Looking back at McCain’s opposition to earmarks, Barack Obama is trying to show that the floods in Iowa wouldn’t have happened if John McCain hadn’t blocked federal money for improving the levees:

Just the other day, Senator McCain traveled to Iowa to express his sympathies for the victims of the recent flooding. I’m sure they appreciated the sentiment, but they probably would have appreciated it more if he hadn’t opposed legislation to fund levees and flood control programs, which he seems to consider pork.

Looking back in time, it seems that this so-called Constitutional scholar would realize that the Founding Fathers never intended to have federal money paying for anything like levees and flood control programs. They intended for the states to pay for it. Madison didn’t even want money going to pay for roads or schools:

“If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare, and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare, they may take the care of religion into their own hands;
they may appoint teachers in every State, county and parish and pay them out of their public treasury; they may take into their own hands the education of children, establishing in like manner schools throughout the Union; they may assume the provision of the poor; they may undertake the regulation of all roads other than post-roads; in short, every thing, from the highest object of state legislation down to the most minute object of police, would be thrown under the power of Congress…. Were the power of Congress to be established in the latitude contended for, it would subvert the very foundations, and transmute the very nature of the limited Government established by the people of America.”

John McCain was right on this one. Barack the socialist is wrong again. But way to capitalism on the misery and misfortune of others to win an election.

Remember, we just TRIPLED our funding for fighting the global AIDS epidemic, to $50 billion over 5 years. Fifty billion dollars we don’t have, for what experts are now calling a myth:

The threat of a global AIDS epidemic is over, the World Health Organisation’s top HIV expert has admitted.

Kevin De Cock, who has spent most of his career leading the battle against the disease, said the understanding of the threat posed by the virus had changed.

Rather than being a risk to populations anywhere, the threat is largely confined to gay men, drug addicts and prostitutes and their clients.

So, why in the world would we be tripling our funding if Dr. De Cock is correct, and the issue is a myth? Because the United Nations lies:

The concession comes just months after the United Nations admitted overstating the threat of AIDS, slashing estimates of the number of people with HIV worldwide from nearly 40million to 33million.

Don’t get me wrong. AIDS is a terrible disease, one no one should suffer. But it is really quite preventable. Look again at the first blockquote: “…the threat is largely confined to gay men, drug addicts and prostitutes and their clients.”

And it kills millions:

In all, there were 33million people living with HIV in 2007 - around two-thirds of which were in Africa.

Around 2.5million people became infected with HIV and 2.1million died of AIDS.

In Britain, the rate of infection has tripled in ten years - to one of the highest in the EU.

In 2006, there were 8,925 cases diagnosed - only Estonia and Portugal had worse rates.

However,

The majority of cases were in gay men and immigrants who contracted the disease overseas.

As I wrote in an earlier post:

Now, I know there are some bleeding heart liberals out there reading this and they are wondering how I can be so heartless (or maybe this is what they expect from us heartless conserva-tarians). Let me explain to you why, using something liberals are allergic to - facts:

• Heart Disease: The number one cause of death in the United States, 21 million new cases of heart disease are reported each year, with 724,859 Americans dying from heart disease in 1998.[5] The National Institutes for Health (NIH) will fund the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute at an estimated $2.6 billion–or $3,541 for each death from heart, lung, or blood disease.
• Cancer: The second leading cause of death in the United States, in 1999 549,838 people died of cancer. The NIH expects to fund the National Cancer Institute at an estimated $4.2 billion in 2002–or $7,713 for each death from cancer.
• Breast Cancer: With 180,000 new cases each year, breast cancer is the leading cause of death among American women who are forty to fifty-five years of age. Each year about 46,000 women die of the disease. The NIH is currently spending $396 million on breast cancer research–or $8,608 per death from the disease.
• Diabetes: According to the CDC, seven million Americans have diabetes–the sixth leading cause of death in the United States. In 1999 64,751 died from complications associated with diabetes. The NIH has budgeted $450 million for diabetes research–or $6,949 per death from diabetes.
• AIDS: By comparison, in 2000, 23,932 people were diagnosed with AIDS. In that year, 8,867 people died from the disease. According to the NIH Office of AIDS Research, $2.5 billion has been proposed for AIDS research programs within the NIH in fiscal year 2002, with that figure increasing to more than $2.7 billion in 2003. The current (2002) budget amounts to an astounding $265,591 per AIDS death. This figure does not include the public monies spent to treat AIDS through federal Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resources (CARE) Act. Funding for CARE is currently $1.8 billion–an additional $202,999 per AIDS death.

