Archive for the ‘Federal’ Category

by JAY REEVES (AP), March 9, 2010

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts said Tuesday the scene at President Obama’s State of the Union address was “very troubling” and the annual speech has “degenerated to a political pep rally.”

Obama chided the court, with the justices seated before him in their black robes, for its decision on a campaign finance case.

Responding to a University of Alabama law student’s question, Roberts said anyone was free to criticize the court, and some have an obligation to do so because of their positions.

“So I have no problems with that,” he said. “On the other hand, there is the issue of the setting, the circumstances and the decorum.

“The image of having the members of one branch of government standing up, literally surrounding the Supreme Court, cheering and hollering while the court — according the requirements of protocol — has to sit there expressionless, I think is very troubling.”

Read more at http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gyvfRvSPtr5INaLpoyt0_bd8V0AwD9EBCSAG0

Posted by PushBackNow on youtube.com, 0:30
March 08, 2010
“How hypocritical, that they call us racists, when they themselves are the real ones! This is how Dan Rather really feels, and this segment has been scrubbed from the Chris Matthews show website.” –PushBackNow

Culled out
By Robert Montgomery, ESPNOutdoors.com, March 8, 2010

The Obama administration will accept no more public input for a federal strategy that could prohibit U.S. citizens from fishing the nation’s oceans, coastal areas, Great Lakes, and even inland waters.

This announcement comes at the time when the situation supposedly still is “fluid” and the Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force still hasn’t issued its final report on zoning uses of these waters.

That’s a disappointment, but not really a surprise for fishing industry insiders who have negotiated for months with officials at the Council on Environmental Quality and bureaucrats on the task force. These angling advocates have come to suspect that public input into the process was a charade from the beginning.

Read more at http://sports.espn.go.com/outdoors/saltwater/news/story?id=4975762

The Census, that is.

With the letter sent yesterday, (in SIX languages! Why not just in English?) you have now been warned by the US Dept. of Commerce of a FUTURE letter.

What a waste of money.

No wonder that We’re Broke!!

US Debt Clock at http://www.usdebtclock.org/

By: RJC Press Office, Friday, March 5, 2010

Washington, D.C. (March 8, 2010) — The Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) Winter Leadership Meeting featured a gala dinner on March 6 to kick off the RJC’s year-long 25th anniversary celebration.

Former U.S. Senator Norm Coleman acted as master of ceremonies. The keynote address was delivered by Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, with additional remarks from House Minority Whip Eric Cantor and Hawaii Governor Linda Lingle. RJC was privileged to present a special video message from President George W. Bush in honor of the occasion.

CLICK HERE FOR THE TRANSCRIPT OF THE PRESIDENT ‘S REMARKS.

CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE VIDEO.

The Republican Jewish Coalition is the national grassroots organization of Jewish Republicans. Since 1985, the RJC has built a strong and effective network of Jewish Republican activists, including nearly 30,000 members and 45 active chapters around the country. RJC members are served by the national headquarters in Washington, D.C. as well as regional offices in New York, Philadelphia, South Florida, and Los Angeles.

As the leading voice of Jewish Republicans in both the broader Jewish community and the Republican community, the RJC plays a unique and increasingly important role in the key political and policy debates of our day. RJC promotes a big-tent Republican perspective on a range of issues including health care, education, national security and defense, the U.S.-Israel relationship, and economic issues. RJC staff work with legislators and other policy-makers, advocating on these and other issues.

The RJC hosts over 300 local events a year nation-wide, including talks featuring local and national political officials, Republican Party chairmen, syndicated columnists, think-tank analysts, and candidates for public office. RJC programs educate, support, and train our members for being actively engaged in public policy advocacy.

From http://www.rjchq.org/Newsroom/newsdetail.aspx?id=27ffab31-00f0-41e5-ba75-6fc5a2ad09c6

By Dennis Cauchon, USA TODAY, March 4, 2010

Federal employees earn higher average salaries than private-sector workers in more than eight out of 10 occupations, a USA TODAY analysis of federal data finds.

