Do, or do not. There is no 'try'. - Yoda

Friday, July 30, 2010

Here is a real interesting graph showing government spending as a percentage of GDP.

While the axis shows the increases or decreases based on whom was in the WH, the better indicator would have been who controlled Congress. After all, they are the ones doing all the spending. Lag the budgets based on the fact that Congress passes spending bills for the next year, and it becomes even more interesting.

Particularly focus on the 1996-2006 budgets, and then compare them with those from 1982 to 1995, or even better with those from 2007 to present.

You can ignore the ones for 2011 and 2012. That either the CBO parroting the demcorat’s claims that they are going to lower spending - you are not stupid enough to really believe that right? – or the CBO accounting for a republican takeover of Congress and an attempted return to sanity in government spending.

What’s the obvious trend here, huh? BTW, do you know that this is the first time our government is spending as a % of GDP is close to the levels set back during WWII? At least we won that one, and most of the spending today isn’t to fight wars. Economists, sane ones, no the Keynesian dingbats, in general see anything over 21% as not good, and anything over 23% as darn right scary. Me, I would like to see it under 18%.

When Obama, helped by the demcorat controlled congress, bought out GM for their Union buddies with tax payer money masquerading as stimulus funding or TARP bailouts - that line is blurry - I warned that the result of this would be disastrous. I warned that all that a government takeover of a car manufacturing company would lead to was the forced adoption of a car that would not be liked, used expensive green technology that was meaningless in the grand scheme of things, and in the end would cost orders of magnitude more to purchase than one was getting for it. Of course, the left pretended that wouldn’t be the case, and that now that government was in charge of GM’s strategy and direction, they would put out a dream car that would do the imposable and also save the environment and planet all in one swoop. GM would go into the business of making green transportation, and with the evil entities usually blamed by the combustion engine-haters unable to thwart GM’s efforts because of government protection, they would finally succeed! All the deniers and doubters were finally going to be shown how great that whole collectivist green stuff really was. It looks like I was right. Let me rub it in some.

Thursday, July 29, 2010

Remember all those collectivists bloaviating about how they have finally stuck it to evil corporatists, capitalists, and Wall Street, by passing that 2400 plus page regulatroy monster? Well guess what: they want to conrtol the private sector, but it is damned obvious they want none of that for them:

So much for transparency. Under a little-noticed provision of the recently passed financial-reform legislation, the Securities and Exchange Commission no longer has to comply with virtually all requests for information releases from the public, including those filed under the Freedom of Information Act. The law, signed last week by President Obama, exempts the SEC from disclosing records or information derived from “surveillance, risk assessments, or other regulatory and oversight activities.” Given that the SEC is a regulatory body, the provision covers almost every action by the agency, lawyers say. Congress and federal agencies can request information, but the public cannot.

Yeah, this is going to work out real well for us all…

Read the whole thing. You simply can not make this shit up. All the evil things the left accused Bush falsely of doing they are actually doing for real. Serfs: that’s what they are going to make us all into.

Have fun, and find out how much this is going to cost you if these people don’t wise up. My numbers showed a 4.5% increase in taxation liability. That was a big chunk of change that I would now not have. Guess while government gets fat, the private sector has to tighten its belt even more. There is a cost for all that social justice stuff, and that cost is always born by the regular Joe, regardless of what the commies that push that crap tell you.

Update: Even collectivist CNBC has to run articles pointing out that any economic recovery would be hampered if tax cuts are allowed to expire. My first question is: “What economic recovery?”. The next is can these people ever stop the Obama propaganda?

The cuts were enacted in 2001 and 2003 under President George W. Bush and covered those earning more than $250,000, but they are set to expire at the end of this year.

