southchild

This story is absolutely pathetic. If Obama’s stimulus bill proves one thing, it is that there is no limit to the degree which a government operation can fail and not get bailed out. In this case, $355 million stimulus dollars are going to the Detroit Public Schools with no strings attached. Besides being mired in corruption and incompetence for decades, the DPS has the distinction of being ranked as the “worst major urban school district” in the country, only graduating 24 percent of its students.

Henry Payne, with the Detroit News, has the story:

Detroit, Mich. — Detroit Public Schools, one of the nation’s most chronically corrupt systems, will receive $355 million from the federal stimulus package — with no strings attached, the Detroit Free Press reported Saturday.

Like much of the nearly $1 trillion fiscal package, the DPS money seems driven less by fiscal good sense than by political payback.

With a $1.5 billion annual budget, Detroit schools are currently running a $150 million deficit with finances so tangled the state of Michigan recently appointed an emergency financial manager to oversee its operations for the second time in ten years.

Since the emergency declaration, DPS has failed to hand over at least five financial reports that are required under the state’s mandated consent agreement.

Ranked in a recent Brookings Institution survey as America’s worst major urban school district, DPS only graduates 24 percent of its students. In December, the DPS board fired Superintendent Connie Calloway for incompetence. Calloway was the second super fired in three years and the eighth district administrator in 20.

DPS has been plagued by corruption. A 2001 audit found $600,000 missing or misspent. Another 2004 audit of the district’s central warehouse found budget over-expenditures of $1.9 million and that furniture bought as part of a $158,000 purchase order was missing.

U.S. taxpayers can likely kiss this stimulus money goodbye.

Add this money to freedom, responsibility, capitalism and common sense on the long list of things we’re kissing goodbye.

Here’s another nice quote for all of you who, like Barack Obama, think it’s a good idea to “spread the wealth around”. This quote comes from Dr. Adrian Rogers (1931-2005):

You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that, my dear friend, is about the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.

Check out these two incidents involving Democrat politicians abusing their constituents. Physically. Violently, in the second example. Like Let Them Eat Pork Chuck-the-Schmuck Schumer, these incidents are object lessons in the arrogance — and contempt — which typifies Democrats.

Thanks to Michelle Malkin for posting both videos and stories (linked below):

First, here’s Charlie “Why don’t you mind your goddamned business?” Rangel. If there was ever a poster child for term limits, it’s Charlie:

Next we have Alderman Ricardo Munoz going ape-shit on some poor constituent. Sweet home Chicago, baby:

Sure, taxpayers “own” Munoz’s office, but who’s this Joe kidding thinking a Democrat gives a rat’s ass about his opinion? Doesn’t he know Obama won? God, taxpayers can be so annoying! Say, who’s ahead on “Dancing with the Stars?”

Writing at the Corner, Jonah Goldberg notes a great quote from Margaret Thatcher:

“The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.”

It’s too bad that nobody in Washington is listening.

Michelle Malkin has an excerpt and link to a Christian Science Monitor story on the “huge Atlanta Tea Party” today. Michelle’s article is “When I grow up I want to be free.” Here’s an excerpt from the CSM story:

Many protesters expressed a sense that basic American freedoms of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are threatened by new Washington policies seen by many as more socialistic than capitalistic. The proposed taxpayer bailout of homeowners who may have inflated their earnings in order to secure mortgages is one example, says Jeff Crawford, a protester from Dacula, Ga.

“The first year after the Mayflower arrived, the colonists tried a communal method of storing and sharing food and it failed miserably,” says Mr. Crawford. “Why are things any different now?”

Eighteenth-century symbolism was rife at the Atlanta event as speakers drew comparisons with the Boston patriots who dumped the King’s tea in Boston Harbor to protest taxation without representation, an act that began the American Revolution and the founding of the United States.

Some kids at the Atlanta protest wore tri-cornered hats, and one held a sign that said, “When I grow up I want to be free.”

