THE WATCHDOG’S ABSURDITY COLLECTION 4
JANUARY 2012
Poor Sport
What a $%^&*#@ crybaby!
Democrat Steve Driehaus from Ohio’s 1st Congressional District is throwing a hissy fit after losing the 2010 mid-term election. What do Democrats in the midst of hysteria do?
They sue.
Charging that its activities contributed to his defeat and therefore contributed to “loss of livelihood,” Driehaus is suing the Susan B. Anthony List, a group that ran advertisements against him. Rather than throw this Pandora’s box out of court U.S. District Court Judge Timothy S. Black is allowing this to proceed. I wonder what the statue of limitations will be on this? George W. Bush could make a fortune.
Exploding Diaper
I actually heard my youngest son, Nicholas singing a song with these very lyrics (Exploding Diaper) while meandering around the house. I inquired where he picked it up from, and as it turns out it was from the film, Diary of a Wimpy Kid II. So I watched the movie with the kids and it I have to admit it was pretty good. The Exploding Diaper song is actually better than most of the stuff they currently play on the FM band.
Representative Rosa DeLauro D-Conn should use the song as her campaign song in 2012, since she is leading the charge against exploding diapers. DeLauro has authored what she calls an economic recovery bill, to have the taxpayer pay for and distribute free diapers through day care centers. The Diaper Investment and Aid to Promote Economic Recovery Act (DIAPER Act) would “relieve some of the stress on families facing hardship in this economy. We all believe that nothing we do in government is as important as ensuring the next generation has the tools they need to thrive. But for our children and our nation to succeed, we have to support their development, their families and the public policies that ensure opportunity. Ensuring that low-income families have access to diapers through the DIAPER Act is one of those policies that will make a difference.”
It gets better…The State of Connecticut has declared October 27th Diaper Needs Awareness Day! “We are thrilled that the Governor has recognized the importance of keeping babies in clean diapers and are looking foreword to celebrating this occasion together,” stated Acting Executive Director of the Diaper Bank Janet Stolfi Alfano.
I wonder if the Governor will give state workers the day off on this all-important new holiday? This is not a parody. I couldn’t make this stuff up.
Walter Peck Returns
It seems as if Walter Peck has recovered from his injuries due to falling marshmallow after the Ghostbusters crossed the streams and destroyed Stay Puft, and is back in action at the Environmental Protection Agency. His boss, Lisa Jackson has stated that new greenhouse gas regulations, as proposed, may be “absurd” in application and “impossible to administer” by its self-imposed 2016 deadline. This reality does not hinder nor slow the big government EPA folks who are hell-bent on regulating the evil carbon dioxide.
The EPA is asking us to fund up to 230,000 new EPA bureaucrats with a cost of $21 billion.
Obama Incentives
I find it extraordinary that for the most part Democrats and their union friends abhor incentive based compensatory programs, but when it comes to getting people signed up for their various cure-all programs, they are all for it.
The last thing big government types want is accountability so incentive programs are taboo. They are so above that capitalistic notion. If a Governor or business asks to put incentives in a union contract, and you will see Richard Trumka’s or Andy Stern’s faces turn purple before you could utter the word, “Strike.”
In it’s never-ending drive to get as many people as possible addicted to government and on the welfare rolls, the Obama Administration is rewarding Oregon with a $5 million bonus for its ability to sign up an extraordinary amount of recipients. Oregon officials bragged that the USDA has given the state $5 million in “performance bonuses” for ensuring that people eligible for food benefits receive them and for its “swift processing of applications.” The money comes on the heels of a separate $1.5 million award from the feds for making “accurate payments of food stamp benefits to clients.” Whoops…I am not being politically correct. The new Obama language would call their efforts a drive to eradicate food insecure households. The program is now called Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and it looks like recipients are now called clients.
Well it looks as if Obama’s incentives are working like a charm. Spending on food stamps (sorry…SNAP program) is scheduled to reach $80 billion in 2012 more than double the amount from as recent as 2007.
Dead Men Cash In
I recently rode the Pirates of the Caribbean ride for the umpteenth time with the kids who unfortunately wanted to ride it again and again. At the beginning of the ride there is ghost who chants, “Dead men tell no tales!”
That may be true…but at least with our bloated bureaucratic nightmare government they can at least get paid. The federal government has doled out more than $600 million in benefit payments to dead people over the past five years. What is pathetic and sad, is that the government has been aware of the problem since 2005 and has been unable to fix it. In fact made it worse when over 89,000 stimulus check payments went to the dead or incarcerated.
