Posts Tagged ‘pork barrell’

LinkSwarm for April 2, 2021

Friday, April 2nd, 2021

Greetings, and welcome to a Good Friday LinkSwarm! I had the day off, so I slept ridiculously late, which is why you’re getting this in the late afternoon evening.

  • “9 Crazy Examples of Unrelated Waste and Partisan Spending in Biden’s $2 Trillion ‘Infrastructure’ Proposal.”

    1. $10 Billion to Create a ‘Civilian Climate Corp’

    The Biden administration proposes spending $10 billion to create a “Civilian Climate Corp.” The White House claims that “This $10 billion investment will put a new, diverse generation of Americans to work conserving our public lands and waters, bolstering community resilience, and advancing environmental justice through a new Civilian Climate Corps.”

    2. $20 Billion to ‘Advance Racial Equity and Environmental Justice’

    The proposal sets aside a whopping $20 billion—more than the latest COVID package spent on vaccines—for “a new program that will reconnect neighborhoods cut off by historic investments and ensure new projects increase opportunity, advance racial equity and environmental justice, and promote affordable access.”

    3. $175 Billion in Subsidies for Electric Vehicles

    Electric vehicles: A technological novelty so good it won’t catch on without hundreds of billions in subsidies. At least, that’s apparently what the Biden administration thinks, as its infrastructure proposal earmarks a “$174 billion investment to win the electric vehicle market.”

    The spending will take the form of manufacturing subsidies and consumer tax credits, which historically have benefitted wealthy families most. For comparison, the proposal carves out more for green energy goodies than it does on the total $115 billion to “modernize the bridges, highways, roads, and main streets that are in most critical need of repair.”

    It’s pork all the way down.

  • Who’s in charge of the Biden Administration?

    After Joe Biden’s performance last Thursday, every American should be demanding to talk to the manager. That’s because while President Joe Biden’s pathetic display during his “matinee” presser showed clearly that he is not in charge of our country, it also begged the obvious follow-up question not being asked by the 25 reporters in the room: If Joe Biden isn’t in charge of running our government, who is?

    If you didn’t actually watch the press conference—and every American should-especially those who voted against Trump by voting for Biden because they’d thought he was an improvement—by now, you have doubtless read the accounts of the President’s cliff notes that included scripted talking points and photos of the journalists upon whom he was directed to call. His staff treated him in much the same way as does the family of someone in the early stages of dementia, where they put pictures on doors and cabinets as a reminder of what goes where.

    If Joe Biden were my next-door neighbor, his condition could be described as sad, and he would be afforded every consideration and allowance possible for someone entering the final stage of the aging process. He is not, however, my next-door neighbor. He is supposed to be the President of the United States. His performance was mortifying. This is one of the most powerful men in the world. He controls our budget. He controls our military. He controls our nuclear weapons. What he clearly does not control is himself.

    And if he isn’t in control of himself, then who is? Who is in charge?

  • You know that Slow Joe has told a particularly egregious lie when even the Washington Post has to call him on it.
  • Matt Taibbi: “Master List Of Official Russia Claims That Proved To Be Bogus”:

    Update 3/21/21 “All 17 intelligence agencies,” October 19, 2016. Before the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton and others publicly stated that all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies backed an assessment that cyberattacks in 2016 came from the “highest levels of the Kremlin.” That was later corrected in congressional testimony to four agencies. It was actually a hand-picked team from three agencies, and the chief conclusion from that group came mainly from CIA chief John Brennan, who in his own book, “Undaunted,” published in 2020, revealed that he had overlooked dissenting analysis from two members of the working group. Brennan said he believed “the quality of the sources justified the high confidence,” but the Times and other outlets reported that Brennan was basing much of his confidence on a single human source in Russia whose information was allowed to bypass the normal vetting process….

    So a story that began as an assessment on Russian interference agreed upon by “all seventeen agencies,” became four agencies, then it was a hand-picked group from three agencies dominated by the CIA director, who overrode dissenting analysts within the group, likely because of confidence in one human source.

    There are twenty five entries on the list, and Taibbi admits he could have gone “on and on.”

