THE WATCHDOG’S ABSURDITY COLLECTION 8
MARCH 2013
Just Use Your Imagination!
Eureka! I have an idea, a green energy idea. We should go out and find some unicorns; train them, and have them run on specially designed treadmills built by Santa’s elves that are hooked up to a state of the art generator built by Obi Wan Kenobi. We then have the whole project managed and supervised by Barney the Dinosaur, because he loves us.
Ridiculous…impossible you say. Well if the Environmental Protection Agency says it can be done, it can be done. Take for example this years EPA mandate to force oil companies to blend 14 million gallons of cellulosic biofuel into their fuel products. Where do the oil companies procure this magical mysterious cellulosic biofuel? You are going to have to ask Obi Wan Kenobi, but I think Yoda might brew the stuff.
A Cleaner More Sustainable Mafia
There was a recent sting operation by Italian authorities that corralled a bunch of corrupt organizations and front groups that were not run by the Cosa Nostra of Sicily and the Calabrian syndicate known as Ndrangheta. They were not selling drugs, they were not engaged in illegal gambling or prostitution, nor were they hijacking trucks leaving the Palermo airport, they were involved in green energy.
The Washington Post reported that the plot was “part Sopranos, part An Inconvenient Truth,” with the new cleaner, sustainable mafia shaking down legitimate farmers for their land and then accepting EU subsidies for windmill construction, paying off political players to ensure the subsidies came. Italy’s National Association of wind energy boss was caught for building wind farms on public subsidies that used up taxpayer funds and delivered nothing. Italian reporter Pasquale Trivisonne stated that these scams waste farmland, have noisy windmills; create zero jobs and no energy.
Sound familiar? The same thing takes place with even greater regularity right here in the United States. However, rather than the mafia engaging in this, we have the much more sinister, Axis of Evil made up of crony capitalists including the major investment houses, crooked politicians and the media.
Buzz Lightyear For Federal Reserve
Outgoing Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was asked on Bloomberg TV’s program Political Capital, “Do you believe we ought to just eliminate the debt ceiling?” Geithner’s response…”Oh absolutely.”
We already raise the debt ceiling every time we reach it, which does not make it much of a ceiling at all, more like a retractable roof. The ceiling gets blown through and we issue more and more debt. We also need to find someone to buy all of this debt and the reality is that they are becoming much more difficult to find. So what do we do when we cannot find buyers/suckers? We call upon a real-live Buzz Lightyear, Ben Bernanke and the Federal Reserve. Bernanke has been working overtime at the presses pumping out over $70 billion a month.
We really need to get some stonemasons to chisel the new catch phrase on the façades of the Federal Reserve Banks across the U.S.A., “To Infinity and Beyond.”
Global Warming Solution!
The Center for Economic Policy and Research has come up with a solution to global warming…
Stop working hard.
That’s right, in a shout out to Europeans and government workers everywhere, The CEPR wants everyone to switch to a European work schedule with fewer hours and more vacation time. They said if we all adopted those polices we could prevent as much as half of the expected global temperature rise by 2100. They state that shorter work hours mean lower carbon emissions. In my opinion we would have a lot less hot air if did away with liberal think tanks like the CEPR.
Redefining Dunce
The Poway Unified School District in San Diego, California owes creditors $1 billion on a $100 million loan. I think Ron Burgundy and Veronica Corningstone said it best…
Ron Burgundy: Mmm. San Diego. Drink it in, it always goes down smooth. Discovered by the Germans in 1904, they named it San Diago, which of course in German means “a whale’s vagina”.
Veronica Corningstone: No, there’s no way that’s correct.
Ron Burgundy: I’m sorry, I was trying to impress you. I don’t know what it means. I’ll be honest, I don’t think anyone knows what it means anymore. Scholars maintain that the translation was lost hundreds of years ago.
Veronica Corningstone: Doesn’t it mean “Saint Diego”?
Ron Burgundy: No. No.
Veronica Corningstone: No, that’s–that’s what it means. Really.
Ron Burgundy: Well. Agree to disagree.
As it turns out San Diego is not the only dunce in the class. 200 other California school districts owe creditors for 10 to 20 times the amount they initially borrowed. The Superintendent of the Poway School District sounding much like a child explaining to a teacher why he or she did something they shouldn’t have told PBS that “Poway has done nothing different than every other district in California.” California State Treasurer Bill Lockyer has stated that nearly 200 districts have borrowed $3 billion in Capital Appreciation Bonds, which allow districts to defer payments well down the road. They should call them kick-the-can bonds! The problem is that while kicking, lots and lots of interest piles up. Those $3 billion in bonds is now $16 billion.
