Archive for the ‘Government Waste’ Category
White House email warned of risky Solyndra venture; worried about potential political damage with 2012 coming up
WASHINGTON POST: A White House official fretted privately that the Obama administration could suffer serious political damage if it gave additional taxpayer support to the beleaguered solar-panel company Solyndra, according to newly released e-mails.
The firm had burned through millions of dollars and in January still tottered near collapse. The official wanted the government’s top budget official to warn Obama’s energy secretary about the risk, according to the e-mails.
Boehner explains why he walked out of meeting with Obama
Basically, he just needed a break after talking hour after hour to a wall.
How many ways can you say “No tax increases”? How many ways can you say “Cut spending”? How many times can you say “The plan passed by the House is the only plan anyone has produced”? How many ways can you say “What’s your plan, Mr. President?”
James O’Keefe Strikes Again: Undercover videos show government workers helping Russian drug dealers, sex traffickers, terrorists get Medicaid benefits
DAILY CALLER: Conservative filmmaker James O’Keefe released the first installment in a new
video investigation Monday morning, this one focused on Medicaid fraud. The first video in the series shows government employees in Ohio assisting two men who have described themselves as Russian drug smugglers with applications for Medicaid.
In the video, the men explain to Ohio Medicaid workers that they are Russian immigrants who sell illegal drugs, drive a modified McLaren F1 sports car with a gold-coated engine, and use their underage sisters to perform sexual favors in exchange for drugs.
In response, Ohio employees tasked with disbursing federal Medicaid dollars are shown coaching the men through the process of applying for benefits. “If it’s not something registered here, maybe I just wouldn’t mention it,” a Franklin County Medicaid officer named Traci Daniels tells the men, when asked whether they should mention owning a vehicle that retails for nearly $1 million, as they apply for government aid designed to help poor people. “Not that I can say that. You didn’t hear that from me. But, that would right there, that would throw him off. He would be immediately not qualified.”
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Taxpayers paid California’s chief prison psychiatrist $838,706 in 2010
BLOOMBERG: A chief psychiatrist for California’s overcrowded prison system was paid more than any other state employee in 2010, according to payroll figures released today.
The doctor, whose name wasn’t released, had a salary range of $261,408 to $308,640 and collected a total of $838,706, according to data released by Controller John Chiang. The total includes bonuses or payout of unused vacation time or sick days, according to the controller’s office. Chiang’s office later issued a statement saying the figure was wrong and would be corrected, without elaborating.
The 10 highest-paid state employees each earned more than $500,000 in the 2010 calendar year, the figures show. In contrast, Governor Jerry Brown’s salary is $173,987. Seven of the top 10 were prison doctors or dentists.
“Governor Brown is concerned about high salaries and payouts, which are driven by a number of things, including court mandates, accrued vacation time and the last administration’s furlough program,” a spokeswoman, Elizabeth Ashford, said in a statement. “We are looking closely at why some individuals receive such extraordinary sums.”
S&P downgrades America’s economic prospects following Obama’s disastrous debt speech
WALL STREET JOURNAL EDITORIAL: Why did Standard & Poor’s drop its “negative” long-term outlook bomb on America’s AAA credit rating yesterday? S&P revealed no numbers not previously known to a “shocked” stock market, which dropped 140 points. So what’s new?
Chief White House economist Austan Goolsbee declared that S&P had made a “political judgment,” and we’d have to agree, though probably not for the same reasons. The bulk of S&P’s analysis is taken up with repeatedly citing what it sees as next-to-no chance that Washington will do anything significant on deficit reduction this year or next.
“The outlook reflects our view of the increased risk that the political negotiations over when and how to address both the medium- and long-term challenges will persist until at least after the national elections in 2012,” said the credit rating outfit. S&P’s announcement is almost wholly a political analysis of the budget outlook.
There is only one reason the rating agency could suddenly have turned this dark on politics in Washington: President Obama’s speech at George Washington University last Wednesday. Mr. Obama’s “fiscal policy” speech may have sent progressive pundits cart-wheeling, but its political effect was to poison the prospect for budget negotiations.
OBAMANOMICS: Losing the Future
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.
What, exactly, are all these taxes buying . . . that’s helping?
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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Obama’s petulance, arrogance, true colors, anger, hatred of Paul Ryan caught on tape
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.”
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
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