatantly clear, that they don't want any amnesty and just to follow the law. Not only is this a key issue--but in a Rasmussen national telephone survey released in November shows that 65 percent of voters oppose birth-right citizenship, for babies of illegal alien mothers.
Of course now we have to depend on the new presidential candidates, to rescind any laws that are inherently not constitutional? We have already seen the court-forced appropriations of taxpayers’ money to support not only the 20 million illegal aliens who have arrived here and stayed, but the most deplorable judicial response to the 14th amendment. It's clear that Americans are angry at having to pay for the smuggled babies of illegal alien mothers. These Individuals have violated our laws to enter the United States and in thousands of cases intentionally becoming pregnant, so they have a chance to override the citizenship law and able to stay. Once pregnant, illegal females are usually not applicable for deportation, so then they can take full advantage of the child's right to citizenship. Owing to the massive expenditures to county and municipal hospitals, each year over 300--to 450.000 illegal alien mother or parent can ride the child's welfare, food stamps, low income housing. That only ‘Birthright Citizenship Bill’ (H.R.140) can rescind this judicial misinterpreted assessment piece in the 14th Amendment.
Along with ‘Legal Workforce Act,’ (H.R. 2885) or publicly known better as Mandatory E-Verify, we can begin to arrest and eventually halt illegal immigration. If our incoherent lawmakers introduce the Lamar Smith bill in the House, then aliens now working illegally throughout the United States will be unable to find work. The core problem is that businesses have ignored these laws, because they were able to strongly influence Congress. But with H.R.2885 passed in Washington, these company owners will be facing harsh penalties, including prison. There is relevant information for you to read at the pro-sovereignty and limited legal immigration at NumbersUSA web-pages.
The liberal press and open border opponents have in desperation tried hard to asphyxiate these mentioned laws, explicitly Mandatory E-Verify. This is predominant policy of the Left wing in the Democrat party who has been incessantly pressing to stifle the TEA PARTY. They cannot comprehend that tens of millions of people are joining the TEA PARTY or that the TEA PARTY is succeeding in its recruitment of uncountable numbers of ordinary voters. Thousands of citizens and legal residents of all nationalities have been greeted and are now paralyzing the ‘Pro Quid pro’, or simple put “favor for a favor”; what has always been the established way of corruption in Congress. The TEA PARTY is 'everybody' in America, which is an every racial mix and not just white people? Although special interests have rotted away at our politician’s sense of integrity, a new hierarchy of earnest TEA PARTY leaders is overhauling the House, with their honest tenancy. Long term career politicians have seen the writing on the wall and packing their bags, already assured of a new job at the distasteful K street lobbyist Den. The legislator favor-buyers have already made millions from their special privileges, but the door is closing and a new ‘hopefully’ honest tier of fresh faces are in the Senate and House, by the behest of the peoples vote.
Everybody is complaining about both parties in Washington, but are hesitant to find a few minutes to contact their Senators or Congress persons at 202-224-3121, demanding their lawmakers vote for both federal mandatory E-Verify and amending the ‘Birthright Citizenship' Bill. These two laws must find passage before the offset of the 2012 election. Once enacted into law a massive exodus will commence, as illegal aliens and family members will return to their country of origin. The average American does not seem to understand they have all the power in their VOTE? They remain unconvinced that their angry voice can change the insidious direction we are facing in a Socialist inspired future, evident of this engorged current government who are changing the ‘Rule of Law’.
The TEA PARTY will never relent in their determination to enforce all 1986 immigration laws. Tea Party politicians once they get an overruling number of politicians In Congress will rescind any Sanctuary City ordinances, Dream Act laws, 287 G federal training programs, mandate “Secure Communities” and anything that rewards illegal aliens, which Obama is forcing to enact.
To ALL CITIZENS! BE WARNED! ILLEGAL ALIENS DO VOTE AND WILL DO IN UPCOMING ELECTIONS.