I don’t know what is worse, the stupidity that allowed this type of debt to pile up or the fact that we allow institutions that are vapid beyond all known metric to educate our children.
Why Did The Train Cross The Border?
From Oilprice.com… “A cargo train filled with biofuels crossed the border between the US and Canada 24 times between the 15th of June and 28th of June; not once did it unload its cargo, yet it still earned millions of dollars. The companies made several million dollars importing and exporting the fuel to exploit a loophole in a U.S. green energy program. Each time the loaded train crossed the border the cargo earned its owner a certain amount of Renewable Identification Numbers (RIN’s) which were awarded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to promote and track production and importation of renewable fuels such as ethanol and biodiesel.”
Zero Hedge reported that the CBC News of Canada began an investigation of this story. CN Rail, the train operator, stated that they were doing as exactly as their customer told them. CBC found in an internal email that the cars of the train were all reconfigured for each trip but the cargo was never to be unloaded. Each move per car across the border is a revenue generator; the sale of the product did not matter. Bioversal Trading INC. owned the cargo of the train or its U.S. partner Verdero. These companies made several million dollars importing and exporting the fuel, exploiting a loophole in a U.S. green energy program. Bioversal accumulated 12 million RIN’s from the trips, which they turned around and sold to oil companies that had not met the EPA’s renewable fuel requirements. The most disturbing thing about this fiasco is that it is legal.
Love It When They Call Me Big Poppa.
I am not making this up. Bill Clinton was named “Father of the Year” by the National Father’s Day Council. My question is, “Who was he up against…Silvio Berlusconi, Tiger Woods, Arnold Schwarzenegger, John Edwards?
U.S.A. Land of the Scooter
I have a problem with Disney World. Whenever I go there I feel like a family of squirrels trying to avoid becoming road kill on an interstate, with the countless numbers of people traversing the park on motorized scooters. When did scooters become an acceptable form of transportation for able-bodied human beings? I didn’t get the memo. I find it disgusting that someone that can walk, chooses not to. Imagine being a disabled veteran that lost their ability to walk fighting for us, watching people choose not to.
For Your Information: Being overweight does not make you disabled, in fact the walk around the park would actually do you some good. The only thing worse than “It’s A Small World” at Disney, is seeing some overweight person lift themselves off of their scooter to walk a full ten feet to get themselves a 10,000 calorie snack. These same overweight people ride around the park with their overweight kids on their laps. I digress.
Records from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services show that the cost of motorized scooters and wheelchairs to the government health service for senior citizens rose 179% between 1999 and 2009. The disconnect is the number of Americans over the age of 65 only increased by 18% over the same time frame. The bill for scooters was $259 million in 1999, it is over a billion today. A report by Medicare inspector general also showed that 61% of motorized wheelchairs provided to Medicare recipients went to people who did not qualify for them. Medicare is billed an average of $4,018 for a motorized wheelchair that normally sells for $1,048.
Going To See A Man About A Horse
The Department of Water and Sewage for the city of Detroit employs a horseshoer.
The Department of Water and Sewage for the city of Detroit has no horses.
The local union president in charge of the workers at the Department of Water and Sewage for the city of Detroit says that “it is not possible to eliminate positions,” and goes on to state that “the department needs more workers. They are just dreaming to think they can operate that plant with less.” The Detroit Water and Sewage Department is loaded with debt and is burdened with inefficient services, which should be obvious with the employment of a horseshoer with no horses. The DWSD uses twice the number of employees per gallon as other major cities and a recent study recommend that the city rid the department of 80% of its workers. The word negotiate is foreign to modern unions in America.
Roi Chinn, a former city administrator and 2013 candidate for mayor stated, “They have said for years that they don’t have enough people. As the bureaucracy thickens and union power grows, there is always a built in reflex to want more. Whenever you think you’ve heard the bad about the city of Detroit, it gets worse.” Chinn is planning on trying to sell the water department if he becomes mayor. The question is… Who would be dumb enough to buy it?
I Got My Obama Phone!
One of the more embarrassing moments of the 2012 campaign was the infamous interview with a women at an Obama rally in Cleveland, OH where she was informed the world that she was voting for Obama because he gave her free phone. This sad display should have embarrassed and disgusted anyone who truly loves this country.