In Tampa, two dozen protesters held handwritten signs with slogans like “Keep Your Bailout; I’ll Keep My Freedom.” About 300 people showed up in 25-degree weather in Wichita, Kansas, and someone brought a pig.

In St. Louis, local media expected about 50 people to show up while actual turnout surged to over 1,000 people.

…“Fiscal responsibility is the new counterculture, and that’s what we’re seeing here,” says conservative columnist and blogger Michelle Malkin. “People were so mad about how the bill was passed, not just what was in it, and the lack of deliberation that preceded the signing.”

Michelle also has pictures from today’s Tea Parties all across the country.

(Hat tip: Uncle Jiles)

The IRS decides to audit Grandpa, and summons him to the IRS office.

The IRS auditor was not surprised when Grandpa showed up with his attorney. The auditor said, “Well, sir, you have an extravagant lifestyle and no full-time employment, which you explain by saying that you win money gambling. I’m not sure the IRS finds that believable.”

“I’m a great gambler, and I can prove it,” says Grandpa. “How about a demonstration?”

The auditor thinks for a moment and said, “Okay. Go ahead.”

Grandpa says, “I’ll bet you a thousand dollars that I can bite my own eye.”

The auditor thinks a moment and says, “It’s a bet.”

Grandpa removes his glass eye and bites it. The auditor’s jaw drops. Grandpa says, “Now, I’ll bet you two thousand dollars that I can bite my other eye.” Now the auditor can tell Grandpa isn’t blind, so he takes the bet.

Grandpa removes his dentures and bites his good eye.

The stunned auditor now realizes he has wagered and lost three grand, with Grandpa’s attorney as a witness. He starts to get nervous.

“Want to go double or nothing?” Grandpa asks. “I’ll bet you six thousand dollars that I can stand on one side of your desk, and pee into that wastebasket on the other side, and never get a drop anywhere in between.”

The auditor, twice burned, is cautious now, but he looks carefully and decides there’s no way this old guy could possibly manage that stunt, so he agrees again.

Grandpa stands beside the desk and unzips his pants, but although he strains mightily, he can’t make the stream reach the wastebasket on the other side, so he pretty much urinates all over the auditor’s desk. The auditor leaps with joy, realizing that he has just turned a major loss into a huge win.

But Grandpa’s own attorney moans and puts his head in his hands.

“Are you okay?” the auditor asks.

“Not really,” says the attorney. “This morning, when Grandpa told me he’d been summoned for an audit, he bet me twenty-five thousand dollars that he could come in here and pee all over your desk and that you’d be happy about it…”

***

(Hat tip: Tonya)

A guy calls his friend the horse dealer and says he has a hot prospect he’s sending over to buy a horse. The horse dealer says, “How will I know it’s him?” “Oh, it’s easy”, the friend says, “he’s a little person and he has a speech impediment.”

Sure enough, the buyer shows up. He’s quite small and has a terrible lisp and trouble with his Rs too. He describes the mare he wants and the dealer brings her out.

The buyer says “Pleathe lift me up tho I may thee her eyeth” and the dealer does. Next it’s “May I thee her earth?” “May I thee the mane?” And on and on and on.

The dealer gets tired and irritated with all the demands and when he hears “Now may I thee her twat?” he just loses it.

“I’ll show her twat, you pervert!” he yells, jamming the buyer’s head up under the horse and then dumping him to the ground only to hear,

“Perhapth I thould repreath that. May I thee her wun around a widdle bit?”

Don’t miss this post from Andy McCarthy, As long as we’re passing out piles of cash, why not $900M for Hamas? It is breathtaking. The Obama administration is creating foreign policies as disastrous as it’s domestic and economic policies.

Various la-la land conservatives and moderates assured us that Obama, despite a career spent in the Left’s fever swamps, is really a “pragmatist” who would govern from the center. They pooh-poohed us knuckle-draggers who doggedly pointed to his radical intimates, like Hamas-apologist Rashid Khalidi. I wonder what they’re thinking today as Obama takes time out from destroying the economy to send $900M from the mint’s busy printing press to Hamas.
…

The game here is obvious. UNRWA takes in hundreds of millions (indeed, billions) in aid. Some is directly funnelled to Hamas in cash or in kind. But for the most part, UNRWA performs social welfare services quite consciously to free Hamas — the Palestinians’ chosen government — to divert its limited resources to wage a terrorist war (“the resistance”) against Israel.