Accountants, nurses, chemists, surveyors, cooks, clerks and janitors are among the wide range of jobs that get paid more on average in the federal government than in the private sector.

Overall, federal workers earned an average salary of $67,691 in 2008 for occupations that exist both in government and the private sector, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. The average pay for the same mix of jobs in the private sector was $60,046 in 2008, the most recent data available.

CHART: Federal salaries compared to private-sector

These salary figures do not include the value of health, pension and other benefits, which averaged $40,785 per federal employee in 2008 vs. $9,882 per private worker, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Read more at  http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2010-03-04-federal-pay_N.htm

by JEFF ZELENY, NY Times, March 4, 2010

The troubles of Gov. David A. Paterson of New York, followed by those of two of the state’s congressmen, Charles B. Rangel and Eric J. Massa, have added to the ranks of episodes involving prominent Democrats like Eliot Spitzer, Rod R. Blagojevich and John Edwards.

Taken together, the cases have opened the party to the same lines of criticism that Democrats, led by Representatives Nancy Pelosi, now the House speaker, and Rahm Emanuel, now White House chief of staff, used effectively against Republicans in winning control of the House and Senate four years ago.

The mix of power and the temptations of corruption can be a compelling political narrative at any time. But with voters appearing to be in an angry mood and many already inclined to view all things Washington with mistrust, the risks for Democrats could be that much greater this year.

Read more at  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/05/us/politics/05memo.html

By Shawn Tully, senior editor at large, March 4, 2010

(Fortune Magazine) — On the eve of President Barack Obama’s winter health-care summit, Rep. Paul Ryan is dining at Talay Thai, a no-frills restaurant with metal chairs and Formica tables. On this frigid evening, Ryan strolled coatless to Talay — “I’m from Wisconsin!” he says — from his cramped Capitol Hill office, where tonight, as on most nights, he’ll sleep on a cot.

Such frugality is fitting for a politician who, as he sips ice water, frets that America is “sleep-walking toward a debt crisis.” Ryan tells me: “Within a few years a sale of government bonds will fail. The capital markets will go crazy, and the Fed and Treasury will run to Capitol Hill demanding a giant bailout. Adding Obamacare would make the crisis go deeper and arrive faster.”

It isn’t unusual to hear such antispending rhetoric from Republicans these days. What makes Ryan a rarity is that he’s been preaching cerebral free-market ideas during his 11 years in Congress, despite getting little attention for his views.

Now the 40-year-old Janesville, Wis., native is emerging as the leading GOP voice on economic policy, thanks to his detailed blueprint for solving what both Democrats and Republicans agree is a perilous fiscal future. (How bad is America’s financial picture? The President’s budget for 2011 forecasts deficits running at more than $1 trillion, or an unsustainable 4.2% of GDP, in 2020 — and that assumes low unemployment and decent growth of the economy.)

Read more at  http://money.cnn.com/2010/03/04/news/economy/paul_ryan.fortune/index.htm

by Daniel Peterson, JS Online Opinion, Posted: Feb. 13, 2010

I am puzzled by much of the opposition to public subsidies for commuter rail and high-speed rail spending. I have yet to hear these opponents object to the massive public subsidies for all of the other modes of transportation in the United States.

Some examples: The trucking industry was given the highway and interstate system completely free. Trucking companies have never paid a dime for the untold billions of dollars in capital costs of our highway and expressway system.

Railroads were given some of their original right of way back in the 1800s but had to purchase much of it. Furthermore, the rail companies have paid property taxes on every square inch of their right of way ever since, they pay for all of the maintenance of it and historically even had to put in most road crossings at their expense.

Trucks do pay a motor fuel tax, inaugurated in 1932 after many of the roads were built. In fact it was because of publicly funded road construction that by the mid-1930s the railroads ceased to be a transportation monopoly - yet they were regulated as a monopoly until just 29 years ago.

