Archive for the ‘Earmarks’ Category

VIDEO – EXPOSING GOVERNMENT WASTE AND ABUSE

Thursday, August 3rd, 2023
The waste of our American tax dollars is truly sickening.  Adam Andrzelewski of OpenTheBooks.com also gives detailed information on the staggering amount of firearms our federal agencies have acquired. Please share this information with your contacts.   Nancy
VIDEO
EXPOSING GOVERNMENT WASTE AND ABUSE

OpenTheBooks’s Adam Andrzejewski Exposes Billions in Wasteful Government Spending, Shocking Payments to China, Russia

 

“We’re borrowing money from China to pay Chinese entities—that doesn’t make any sense,” says Adam Andrzejewski, CEO and founder of OpenTheBooks.com.

Through tens of thousands of Freedom of Information Act requests, this government watchdog has compiled and made public almost all U.S. money taxed and spent, at every level of government, across all 50 states.

We discuss shocking payments to China and Russia, the problem of earmarks—what Mr. Andrzejewski calls Congress’s “currency of corruption, and the militarization of our federal agencies.

“There are 76 traditional, paper-pushing, regulatory, civil administrative agencies that have now armed up,” says Mr. Andrzejewski. “Who knew that the National Institutes of Health had a police force of over 100 officers?”

 

 

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RAND PAUL’S ANNUAL LIST OF GOVERNMENT WASTE

Tuesday, December 27th, 2022

 

Rand Paul’s Annual ‘Festivus’ Report: $482,276,543,907 in Government Waste
Paul’s 2022 Festivus report highlights $482,276,543,907 in government waste and includes $2.3 million used by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for an experiment involving injecting puppies with cocaine, $202,000 used by the Department of Defense (DOD) on Starbucks espresso machines, and $3 million for the construction of a Gandhi museum.
The NIH also wasted a significant amount of money. That includes $2.1 million on encouraging Ethiopians to wear shoes, $2.3 million injecting beagle puppies with cocaine, $1.1 million on “training mice to binge drink alcohol,” over $519,000 using mice to study racial aggression, and $187,500 on “verifying that kids love their pets.”
According to the report, the pet grant went to Kent State University, which used the funds to apparently “verify that the relationship between pets and children is beneficial to mental health.”
Other highlights directly from the report include:
Maintaining 77,000 empty Federal buildings (GSA)………………..………….$1,700,000,000
Helping illegal immigrants avoid deportation (DHS)……………………….…. $168,000,000
Overpaying government contractors for a terminated contract (GSA)…………..$69,000,000
Using COVID relief funds to construct an 11,000 square foot spa……….……. $140,000,000
Watching hamsters fight on steroids (NIH)………………………..………….…..$3,000,000
Studying the romance between parrots (NSF)……………..………………………….…$689,222
A radio campaign telling drivers to stop at railroad crossings (DOT)………………..$200,000
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BIG CHUNK OF THE FIRST TAXPAYER CORONAVIRUS AID COULD BE SPENT OVERSEAS

Tuesday, March 24th, 2020

 

 We should be forgiven if our eyes glaze over as we read the enormous expense  of all  this.   Nancy

Big chunk of the first taxpayer coronavirus aid could be spent overseas

As much as $1 in every $4 from the first $8.3 billion aid package approved by Congress could be spent overseas or on foreign affairs.

Last Updated:
March 23, 2020 – 9:52pm

 

The short answer is … a good bit may end up overseas.

The title of the first legislation was the Coronavirus Preparedness and Response Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2020. President Trump signed it into law on March 6 after a bipartisan vote of Congress. The law appropriated $8.3 billion in initial response monies.

To put that into perspective, the first COVID-19 legislation exceeds the $1.1 billion appropriated for Zika in 2016, the $5.4 billion for Ebola in 2014, and the $7 billion for swine flu in 2009.

As much as $2.3 billion of the first $8.3 billion in funding falls into the categories of foreign aid, foreign affairs or overseas disease surveillance. Here’s how some of that breaks down:

  • $435 million for the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Global Health Programs.
  • $300 million for “international disaster assistance.”
  • $300 million for global disease detection and emergency response under the Centers for Disease Control
  • $200 million more goes to the State Department Foreign Operations Emergency Reserve Fund ·
  • $264 million for State Department Foreign Affairs for diplomatic response and evacuation over the next two and a half years.
  • $836 million for the U.S. or global response under the National Institutes of Health.