According to a 2004 report, “In 2000, 4.5 million Americans were suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease. This number is expected to increase nearly three-fold to 13.2 million by 2050 (Hebert, et al.). By contrast, the number of people with AIDS is less than 400,000.” Yet the FAIR Foundation noted at the time:

NIH research money budgeted per death is $162,790 for AIDS versus $10,245 for Alzheimer’s.

There are better things to spend this money on than a mythical epidemic of a disease that is preventable.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Summit is currently being held in Rome. The purpose of the meeting is to create “an emergency plan to reduce hunger and help Third World farmers.”

While millions around the world go hungery, the leaders and representatives who created this hunger problem feast. According to the AP, the menu for the meeting is quite spectacular:

For presidents and premiers at summits, delicacies washed down by fine wines are all part of the agenda.

But the puff pastries with corn and mozzarella, pasta with pumpkin and shrimp, and rolls of thinly sliced veal served up Tuesday at a U.N. conference on fighting hunger were a contrast to bleak accounts of starving people around the world.

The menu was in French but the fare was strictly Italian, served in a dining room at the headquarters of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.

The repast was accompanied by a chilled white wine from Orvieto in the hills of Umbria north of Rome.

“It’s pretty standard stuff,” said FAO spokesman Nick Parsons, describing the meal as “pleasant, light and nutritious.”

For the millions suffering because of the bureaucrats failures, this is not “pretty standard stuff.” These clowns should be feasting on bologna and cheese, some plain label chips and a hot Diet Shasta.

No, not the elites. They get puff pastries while their subjects hunger.

Here’s the full menu:

Tuesday:

• Vol-au-vent (pastry puffs) with corn and mozzarella
• Pasta with a sauce of pumpkin and shrimp in cream
• Veal rolls with cherry tomatoes and basil
• Spinach Roman-style
• Fruit salad with vanilla ice cream
• white wine from Orvieto

Wednesday:

• Cheese mousse
• Pasta with vegetables and cherry tomatoes
• Chopped beef
• Butter beans
• Pineapple with ice cream
• Cabernet

Thursday:

• Zucchini pie
• Parmesan Risotto
• Ragout of veal with legumes
• Sauteed potatoes
• Lemon mousse with raspberry sauce.
• Pinot Grigio

It’s like some surreal scene directly from the pages of an Ayn Rand novel. These are the knuckleheads that created the hunger problem. People like Robert Mugabe, who took the breadbasket of Southern Africa and turned it into a disaster area. He is in attendance, and has actually blamed the West for his country’s food shortages.

Mugabe struck a defiant tone — accusing Western powers of maneuvering to bring about “regime change” in Zimbabwe.

He contended that while land reform was “warmly welcomed” by most of his people, it has “elicited wrath from our former colonial masters.”

“The United Kingdom has mobilized her friends and allies in Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand to impose illegal economic sanctions against Zimbabwe,” he said.

Although Mugabe pins much of his nation’s plight on the sanctions, the measures are narrowly targeted at him and his allies. Humanitarian aid, with the Europeans the biggest donors, continues to flow, but is channeled through aid groups instead of the government.

Not only does Mugabe refuse to accept repsonsibility for the conditions his policies created, but he recently ordered that providers of food aid stop their efforts to feed the hungry:

Human Rights Watch said Wednesday that the Zimbabwe government is imposing control over food aid to intimidate voters before the presidential runoff.

The New York-based organization called for the government to lift restrictions on international aid groups operating in Zimbabwe.

The aid organization CARE International has been ordered to halt operations pending an investigation of allegations it was campaigning for the opposition. CARE denies that was the case.

Other aid groups have also been told to curb activities in Zimbabwe and there is concern the decision will hinder the delivery of food to millions of people.

“The decision to let people go hungry is yet another attempt to use food as a political tool to intimidate voters ahead of an election,” said Tiseke Kasambala, Zimbabwe researcher at Human Rights Watch. “President Mugabe’s government has a long history of using food to control the election outcome.”

CARE International provides aid to about 500,000 Zimbabweans and had planned to resume food distribution this month to about 1 million people.

Your United States tax dollars are helping to support this summit, which gives men like Robert Mugabe a platform to attack the United States and blame others for his actions. And your tax dollars also give him a big meal with Lemon mousse with raspberry sauce for dessert, all while he intentionally starves his own people.

Isn’t it time to leave the United Nations?

I was reading the New York Times article on a set of proposals Congressional Republicans were throwing at the wall to see what sticked, when I read this jewel:

Some of the ideas from the conservatives have been circulating for months, including an immediate moratorium on seeking money for the pet home-state projects known as earmarks. But other Republicans have rejected that idea, arguing it is a chief responsibility of representatives to win federal aid for local initiatives.

Um, what?

This is the problem. The Republicans have become the Democrats.