If an organization comprised of American citizens attempted to do this, they could be prosecuted and imprisoned for decades on charges of providing material support to a terrorist organization. (I would say “would be prosecuted,” but with this administration, who knows?) Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (an old hand at empowering Palestinian terrorists) are now proposing to give nearly a billion dollars to a Hamas subsidiary — knowing full well that this funding must inevitably result in the murder of innocent people.

Congress can stop this from happening. Michael Steele and Republicans can show real leadership and moral clarity in the war against Islamic radicalism while the many Democrats who support Israel can step up to the plate. It’s one (foolish) thing to “engage” our enemies in self-loathing negotiations; it’s quite another to fund them.

Un-freaking-believable.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin gave a speech at the opening ceremony of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Here’s an excerpt from his speech in which he warns other countries about the dangers of Socialism and increased State control over the economy:

Esteemed colleagues, one is sorely tempted to make simple and popular decisions in times of crisis. However, we could face far greater complications if we merely treat the symptoms of the disease.

Naturally, all national governments and business leaders must take resolute actions. Nevertheless, it is important to avoid making decisions, even in such force majeure circumstances, that we will regret in the future.

This is why I would first like to mention specific measures which should be avoided and which will not be implemented by Russia.

We must not revert to isolationism and unrestrained economic egotism. The leaders of the world’s largest economies agreed during the November 2008 G20 summit not to create barriers hindering global trade and capital flows. Russia shares these principles.

Although additional protectionism will prove inevitable during the crisis, all of us must display a sense of proportion.

Excessive intervention in economic activity and blind faith in the state’s omnipotence is another possible mistake.

True, the state’s increased role in times of crisis is a natural reaction to market setbacks. Instead of streamlining market mechanisms, some are tempted to expand state economic intervention to the greatest possible extent.

The concentration of surplus assets in the hands of the state is a negative aspect of anti-crisis measures in virtually every nation.

In the 20th century, the Soviet Union made the state’s role absolute. In the long run, this made the Soviet economy totally uncompetitive. This lesson cost us dearly. I am sure nobody wants to see it repeated.

Nor should we turn a blind eye to the fact that the spirit of free enterprise, including the principle of personal responsibility of businesspeople, investors and shareholders for their decisions, is being eroded in the last few months. There is no reason to believe that we can achieve better results by shifting responsibility onto the state.

And one more point: anti-crisis measures should not escalate into financial populism and a refusal to implement responsible macroeconomic policies. The unjustified swelling of the budgetary deficit and the accumulation of public debts are just as destructive as adventurous stock-jobbing.

Look for the Obama and the Democrats to call Putin’s speech “hate speech” and to roundly denounce it.

(Hat tip: Mark Hemingway)

William McGurn nails the mendacity of Barack Obama. Read the following passage from Obama’s “The Audacity of Hope” and compare that to the “bipartisanship” displayed during the passage of Obama’s stimulus bill. The hypocrisy is deafening.

In a passage from his 2006 book, “The Audacity of Hope,” he sounds like a Republican complaining about the stimulus. “Genuine bipartisanship,” he wrote, “assumes an honest process of give-and-take, and that the quality of the compromise is measured by how well it serves some agreed-upon goal, whether better schools or lower deficits. This in turn assumes that the majority will be constrained — by an exacting press corps and ultimately an informed electorate — to negotiate in good faith.

“If these conditions do not hold — if nobody outside Washington is really paying attention to the substance of the bill, if the true costs . . . are buried in phony accounting and understated by a trillion dollars or so — the majority party can begin every negotiation by asking for 100% of what it wants, go on to concede 10%, and then accuse any member of the minority party who fails to support this ‘compromise’ of being ‘obstructionist.’