  • Democrats finally give up on stealing an Iowa congressional seat.
  • Wisconsin Supreme Court strikes down Democratic Governor Tony Evers’ mask mandate. Good.
  • How cancel culture is like the East German Stasi.

  • Russia is building up forces on the Ukraine border again.
  • Just in case all my previous posts on this subject were unclear: “Free States Faring Far Better Than Lockdown States in One Huge Way, New Data Show”

    The results are in—and they overwhelmingly vindicate the free states over the authoritarian experiments. First, we saw that states with the harshest restrictions didn’t necessarily achieve the best COVID-19 death outcomes. Florida has fared far better than New York and New Jersey, for example, and multiple studies have found no correlation between lockdown stringency and death rates.

    Yet lockdowns have come at an enormous economic and human cost. We’ve seen mental health problems and child suicide spikes, an increase in domestic violence, an uptick in drug overdoses, and much, much more. And, of course, the economic toll of shutting down businesses and criminalizing “non-essential” livelihoods has been devastating.

    The national unemployment rate was a poor if not disastrous 6.2 percent in February. Yet the just-released state-level unemployment rates for last month show that the devastation hasn’t been equal across the board. New Labor Department data reveal that many free states have returned to nearly their pre-pandemic unemployment rates—while lockdown states dominate the wrong end of the list.

  • Why isn’t everyone in Texas dying? “The lockdowns have had no statistically observable effect on the virus trajectory and resulting severe outcomes. The open states have generally performed better, perhaps not because they are open but simply for reasons of demographics and seasonality. The closed states seem not to have achieved anything in terms of mitigation.”
  • Speaking of which: A timeline on the one year anniversary of 15 days to slow the spread.
  • Louis Farrakhan supporter Noah Green killed one capitol police officer and injured another. Now that the media knows it wasn’t a white trump supporter, expect the story to disappear. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Delta hates Georgia’s policies. Communist China? Not so much.
  • The Democrats “increase election fraud so we can win” bill is unconstitutional. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • “75% Of All U.S. Voters, 69% Of Black Voters Support Voter ID Laws.”
  • “Cuomo Ordered Aides To Conceal Nursing Home Death Numbers While He Negotiated $4M Book Deal.” Sounds like a corrupt, indictable offense to me…
  • The NCAA’s free athletics plantation is coming under increased scrutiny at the Supreme Court. Even famously taciturn Justice Clarence Thomas asked questions.
  • Try to contain your shock, but Cruz Noguez, the mano owned the SUV involved in the carash that killed 13 illegal aliens, was a coyote.
  • Related: “Austin Resident Faces Life in Prison for Alleged Smuggling That Killed 8 Illegal Aliens.”

    Prosecutors have also charged Austin resident Sebastian Tovar, age 24, with transporting illegal aliens resulting in death for an incident that killed eight people on March 15.

    The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) said in a press release that a Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) officer tried to stop Tovar, who led police on a 50-mile car chase.

    “Traveling north into the southbound lane on Highway 277, Tovar collided with another vehicle head-on, resulting in the death of eight illegal aliens that had been in Tovar’s pickup truck,” the DOJ said. “The driver and passenger of the vehicle into which Tovar collided are hospitalized and in stable condition.”

    The DOJ said that, after the incident, border patrol agents apprehended 12 illegal aliens, two of whom confessed to being connected to Tovar’s alleged smuggling activities.

    The defendants in the March 4 incident are 28-year-old Isidro Rodriguez Jr. and 18-year-old Bianca Michelle Trujillo-Lopez. They face the possibility of life in federal prison if convicted.

    The indictment charges Rodriguez and Trujillo-Lopez with illegal alien transportation resulting in death, illegal alien transportation resulting in serious bodily injury and placing lives in jeopardy, and two counts of conspiracy.

    “Court records allege that on March 4, 2021, the defendants were traveling on FM 2523 near Del Rio when a Texas Department of Public Safety trooper attempted to stop them for speeding,” the DOJ said in a press release.

    “The driver, Trujillo-Lopez, tried to outrun the trooper, at times reaching speeds over 120 miles per hour. She ultimately lost control of her vehicle and rolled it multiple times after missing a curve on the road.”