Last I remember, and even Bush hating Wikipedia agrees with that, these tax breaks were for ALL AMERICANS, not just those making $250K and more. Oh sure, these morons at CNBC used this wording on purpose and will point out that the they chose that threshold because Saint Obama says that’s the break between rich and poor, but it is a lie intended to again make it look like evil Boooosh only cared about the rich. In fact, these were this tax act was the on that enacted the idiotic changes that left such a huge portion of Americans free of the need to pay any taxes, leaving too many amongst them without any tax obligations, and figuring in their twisted world that tax hikes, since they didn’t pay any anyway, were a fine idea.

Anyway, here is the gist of the story:

Deutsche said the drag on gross domestic product should they lapse could be as much as 1.5 percent, with the more likely impact at 1.1 percent. The impact would be worse, the analysts said, if Congress fails to fix the Alternative Minimum Tax, which was enacted in 1969 to make sure rich people pay taxes but was never indexed for inflation, and thus is now hitting middle-income workers.

“In a worst-case scenario, allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire and failing to fix the AMT could result in (1.5 percent) of fiscal drag in 2011 on top of the 1 percent fiscal drag we expect to occur as the Obama fiscal stimulus package unwinds,” Deutsche said in a note to clients. “If the recovery remains soft/tentative through early next year, this additional drag could be enough to push the economy to a stalling point.”

Don’t expect the morons holding this Congress hostage to be smart enough to figure out that letting any portion of this tax cuts expire is a bad idea. They can just pass another trillion dollar stimulus bill and deficit spend a few more trillion on top of that, to perk up the economy. After all, the last patronage bill and the $1.4 trillion dollars they flushed down the hole this year worked so well.

“As we have noted, this is not going to be an easy process politically, and it may well take a significant negative event in financial markets to steer the US political system to do what needs to be done.”

What really needs to be done is a massive rollback of the social justice state. Let people earn what they have. Not steal it from others or work in government (same thing as stealing it from others).

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

What?

A U.S. audit has found that the Pentagon cannot account for over 95 percent of $9.1 billion in Iraq reconstruction money, spotlighting Iraqi complaints that there is little to show for the massive funds pumped into their cash-strapped, war-ravaged nation.

The $8.7 billion in question was Iraqi money managed by the Pentagon, not part of the $53 billion that Congress has allocated for rebuilding. It’s cash that Iraq, which relies on volatile oil revenues to fuel its spending, can ill afford to lose.

“Iraq should take legal action to get back this huge amount of money,” said Sabah al-Saedi, chairman of the Parliamentary Integrity Committee. The money “should be spent for rebuilding the country and providing services for this poor nation.”

To quote P. J. O’Rourke, how do you “lose” $8.7 billion?  Did they check under the couch cushions?

The deal here is that the US was allowed to tap money put into the Iraq Development fund, which is run by the UN.  The US took about $20 billion out and this audit, which covers the $9.1 billion spent from 2004 to 2007, showed that the spending was simply not documented.

Between Iraq and Afghanistan, we have poured $100 billion into reconstruction, with little to show for it.  Part of this is the basic incompetence of the last Administration’s reconstruction efforts, as documented in Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s book.  And part of this is just the fundamental problem of nation building in nations that weren’t terribly built in the first place.  There’s a part of me that thinks we should still keep trying to fix these countries.  But there’s a growing part that thinks this would be just throwing good money after bad.

So having built up some good will with my “Death of the Middle Class” post below, I’ll throw it away with this one.

It is the issue that will not die: the Cordoba House that is being built in New York.  You may recognize it by the name it’s gotten in the media: The Ground Zero Mosque.

Ignore, for the moment, the arguments for or against—I have my opinion expressed below the fold and have already made it clear where I stand.  Concentrate on this:

Why?

Why this?  Why now?

Look, we have serious problems in this country.  Last friday, the administration quietly announced that next year’s deficit is going to be another $1.4 trillion.  We have structural deficits out the ying-yang, states struggling to deal with out of control pensions and an economy that seems on the brink of a double dip recession.  Millions of Americans are out of work and our Administration has no clue what to do about it, other than tax the shit out of small businesses.

So who the blue fuck cares about a mosque?