“For the minority party in such circumstances, ‘bipartisanship’ comes to mean getting chronically steamrolled, although individual senators may enjoy certain political rewards by consistently going along with the majority and hence gaining a reputation for being ‘moderate’ or ‘centrist.'”

(Hat tip: powerline)

Writing over at NRO’s the Corner, Michael G. Franc (from the Heritage Foundation) details the lesser-known provisions of the Porkulus bill that constitute the real dangers to our liberty and freedom. Read Keeping Our Eyes on the Real Ball:

The broad outlines, and few details, of a stimulus have been announced. The headlines focus on how much we will borrow to “stimulate” the economy—$789.5 billion. Remarkably, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charlie Rangel (D., NY) groused over the “cuts” that brought the total down below $800 billion. “Hardly anybody’s happy,” he said, “with having to go backward.”

Go backward? Huh?

Over the last three weeks the policy experts at my institution, the Heritage Foundation, have published dozens of biting critiques of literally every aspect of the House and Senate versions of this legislative monstrosity. They agree on one thing: Under the guise of stimulating the economy, this one bill contains a generation’s worth of liberal policymaking, an entire Great Society-scale agenda, one that advances the liberals’ view of man and his relationship to government enough to cause LBJ himself to turn red with envy.

The pork and the overall spending are every bit as bad as the critics say, but in the long run, they are mere distractions. The real damage comes from other, less noticed provisions in the bills.

The House and/or Senate stimulus bills would undo the 1996 welfare reforms, explode entitlement spending by a cool quarter trillion dollars, lay the groundwork for the federal government’s takeover of our health care system, double Uncle Sam’s already overbearing role in education, require taxpayers to pick up the bail tab for potentially dangerous felons, allow unemployed Wall Street executives to qualify for Medicaid, and reignite the fires of trade protectionism, thereby risking a global trade war.

Not bad for the first month of unified liberal rule in Washington, eh?

What follows is my attempt to cull together the most salient of these critiques as published on our web site. And these are just the serious concerns that have been uncovered thus far. The Lord only knows what other travesties remain to be found.

Here goes:

Keep reading for the details. It ain’t pretty.

From Iowahak, Mathematicians Discover Largest Number:

PALO ALTO, CA – An international mathematics research team announced today that they had discovered a new integer that surpasses any previously known value “by a totally mindblowing shitload.” Project director Yujin Xiao of Stanford University said the theoretical number, dubbed a “stimulus,” could lead to breakthroughs in fields as diverse as astrophysics, quantum mechanics, and Chicago asphalt contracting.

“Unlike previous large numbers like the Googleplex or the Bazillionty, the Stimulus has no static numerical definition,” said Xiao. “It keeps growing and growing, compounding factorially, eating up all zeros in its path. It moves freely across Cartesian dimensions and has the power to make any other number irrational.”

Jean-Luc Brossard, a researcher with the European consortium CERN, said the number is so staggeringly large that it is difficult for even mathematicians to grasp, let alone lay people.

“The number itself is incomprehensible by human minds, and can only be theoretically understood in a fractional parallel universe which we refer to as the DC dimension,” said Brossard. “The best way to understand a stimulus is to imagine a dollar sign followed by a packed string of hexidecimal nanodigits, wound into a triple helix, woven into a dodecahedron, and stacked on top of one another. Now imagine you were a black hole on the far edge of the universe, trying to escape the stimulus at 30 times the speed of light. The stimulus would still catch up to you and ram your black hole with such furious, repeated force that it would cause your entire reality itself to collapse.”

Xiao said the team discovered the number with the help of an international network of 24 nitrogen-cooled Cray Ultracluster supercomputers, the CERN particle accelerator, and “three pounds of Humboldt County Chronic.”

“The exciting news is that with more powerful computers and drugs, we believe we are on the verge of discovering an even larger number, which we refer to as a ‘stimulusconferencebill,'” said Xiao. “Speaker Pelosi has already promised us the funding.”