Here are some other major categories where the monies can be spent under the law:

(more…)

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VIDEO – TUCKER CARLSON: DEMOCRATS STUFF CORONAVIRUS BILL WITH IDENTITY POLITICS

Tuesday, March 24th, 2020

 

VIDEO – TUCKER CARLSON 

#FoxNews #Tucker

Tucker: Democrats stuff coronavirus bill with identity politics

At a time when America so badly needs to come together, Democrats remain intent on splitting the country into warring tribes. #FoxNews #Tucker
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WHY IS THIS ELECTION SO CLOSE?

Tuesday, September 11th, 2012

 

  • POWERLINE

How Obama Benefits From His Own

Failure

Yesterday I wrote a post titled Why Is This Election Close? which has gotten considerable attention and comment. I want to expand on that post by making explicit one of its implicit themes.

Ordinarily, as I wrote yesterday, a president with a record on the economy as disastrous as Obama’s wouldn’t have chance at re-election. But in a perverse way, Obama’s failures may be working in his favor, politically.

Because Obama’s policies have suppressed economic growth, the ranks of the unemployed and underemployed have grown steadily. As unemployment benefits have finally run out, the long-term unemployed have, by the millions, declared themselves to be permanently and totally disabled. Millions of Americans have come to be dependent on government largesse as a result of the economic folly of the Obama administration. So how are those people going to vote? One might think that, angry at the government policies that have robbed them of their ability to be self-supporting, they would vote Republican. No doubt some will. But many more will cling to the only life raft in sight, and will vote for the party that promises the never-ending continuation and expansion of government benefits.

A second factor is also at work. The Obama economic disaster has spawned widespread hopelessness. Many millions of Americans are convinced that things aren’t going to get better; that stagnant growth, high unemployment, and few if any opportunities in the private sector are the “new normal.” Perversely, that very hopelessness works in Obama’s favor as well. If the underemployed and the “disabled” thought that recovery is just around the corner, given halfway-decent government policies, they would vote Obama out so they can get back to work. Again, there are some in this category. I received a DM on Twitter a few minutes ago that said, “John, this food stamp family intends to vote for Romney so that we can get a job and GET OFF FOOD STAMPS!!!” That is of course the right attitude. But those who are hopeless won’t think that way. They can see no future except one of dependence on the government, and most of them will vote for the party of dependence, the Democrats.

So the sad fact is that Barack Obama’s economic illiteracy, and the consequent debacle that we have lived through for the past four years, hurts him with some voters but benefits him with others. Hopelessness: a cynical politician can turn that to his advantage!

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OBAMA – THE DECLINE AND FALL

Wednesday, August 31st, 2011
Published on The Weekly Standard (www.weeklystandard.com)

Decline and Fall

The arc of the Obama presidency bends towards failure.

Peter Wehner

August 29, 2011, Vol. 16, No. 46

Now more than halfway through his third year in office—with the economy flat-lining, American prestige evaporating, and public anxiety spiking—Barack Obama is the most vulnerable incumbent president since Jimmy Carter. The election is still 14 months away, but it’s not too early to see the broad outlines of the GOP’s case against the president.

Economic Malpractice: Obama inherited a tough economy, but his stewardship has in many respects made the situation worse.

The unemployment rate stands at 9.1 percent (it was 7.8 percent the month Obama took office). July marked the 30th consecutive month in which the unemployment rate was above the 8 percent level that the Obama administration said it would not exceed as a result of its stimulus program. Chronic unemployment is worse than during the Great Depression, while the share of the eligible population holding a job (58.1 percent) has declined to the lowest level since the early 1980s.

The housing crisis is also worse than in the Great Depression. Home values are worth roughly one-third less than they were five years ago. Consumer confidence has plunged to the lowest level since the Carter presidency. And from the first quarter of 2010 through the first quarter of 2011, we experienced five consecutive quarters of slow growth. America’s GDP for the second quarter of this year was an anemic 1.3 percent; in the first quarter, it was 0.4 percent. Even more problematic for the president, there are virtually no signs that things will improve anytime soon. He now has to hope for an economic miracle. (more…)

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WHY ARE TAXPAYERS PAYING FOR WINE TASTING?

Friday, June 17th, 2011
The Wall Street Journal

  • JUNE 15, 2011

At a time of crisis a wasteful federal agency gets $200 million more.

Long before there was President Obama’s stimulus, there was the Economic Development Administration. The EDA was created in 1965 with the same high-minded intent used to usher in the $814 billion stimulus bill in 2009. Set inside the Commerce Department, the bureau and its grants are supposed to promote economic competitiveness and create jobs. In reality, the EDA has given taxpayers little return on their investment and instead become a slush fund for the well-connected.