Today, over-the-road heavy trucks pay approximately $14,000 per year in combined fuel and other highway taxes. This amount does not come close to paying for the damage to roads and bridges caused by trucks, let alone the capital cost of the highway system or for new or expanded road and bridge construction.

“Typical passenger vehicles don’t cause damage,” says Virginia Department of Transportation engineer A.S. Ahmad. “Only the trucks cause damage.”

More specifically, “Pavement damage increases exponentially with the weight of a truck. For example, one 80,000-pound truck does the same road damage as 9,600 automobiles, and trucks operate well above 80,000 pounds in a number of states.

Read more at http://www.jsonline.com/news/opinion/84269192.html

Posted as an interesting article, not that we necessarily agree with it.

By David Weidner, MarketWatch, March 2, 2010

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — Barack Obama surfed into office on a wave of financial panic. A year later, he’s ended up dry but the rest of us are still looking for a life preserver.

So, what happened?

Instead of making financial reform and the economy his first priority, the president chose to follow through on a domestic agenda built for better times. He went to work on health care, high-speed rail, green technology and Iraq. He put financial reform in the hands of people who contributed to the problem.

The president’s choices reflect a lack of understanding of Wall Street and its relationship with Main Street. It shouldn’t come as a surprise; Obama is a constitutional law professor and civil rights attorney. His background is politics and public policy. He’s a consensus builder. These strengths serve him well when he pushes his non-financial domestic agenda — such as reducing the U.S. nuclear arsenal or merit pay for teachers.

Every president comes to the job with strengths, but if anything, the first year has shown us that Obama’s are mismatched with the problems the country faces: a broken credit system, the failure of regulation, the misuse of derivatives and the battle between traders and investors for the soul of the stock market.

On these fronts, the president is either in over his head or his heart isn’t in the fight — or both.

Read more http://www.marketwatch.com/story/how-obamacare-is-killing-financial-reform-2010-03-02

by Mark Steyn, OC Register, Feb. 27, 2010

While Barack Obama was making his latest pitch for a brand new, even more unsustainable entitlement at the health care “summit,” thousands of Greeks took to the streets to riot. An enterprising cable network might have shown the two scenes on a continuous split-screen - because they’re part of the same story. It’s just that Greece is a little further along in the plot: They’re at the point where the canoe is about to plunge over the falls. America is further upstream and can still pull for shore, but has decided, instead, that what it needs to do is catch up with the Greek canoe. Chapter One (the introduction of unsustainable entitlements) leads eventually to Chapter 20 (total societal collapse): The Greeks are at Chapter 17 or 18.

What’s happening in the developed world today isn’t so very hard to understand: The 20th century Bismarckian welfare state has run out of people to stick it to. In America, the feckless insatiable boobs in Washington, Sacramento, Albany and elsewhere are screwing over our kids and grandkids. In Europe, they’ve reached the next stage in social democratic evolution: There are no kids or grandkids to screw over. The United States has a fertility rate of around 2.1 – or just over two kids per couple. Greece has a fertility rate of about 1.3: 10 grandparents have six kids have four grandkids – i.e., the family tree is upside down. Demographers call 1.3 “lowest-low” fertility – the point from which no society has ever recovered. And, compared with Spain and Italy, Greece has the least-worst fertility rate in Mediterranean Europe.

So you can’t borrow against the future because, in the most basic sense, you don’t have one. Greeks in the public sector retire at 58, which sounds great. But, when 10 grandparents have four grandchildren, who pays for you to spend the last third of your adult life loafing around?

Read more at http://www.ocregister.com/opinion/greece-236468-government-america.html

by Patrice Hill, Washington Times, March 1, 2010

The so-called “Great Recession” has left Americans depending on the government dole like never before.

Without record levels of welfare, unemployment and other government benefits as well as tax cuts last year, the income of U.S. households would have plunged by an astonishing $723 billion — more than four times the record $167 billion drop reported last month by the Commerce Department.

Moreover, for the first time since the Great Depression, Americans took more aid from the government than they paid in taxes.