As it turns out, the wireless company that is making a fortune on the Free Obama Phone program is run by a big time Democratic fundraiser. TracFone Wireless CEO and spouse have raised more than $1.5 million for Democratic candidates since 2007.
In 1985 the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) started a program called Lifeline, which provided free landline phone service for low-income individuals. The government was paying the companies providing the service by taking the money out of peoples pockets that actually pay their phone bill via the Universal Service Charge Tax on our phone bill. The program got a very expensive upgrade in 2008 when the federal government included cell phones. It now costs us phone using/bill paying Americans over $1.6 billion a year up from $772 million in 2008. The program has over 12.5 million happy customers.
Dumb Vote
Two years ago in an interview I was asked about my thoughts on the 2012 Presidential election and what Republicans needed to do to win. I cut to the chase and said that 2012 was about the dumb vote.
President Obama was Time Magazine’s 2012 Person of the Year. Richard Stengel, the editor of Time Magazine, made rounds on the interview circuit to explain Time Magazines choice, and to attempt to sell some magazines. Stengel explained on the Today Show that Obama was able to get people to vote, get people to the polls who normally would never show up on Election Day. President Obama campaigned on Rap and Pop radio stations, Entertainment Tonight, The View, and Late Night Talk Shows; he basically ran a pop culture campaign targeting people who care more about the Kardashian’s than our national debt.
One interview that Stengel did that I found extraordinary and further proof of my dumb vote thesis was his appearance on the Charlie Rose Show. Stengel stated, “The Obama campaign discovered that these people who say they’re not interested in politics who do not like the Republicans, who do not like the Democrats, who do not like Washington, you know what they do like? They like Barack Obama because they sense something about him that he’s not really part of it. So even that first debate, which we thought was a debacle, a lot of those people thought… Well, I liked that because he’s not playing that game. He’s not playing gotcha. He’s not saying nasty things. That helped tip the balance for him.” Translation…In a scene eerily reminiscent of the film Idiocracy, the masses had great disdain for anything intelligent or logic based.
The interesting thing about this last election was the fact that the so-called wizards of smart consultants, that make the rounds on the cable news shows explaining how a candidate can win; are always presenting the formula of getting out your base and winning the independents or moderates. Really…Romney did that and lost the election. The deciding factor in this election as I predicted was the dumb vote.
Trillion
One of the hardest things to do in radio is translate numbers and explain them in a manner that does not induce deep REM sleep across the airwaves. It has become more difficult today with the sheer size of the numbers we are dealing with; billions and trillions are tough to get ones arms around.
Andrew Tisch CEO of the Lowes Corporation did a great job articulating the incomprehensible number that is a trillion.
“If you have a briefcase full of $100 bills, you’d have roughly $1 million. Few of us have ever seen that much money in one place, but we can at least imagine what it looks like. But a trillion dollars in $100 bills would weigh 22 million pounds. Things get more interesting if you stack the $100 bills on top of each other, rather than pack them tight in a briefcase. You’d have only $10 billion by the time you got as high as a commercial jetliner cruises. Think about that next time you’re up in the air. If you want to see a trillion dollars of those Benjamin Franklins, you need to penetrate Earth’s atmosphere and keep on going 678 miles high. Our national debt would form a stack of $100 bills 10,712 miles high.”
I would like to add…and rising.
Johnsen Erika The EPA Once Again Raises Its Biofuel Standards For Biofuels That Still Do Not Exist Hot Air 2/1/13
Editors Greenfellas: The Italian Mafia Muscles In On Green Energy Racket Investors Business Daily 1/28/13
Harrington Elizabeth Treasury Secretary Geithner: Lift Debt Limit To Infinity CNS News 11/19/12
Koebler Jason Global Warming Can Be Slowed By Working Less U.S. News And World Report 2/5/13
Lee Tony CA School District Owes $1 Billion On $100 Million Loan Breitbart 12/11/12
Durden Tyler Why Did A Train Carrying Biofuel Cross The Border 24 Times And Never Unload Zerohedge 1/3/13
McDevitt Caitlin Bill Clinton Named Father Of the Year Politico 1/10/13
Quinn Jim Decline Decay Denial Delusion and Despair The Burning Platform 10/25/12
Skorup Jarrett No Horses, But Detroit Water Department Employs Horseshoer Capcon 8/20/12
Stiles Andrew ObamaPhones Profiting ObamaDonors The Washington Free Beacon 10/8/12
Tisch Andrew Let’s Ban The Word Trillion Wall Street Journal 6/26/12