Allow me to educate this fools, using the words of our Founding Fathers:

• “When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.”
  -Benjamin Franklin
• “I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it.”
  – Benjamin Franklin, On the Price of Corn and Management of the Poor, November 1776
• “To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.”
  -Thomas Jefferson, letter to Joseph Milligan, April 6, 1816
• “A wise and frugal government … shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government.”
  -Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1801
• “Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated.”
  -Thomas Jefferson
• “When all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated.”
  -Thomas Jefferson to Charles Hammond, 1821. The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, (Memorial Edition) Lipscomb and Bergh, editors, ME 15:332
• “With respect to the two words ‘general welfare,’ I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators.” - James Madison, the Father of the Constitution
• In 1794, , James Madison stood on the floor of the House to object saying, “I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.”
  -James Madison, 4 Annals of congress 179 (1794), following Congress’ appropriation of $15,000 for relief of French refugees who fled from insurrection in San Domingo to Baltimore and Philadelphia
• “…[T]he government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects. It is not like the state governments, whose powers are more general. Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.”
  -James Madison
• “If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the general welfare, the government is no longer a limited one possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one subject to particular exceptions.” James Madison, “Letter to Edmund Pendleton,”
  -James Madison, January 21, 1792, in The Papers of James Madison, vol. 14, Robert A Rutland et. al., ed (Charlottesvile: University Press of Virginia,1984).

(Find more great quotes here.)

Republicans need to remember these things. They are losing elections because not only is the base disgusted with them, but the center doesn’t trust them. They simply do not do what they say they will do. They used to stand for small government, now they pass $300 billion farm bills, loaded with earmarks and tax breaks.

As one Freeper said:

If they take it on the chin this fall, and then still stick to that platform then it is believable, if they “change the message” again, we know it is pablum.

See. No trust.

Republicans have a negative balance in the trust bank account. They are going to have to make some consistent deposits before anyone will feel like doing business with them again. They have bounced too many checks.

You would think that in the Farm Bill, the bulk of the moeny would go to, well, farms. Instead, a bulk of the money goes to domestic nutrition programs. What exactly is a “domestic nutrition program?”

Food stamps.

• Food stamps and other domestic nutrition programs such as emergency food assistance: just over 66 percent, about $200 billion.
• Subsidies for rice, cotton, corn, soybeans, wheat and other crops: 14 percent, around $43 billion.
• Conservation programs to set aside or protect environmentally sensitive farmland: 9 percent, about $27 billion.
• Crop insurance to help farmers protect against losses: 8 percent, about $23 billion.
• Foreign food aid would make up less than one percent of the bill, costing less than $200 million. The bulk of international food assistance is in annual appropriations bills.

“Conservation programs to set aside or protect environmentally sensitive farmland” could also be read as: “money given to farmers for not growing anything on this land: about $27 billion.”

This farm bill is a pork laden monstrosity that should be not only be vetoed, but its supporters should be taken out behind the woodshed and beaten. And that goes for you too Sam Graves. Look at this garbage:

At an estimated cost of at least $285 billion over 10 years, this will be the most expensive and regressive farm bill ever. Given how Congress uses budget gimmicks these days to hide the real costs of many of the bills it approves, that $285 billion figure is almost certainly too low. If there was a truth-in-spending law with real teeth in it, this Congress would have been hauled to the pokey long ago.

On Tuesday, four reformist House members wrote a letter explaining that the devil is in the details of the farm bill.

Democrats Ron Kind of Wisconsin and Jim Cooper of Tennessee joined Republicans Jeff Flake of Arizona and Paul Ryan of Wisconsin in pointing out that the cap on direct payments to landowners — which are based on total acreage rather than land actually used to grow real food — would rise from $40,000 to $50,000 per person. And remember those infamous subsidies that have gone to “farmers” like former ABC newsman Sam Donaldson, CNN founder Ted Turner and banker David Rockefeller? The farm bill allows subsidies for people making as much as $950,000 annually, and nearly $2 million for married couples.

This socialist program has been around since the 20s. I covered it in a five part series last year. It was well received then and, considering the above, could stand a review.

• How We Got to $286 Billion in Corporate Welfare: A Short History of Farm Subsidies
• Subsidizing the Consolidation of the Family Farm: How Farm Subsidies Are Nothing More Than Corporate Welfare
• Scams, Scandals and Downright Stupidity: The Fraud, Waste and Abuse of the Federal Farm Subsidy Program
• America’s Farm Subsidies and the World Economy
• What Happens If We Abolish Farm Subsidies?

Nancy Pelosi says that George Bush is in denial and that the American people need another handout. This bill is twice and big as the first one, but the check is for only about 2 million Americans:

As Democrats push for a more activist government response to the flagging economy, Pelosi hosted a group of like-minded economists and officials, including former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, at a policy forum.