Why is this an issue?  How is it going to benefit the country if we indeed blocque the mosque?  Is that going to balance the budget?  Or get the economy moving?  Hell, the project is probably going to create more jobs than the damned stimulus.

So why are we are arguing about this?

We are arguing about it because it is becoming increasingly apparent that the bulk of the Republican Party has no clue how to fix the country either.  They are screaming the heavens down about the deficit but none of them—except Paul Ryan—have even the vaguest proposals for reducing it.  They’re willing to brand the President a borderline traitor for his policies in Iraq and Afghanistan, but they have yet to articulate a clear defense strategy of their own.  They gnash their teeth about jobs, but they have no idea what do about them.  What few policy proposals they make are either impossible with Obama in the White House (repeal healthcare reform), unaffordable (increase defense spending and cut taxes) or pointless (cut “waste”, don’t bow to the Japanese emperor.).

Ever since 2006, I have been waiting the GOP to come out with a coherent platform.  I mean something other than buzzwords, catch phrases and vague platitudes.  It’s now been four years since they lost power and the GOP still has only anger, resentment and outrage to offer us.  I am, once again, forcibly reminded of the Left in the 80’s and 90’s.  You don’t need ideas; all you need is anger.

And so the talk of town, with three months until election day and the Democratic Party reeling, remains the Outrage of the Week.  Whatever news story the Right Wing can work themselves into a lather over is the issue de jour.  One week, it’s “snubbing Israel” (who would have thought the GOP would take another country’s side in a minor diplomatic tiff).  Another week, it’s racists at the NAACP.  The next week it’s a stupid mosque that no one ever heard of before some Right Wingers got ahold of it and decided they understood the pain of 9/11 better than the people who were actually there.  Sometimes these issues are real; more often they’re bogus.  And almost always, they’re penny ante stuff—the sort of trivial things you worry about when there’s no wars or recessions to deal with.

For four years, it’s been a non-stop barrage of outrageous outrage.  Screaming and yelling and getting worked up into a frenzy over nothing.  It’s been a constant electric jolt to the spleens of tens of millions of conservative Americans.  And for what?  So the GOP can get in power and return to the mistakes they made for half a decade?  Have they shown any evidence of learning from their colossal fuck-ups?

Frankly, I’m sick of this bullshit.  I crossed my own threshold last week with the NAACP business.  I’m outraged out.  I’m tired of having my emotions played with by people who are pig ignorant, confuse ideology with ideas, have no concrete solutions to our national problems and whose idea of a crowning political achievement is a guest commentator spot on Fox News.

Fuck ‘em.  If this is the best they’ve got—that they want to ignore religious freedom, economic freedom and the decision of a local government because a non-violent muslim group wants to build a mosque within some arbitrary radius of the twin towers, they are unworthy of our time or attention.  If they had some good ideas about the economy, then I might be willing to listen to their ideas on Manhattan zoning.  But they don’t, so I won’t.  I’m sorry.  Your ideas must be at least this good for this ride.

I want the Democrats out and I hope they get flogged in November.  But at this point, I’m still not sure want the GOP back in.  After four years of Democratic bullshit, the last thing we need is two years of GOP bullshit.  And in their present state, I certainly don’t want them in command of both the White House and Congress.

Call me when you’re serious, GOP.  Call me when you want to govern.  Somebody else can pay attention while you’re foaming at the mouth over the pseudo-controvery of the week.

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Speaking of people who abuse statistics, Elizabeth Warren is likely to head up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Warren is extremely popular in liberals circles.  It’s not difficult to see why.  She’s glib, charismatic and has a way of speaking that makes her sound very down to earth and straight forward.  She seems like everyone’s mom with an eye on the budget.

She is also, to say the least, somewhat suspect in the way she analyzes issues and presents data.  McArdle takes her to task here and here, pointing out Warren’s tendency to find the worst statistics possible on medical bankruptcies and middle class struggles.  If you listen to what she says, rather than how she says it, she’s very much a Big Government person who believes the rest of us need to have our hands held by our benevolent overlords.