President Barack Obama held Town Hall-style Beg-a-Thon in Fort Myers Florida today yesterday. This was a surreal event. It was kind of like The Wizard of Oz when Dorothy and her friends ask for brains, hearts, and a trip back to Kansas. We haven’t watched the entire meeting, but the parts we’ve seen more closely resembled Oprah than a Presidential Town Hall meeting.

We are witnessing the glorification of the entitlement mentality. Begging is now the highest virtue — a fitting tribute to Socialism.

Here’s Julio asking for better benefits. Julio is 19 years old and has been working at McDonald’s for 4 1/2 years, and he asks Obama to provide better benefits to people like him who have held a job for such a long time.

We find it odd that he’s 19 years old, yet he states that he’s been working at McDonald’s for four and a half years. Is Julio lying or confused, or is McDonald’s breaking child labor laws?

Here’s the video of Henrietta Hughes and the “I Love You Barack” Lady. Ms. Hughes asks Obama for a house with her own bathroom and kitchen. And check out “I Love You Barack” Lady near the end of the video: this is pure celebrity-cult worship. Creepy.

Listen to John Kerry make the point that cutting taxes for individuals and businesses is a bad idea because “there’s no guarantee they’re going to invest their money.”

You can’t be trusted to invest or spend your money. Only government can be trusted to “invest” our money responsibly.

We’re still glad we switched from Heinz to Hunts ketchup after the 2006 election.

Mark Steyn is without question the smartest, wittiest, conservative writer out there. As we’ve come to expect, his latest column is incredible:

A president doesn’t have to be able to walk on water. But he does have to choose the right crew for the ship, especially if he’s planning on spending most of his time at the captain’s table schmoozing the celebrity guests with a lot of deep thoughts about “hope” and “change.” Far worse than his cabinet picks was President Obama’s decision to make the “stimulus” racket the all-but-sole priority of his first month, and then outsource the project to Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, and Harry Reid. Appearing on The Rush Limbaugh Show last week, I got a little muddled over two adjoining newspaper clippings—one on the stimulus, the other on those octuplets in California—and for a brief moment the two stories converged. Everyone’s hammering that mom—she’s divorced, unemployed, living in a small house with parents who have a million bucks’ worth of debt, and she’s already got six kids. So she has in vitro fertilization to have eight more. But isn’t that exactly what the Feds have done? Last fall, they gave birth to an $850 billion bailout they couldn’t afford and didn’t have enough time to keep an eye on, and now four months later they’re going to do it all over again, but this time they want trillionuplets. Barney and Nancy represent the in vitro fertilization of the federal budget. And it’s the taxpayers who’ll get stuck with the diapers.
…

As it happens, the best way to ensure catastrophe is to “act now.” It would be nice if the world could all prance along in regimented unison like the Radio City Changettes. But, alas, the foreigners made the mistake of actually reading the “stimulus” bill, and the protectionist measures buried on page 739 sub-section XII(d) ended, instantly, the Obama honeymoon overseas. The European Union has threatened a trade war. Up in Canada, provincial premiers called it “a march to insanity.” Wait a minute: I thought the Obama era was meant to be the retreat from insanity, a blessed return to multilateral transnational harmony?

Damn. Yes, the rest is even better.

We recently criticized Georgia’s Senators — Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson — over their votes confirming Eric Holder to Attorney General. Saxby’s office replied:

Thank you for contacting me regarding the nomination of Eric Holder to become Attorney General under the Obama Administration. It is good to hear from you.

President Obama nominated Mr. Holder to be the Attorney General on December 1, 2008 and he was confirmed by the Senate on February 2, 2009. I believe the President deserves great deference in filling his Cabinet. While Mr. Holder and I have differences on policy and judicial theories, I supported Mr. Holder because of his great experience and because I believe he can competently fill the role for which he has been nominated. Mr. Holder has previously been unanimously confirmed to judicial positions by the United States Senate on three separate occasions. In 1988, he was nominated by President Ronald Reagan to be associate Judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. In 1993, President Clinton nominated Mr. Holder to be the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, and in 1997, President Clinton nominated him to be Deputy Attorney General of the United States.