Afterward, standing beside Pelosi, Massachusetts Democratic Rep. Barney Frank said a major package of housing legislation will be brought to the House floor on Wednesday.

“We will pass a bill tomorrow,” said Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services committee. The legislation written by Frank’s committee would authorize the government to finance $300 billion in distressed mortgages to help some 2 million American homeowners hit by the housing crisis.

$300 million to help 2 million people who bought bigger than they could afford, or signed an agreement they didn’t understand! $300 million to loaning institutions that made risky loans with the hope of a big payday!

No risk, no reward? How about all the risk you want and the government, meaning you and me, will pick up the pieces, and the check?

While Nevada faces “a multi-billion shortfall in basic highway, bus and other transportation needs,” Harry Reid is earmarking $45 million dollars for a train to Disneyland:

Start talking about magnetic levitation trains and people quickly fall into two categories: dreamy-eyed futurists whose eyes widen with the promise of 300 mph travel or dismissive cynics who see the next boondoggle heading down the track.

When it comes to building a maglev train between Las Vegas and Southern California, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has remained a believer. This week, he is risking the wrath of the Senate anti-pork czars to secure $45 million to push the train project along.

Who wouldn’t want a 300 mile per hour train in Southern California? So what reason does land baron Harry Reid give for this train to So Cal? Pure show:

“If it’s going to be really done in a big way, a Las Vegas way, the magnetic levitation would be the way to do it,” Reid said. “We could bring someone from L.A. to Las Vegas, and vice-versa, in less than an hour,” he said. “If we can get this done, it will be the showboat of the world.”

With the success of AmTrak, it is easy to see why liberal brainiac Harry Reid would want to invest your money instead of his own in this venture. Of course, one might think that if it could really make money, private investors would be all over it?

Hat Tip: The Oink Report

Remember when the Repubican party was known as the party of fiscal conservatism? Well, they are trying at least:

The latest effort to restore fiscal responsibility comes in the form of a Spending Limit Constitutional Amendment. The Republican Study Committee (RSC) is targeting out of control federal spending in order to equalize federal government spending with national economic growth.

Their goal is to decrease the burden on American families, so that the budget does not increase more than the collective incomes of those families.

I would have been happier with “so that the budget does not increase.” For me, here is the saddest paragraph in the article:

About ten members of the RSC represented the amendment at the press conference, including earmark reform leader Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) and RSC Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-Tex.).

Hensarling reminded listeners that “as bad as Republicans are, Democrats are a thousand times worse,” not only on spending but by raising taxes every time they can. He said there are many budgetary concerns on the agenda but all “pale in comparison” to the “greater concern” for a “future where our children have their taxes doubled.”

You know, how about just saying, “We’re sorry. We promised to be responsible with your tax dollars, and we weren’t. We spent like drunken sailors on shore leave. It is an embarrassment and we will do better. We don’t expect you to take our word on it, but we will prove our commitment through responsible stewardship of your tax dollars.”

It took me four minutes to write that and would have gone a lot farther than “Well, we suck, but look at the massive suckiness of these guys.”

Rep Tom Fleeney hit tht nail on the head with this questions: “Why must this rise to the level of a constitutional amendment?”

RSC members agreed that federal spending has become so ridiculous that dramatic action must be invoked. The amendment, described as “simple and straightforward” by Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.), bars federal spending from exceeding 20% of GDP.

…

The RSC members agreed that the amendment would be a tremendous step forward for the Republican Party and for the American people overall. Idaho Rep. Bill Sali (R) called it “go[ing] back to the vision of the Founding Fathers” by implementing necessary “restraint.”

Don’t pretend that this Congress is in any way interesting in “going back to the vision of the Founding Fathers.” When they get rid of farm subsidies, oil subsidies, earmarks, the Departments of Education, Energy and Health and Human Services I’ll believe they might be interested in that.

Until then, I don’t know if they understand the “vision of the Founding Fathers.” All they have to do is stop spending so much. They don’t need a constitutional amendment to be responsible.

I have talked about ethanol time and again on the blog, not only about the subsidies for ethanol, not only about the fact that it is a bigger pollutant than gasoline, but ethanol is causing food shortages and an increase in food prices.

Investor’s Business Daily has an article that outlines what happens when the government decides pay to burn food for fuel:

In America, the federal government pushes the production of ethanol from corn with a rich mix of tax incentives and protectionism. Refiners get a 51-cent tax credit for every gallon of ethanol they produce and are shielded from cheaper imported ethanol with a 54-cent-a-gallon tariff.