The figures show the devastating results of the massive job losses last year and indicate that the economic recovery that began last summer is tenuous and has a long way to go before many Americans resume life as normal, analysts said.

Economic growth typically depends on consumer spending, which is fed by wages, rents, interest and other forms of income. But the tentative revival of consumer spending in the second half of last year appears to have been fed largely by an extraordinary flood of government spending, as growth in other kinds of income has disappeared.

Read more at http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/mar/01/americans-reliance-on-government-at-all-time-high/

(received from an email)

THANK GOD FOR BARACK OBAMA

He destroyed the Clinton Political Machine - Driving a stake through the heart of Hillary’s Presidential aspirations - something no Republican was ever able to do. Remember when a Hillary Presidency scared the daylights out of you?

He killed off the Kennedy Dynasty - No more Kennedys trolling Washington looking for booze and women wanting rides home. American women, and Freedom, are safer tonight!

He is destroying the Democratic Party before our eyes!

Dennis Moore (D-KS) - had never lost a race - quit

Evan Bayh (D-IN) - had never lost a race - quit

Byron Dorgan (D-ND) - had never lost a race - quit

Harry Reid (D-NV) - his bid for re-election doesn’t look good

Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) - revealed as the hapless woman who will lose power and may be on the way out!

These are just a handful of the Democrats that whose political careers Obama has helped destroy! By the end of 2010 there will be dozens more! (How many more can you name??)

Remember, in December of 2008 the Democrats were on the rise. In the last two election cycles they had picked up 14 Senate seats and 52 House seats. The press was touting the death of the Conservative Movement and the Republican Party.

In ONE YEAR Obama put a stop to all of this, and will probably give the House, if not the Senate back to the Republicans!

He has completely exposed liberals and progressives for what they are. Every generation seems to need to re-learn the lesson on why they should never actually put liberals in charge.

He is bringing home the lesson very well:
* Liberals tax, borrow and spend - check
* Liberals won’t bring themselves to protect America - check
* Liberals want to take over the economy - check
* Liberals think they know what is best for everyone - check
* Liberals aren’t happy until they are running YOUR life - check

He has brought more Americans back to conservatism than anyone since Reagan.

In ONE YEAR he rejuvenated the Conservative movement and brought out to the streets millions of Freedom-Loving Americans.

Name me one other time in your life that you saw your friends and neighbors this interested in taking back America!

In all honesty ONE YEAR ago I was more afraid than I had ever been in my life. Not about the economy, but about the direction our country was going. I thought Americans had forgotten what this country was all about. But neighbors, friends, even strangers, proved to me that my lack of confidence in the Greatness and Wisdom of the American people was flat out wrong.

When the American People wake up, no smooth talking teleprompter reader can fool them!

Barack Obama woke up these Great Americans.

Again, THANK YOU BARACK OBAMA!

by Kathleen Gallagher of the Journal Sentinel, Feb. 24, 2010

Best way to guarantee a financially stress-free retirement in Wisconsin?

Work for the government.

State public employees - such as public school teachers and state and city workers - on average receive hundreds of dollars more per month in retirement than higher-paid employees in the private sector, according to a new report from the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute.

Even as the state has lost 140,000 jobs and one-eighth of its manufacturing workforce during the recession, public employees’ benefits have been protected. Those statistics prompted the institute to commission the report, said George Lightbourn, the president of the conservative think tank.

According to the report, an employee covered by the Wisconsin Retirement System who earns $48,000 a year would retire with an estimated monthly benefit of $1,712 from the system.

In contrast, a private sector employee who earned $70,000 a year would get an estimated $1,301 a month in retirement - or $411 less per month than the lower-paid public sector retiree, said Joan Gucciardi, a Milwaukee-area actuary with more than 40 years of experience who spent nine months preparing the report.

Read more at http://www.jsonline.com/news/wisconsin/85159562.html

by Richard Teitelbaum, Bloomberg, Feb. 23

When a congressional panel convened a hearing on the government rescue of American International Group Inc. in January, the public scolding of Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner got the most attention.