That’s Not Mine
From the film Austin Powers International Man of Mystery…
Clerk: One Swedish-made penis enlarger.
Austin Powers: That’s not mine.
Clerk: One credit card receipt for Swedish-made penis enlarger signed by Austin Powers.
Austin Powers: I’m telling ya baby that’s not mine.
Clerk: One warranty card for Swedish-made penis enlarger pump, filled out by Austin Powers.
Austin Powers: I don’t even know what this is! This sort of thing ain’t my bag, baby.
Clerk: One book, “Swedish-made Penis Enlargers And Me: This Sort of Thing Is My Bag Baby,” by Austin Powers.
From data obtained by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), they have determined that Medicare has spent more than $240 million of taxpayer money on penis pumps for men. Medicare crooks have been privy to this information and have been profiting. This past year an Illinois man was caught collecting over $2 million from Medicare in an operation where he would buy $26 penis pumps from adult websites and repackage and provide them to senior citizens billing Medicare for $284 a piece.
Yeah baby! Medicare bringing back the mojo!
Catch and Release
You are doing it wrong. One would think that as states across the country are working to catch illegal immigrants, the federal government would be supportive. Not so much. The Politico reported that the Obama administration has launched a new free hotline for people caught on immigration violations.
The hotline, run by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, is available twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, for incarcerated immigration violators to phone and receive aid. The hotline will also have translation services available in many different languages.
I wonder if the hotline will also attempt to register the individual to vote in 2012. Hope and Change Baby!
The Biofuel Catch 22
We are all well aware that our nation is in a deep fiscal nightmare. The inability of the super committee to come up with budget cuts is leading to automatic cuts to various areas of government including defense. You would think with cuts looming, the military would be doing everything and anything they can to be efficient. Nope, not going to happen, especially with political contributors that need back scratching. The Navy is getting together with the Department of Agriculture to purchase 450,000 gallons of biofuel at a cost of $16 a gallon. The price of the biofuel is four times as much as the standard marine fuel. It just so happens that a member of President Obama’s transition team, T. J. Glauthier, is a “strategic advisor” at Solazyne, the company that is selling the biofuel to the Navy. It also just so happens that Glauthier worked on the energy-sector portion of Obama’s stimulus bill. Solazyne, aside from selling economically moronic fuels to the taxpayer by force, also received $21.8 million from us via the Obama stimulus package.
Biofuel factory Range Fuels located in southeastern Georgia that took $65 million of taxpayer funds was sold this January for pennies on the dollar to another biofuel company for $5.1 million. What makes me physically nauseous is the fact that the new biofuel company once again bought the factory with our money! We basically bought the same stupid factory twice. It gets worse…the main backer of the new buyer Vinod Kholsa was the same guy behind Range Fuels.
The New York Times reported…”When the companies that supply motor fuel close the books on 2011, they will pay about $6.8 million in penalties to the Treasury because they failed to mix a special type of biofuel into their gasoline and diesel as required by law. But there was none to be had. Outside a handful of laboratories and workshops, the ingredient, cellulosic biofuel, does not exist.”
Refiners across the country are required by the Environmental Protection agency to blend in 6.6 million gallons into gasoline and diesel in 2011 and 8.65 million gallons this year. Once again… this fuel does not exist!
OUR GOVERNMENT IS FINING FUEL COMPANIES FOR NOT USING A FUEL THAT DOES NOT EXIST! In my book this is downright evil.
This idea was not born out of the Obama administration. President George W. Bush was the culprit behind this idiocy. He felt the future was biofuels and had Congress mandate the purchase of 250 million gallons in 2011, whereas the actual production was a mere 6.6 million gallons. President Bush’s fascination with biofuels is quite similar to Obama’s love of wind and solar. George W. Bush like Obama also showered the biofuel industry with useless subsidies and mandates. The moral of this story is this…
Right wing economic and social engineering is no different than left wing economic and social engineering. They are both put together by elites that think that they actually have power over the economy or human nature. They are both futile and always end up costing We The People a fortune.
Left Wing Mathematics and Econ 101
Representative Jesse Jackson Jr. (D) has an economic plan to solve all of our economic ills. This plan, believe it or not, does not involve shaking down any business utilizing the race card like his father has done for a living for decades. For only a mere $804 billion taxpayer dollars, he does not really specify where he will get the money from; (More than likely he would charge it on our Bank of China credit card and leave the bill for our kids,) we will be out of this lingering downturn and be back on easy street.