The result, totally by design, is that a huge swath of the U.S. corn crop that would otherwise go to food for people and animals is diverted to ethanol.

The National Corn Growers Association says 2.3 billion bushels of corn, or nearly a fifth of U.S. production, went into ethanol in 2007. That’s up 28% in just one year. It also is 18% of U.S. corn production, a percentage that is bound to soar.

Ethanol production reached 6.5 billion gallons in 2007, and it’s headed to a federally mandated 9 billion this year.

So what happens when you take that much food off the marketplace and dedicate it for ethanol?

On corn, now at a record $6 a bushel, its impact is clear enough. And high-priced corn makes food costlier in all the supermarket aisles, from baked goods and cereal to meat and soft drinks.

Ethanol demand also raises the cost of other grains, such as soybeans, by crimping supply; it shifts land to corn production and leaves that much less for other crops.

These subsidies to promote the production and use of ethanol are benefitting only the agriculture industry. And I don’t mean the family farmers, but the corporate farms. While I don’t have a problem with them making a profit, I don’t think they should make a profit because they get tax breaks and prohibit others from selling the same product for less.

Our federal policies on agriculture do more harm globally then most people realize. I covered just a few of the effects in “America’s Farm Subsidies and the World Economy.”

Don’t misunderstand me. The federal government isn’t the only reason “the poorest Haitians are trying to get by on cookies made with dirt, vegetable oil and salt.” As IBD notes:

So who or what is to blame? There is no shortage of culprits, natural and man-made. Droughts have cut grain harvests. The global economic boom has raised prices by hiking demand for higher-end food such as beef (it takes a lot of grain to feed cattle) and of food in general. The spike in oil prices has made farming more expensive, from tractor fuel to fertilizer.

But we need to understand our role in the food shortages around the world. The federal governments meddling in the free market has adverse effects worldwide.

Big headline:

Poll: 81 percent think US on wrong track

I agree. The country is on the wrong track, or should I say road? Seeing as how bad news hits the airwaves more than good news, it is no surprise that people think the country is heading in the wrong direction.

I mean look at this article:

More than 80 percent of Americans believe the country is headed in the wrong direction, the highest such number since the early 1990s, according to a new survey.

The CBS News-New York Times poll released Thursday showed 81 percent of respondents said they believed “things have pretty seriously gotten off on the wrong track.” That was up from 69 percent a year ago, and 35 percent in early 2002.

The survey comes as housing turmoil has rocked Wall Street amid an economic downturn. The economy has surpassed the war in Iraq as the dominating issue of the U.S. presidential race, and there is now nearly a national consensus that the United States faces significant problems, the poll found.

A majority of Democrats and Republicans, men and women, residents of cities and rural areas, college graduates and those who finished only high school say the United States is headed in the wrong direction, according to the survey, which was published on The New York Times’ Web site.

Seventy-eight percent of respondents said the country was worse off than five years ago; just 4 percent said it was doing better.

The newspaper said Americans are more dissatisfied with the country’s direction than at any time since the poll’s inception in the early 1990s. Only 21 percent of respondents said the overall economy was in good condition, the lowest such number since late 1992. Two in three people said they believed the economy was already in recession.

That is some Major League Doomage!

Here is the death’s knell though:

Americans favored help for people but not for financial institutions in assessing possible responses to the mortgage crisis. A clear majority said they did not want the government to lend a hand to banks, even if the measures would help limit the depth of a recession.

Respondents were considerably more open to government help for homeowners at risk of foreclosure. Fifty-three percent said they believed the government should help those whose interest rates were rising, while 41 percent said they opposed such a move.

A majority of Americans feel that the people who made poor decision regarding their finances should be bailed out, but not financial instutions. Help the collective, private business is bad. Take from one to give to another so everyone can have the same. Let no one fail.

The lone bright spot for me was the 41% who opposed more government help. That is inspiring.

I don’t think either the borrower or the lender should be bailed out. Furthermore, I don’t think the federal government should be involved in housing at all.

But more and more people feel the federal government is the answer. And we keep marching down the road to tyranny.

Congress Is Full Of Bold-Faced Liars

What’s the only thing worse than Republicans on a spending spree? Democrats on a spending spree. Or maybe Republicans on a spending spree when they know the Democrats are going to take the heat. Either way, your representatives in Washington D.C. are a bunch of dirty filthy liars.

The 2008 Pig Book is out, and even though Republicans and Democrats promised to cut back on the earmarks, they have done the exact opposite. The people we picked to handle our money wrote fat checks for 11,610 pork-barrel projects. The earmark reforms Congress passed last year didn’t count for much apparently. 17.2 billion dollars of your money went to pay for only God knows what.