She’ll probably be confirmed and she should be.  As I said before, elections have consequences and I think Presidents should have a great deal of discretion in appointing people to positions within the executive and judicial branches.  But don’t be fooled by the overwhelmingly positive press she is certain to get.

Unless you live in a cave somewhere - not Afghanistan or Pakistan of course, because if you are there, your co-conspirators in the MSM are keeping you in the loop, and letting you now how well your joint war on civilization is going - you have heard about the big WikiLeaks document dump. The real big revelation?

A trove of military documents made public on Sunday by an organization called WikiLeaks reflects deep suspicions among American officials that Pakistan’s military spy service has for years guided the Afghan insurgency with a hidden hand, even as Pakistan receives more than $1 billion a year from Washington for its help combating the militants.

Yawn! As if this was not obvious already. Maybe we need to talk more to the Pakis and cut off their funding. Let their Chinese buddies pay for them. Military investigators are checking computers used by Pfc. Bradley Manning, who somehow made it into an intelligence analyst slot, and then got charged this month with leaking this classified information for whatever idiotic reason. I hope that he spends a lot of time in Leavenworth, being “loved long time” at a minimum, or hangs for this treasonous act. The MSM, and especially these losers, are an enemy of this state.

Anyway, the left is dead set in pretending these documents show war crimes. Of course these morons would not know a war crime if it bit them in the arse, and only believe that the US or other NATO troops can commit war crimes - where else have we heard something just like that, huh? - anyway, so take it all with a grain of salt. As I suspected, this moron released mostly boring and low level contact reports, and while it is obvious that there will be information that is damaging to security, the troops, and operations, I doubt there will be anything that is going to satisfy the left’s need for a grand conspiracy and rampant war crimes after this revelation about the documents classification status made it obvious that:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon said on Monday that its review of the leak of secret military documents on the war in Afghanistan would take “days if not weeks” and that it was too soon to assess their damage. WikiLeaks, an organization promoting the leaking of information to fight corporate and government corruption, on Sunday said it released 91,000 U.S. military documents on the war stretching back to 2004.

This Australian newspaper also seems not to know WikiLeaks is one giant joke where fake is real and not give them so much legitimacy, but who then again, it doesn’t fit the narrative. Speaking of narrative, check out this beat down:

Well, the issue of civilian casualties is a major one and the U.S.  has taken a lot of criticism because of this. However, what’s interesting to note that is according to the documents, 195 Afghan civilians have been killed. But also according to the documents, two thousand Afghan civilians have been killed by the Taliban, which is more than ten times the number said to be killed by U.S. and NATO forces. And very little is being made of that.

I have been asking the same question. Why is the western media obsessed with how many people we kill but always giving these barbarians a pass? At a minimum it puts into serious doubt their motives and makes it clear that there is an agenda, and then not a good one. When the agenda is that leaks that compromise lefty reporters and their agenda is bad, but any leaks that kill American troops and hampers America’s ability to fight wars against evil people while helping those fighting America is good, you have a problem. In case you are not seeing the obvious swipe here, I am discussing the left’s reaction to the t revelations about Journolist and their shenanigans, up and including their collusion to defend and elect the idiot now living in the WH, versus the reaction from the left about the release of documents intended to hurt American troops during a war.

Don’t you worry though! The left will have someone on their side cook up the facts just right. Maybe they can get Oliver Stone to do it for them after he reforms Hitler’s & Stalin’s images so the left no longer needs to remember that these two collectivists combined to kill close to a hundred million people in a war, and that Stalin fellow killed a few tens of millions more of his own people and a few hundred million more, leaving billions in chains, as their filthy collectivist ideology spread across the globe.

Monday, July 26, 2010

Lots of people are linking up this article that has 22 statistics that prove the middle class is dying.