  • Alas, state trooper Chad Walker died of his wounds. (Previously.)
  • Homeschooling triples during the pandemic
  • “Conservative Humorist Chad Prather Launches Campaign for Texas Governor.” He’s running against incumbent Governor Greg Abbott in the Republican primary. I can’t say that I’ve actually heard of Prather before (which would tend to bode ill for his chances), but he starts out with 196,000, which is more than a goodly number of Democratic Presidential candidates started out with. Of course, all of them lost too…
  • Dwight covers stopping the bleed, with a side order of Julia Child’s liver and a nice Chianti.
  • Review of Kong: Skull Island in advance of seeing Godzilla vs. Kong this weekend.
  • “Controversial Georgia Law Requires Poll Workers To Check Voters For A Pulse.”
  • “Actors Vow To Boycott Georgia And Only Film In The Xinjiang Region Of China.”
  • OK, I chuckled:

    And the incidental music is from Plants vs. Zombies…

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    Posted in Border Control, Budget, Crime, Democrats, Elections, Media Watch, Republicans, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, Waste and Fraud | No Comments »

    LinkSwarm for December 25, 2020

    Friday, December 25th, 2020

    Welcome to a special Christmas day LinkSwarm! And by “special,” I mean “because Christmas falls on Friday.”

  • Explosion rocks downtown Nashville. “Around 6:30 a.m., police received a call for a suspicious RV with no tags parked across from the Davidson County courthouse. As officers arrived, the RV exploded, blowing out the windows of nearby buildings and leaving extensive damage.” They’re calling it an “intentional act.” Maybe, especially across the street from a courthouse. But it could still be a meth lab cooking off. As always, remember that much of the early reporting around such events are usually wrong.

    Update: Assuming the message in this video is real, it does appear to be a premeditated act of which authorities were warned:

  • The UK and the EU have reached a Brexit deal:

    The deal comes in just eight days short of the hard-Brexit deadline. Rather than erecting trade barriers to which some had resigned themselves, the two sides are looking toward a more cooperative than contentious relationship, reports the Wall Street Journal:

    Under the terms of the accord, both sides will continue to trade free of tariffs but there will be significant new bureaucracy for importers and exporters. The free flow of workers between the two economies will end and trade in services will be much reduced. London’s vast financial center will no longer have guaranteed access to European markets.

    The deal gives Britain significant freedom to depart from EU regulations and sign free-trade deals with countries like the U.S. But as the price for securing a deal without tariffs, the U.K. agreed that it wouldn’t seriously undercut EU standards on issues such as labor and the environment and would maintain similar constraints on the subsidizing of private industry.

    The agreement must formally be ratified by the European and U.K. parliaments and signed off by EU leaders before the end of the year. Capitals have insisted they need proper time to comb through the text before approving it. Though their approval is likely, France has warned it could veto a deal if some of its key concerns, including access to British waters for its fishing fleet, aren’t met.

    (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)

  • President Donald Trump is right to call the $900 billion stimulus package a disgrace.

    Here’s the short version: One main problem is that the 5,500-plus page legislative package was drafted behind closed doors by party leaders, then quickly unveiled hours before a vote.

    As voices as disparate as Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Libertarian Rep. Justin Amash have pointed out, this meant that most members of Congress had to vote for or against the package before actually getting to read the legislation.

    That’s right: Trillions of taxpayer dollars were doled out, and the members of Congress who voted for it don’t even know where much of it is going.

    This bill pours hundreds of billions of dollars into preexisting stimulus programs that were rife with waste, fraud, and abuse, without meaningfully addressing any of the problems. You can expect more stimulus checks sent to dead people and more runaway fraud to plague the expanded unemployment benefits.