How The Candidates Did

John McCain didn’t play the earmark game, and I applaud him for being associated with zero earmarks. His home state of Arizona, which is where I live, received the lowest amount of earmarked money with about 90 Million. By comparison, Alaska received the most with a whopping 380 Million. Apparently they didn’t learn from the “bridge to nowhere” fiasco.

Senator Obama had 53 earmarks, to the tune of about 97 Million Dollars. Senator Hillary Clinton had 281 earmarks, for which you and I paid about 296 Million. The McCain campaign will get some good shots in with those numbers, and rightfully so.

Yes, You Can Do Something About This

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I just don’t have any respect for these people any longer. How can the people who are supposed to be running the country on our behalf do such a crappy job and lie about it when the facts are so obvious. In 2004 the Democrats took control of congress promising to fix the earmark problem. Instead of fixing it, they are doing their best to outdo the spending of the Republican controlled congress before them. This isn’t a partisan problem, it’s a problem all Americans need to be aware of, and take action to fix.

Take the time today, right now, to write to your representatives and let them know how you feel about what they are doing. You have one person in the House of Representatives, and two Senators. The only way they’re going to stop spending like drunken sailors is if you and I take ten minutes to tell them what we think. They still need our votes to get elected, so what you say really does matter to them.

Just don’t let them tempt you with any earmark money.

At what point did we lose it? There was a time in this country, when we believed that we were responsible for ourselves, and if we made it, we made it on our own. And if we failed, we failed on our own.

Those days are long gone.

Barack Obama wants to take $30 billion from Americans who earned it, and give it to people who made poor investment choices, and lost money:

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama called for greater government regulation of the U.S. financial system on Thursday and proposed a new $30 billion economic stimulus plan to help homeowners.

To help homeowners? I’m a homeowner. I don’t want your damn help!

Or does he mean the home owners who speculated in the home market, and lost money when the market tanked? The people who signed loans they knew had ARMs when they didn’t even have JOBs? The people who bought WAY over their heads? Yeah, we responsible tax payers have to subsidize these guys, so no one fails.

“If we can extend a hand to banks on Wall Street when they get into trouble, we can extend a hand to Americans who are struggling through no fault of their own,” Obama said to applause.

I’ll bet they applauded. Like lemmings and drones, I bet they let loose with applause. But it doesn’t take much with Obamatons. They cheer when he blows his nose. Really.

Newsflash for Barack: We should not be handing federal tax dollars over to Wall Street, or anyone else. We should not be giving money for global AIDS research, or food for Zimbabwe, or even relief for victims of Hurricane Katrina.

That is not the role of the federal government.

Protect my rights from foreign invaders and criminals. That’s it. And they are not doing those right.

Predatory Lenders, you say? I don’t think they exist. I have not read an article where a lender put a gun to someone’s head and made them borrow money. If you have that story, send it to me.

Where does Barack plan to get $30 billion from anyway? From you and me.

I repeat:

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until a majority of voters discover that they can vote themselves largess out of the public treasury.

We are looking at the enemy of America, and it is us. Something Lincoln said is pertinent here also:

America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.

We refuse to see the truth. We are destroying ourselves with this dependence on the federal government.

Use the john with commoners? Too risky. (By Sarah L. Voisin — The Washington Post)

This jackass is spending $65,000 on a private bathroom, complete with a shower, because his security detail says using the public restroom is “too dangerous.” He’s got A FREAKING SECURITY DETAIL! HOW DANGEROUS COULD IT BE!?

These people are gonna cause me to pop a blood vessel in my giant cranium one day:

“I don’t see this as a big expenditure,” Leggett (D) said. Describing himself as “the guy who flies coach and spends sparingly,” he said, “It’s not something I asked for.”

::blinks::

You have got to be kidding, right? I’ll bet it would be a big expenditure if YOU WERE PAYING FOR IT! The magnitude of jackassedness surrounding this guy is indescribable.

The timing of the project could be politically problematic. The bathroom budget was approved in June, but the construction coincides with his proposal to raise property taxes, offer employee buyouts and trim spending to close a $297 million budget shortfall.

“I can’t believe they would do that now. We’re taking it on the chin, and we’re looking for every dime we can find,” said County Council member Valerie Ervin (D-Silver Spring). “I think this is an extravagance, not something that has to be done.”

Shhhhh….quiet now…behold it in all its magnificence…it appears we have found something rare here…it might be a Democrat with a little sense…these beauties have been all but eradicated from the Democratic party lately…it’s a thing of wonder to see one actually make the news…brings a tear to my eye really….