Although I continue to have concerns with some of Mr. Holder’s policy views, particularly his view of the Second Amendment, after speaking with him, I am convinced he recognizes that the Supreme Court’s decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, recognizing the Second Amendment right to be an individual right, to be the law of the land.

Moreover, I believe that if any changes will be made to our country’s gun policies, they will be made by Congress or the court system, and not the Department of Justice. I also had serious concerns about the role Mr. Holder played in the pardons of Marc Rich and members of the FALN group when he was at the Department of Justice. These pardons have been nearly universally condemned by the entire legal community. In his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Mr. Holder fully recognized his mistakes in those pardons and stated if he had to do it again, he would have done things differently. I believe he will take that learning experience with him into his role as Attorney General.

I have closely scrutinized Mr. Holder’s nomination by reviewing his testimony from the Judiciary Committee and personally questioning him. I believe Mr. Holder is qualified for the position of Attorney General. Again, although I do not agree with a number of the positions Mr. Holder has taken in the past, I believe that Presidents, including President Obama, should be given deference in filling their Cabinet.

Thank you, Senator Chambliss, for an honest and thorough response. We’ll just have to agree to disagree on Holder. Marc Rich, FALN pardons, and 2nd Amendment questions demonstrate why Holder is not a stalwart supporter of freedom. These actions are contrary to the values of your constituents who expect a better person than this to be their Attorney General!

“I am convinced he recognizes that the Supreme Court’s decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, recognizing the Second Amendment right to be an individual right, to be the law of the land.”

Senator, we do not share your confidence. In only two, short weeks, this administration has demonstrated duplicity, arrogance, hypocrisy, confusion, gross-incompetence and inner-strife as they overextend themselves in typical, Democrat fashion. We can only imagine what they’ll try next.

Here’s the problem:

The Democrats won’t bring back the Fairness Doctrine to shutdown talk radio. They’ll use “locality” issues or other, nefarious means of going after stations one at a time. New name, same objective. Likewise, you don’t need “gun control” to attack 2nd Amendment rights. You can pass laws requiring ammunition to be serialized. Or you can put a huge tax on ammo and prohibit reloading. These bills are pending in many States as we write. Then there’s H.R. 45 which is a Federal gun licensing and registration bill. The legislation notes that registration and mental health records go through the Attorney General of the United States.

Senator Chambliss confirmed as our “Chief Law Enforcement Officer” a man known to be hostile to the 2nd Amendment working for an administration known to be hostile to the 2nd Amendment. That by itself disqualifies him in our opinion.

UPDATES:

7 February 2009: We’d like to thank Senator Chambliss for writing us back. We’d love a response from Senator Isakson. Senator?

(Hat tip: NRO Corner)

From Tom Coburn’s speech on Wednesday, 4 February 2009:

We are going in exactly the wrong direction. We ought to be standing on the principles that made this country great. There ought to be a review of every program in the Federal Government that is not effective, that is not efficient, that is wasteful or fraudulent, and we ought to get rid of it right now. We ought to say, Gone, to be able to pay for a real stimulus plan that might, in fact, have some impact.

I would be remiss if I didn’t remind everybody that next week we are going to hear from the Obama administration wanting another $500 billion. Outside of this, they are going to want another $500 billion to handle the banking system. Still not fixing the real disease—the pneumonia—we are going to treat the fever or treat the cough, but we are not going to treat the real disease. Until we treat the real disease, this is pure waste. It is worse than pure waste. It is morally reprehensible, because it steals the future of the next two generations.

I am going to wind up here and finish, but I wanted to spend some time to make sure the American people know what is in this bill. I think once they know what is in this bill, they are going to reject it out of hand. Let me read for my colleagues some of the things that are in this bill. The biggest earmark in history is in this bill. There is $2 billion in this bill to build a coal plant with zero emissions. That would be great, maybe, if we had the technology, but the greatest brains in the world sitting at MIT say we don’t have the technology yet to do that. Why would we build a $2 billion powerplant we don’t have the technology for that we know will come back and ask for another $2 billion and another $2 billion and another $2 billion when we could build a demonstration project that might cost $150 million or $200 million? There is nothing wrong with having coal-fired plants that don’t produce pollution; I am not against that. Even the Washington Post said the technology isn’t there. It is a boondoggle. Why would we do that?

