Archive for the ‘Big Government’ Category

REAL CLEAR POLITICS: President Obama responds to a woman who was laid off from her government job: “Let me just first of all say that workers like you, for the federal, state, and local governments, are so important for our vital services. And it frustrates me sometimes when people talk about ‘government jobs’ as if somehow those are worth less than private sector jobs. I think there is nothing more important than working on behalf of the American people.”

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The Internet is working fine without Obama. Does anyone think Obama will improve it with these new rules?

ASSOCIATED PRESS: The White House on Thursday is expected to unveil its proposal to enhance the nation’s cybersecurity, laying out plans to require industry to better protect systems that run critical infrastructure like the electrical grid, financial systems and nuclear power plants.

The Obama administration also is insisting that companies tell consumers when their personal information has been compromised.

According to cybersecurity experts familiar with the plan, the administration’s proposed legislation also would instruct federal agencies to more closely monitor their computer networks.

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Some light and breazy bedtime reading

PETER SUDERMAN-REASON: How many pages does it take to lay out the insanely complicated rules and requirements of our tax code? According to tax publisher CCH, the total number of pages devoted to federal tax code rules, IRS rulings, and regulations has grown to 72,536:

It’s no wonder that even the government’s own experts and officials can’t figure it out. Any system of rules that requires in excess 72,000 pages to explain and understand borders on useless. At this point it might as well be Calvinball.

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MARK STEYN: I always enjoy the bit in Planet of the Apes where a loinclothed Charlton Heston falls to his knees as he comes face to face with a shattered Statue of Liberty poking out of the sand and realizes that the eponymous simian planet is, in fact, his own — or was. Also the bit in Independence Day where Lady Liberty gets zapped by space aliens. And in Cloverfield when she’s decapitated by a giant monster. And in The Day After Tomorrow when she’s flash-frozen after polar-ice-cap melting brought on by a speech from Dick Cheney. I’ve been enjoying such moments since, oh, the short story “The Next Morning” in the 1887 edition of Life, illustrated with a pen-and-ink drawing of a headless statue with the smoldering rubble of the city behind her. The poor old girl was barely off the boat from France, and she’d already been pegged as the perfect visual shorthand for societal collapse.

But the United States Postal Service has now gone the Hollywood apocalyptics one better and produced a somewhat subtler image of civilizational ruin. The other day the post office apologized for its new stamp honoring Lady Liberty. Due to an unfortunate error, the stamp shows not the 19th-century Statue of Liberty that stands in New York Harbor but the 1990s replica that stands at the New York–New York Casino in Las Vegas.

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ART CARDEN-FORBES: Millions of Americans are hustling to file their income tax returns before the deadline. Perhaps you owe more money to the government. Perhaps you are due a refund. Perhaps you’re paying nothing or actually getting money, on net. Regardless, someone is paying for the leviathan we call government. What are we paying for? And is it even necessary?

At a conference last year, I picked up two books published by the Independent Institute, for whom I now serve as a Research Fellow: Housing America and Anarchy and the Law. As I perused Housing America, I reflected on the disastrous consequences of government involvement in the housing market. As I perused Anarchy and the Law, I reflected on the fact that most of the popular and plausible justifications for government are undermined by theory and evidence. The reality is that a lot of the things governments do—even those things we think only government can do, like deal with market failures and provide public goods —are wasteful, superfluous or destructive.

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CBS NEWS: In what he thought was a private chat with campaign donors Thursday evening, President Obama offered the most revealing behind-the-scenes account to date of his budget negotiations with GOP leaders last week.

CBS Radio News White House correspondent Mark Knoller listened in to an audio feed of Mr. Obama’s conversation with donors after other reporters traveling with the president had left the room.

In the candid remarks, Mr. Obama complains of Republican attempts to attach measures to the budget bill which would have effectively killed parts of his hard-won health care reform program.

“I said, ‘You want to repeal health care? Go at it. We’ll have that debate. You’re not going to be able to do that by nickel-and-diming me in the budget. You think we’re stupid?’”

Speaking into a microphone which he may not have realized was still relaying his remarks to the White House press room — where Knoller had been listening to earlier remarks that were open to the press — Mr. Obama bemoaned GOP leaders’ attempts to attach a measure to the budget bill which would have cut funding for Planned Parenthood.

“Put it in a separate bill,” the president said he told Boehner and his staff. “We’ll call it up. And if you think you can overturn my veto, try it. But don’t try to sneak this through.”