    (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • “Tables Turned: Detroit Sues Black Lives Matter Group for ‘Civil Conspiracy’ to Riot and Attack Police.” The group in question is Black Lives Matter umbrella group Detroit Will Breathe. Discovery should be extremely interesting… (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Andrew Cuomo hates ordinary people and non-bankrupt restaurants so much that he’s barred patrons of outdoor dining from using a restaurants restroom. Who does he think he is, Werner Erhard?
  • Andrew Yang is running for mayor of New York City. It would be very difficult indeed for Yang not to be a vast improvement over the burning Porta-Potty stuffed with dead clowns that is the De Blasio administration. As a moderate Democrat, I would expect Yang to be a better mayor than de Blasio or David Dinkins, but not as good as Rudy Giuliani or Ed Koch. I would expect a Yang mayoralty to be about on par with Bloomberg’s, with maybe more upside if he’s willing to shake up the corrupt status quo and not push his disasterous pet guaranteed income idea.
  • Another thing President Trump disrupted: stale, self-serving conventional wisdom about peace in the Middle East:

    In an address to the UN Security Council on Monday during a monthly session on the Middle East, US Ambassador Kelly Craft asserted that President Donald Trump’s policies had “overturned” long-held views about diplomacy in the region.

    “For decades, the prevailing assumption was that the world would only see normalized international relations with Israel following a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute,” Craft told the virtual meeting. “But we have proven this assumption wrong.”

    She touted the Trump administration’s pursuit of “economic and cultural ties” between Israel and its Arab neighbors, which has led to normalization agreements with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco. Similar deals with countries such as Saudi Arabia and Oman, among others, could also be in the offing.

    “All of us here should think long and hard about what else we may have missed or misinterpreted over the years.”

  • “UK: Muslim rape gang ringleader released back onto the streets 8 years into his 26-year term.”
  • “Demanding Silicon Valley Suppress ‘Hyper-Partisan Sites’ in Favor of ‘Mainstream News’ (The NYT) is a Fraud:

    The most prolific activism demanding more Silicon Valley censorship is found in the nation’s largest news outlets: the media reporters of CNN, the “disinformation” unit of NBC News, and especially the tech reporters of The New York Times. That is where the most aggressive and sustained pro-internet-censorship campaigns are waged.

    Due in part to a self-interested desire to re-establish their monopoly on discourse by crushing any independent or dissenting voices, and in part by a censorious and arrogant mindset which convinces them that only those of their worldview and pedigree have a right to be heard, they largely devote themselves to complaining that Facebook, Google and Twitter are not suppressing enough speech. It is hall-monitor tattletale whining masquerading as journalism: petulantly complaining that tech platforms are permitting speech that, in their view, ought instead be silenced.

    Snip.

    The conceit that outlets like The New York Times, CNN and NPR are the alternatives to “hyper-partisan pages” is one you would be eager to believe, or at least want to induce others to believe, if you were a tech reporter at The New York Times, furious and hurt that millions upon millions of people would rather hear other voices than your own, and simply do not trust what you tell them. Inducing Facebook to manipulate the algorithmic underbelly of social media to artificially force your content down the throats of citizens who prefer to avoid it, while rendering your critics’ speech invisible — all in the name of reducing “hyper-partisanship,” “divisiveness,” and “misinformation” — is of course a highly desirable outcome for mainstream outlets like the NYT.

    The problem with this claim is that it’s a complete and utter fraud, one that is easily demonstrated as such. There are few sites more “hyper-partisan” than the three outlets which the NYT applauded Facebook for promoting. In the 2020 election, over 70 million Americans — close to half of the voting population — voted for Donald Trump, yet not one of them is employed by the op-ed page of the “non-partisan” New York Times and are almost never heard on NPR or CNN. That’s because those news outlets, by design, are pro-Democratic-Party organs, who speak overwhelmingly to Democratic readers and viewers.

    It is hard to get more partisan than the news outlets which the NYT tech reporters, and apparently Facebook, consider to be the alternatives to “hyper-partisan” discourse. In April, Pew Research asked Americans which outlet is their primary source of news, and the polling firm found that the audiences of NPR, CNN and especially The New York Times are overwhelmingly Democrats, in some cases almost entirely so.

    As Pew put it: “about nine-in-ten of those who name The New York Times (91%) and NPR (87%) as their main political news source identify as Democrats, with CNN at about eight-in-ten (79%).” These outlets speak to Democrats, are built for Democrats, and produce news content designed to be pleasing and affirming to Democrats — so they keep watching and buying. One can say many things about these news outlets, but the idea that they are the alternatives to “hyper-partisan pages” is the exact opposite of the truth: it is difficult to find more hyper-partisan organs than these.