The guy Leggett replaced used the public bathroom for years, and laughed at the idea of it being dangerous:

For almost all of his 12-year tenure, Leggett’s immediate predecessor, Douglas M. Duncan (D), used a public restroom. He had a private bathroom when he was first elected but scrapped it to create a kitchenette for employees. A major renovation of the executive’s floor in Duncan’s first year cost more than $1 million.

“We had perfectly good bathrooms right at the elevators,” he said yesterday. When asked whether he ever felt unsafe using the public restroom, Duncan chuckled, “Heck no.”

Now before you read this next part, understand that Ike Leggett is trying to raise taxes and eliminate 225 jobs. But he doesn’t have the power to stop this construction? Right:

“We have had some challenging, disgruntled employees or citizens demanding to see the county executive, and from a security perspective he can walk into that,” Chief Administrative Officer Timothy L. Firestine said. “Quite frankly, Ike didn’t want [the new bathroom], but we more or less suggested from a security perspective that he needs it.”

Wow. So, he could actually come face-to-face with someone he works for…in a public setting! Well, that must be avoided at all costs. Even if it costs more than $65,000:

So a crew has been working after hours to transform a closet and small office across the hallway from Leggett’s Rockville office into the bathroom and “shelter-in-place.” The estimated $65,255 cost includes basic tile, a Santec faucet, Toto toilet, and prefabricated countertop and sink. The price could go up $12,400 as workers wrestle with water drainage issues.

$65,000 will buy a house and about five acres where I live. I know that for a fact. Yet this county spend that much for a bathroom, when they are close to $300,000,000 over budget.

I hope it’s a big toilet, because they are flushing the whole county down it.

Where in the Constitution does the House Foreign Affairs Committee find the power to give a dollar to an AIDS program, let alone increase the funding by $50 billion over five years? This is sickening:

The Foreign Affairs Committee’s voice vote on the plan to approve spending of an average $10 billion annually over the next five years came hours after lawmakers and the White House reached a compromise on some of the policy issues, including spending on abstinence programs, that had held up action on the legislation.

The bill extends the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, which authorized spending of $15 billion total for five years for prevention and care programs in sub-Saharan Africa and other regions hit by the epidemic. That act, passed in 2003, expires in September.

Bush is going to sign this craptastic waste of money, because he is a compassionate conservative. Compassionate to who? The American taxpayer? Not in my book. He is no conservative where spending is concerned. This is just money down the toilet.

Foreign aid is already a colossal waste of money, but this is made even worse when you look at how much the world is already spending on AIDS:

In 2004, 21 per cent of all health aid was allocated to HIV, up from 8 per cent in 2000, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. It could now exceed a quarter of all health aid and is the only disease to have its own United Nations agency, UNAIDS.

In 2001, HIV/Aids represented 5 per cent of the burden of disease in low and middle-income countries as measured by disability-adjusted life years lost, a measure combining reduced life expectancy and quality of life. This compares with 3 per cent each for tuberculosis and malaria, and 6 per cent each for respiratory infections and perinatal conditions.

Are HIV interventions so much more cost effective to justify this disproportionate spending? Probably not. Comparable costs per death prevented are lower for immunisations, malaria, traffic accidents, childhood illnesses and tuberculosis than for HIV. Moreover, HIV incidence (new infections per year) has peaked already in Africa, a fact not widely promoted by the industry.

Now look at our share:

While the US has only 7% of the world’s population and has less than 1% of all HIV/AIDS cases, it provides more than two thirds of AIDS research funding worldwide.

So why are we tripling our funding for this disease? Why are we giving American tax dollars to other countries at all? I can only shake my head and say that the homosexual community must have a powerful lobby.

Now, I know there are some bleeding heart liberals out there reading this and they are wondering how I can be so heartless (or maybe this is what they expect from us heartless conserva-tarians). Let me explain to you why, using something liberals are allergic to - facts:

• Heart Disease: The number one cause of death in the United States, 21 million new cases of heart disease are reported each year, with 724,859 Americans dying from heart disease in 1998.[5] The National Institutes for Health (NIH) will fund the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute at an estimated $2.6 billion–or $3,541 for each death from heart, lung, or blood disease.

·

• Cancer: The second leading cause of death in the United States, in 1999 549,838 people died of cancer. The NIH expects to fund the National Cancer Institute at an estimated $4.2 billion in 2002–or $7,713 for each death from cancer.

·

• Breast Cancer: With 180,000 new cases each year, breast cancer is the leading cause of death among American women who are forty to fifty-five years of age. Each year about 46,000 women die of the disease. The NIH is currently spending $396 million on breast cancer research–or $8,608 per death from the disease.