Certainly, the bureau has funded some well-meaning projects, just as there were some noncontroversial earmarks mixed in with bridges to nowhere and teapot museums. As a recovering earmarker, I must say that I have supported certain EDA grants in the past. But to my fellow senators, I now say this: If you aren’t willing to cut spending you previously supported, our nation is destined for bankruptcy.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid hand delivered a $2 million EDA check in 2008 to the University of Nevada in Las Vegas to begin construction of the ‘UNLV Harry Reid Research and Technology Park.’

demint

Yet, in the midst of a debt crisis, the Senate is currently seeking to increase EDA funding to $500 million a year from $300 million. Worse, this bill passed out of a Senate authorization committee with unanimous, bipartisan support.

(more…)

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A PSYCHIATRIST’S ADVICE FOR PRESIDENT OBAMA – DR. KEITH ABLOW

Saturday, January 29th, 2011
By Dr. Keith  Ablow

Published January 27, 2011 | FoxNews.com

President Obama’s State of the Union speech on Tuesday night symbolically kicked off the 2012 Presidential campaign. I tuned in with what psychiatrists call a “third ear”—listening to myself listening, polling my gut for when it alerted me to true or false notes. In my office, it is this “third ear” that allows me to ask questions that get past a person’s more superficial stories, to the heart of that person. In other words, I was paying as much attention to whether I sensed the President believed what he was saying, as to whether I agreed with what he was saying.

I loathe lip service. I am more than two decades into a career based on detecting it and opposing it. Much of what I can offer patients is help finding the courage and faith to stop running from who they really are and what they really believe—to say what they mean and mean what they say. Authenticity is quite literally part of the cure for depression and anxiety, because self-deception and the manipulation of others are so dispiriting. They literally remove us from the healing power of God.

So, here’s what I heard Tuesday night: I heard a man reading a script, acting out a part. The words the President spoke about reducing our national debt, reining in the size of government and working collaboratively with both Republicans and Democrats sounded—to my third ear—like the words of an alcoholic who tells me that he won’t drink, that I should just believe him, even though that he can’t share any compelling insight (let alone a true moment of epiphany) as to why he started anesthetizing himself with booze to begin with, nor any compelling narrative as to why he now believes he has to be sober to walk the path ahead. In short, he sounded like a man with new words, but without the new perspective that would make them his own, and, thereby, make them either credible or moving.

It was all too “add-water-and-stir” for me. I would have had to be drunk myself to believe it.
This new fiscally-disciplined, job-focused, centrist, collaborative, entrepreneurial president arrives on the stage with no back story to explain the character “arc” he has traveled on the national stage. (more…)

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SENATOR COBURN’S LIST OF WASTEFUL GOVERNMENT SPENDING

Wednesday, December 22nd, 2010

NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE www.nationalreview.com The Corner

Taxpayer Dollars at Work

December 20, 2010

Sen. Tom Coburn (R., Okla.) released today his annual Wastebook, which details lavish government funding on obscure projects.

“As you look at these examples, ask yourself: at a time when we are borrowing over $44,000 for every person in the country, are these items a priority and are they a federal responsibility?” writes Coburn in the introduction, adding that the cost of the 100 projects he highlights totals over $11.5 billion. Here’s some of the “best” taxpayer-funded items:

● $1.8 million to the Neon Boneyard Park and Museum, which collects and displays discarded neon Las Vegas signs.

● $2.9 million to a group of professors at University of California-Irvine for research on internet games such as World of Warcraft and Second Life and how, according to the university’s press release, they “can help organizations collaborate and compete more effectively in the global marketplace.”

● $239,100 to Stanford University for a study on how people date and find love online. (more…)

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PRESIDENT MCCAIN AT MIDTERM (WHAT IF…)

Tuesday, November 23rd, 2010
Published on The Weekly Standard (www.weeklystandard.com)

Tod Lindberg

November 8, 2010, Vol. 16, No. 08

No, this is not going to be a full-blown exercise in the fiction genre of Alternative History: A minor adviser to the 2008 McCain presidential campaign chronicles the day-to-day ups and downs of the two eventful years following the American people’s reluctant conclusion that they don’t know a blessed thing about Barack Obama and want something a little more reliable than “hope and change.” We’ll leave that to Harry “Guns of the South” Turtledove—the master of the genre. While we will be engaging here in flagrant speculation, and though the claims we will make are accordingly beyond truth or falsehood, this is not fiction but rather an attempt to take what we know about American politics and ask what would have happened if, mirabile dictu, the 2008 election had gone the other way and John McCain were president of the United States today. (more…)

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