We eliminated tonight a $246 million payback for the large movie studios in Hollywood.

We are going to spend $88 million to study whether we ought to buy a new ice breaker for the Coast Guard. You know what. The Coast Guard needs a new ice breaker. Why do we need to spend $88 million? They have two ice breakers now that they could retrofit and fix and come up with equivalent to what they needed to and not spend the $1 billion they are going to come back and ask for, for another ice breaker, so why would we spend $88 million doing that?

We are going to spend $448 million to build the Department of Homeland Security a new building. We have $1.3 trillion worth of empty buildings right now, and because it has been blocked in Congress we can’t sell them, we can’t raze them, we can’t do anything, but we are going to spend money on a new building here in Washington. We are going to spend another $248 million for new furniture for that building; a quarter of a billion dollars for new furniture. What about the furniture the Department of Homeland Security has now? These are tough times. Should we be buying new furniture? How about using what we have? That is what a family would do. They would use what they have. They wouldn’t go out and spend $248 million on furniture.

How about buying $600 million worth of hybrid vehicles? Do you know what I would say? Right now times are tough; I would rather Americans have new cars than Federal employees have new cars. What is wrong with the cars we have? Dumping $600 million worth of used vehicles on the used vehicle market right now is one of the worst things we could do. Instead, we are going to spend $600 million buying new cars for Federal employees.

There is $400 million in here to prevent STDs. I have a lot of experience on that. I have delivered 4,000 babies. We don’t need to spend $400 million on STDs. What we need to do is properly educate about the infection rates and the effectiveness of methods of prevention. That doesn’t take a penny more. You can write that on one piece of paper and teach every kid in this country, but we don’t need to spend $400 million on it. It is not a priority.

How about $1.4 billion for rural waste disposal programs? That might even be somewhat stimulative. New sewers. That might create jobs.

How about $150 million for a Smithsonian museum? Tell me how that helps get us out of a recession. Tell me how that is a priority. Would the average American think that is a priority that we ought to be mortgaging our kids’ future to spend another $150 million at the Smithsonian?

How about $1 billion for the 2010 census? So everybody knows, the census is so poorly managed that the census this year is going to cost twice—in 2010 is going to cost twice what it cost 10 years ago, and we wasted $800 million on a contract because it was no-bid that didn’t perform. Nobody got fired, no competitive bidding, and we blew $800 million.
We have $75 million for smoking cessation activities, which probably is a great idea, but we just passed a bill—the SCHIP bill—that we need to get 21 million more Americans smoking to be able to pay for that bill. That doesn’t make sense.

How about $200 million for public computer centers at community colleges? Since when is a community college in my State a recipient of Federal largesse? Is that our responsibility? I mean, did we talk with Dell and Hewlett-Packard and say, How do we make you all do better? Is there not a market force that could make that better? Will we actually buy on a true competitive bid? No, because there is nothing that requires competitive bidding in anything in this bill. There is nothing that requires it. It is one of the things President Obama said he was going to mandate at the Federal Government, but there is no competitive bidding in this bill at all.

We have $10 million to inspect canals in urban areas. Well, that will put 10 or 15 people to work. Is that a priority for us right now?

There is $6 billion to turn Federal buildings into green buildings. That is a priority, versus somebody getting a job outside of Washington, a job that actually produces something, that actually increases wealth?

How about $500 million for State and local fire stations? Where do you find in the Constitution us paying for local fire stations within our realm of prerogatives? None of it is competitively bid—not a grant program.

Next is $1.2 billion for youth activities. Who does that employ? What does that mean?

How about $88 million for renovating the public health service building? You know, if we could sell half of the $1.3 trillion worth of properties we have, we could take care of every Federal building requirement and backlog we have.