  • Kurt Schlichter on our stupid establishment:

    The Establishment decided that instead of having a vigorous debate and discussion over the safety and efficacy of these prophylactic potions, they would just short circuit the whole messy truth determination process that Western civilization has relied upon for a millennium – argument, debate, and eventually consensus after everything is fully and freely hashed-out – and move right to the Official Truth. All the smart set decided that the Official Truth would be that these vaccines were all perfect and necessary and that we needed to stamp out any hint of dissent lest people pause and think for themselves and thereby disrupt the plan by raising unapproved notions. And the tech overlords would do their part by ensuring that any info, ideas, or interplay that was not inline with the narrative would be suppressed.

    It’s so much more efficient, you know, to tell people what they think than to take the time to convince them and refute counter-arguments.

    Not everyone was foolish. It was very smart and good leadership for Mike Pence to take the shot in public in front of cameras. That a couple of tentacles didn’t sprout out of his clavicles was reassuring. That’s leadership, and that’s what our leaders should be doing. But most of our ruling class instead thinks that if they lie to us and suppress our debates and call us stupid enough, we’ll fall into line.

    When has that worked for long?

  • A roundup of climate predictions for 2020 that were horribly wrong. Remember how snowfall would be a thing of the past?
  • Israel hits Syria again.
  • “US Army Hits Target 43 Miles Away With Long-Range Cannon.”
  • Rush Limbaugh signs off, possibly for the last time.
  • Austin restaurants and bars under Stage 5 Wuhan coronavirus restrictions again. Thanks a lot, China. And Mayor Adler.
  • Rand Paul presents the airing of the Festivus grievances:

    Among Paul’s instances of waste were several health studies, including more than $36 million spent on studying why stress makes hair turn gray, more than $1 million spent studying whether people will eat ground-up bugs, and more than $3 million spent interviewing San Franciscans about their edible cannabis use.

    As far as taxpayer dollars spent aiding other countries, $8.62 billion was spent in Afghanistan on counternarcotics efforts, more than $37 million was spent helping deal with truant Filipino youth, and more than $3 million was spent on sending Russians to American community colleges for a “gap year.”

    Among funds spent on the environment, energy, and scientific research, more than $1 million was spent walking lizards on a treadmill, nearly $200,000 was spent studying how people cooperate while playing e-sport video games, and more than $2 million on developing a wearable headset to track eating behaviors.

    The military had several particularly high expenditures this year that Paul listed as waste, including repurposing $1 billion in coronavirus response funds for unrelated acquisitions, more than $ 715 million in lost equipment designated for Syrians fighting ISIS, and $174 million on drones that were lost over Afghanistan.

    Other eyebrow-raising expenses included more than $4 million spent on spraying alcoholic rats with bobcat urine, more than $10 million spent on would-be coronavirus test tubes that turned up as used soda bottles, and nearly $6 million spent building three bicycle storage facilities at Washington, D.C. Metro stations.

  • Titania McGrath, prophet of our times.
  • Man of the year: Jeffrey Toobin. “Toobin’s grip on the media was relentless. In 2002 he joined CNN and became the network’s chief legal analyst, a cocksure critic of Republicans…” (Hat tip: HashtagGriswold.)
  • Good idea:

  • Heh:

  • “Can I interest you in some propane? Or some propane explosions?”
  • How badly do you want a drink?
  • Oh the weather outside is frightful:

  • Christmas with the Sex Pistols.

    • Merry Christmas, everyone!

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    Posted in Austin, Budget, Democrats, Foreign Policy, Global Warming, Jihad, Media Watch, Military, Texas, Waste and Fraud | 2 Comments »

    What Rough Porkulus Shambles Out of Washington?

    Wednesday, December 23rd, 2020

    People asked why Nancy Pelosi delayed passing a Wuhan coronavirus relief bill until now. One obvious reason was to avoid helping President Donald Trump’s reelection chances. Now that both houses of congress have passed this 5,593 page monster of a bill, another reason is evident: To cram as much special interest pork into it as possible.

    How serious is this bill? Not very, but it spends serious money on unserious things. Tom Elliott of Grabien points out a few of the ridiculously beside-the-point items in this bill. They’re gobsmacking.

    Snip.