They dance around a truth here which that the recession has hit hard and that the last decade saw a lot more wealth gains for the rich than the poor—more so than in the 90’s and 80’s.  They don’t know the reason for this, which is the accelerating destruction of the free enterprise system to the benefit of big powerful businesses.  But their general point, that the middle class is disappearing, can not be supported by their data.  You will rarely see a more cherry-picked group of stats in your life.  But no one wants to look closely at it because it plays to their pre-conceived notions.

Let’s take this silliness apart, shall we? 

Guess what? Remember all the talk about how the BP Gulf incident was going to destroy the entire ecosystem of the Gulf? Well, check this latest story out:

For 86 days, oil spewed into the Gulf of Mexico from BP’s damaged well, dumping some 200 million gallons of crude into sensitive ecosystems. BP and the federal government have amassed an army to clean the oil up, but there’s one problem—they’re having trouble finding it. Watch ‘World News’ for the latest coverage on the Gulf oil spill. At its peak last month, the oil slick was the size of Kansas, but it has been rapidly shrinking, now down to the size of New Hampshire. Today, ABC News surveyed a marsh area and found none, and even on a flight out to the rig site Sunday with the Coast Guard, there was no oil to be seen.

You read that right. There are some hints there though. Did you know that the there is a very active and thriving ecosystem in the Gulf that lives off of oil seepage in the Gulf? And while the story also points out the following:

Still, it doesn’t mean that all the oil that gushed for weeks is gone. Thousands of small oil patches remain below the surface, but experts say an astonishing amount has disappeared, reabsorbed into the environment.

It goes right on to point out the most important thing in this story:

“[It’s] mother nature doing her job,” said Ed Overton, a professor of environmental studies at Louisiana State University.

I think the biggest lies we have had our political and agenda driven classes tell us recently is how vulnerable Mother Nature is when we constantly have examples, like this one, of nature reversing the effects of these catastrophes of every kind, and in record time.

The light crude began to deteriorate the moment it escaped at high pressure, and then it was zapped with dispersants to speed the process along. The oil that did make it to the ocean’s surface was broken up by 88-degree water, baked by 100-degree sun, eaten by microbes, and whipped apart by wind and waves.

And it is no coincidence that nature was prepared to deal with this stuff. It has had billions of years of practice. My guess is that man will be long gone before the planet ever goes barren and lifeless, and future generations will make fun of the hoaxsters that constantly predicted man’s demise and evil disregard for a natural order that could have cared less about any of the hoopla. At least Obama can now say the government did a bang up job by doing squat.

Sunday, July 25, 2010

I blogged earlier this year on the Phoebe Prince case.  This is the Irish girl who killed herself after being bullied at school.  Slate has an in-depth article that looks at the case.  It’s not nearly as clear-cut as we were told.

Phoebe had a history of cutting and depression. She was dealing with a move across the ocean, her parents’ separation, and her father’s absence. She’d made another serious suicide attempt. According to the police interviews with a school counselor and nurse, she had gone off antidepressants before her death, and it’s not clear whether she was still in therapy. She was asking for help from older boys who seemed ill-equipped to provide it and who don’t seem to have told any adults what was wrong—not just Sean and Austin, but other boys, too. She resisted talking to her mother or an adult at school about her clashes with other kids, which psychiatrists I spoke to said is typical.

It’s a hard read and I still need to think about it some more.  But I’m less convinced than ever that criminal charges should be filed.  Bazelon goes into the D.A. involves as well.

The writer is being blasted in the comments.  And I’m curious myself as to how some of this information was acquired.  I’m not sure where this will go in court.  But I do know that any legislation based on this is likely to be ill-informed and ill-advised.  Let’s—for once—not compound a tragedy by acting rashly and without all the information.

Update: If everything in the article is to be believed, the only people not acting like twats are the high school kids.  They’ve been much more active and successful in opposing bullying than the supposedly outraged parents.  How sad is that?

Saturday, July 24, 2010

Guess what is slithering back into public discussion:

At a time when both political parties are worrying about the federal deficit, an unexpected and unorthodox proposal is coming back from the shadows of last year’s health-care debate the “public option.” The idea of creating a major government health insurance program was roundly rejected last year, but the 128 House Democrats pushing to reconsider the idea are now advancing the argument that it would help hold down federal spending.