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Obama also rips into Paul Ryan

OBAMA: “When Paul Ryan says his priority is to make sure, he’s just being America’s accountant … This is the same guy that voted for two wars that were unpaid for, voted for the Bush tax cuts that were unpaid for, voted for the prescription drug bill that cost as much as my health care bill–but wasn’t paid for.”

How thin skinned is Obama?  What a cry-baby we have for a POTUS.

Paul Ryan has really gotten in Obama’s craw.

It would be wonderful to see a debate between Obama and Ryan on the budget.

Here’s a good piece by Bill Whittle on why the budget can’t be balanced even if the government seized all the money of the rich

FLASHBACK: Even CNN and James Carville have noticed what a cry-baby Obama is

WASHINGTON TIMES: There’s at least one government function some taxpayers might not miss in a government shutdown: IRS tax audits.

A senior administration official, briefing reporters on potential effects of a shutdown, said “the performance of tax audits will be shut down or suspended for this period.”

Overall, the official said he expects about 800,000 government employees to be furloughed if Congress and the president aren’t able to agree on spending cuts before midnight Friday, which is when current stopgap funding expires.

The official said the IRS will still process electronic tax filings, but will not process paper filings, which means a delay for those who filed by paper and are expecting refunds.

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STEVE MOORE-WALL STREET JOURNAL: If you want to understand better why so many states—from New York to Wisconsin to California—are teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, consider this depressing statistic: Today in America there are nearly twice as many people working for the government (22.5 million) than in all of manufacturing (11.5 million). This is an almost exact reversal of the situation in 1960, when there were 15 million workers in manufacturing and 8.7 million collecting a paycheck from the government.

It gets worse. More Americans work for the government than work in construction, farming, fishing, forestry, manufacturing, mining and utilities combined. We have moved decisively from a nation of makers to a nation of takers. Nearly half of the $2.2 trillion cost of state and local governments is the $1 trillion-a-year tab for pay and benefits of state and local employees. Is it any wonder that so many states and cities cannot pay their bills?

Every state in America today except for two—Indiana and Wisconsin—has more government workers on the payroll than people manufacturing industrial goods. Consider California, which has the highest budget deficit in the history of the states. The not-so Golden State now has an incredible 2.4 million government employees—twice as many as people at work in manufacturing. New Jersey has just under two-and-a-half as many government employees as manufacturers. Florida’s ratio is more than 3 to 1. So is New York’s.

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Sitting on the can is now a spectator sport.

CBS: Miami-Dade’s newest crime fighting tool is a literal ‘eye in the sky’.

The Micro Air Vehicle, or MAV for short, is a small radio controlled drone aircraft equipped with a portable camera system. Miami-Dade Sgt. Andrew Cohen said drone will be used to gather real time information in situations which may be too dangerous for officers.

“If an SRT (Special Response Team) has to go into an area they don’t know what’s there, we don’t know what is in the backyard,” said Cohen, “They want to know if there are dogs in the backyard, if there is a shed, things that could be a threat to us.”

The MAV is used by the military to scan dangerous areas before troops are sent in. Miami-Dade police used a $50,000 grant to buy one, but not everyone is happy with the purchase.

Great to see a student at the left-leaning Harvard Crimson have the guts to point out the obvious.

DHRUV K. SINGHAL-HARVARD CRIMSON: Every time she opens her mouth and lets loose her latest litany of seizure-inducing inanities, the media—dutiful stenographers that they are—respond with Pavlovian immediacy. They hail her as a trailblazer and a model for working mothers everywhere, even as they proceed with their objectifying scrutiny of her every questionable fashion decision. She invites the derision of the political opposition and the praise of the political base, while a majority of the country has largely made up its mind about her. She is over-hyped, over-covered, and over-rated. If only I were talking about Sarah Palin.

Ever since her husband ascended to the presidency, the media has prematurely sought to fit the square-shaped Michelle Obama into the circular hole of Camelot. Still bewitched by the moldering majesty of the Kennedy legacy and always on the lookout for an heir to King John’s throne, every time a young Democratic couple enters the White House, the media assume that Camelot has been reborn. But like Hillary Clinton before her, Mrs. Obama is no Jackie O.

Now, it is traditionally indecorous to criticize the presidential spouse, a memo that appears to have gone unread by His Rotundity Rush Limbaugh, who classily critiqued the First Lady’s “Let’s Move” anti-childhood obesity initiative by pointing out that “Our first lady does not project the image of women that you might see on the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue.”

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