    Don’t worry. The Kennedy Center is getting yet another bailout. Why, exactly? Are they putting on shows right now? How many bailouts does it take to keep the lights on and the development department still working the phones calling on all those rich lobbyists living in the DMV?

    And — thank God! — the government COVID stimulus package is there to keep teenagers from hooking up — as if there aren’t dozens if not hundreds of other programs doing the same thing. And let us take a moment to say thanks to all the HIV workers in other countries by giving them new cars. Funding for this is in the COVID bill. You? Buy used.

    Other pork in the bill:

    A minimum of $3.3 billion in grants to Israel.

    Also included is $453 million to Ukraine, on top of the $400 million Trump eventually released. No word on how much of that goes to the ‘big guy.’

    $10 million for “gender programs” in Pakistan.

    $1.3 billion to Egypt, and $700 million to Sudan.

    $135 million to Burma, $85.5 million to Cambodia, $1.4 billion for an “Asia Reassurance Initiative Act,” and $130 million to Nepal.

    If we have to pay money to Sudan for it’s peace deal with Israel, then the price is too high.

    There’s so much pork in the bill that President Trump has threatened to veto it:

    He notes that the bill provides stimulus checks for the families of illegal aliens, “far more than the Americans are getting.”

    Alas, President Trump is a late convert to fiscal sanity. The budget deficit was just shy of $1 trillion in FY2019, before coronavirus shutdowns wrecked the economy. Alas, since the Senate passed the bill 92-6 (Ted Cruz, Marsha Blackburn, Ron Johnson, Mike Lee, Rand Paul and Rick Scott were the only senators to vote against it), a veto override seems likely.

    As Stephen Kruiser notes:

    All of the media chatter about this has been referring to it as a COVID relief bill. Yes, we’re all aware that this is how these spending bills get done. That’s the problem, though, isn’t it? This little pork dance just gets worse with each new spending bill. Ninety-nine percent of the people who get elected to the House or Senate immediately become afflicted with brain damage that renders them incapable of understanding the meaning of “fiscal responsibility.”

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

    Alas, I would not expect any fiscal process reform from a Biden-Harris Administration…

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    Posted in Budget, Democrats | 3 Comments »

    LinkSwarm for February 15, 2013

    Friday, February 15th, 2013

    The Week of Extreme Busyness continues (though the weekend has gotten slightly less busy), but here’s a semi-random LinkSwarm to end your work week with.

  • The Washington Post is shocked, shocked that Ted Cruz dares to rock the comfy Democratic Media Complex boat.
  • Democrats attempting to hold onto the Senate just got kicked right in the Vilsack.
  • Government entitlement spending is unsustainable. Duh.
  • Thanks to ObamaCare’s electronic billing provisions, doctors “see fewer patients per shift than they did previously, and spend less time with each one.”
  • The media just can’t help itself when it comes to lying about Sarah Palin.
  • Gee, who do I trust less: a New York Times reporter, or the CEO of an electric car maker who received $465 million in “green energy” loans?
  • Oh, and everyone complaining about New York Times inaccuracy and bias? Now you know how every gun owner feels about every NYT story about guns.
  • America doesn’t have a crime problem, it has a Democrat problem.
  • Massachusetts Democratic Senator-in-Waiting Ed Markey is deeply upset that somewhere out there, people might be having fun on roller coasters.
  • Grad student sues over university giving her a C+ in a class. Oh, and she also attend the university for free. Why not just hang a sign around your neck saying “No employer should ever hire me, I’m a lawsuit waiting to happen”?
  • School locked down over evil “Assault Shovel”.
  • Cops to Dorner: We don’t need no water, let the motherfarker burn. (NSFW reference follows.)

    • Have a great weekend!