Their bill, which faces long odds, would allow Americans who do not get insurance at work to choose a government plan for their health coverage starting in 2014.

“There is all this concern about the deficit,” said Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Calif., a leading champion of the proposal. “Well, guess what, this would reduce the deficit because it saves so much money.” Woolsey and her allies, including Reps. Jan Schakowsky of Illinois and Fortney “Pete” Stark of California, are armed with a new analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. It projects the public option could save the federal government $68 billion between 2014 an 2020, according to Democrats.

First thing’s first.  The CBO projections, as I have noted about a million times, are based entirely on the bill that is presented to them.  The Democrats demonstrated convincingly that they know how to game the system and force the CBO to produce whatever number they want.  In reality, the long term cost would be enormous.  Faced with competition from a socialized competitor that is—overtly or covertly—subsidized by government, there will be a stampededof employers dumping people on the public option, a reality the CBO can not really consider.

Second, I fucking told you so.  One of the arguments made in favor of the healthcare bill was that it was “moderate” and that we could fix it after it was passed.  As I and everyone with their head not three up their ass argued, this was absurd.  Any “fixes” to the bill were almost certain to be on the side of eating freedom and making it more expensive.  You need to have looked no further than Medicare Part D, which Obamacare changed to make far more expensive (by eliminating tax breaks for retiree drug plans and closing the “donut whole").

Third, are the Democrats really this stupid?  The elimination of the public option is the only reason they got this passed and the only thing keeping their hopes alive in November.  Now they want to bring it back.

We can’t have these assholes out of Washington fast enough.  I just wish there were a way to do it without putting the Republicans back in.

Friday, July 23, 2010

In a general display of how the leftist elites really feel about all those taxes they love to levy on the “undeserving rich” and everyone else, we have this interesting story about the new Kerry yacht:

Sen. John Kerry, who has repeatedly voted to raise taxes while in Congress, dodged a whopping six-figure state tax bill on his new multimillion-dollar yacht by mooring her in Newport, R.I. Isabel - Kerry’s luxe, 76-foot New Zealand-built Friendship sloop with an Edwardian-style, glossy varnished teak interior, two VIP main cabins and a pilothouse fitted with a wet bar and cold wine storage - was designed by Rhode Island boat designer Ted Fontaine.

But instead of berthing the vessel in Nantucket, where the senator summers with the missus, Teresa Heinz, Isabel’s hailing port is listed as “Newport” on her stern. Could the reason be that the Ocean State repealed its Boat Sales and Use Tax back in 1993, making the tiny state to the south a haven - like the Cayman Islands, Bermuda and Nassau - for tax-skirting luxury yacht owners? Cash-strapped Massachusetts still collects a 6.25 percent sales tax and an annual excise tax on yachts. Sources say Isabel sold for something in the neighborhood of $7 million, meaning Kerry saved approximately $437,500 in sales tax and an annual excise tax of about $70,000.

The senior senator’s chief of staff David Wade denied the old salt was berthing his boat out of state to avoid ponying up to the commonwealth.

Seriously, you don’t think this decision was done on advice from his accountants to avoid taxes? If you don’t I am also sure you think Charley Rangel is being unjustly persecuted. One set of rules for thee, another for me. But we are the party of the little guy and the people. Right..

On a lighter note, Biden is again showing us how lucky we are Obama is president.

Thursday, July 22, 2010

Well, it looks like the tax payer subsidized government bail outs are now at a record setting $3.7 trillion of tax payer dollars, with no end in sight. Seems that $4 trillion number we were supposed to hit at the end of Obama’s first term will come about long before we get rid of him. Some $700 billion has been forked out just in the last year.