Jackson states that we can bail out the states, the cities, and hire every unemployed worker in the United States. Jackson wants President Obama to declare a national emergency call for full government employment of the 15 million unemployed. Jackson wants Obama to take “extra constitutional” action “administratively” without the approval of Congress to handle the unemployment crisis.
“I hope the president continues to exercise extraordinary constitutional means, based on the history of Congresses that have been in rebellion in the past. He’s looking administratively for ways to advance the causes of the American people, because this Congress is completely dysfunctional. On several occasions now we’ve seen the Congress is in rebellion, determined, as Abraham Lincoln said, to wreck or ruin at all costs. I believe in the direct hiring of 15 million unemployed Americans at $40,000 a head, some more than $40,000, some less than $40,000. That’s a $600 billion stimulus. It could be a five-year program. For another $104 billion, we bailout all of the states, for another $100 billion, we bailout all of the cities. I support the jobs plan. I support the president’s re-election. I support Barack Obama. But, at this hour, we need a plan that meets the size and scope of the problem to put American people back to work.”
I have heard some stupid bull excrement in my days following Wall Street and politics, but this could most certainly crack the top ten.
A couple of questions for Professor Jackson…
$40,000 for 15 million unemployed is $600 billion. However Professor that is for one year only. What happens next year? What about health and benefit costs? These will be government workers who actually have no job that will be sitting around for twelve months collecting a check. Don’t you think they might need health care for all that carpal-tunnel syndrome they will get playing X-Box? You mentioned that you thought this program should go on for five years. With benefit costs around 20% of salary, that puts the annual cost at $720 billion. For five years $3.6 trillion. Do you think the Chinese are going to float us $3.6 trillion to pay people to sit on their collective derrieres? After five years of X-Box where will these 15 million ex-government employees go and find gainful employment? How do you think sucking $3.6 trillion out of the private sector to pay for your plan will affect our economy? On the state and city bailouts…didn’t we already do that with the first stimulus package? Most municipalities, rather than make the necessary cuts and structural reforms necessary to make them viable used the money to keep business as usual. You want us to give them more? You think it is fair to force people who live in prudent municipalities to bailout profligate ones?
They Said What
“I simply do not know where the money is.” Former Senator/Governor/Goldman Sachs CEO/MF Global CEO Jon Corzine (D) commenting on his lack of knowledge in what happened to all of his client’s money.
“I don’t think ethics was my favorite subject.” President Obama, speaking to a group of high school students.
“I think we ought to suspend perhaps, elections for Congress for two years and just tell them we won’t hold it against them.” North Carolina Governor Bev Purdue (D)
“You are headed for a one-term presidency.” The late Steve Jobs telling President Obama that his administration needs to be more business-friendly. Jobs further tried to explain to Obama how much easier it was to do business and build factories overseas. “Regulations and unnecessary costs” make business difficult in the United States.
“We made all the right moves.” President Obama telling Steve Kroft of CBS about his record on the economy.
Roff Peter Failed Democrat Pol Sues Over Election Loss US News And World Report 10/24/11
Hudson Audrey Rep. Rosa DeLauro Pushes Bill That Gives Free Diapers to the Poor Human Events 10/19/11
Editors Connecticut To Celebrate Diaper Need Awareness Day Stamford Plus 10/26/11
Boyle Matthew EPA Regulations Would Require 230,000 New Employees, $21 Billion Daily Caller 9/26/11
Editors State Gets $5 Million Bonus For Food Stamp Sign Up Judicial Watch 9/29/11
Editors The Spenders Won 2011 Wall Street Journal 1/3/12
Hananel Sam Gov’t Paid $600 Million In Benefits To Dead People Associated Press 9/23/11
Domenech Benjamin Quarter-Billion Taxpayers Dollars Spent On Penis Pumps Heartlander Magazine 12/7/11
Weigner Mackenzie New Hotline For Busted Immigrants Politico 12/29/11
Dyer J.E. Navy Buys Biofuel For $16 a Gallon Hotair 11/12/11
Chapman Dan Georgia Ethanol Plant Sold, at Taxpayers Loss Atlanta Journal Constitution 1/4/12
Wald Matthew L. A Fine For Not Using A Biofuel That Doesn’t Exist New York Times 1/9/12
Editors The Cellulosic Ethanol Debacle Wall Street Journal 12/13/11
Morrissey Ed Let’s just Hire 15 Million Americans To Do Something Hot Air 10/13/11