Then there’s $412 million for CDC buildings and property. We spent billions on a new center and headquarters for CDC. Is that a priority? Building another Government building instead of—if we are going to spend $412 million on building buildings, let’s build one that will produce something, one that will give us something.

How about $850 million for that most “efficient” Amtrak that hasn’t made any money since 1976 and continues to have $2 billion or $3 billion a year in subsidies?
Here is one of my favorites: $75 million to construct a new “security training” facility for State Department security officers, and we have four other facilities already available to train them. But it is not theirs. They want theirs. By the way, it is going to be in West Virginia. I wonder how that got there. So we are going to build a new training facility that duplicates four others that we already have that could easily do what we need to do. But because we have a stimulus package, we are going to add in oink pork.

How about $200 million in funding for a lease—not buying, but a lease of alternative energy vehicles on military installations? We are going to bail out the States on Medicaid. Total all of the health programs in this, and we are going to transfer $150 billion out of the private sector and we are going to move it to the Federal Government. You talk about backdooring national health care. Henry Waxman has to be smiling big today. He wants a single-payer Government-run health care system. We are going to move another $150 billion to the Federal Government from the private sector.

We are going to eliminate fees on loans from the Small Business Administration. You know what that does? That pushes productive capital to unproductive projects. It is exactly the wrong thing to do.

Then there is $160 million to the Job Corps Program—but not for jobs and not to put more people in the Job Corps but to construct or repair buildings.
We are going to spend $524 million for information technology upgrades that the Appropriations Committee claims will create 388 jobs. If you do the math on that, that is $1.5 million a job. Don’t you love the efficiency of Washington thinking?

We are going to create $79 billion in additional money for the States, a “slush fund,” to bail out States and provide millions of dollars for education costs. How many of you think that will ever go away? Once the State education programs get $79 billion over 2 years, do you think that will ever go away? The cry and hue of taking our money away—even though it was a stimulus and supposed to be limited, it will never go away. So we will continue putting that forward until our kids have grandkids of their own.

There is about $47 billion for a variety of energy programs that are primarily focused on renewable energy. I am fine with spending that. But we ought to get something for it. There ought to be metrics. There are no metrics. It is pie in the sky, saying we will throw some money at it. Let me conclude by saying we are at a seminal moment in our country. We will either start living within the confines of realism and responsibility or we will blow it and we will create the downfall of the greatest Nation that ever lived. This bill is the start of that downfall. To abandon a market-oriented society and transfer it to a Soviet-style, government-centered, bureaucratic-run and mandated program, that is the thing that will put the stake in the heart of freedom in this country.

I hope the American people know what is in this bill. I am doing everything I can to make sure they know. But more important, I hope somebody is listening who will treat the “pneumonia” we are faced with today, which is the housing and mortgage markets. It doesn’t matter how much money we spend in this bill. It is doomed to failure unless we fix that problem first. Failing that, we will go down in history as the Congress that undermined the future and vitality of this country. Let it not be so.

Reid is going to try to ram this bill through the Senate by tomorrow. Please call your Senators now.

Great big KUDOS to Mark Hemingway for his excellent report on where Republican Governors stand on the “Stimulus” bill. Here’s the response Mark received from Georgia governor Sonny Perdue’s office:

Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue: “We’re certainly following the progress and trying to give input where we can and raise concerns where we have them, but we’re certainly not waiting on this money,” however,”I can’t give you a checkbox that he’s for it [or against it], it’s much more nuanced.”

In other words,

We don’t necessarily like this thing in principle, but if it passes (and we think it might), we want our “fair share” of the pie. After all, that bailout money sure would make our situation up here in Atlanta a lot easier.

And we’re reluctant to get to far out on the edge…like that crazy governor from South Carolina.

Nuanced.

As Mark Steyn pointed out today on the Rush Limbaugh show, Nancy Pelosi is the third in line to the Presidency and is the most powerful woman in the world. Oh, she’s also an idiot.

Nancy Pelosi is a moron.

Thanks, Michelle, we feel better now. God help us.