WASHINGTON, July 21 (Reuters) - Increased housing commitments swelled U.S. taxpayers’ total support for the financial system by $700 billion in the past year to around $3.7 trillion, a government watchdog said on Wednesday. The Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program said the increase was due largely to the government’s pledges to supply capital to Fannie Mae (FNMA.OB) and Freddie Mac (FMCC.OB) and to guarantee more mortgages to the support the housing market.

Now one can argue that it was necessary and Bush was not a moron for going along with the first $350 billion, but none of us, including GWB, liked it when congress - who controlled it back in 2008 again lefties - decided to up it to $ 700 billion, and most of us objected to it. Even though Bush was no longer running for office, republicans paid for this move in 2008, while the demcorats made a great show, even as they rigged the way the cash was being distributed to make it end up with their hobby horses, big donors, friends and lobbyists, of blaming Bush for the bad economy and the need to bail out corporations with tax payer money. Things have steadily gone down hill from there, as the TARP bailout funds became the perfect place for demcorats to hide their shenanigans, and that $700 billion number soon was nothing but wishful thinking. Here we are now closing in on the $4 trillion mark not even two years after the fact. And who, pray tell, did most of the $700 billion they spent this year go to? Why.. Nah, just read it yourself:

Increased guarantees for loans backed by the Federal Housing Administration, the Government National Mortgage Association and the Veterans administration increased the government’s commitments by $512.4 billion alone in the year to June 30, according to the report.

“Indeed, the current outstanding balance of overall Federal support for the nation’s financial system...has actually increased more than 23% over the past year, from approximately $3.0 trillion to $3.7 trillion—the equivalent of a fully deployed TARP program—largely without congressional action, even as the banking crisis has, by most measures, abated from its most acute phases,” the TARP inspector general, Neil Barofsky, wrote in the report.

So wait a minute? We aren’t bailing out banks anymore – the demcorats sure as hell are trying their best to pretend that the bailouts are for Wall Street – like before, so what did all that cash end up going to? Well you found out when you read deeper into the article, or if you had been paying attention, that the big money this year went to prop up government institutions and amongst them are none other than Freddie and Fannie, whose protectors also brought us that fun bill Hal has an awesome piece on right here. The banks in the mean time? Well, check it out:

The increased government commitments more than offset about a $300 billion decline in the U.S. Treasury’s TARP commitments in the past year as programs have closed and banks have repaid taxpayer funds.

They are paying back our money. So why are we still seeing such massive TARP expenditures still going on when the banks are paying back the cash, then?

“The fact that the Obama administration is treating TARP like its own personal slush-fund is beyond egregious and a complete betrayal of what the American people were told would be then when their tax-dollars were used to bailout Wall Street,” Issa said in a statement, adding that the housing efforts were “dumping good money after bad”.

Heh, must be more of the same game that has them avoiding both a budget before the 2010 elections and playing chicken with the Bush tax cuts that expire then too. “Hope and Change”, baby! Fiscal discipline the demcorat way....

Just the other day I was talking to a lobsterman who told me this was the worst season ever. I am sure most people - even I did originally - will jump to conclusions that he felt this way because the lobster population is low and they were having trouble getting enough lobsters to make a living. That’s not the reason however that this gentleman gave me. He felt this was the worst season ever because of exactly the opposite! There was so much lobster out there that the lobster fishermen were bringing in so much stuff that it far exceeded demand, driving the cost of lobster down to a point where it was actually hurting them despite the record setting volume. I think he was definitely right when I paid $3.99 a pound – not on sale, but as regular price- for lobsters that went as high as 2 1/2pounds. And that was my choice, because my wife I doesn’t like bigger lobsters. I could have gone for bigger ones at the same per pound cost.

So I was baffled when I saw there was talk of a proposed ban. Is this yet another brilliant government maneuver to limit who gets to fish – those that pay off the right demcorats in these states no doubt – for them, the volume of lobsters that gets taken in, thus driving up the price due to an artificial scarcity, and to drive more people towards government for their daily subsistence? What gives? Are they just artificially going to control how much is available in order to artificially control the prices, and thus the income from these jobs? Nothing will go wrong with that I bet….