Lawmakers said the former head of the New York Federal Reserve Bank had presided over a backdoor bailout of Wall Street firms and a coverup. Geithner countered that he had acted properly to avert the collapse of the financial system.

A potentially more important development slipped by with less notice, Bloomberg Markets reports in its April issue. Representative Darrell Issa, the ranking Republican on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, placed into the hearing record a five-page document itemizing the mortgage securities on which banks such as Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Societe Generale SA had bought $62.1 billion in credit-default swaps from AIG.

These were the deals that pushed the insurer to the brink of insolvency — and were eventually paid in full at taxpayer expense. The New York Fed, which secretly engineered the bailout, prevented the full publication of the document for more than a year, even when AIG wanted it released.

That lack of disclosure shows how the government has obstructed a proper accounting of what went wrong in the financial crisis, author and former investment banker William Cohan says. “This secrecy is one more example of how the whole bailout has been done in such a slithering manner,” says Cohan, who wrote “House of Cards” (Doubleday, 2009), about the unraveling of Bear Stearns Cos. “There’s been no accountability.”

–SNIP–  “It’s almost too uncanny,” Calacci says. “If these banks had insight into the underlying loans because they had relationships with banks, originators or servicers, that’s at the least unethical.”

Read more at http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=ax3yON_uNe7I&pos=11

from CNN Deputy Political Director Paul Steinhauser, cnn.com, Feb. 26, 2010

Washington (CNN) – A majority of Americans think the federal government poses a threat to rights of Americans, according to a new national poll.

Fifty-six percent of people questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Friday say they think the federal government’s become so large and powerful that it poses an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens. Forty-four percent of those polled disagree.

Read more at http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2010/02/26/cnn-poll-majority-says-government-a-threat-to-citizens-rights/?fbid=gD5tRxyq7kC

by yidwithlid, Saturday, February 27, 2010

Ever since President Obama began his public assault on Israel, I have been waiting for Congressional supporters of Israel to speak out, especially the Democrats who received 78% of the Jewish vote in the most recent election.

But the silence of the Democratic Party has been deafening, none of the usual whining from Chuck Schumer about the POTUS trying to pressure Israel while allowing the Palestinians to get off scot-free, nothing from Gary Ackerman about POTUS linking the creation of Israel to the Holocaust, even nothing from Anthony “The Weenie” Weiner about Obama’s bigoted statements saying only are not allowed to live in Jerusalem. One would think that someone like Congressman Jerrold Nadler, who never misses a pro-Israel dinner (or any dinner), would speak out about the latest Obama criticism, bashing Israel for wanting to take care of the Cave of the Patriarchs and Rachel’s tomb. Or you would expect my congressman Steve Israel to refuse the request of the White House to lend his name to a dinner sponsored by the anti-Israel group J-street.

You would expect all that, but none of it happened. As the far left progressive movement continues its stranglehold on the Democratic Party, the party faithful moves away from Israel to satisfy the progressives.

Progressive websites such as the Daily Kos and the Huffington Post contain some of the most vile Anti-Israel and Anti-Semitic rhetoric on the web.

Read more at http://yidwithlid.blogspot.com/2010/02/democratic-party-is-no-longer-pro.html

by Matthew Continetti, Weekly Standard blog, February 25, 2010

Rep. Paul Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin, just launched a full-bore assault on the faulty assumptions behind the claim that the Obama health care plan will reduce the deficit. Obama didn’t even bother questioning Ryan’s presentation. He changed the subject to Medicare Advantage. The expression on the president’s face as Ryan made his case was absolutely priceless. Simply put, he looked like someone who realizes he’s met his match.

From http://weeklystandard.com/blogs/main-event-ryan-v-obama

youtube.com, 6:11

“I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits — either now or in the future.”
(Remarks by President Obama to a Joint Session of Congress, September 9, 2009)
This afternoon Budget Committee Ranking Member Ryan walked through why the bill put forward by Democrats FAILS the Presidents deficit test.