·

• Diabetes: According to the CDC, seven million Americans have diabetes–the sixth leading cause of death in the United States. In 1999 64,751 died from complications associated with diabetes. The NIH has budgeted $450 million for diabetes research–or $6,949 per death from diabetes.
• AIDS: By comparison, in 2000, 23,932 people were diagnosed with AIDS. In that year, 8,867 people died from the disease. According to the NIH Office of AIDS Research, $2.5 billion has been proposed for AIDS research programs within the NIH in fiscal year 2002, with that figure increasing to more than $2.7 billion in 2003. The current (2002) budget amounts to an astounding $265,591 per AIDS death. This figure does not include the public monies spent to treat AIDS through federal Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resources (CARE) Act. Funding for CARE is currently $1.8 billion–an additional $202,999 per AIDS death.

According to a 2004 report, “In 2000, 4.5 million Americans were suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease. This number is expected to increase nearly three-fold to 13.2 million by 2050 (Hebert, et al.). By contrast, the number of people with AIDS is less than 400,000.” Yet the FAIR Foundation noted at the time:

NIH research money budgeted per death is $162,790 for AIDS versus $10,245 for Alzheimer’s.

We already overspend on AIDS. Stop throwing money down the toilet.

Call the House Foreign Affairs Committee at 202-225-5021. Call them and politely give them your opinion.

It’s that time of year - it’s tax time! At least that’s what the evening news tells me. Actually, paying taxes is a pretty constant event in this country. People most often think of paying taxes as the money the government takes out of your paycheck. While that is certainly the single biggest collective lump for most of us, it doesn’t even begin to cover all taxes that you pay throughout a typical year. Here’s a partial list showing just some of the ways the government takes money from us.

• Cigarette Tax
• Corporate Income Tax (passed on to the consumer)
• Dog License Tax
• Federal Unemployment Tax (FUTA)
• Fishing License Tax
• Food License Tax
• Gasoline Tax
• Hunting License Tax
• Inheritance Tax Interest expense (tax on the money)
• Inventory tax IRS Interest Charges (tax on top of tax)
• Liquor Tax
• Local Income Tax
• Marriage License Tax
• Property Tax
• Retail Sales Taxes
• Recreational Vehicle Tax
• Road Toll Booth Taxes
• State Income Tax
• Telephone federal excise tax, universal service fee, local and state surcharges, minimum usage surcharge, usage charge tax.
• Toll Roads, Bridges, and Tunnels
• Traffic Fines (indirect taxation)
• Utility Taxes
• Vehicle License Registration
• Vehicle Sales Tax
• Well Permit Tax

Yes, you read that last one right. You have to pay the government to dig a hole on your own land. And you’d better have a permit for that septic tank as well. Remember, every time you make a doody, the government has it’s finger in it.

Tolls, Permits, Licenses, Fines, Surcharges… these are all little taxes that we all pay every day. I call them tollgate taxes because you have to pay them to make it through life. When you add it all up, you might be surprised at just how much of your money the government takes from you.

Item	Rate	Notes
Federal personal income tax	17%	Top 25% rate. It ranges from a credit up to well over 40%. Source
State & local income taxes	10.1%	State taxes range from under 6% to over 12%. Local taxes run from zero to 2.75%. Source,  source,  source
Sales tax	8.6%	Figure is the average rate. State sales taxes range up to 7% and local taxes run from zero to over 5%. Source,  source,  source
Social security & Medicaid	7.65%	Total rate is actually 15.3% since half is paid by the employer, but we’re ignoring that to be kind. Source, box 1
Federal corporate income tax share	3%	Based on corporate taxes being approximately 1/6 of personal taxes, and that they are paid by individuals in the final analysis. Source
Property tax	2.5%	Yearly average actual costs range from under $200 in Alaska to almost $1900 in New Jersey. Source
Fuel/gasoline tax	.5%	Approximately 23% of the 2005 gasoline price is for federal & state taxes. The federal excise tax is 18.4 cents per gallon. Per the CPI, about 6% of the average budget is for transportation. Estimated. Source
Other	5%	Includes estate tax, fees, licenses, inflation losses, inheritance, deficit allowance, gift, and others too numerous to mention. Estimated.

The Government Even Has A Tax For Illegal Drugs

Total tax percentage paid by the above average US citizen in 2005 is estimated at about 54% when you figure in all the miscellaneous taxes and fees.

Almost all the money that Americans pay in Income Tax goes to pay interest on the money that government borrows from the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve isn’t part of the government either. Think of it as the worlds largest credit card company and the United States is the worlds stupidest teenager with no credit limit running wild in a shopping mall.

Doesn’t it make you feel all warm inside just thinking about the four months of the year the average taxpayer works just to keep Uncle Sam from pointing a gun at you. I know it fills me with a few emotions.

Now get back to work you wage slaves! Congress needs another pay raise.