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    Posted in Crime, Democrats, Media Watch, Obama Scandals, ObamaCare, Uncategorized, Waste and Fraud | No Comments »

    LinkSwarm for 1/11/13

    Friday, January 11th, 2013

    Between work and the TPPF Policy Orientation, it’s going to be a busy day, so here’s a quick Friday LinkSwarm:

  • How bad did you think 2012’s economy was? Guess what? It was even worse than you thought.
  • Profile of Jim DeMint’s replacement, new South Carolina Senator Tim Scott: “One of the most threatening places to be in politics is a black conservative…there are so many liberals who want to continue to reinforce a stereotype that doesn’t exist about America. That somehow, some way, if you’re a Republican you’re a racist and if you’re black, there’s no chance for you in society.”
  • Phil Gramm on how wind subsidies screw up the economy.
  • Obama played Ed Koch for a schmuck.
  • George Will on why Republicans should push for a balanced budget amendment. “No politically conceivable or economically feasible middle-class tax rate can fund the entitlement state.”
  • Obama doesn’t think he has a spending problem, just like Lindsay Lohan doesn’t think she has a drinking problem.
  • A story of fake job shenanigans from a government employment center. “We were used by a bogus company to rake in funding by the state. It’s like a full blown industry here to pass around jobless people and keep them from getting real jobs.”
  • 35 years ago, the Chicago Sun-Times exposed the city’s corruption in the Mirage tavern series. Does anyone think Chicago is any less corrupt today? Why don’t they have the balls to do something like that now? (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • I think Bloomberg just hates people.
  • Washington is booming on your money.
  • The homeless are responsible for 35% of downtown Austin’s violent crime.

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    Posted in Austin, Budget, Crime, Democrats, Foreign Policy, Texas, Waste and Fraud, Welfare State | No Comments »

    “Superstorm Sandy? I say ‘Super Lobbyist Profits!'”

    Thursday, January 3rd, 2013

    “Good afternoon, and welcome to the Lipsky Extreme Lobbying Seminar. And by ‘Extreme,’ I mean both our proven seminar methods and the profits you’ll be raking in after you get out of here.”

    “Is that why we’re wearing the shock collars?”

    “Got it in one! Immediate, painful correction is necessary for maximum learning in minimum time. You’ll learn more here in three hours than three years of law school. Now, on to the topic at hand: Emergency funding bills. Today’s example: the relief bill for Superstorm Sandy. Now, let me ask you bright boys and girls a question: What should go in an emergency relief bill. Mr. Smith?”

    “Uh, emergency relief for victims of AGGGHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!”

    “Sorry, Mr. Smith, but Mr. Shock Collar says you’re mistaken. Anyone else? Mr. Dewey?”

    “Whatever a lobbyist client pays for?”

    “Ding ding ding! Correct on all counts! Now, can someone give me an example of an ideal item to put in an emergency spending bill? Mr. Smith?”

    “Uh, $5 million for emergency power generAGGHHHHHHHHHH!”

    “Sadly, it appears that Mr. Smith is a slow learner. Ms. Cheathum?”

    “$150 million for Alaskan fisheries?”

    “Correct! Mr. Howe?”

    “$188 million for Amtrack?”

    “Excellent! Mr Smith?”

    “$20 million for tearing down flood damaged AGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH! Why does learning have to be so painful???”

    “Pain is just stupidity leaving the body. Mr. Solitary?”

    “$600 million for a global warming slush fund?”

    “Brilliant! That’s thinking big! Mr. Smith, care to give it one last try?”

    “$188 million for hurricane cleanAGGGHHHHHHHHHH I mean tunnels! Random tunnels!”

    “I’m glad to see that my proven learning methods have finally gotten through to Mr. Smith. Class dismissed.”

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    Posted in Budget, Democrats, Global Warming, Waste and Fraud | No Comments »

    House Democrats Cave, Pass Deal to Extend Bush Tax Cuts

    Friday, December 17th, 2010

    The Bush Tax Cuts passed the House by a margin of 277 to 148. I guess the public outcry over the biggest tax increase in history finally got through their reality bubble.

    Also good news is the fact that Harry Reid pulled the pork-and-earmark laden omnibus budget bill off the floor, due, in large measure, to Tea Party pressure.

    These are just two small steps toward restoring fiscal discipline and reigning in a gargantuan government, and Tea Partiers and other taxpayers are going to have to keep up the pressure to keep Washington from resorting to its old ways (and expect a lot of backsliding and heartbreak along the way). But both these victories prove one thing: elections matter. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

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    Posted in Democrats, Economics, Elections, Republicans, Waste and Fraud | 2 Comments »