Happy Halloween!

Last night, BigGovernment.com Editor in Chief Mike Flynn discussed government spending on the “Kudlow Report” with Jeremy Anwy of Edmunds.com and Joe Weisenthall of Clusterstock.com.

(more…)

From the Calbuzz Blog:

The stunning news that a spokesman for Attorney General Jerry Brown secretly taped a conversation with SF Chronicle reporter Carla Marinucci, admitting that this something he did routinely, leaves Brown with one and only option: fire the flack immediately.

The paper reported Friday that Brown press spokesman Scott Gerber acknowledged taping the call, apparently in direct violation of California Penal Code Section 632, which says that conversations may not be taped without notice to all parties.

Dick Nixon must be rolling over in his grave.

(more…)

All 40 Republican Senators signed a letter yesterday demanding to see the health care bill Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) sent to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).  Reid claimed he submitted the legislation for a CBO score on Monday.  The letter from the Republican Caucus states that “our national debt stands at nearly $12 trillion, with a deficit of $1.4 trillion. The health care bill will likely be more than 1,000 pages long and is the single most important legislation we will consider and debate this year in Congress.”   It is six days after Senator Reid said he sent the bill to the CBO.  Where is the bill?  Is this another Vapor Bill?  Why are the American people prevented from reading the bill?

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) released an almost 2,000 pages of Obamacare, yet Reid refuses to release the Senate version of Obamacare.  The Senators wrote that “with an issue this large and complex, we need full transparency at every stage in the legislative process. President Obama was elected, in part, on his promise to bring greater transparency to the workings of the federal government. The American people and every member of Congress should be allowed to read the bill that was sent to CBO.”  The American people have a constitutional right to participate in this process and they can’t fully participate if they are not allowed to know the details of the bill.

(more…)

On Wednesday, Boeing announced it would put a second 787 assembly line in Charleston, S.C., rather than Everett, WA.

Union leaders and politicians like Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., expressed shock, dismay and outrage at the company’s decision.

Either they are feigning surprise, or they’ve been comatose for the last decade. Your guess is as good as mine.

For years, politicians and labor leaders in Washington have ignored Boeing’s pleas to stay competitive. In 2002, Boeing CEO Alan Mulally told the State House Labor Committee that “the state of Washington is not competitive. . . . meaning it costs us more to operate [here].” He specifically pointed to Washington’s costly workers’ compensation system, which requires employers to purchase insurance coverage from the state or be on the hook to cover all claims costs themselves, rather than allowing them to choose from among competing private providers. As a result, Washington collects some of the highest premiums from employers and injured worker rates are well above the national average.

(more…)

Happy Halloween!

Yeah, we thought it was pretty scary too…

From the Washington Post:

Breitbart wins following Web sites provide outlet to the right

By Perry Bacon Jr.
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, October 31, 2009

Andrew Breitbart blew into Washington recently for what amounted to a victory lap.                             

The Internet entrepreneur spent last week soaking up accolades from conservatives for having offered guidance to the two twenty-somethings who posed as a pimp and prostitute and took a hidden camera into several ACORN offices. The pair filmed workers from the national liberal community group appearing to aid them as they inquired about starting a brothel — a move that has put ACORN on the defensive and made the activists, James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles, instant conservative heroes.

But in the end it’s Breitbart who may be the biggest winner.

It was the 40-year-old Breitbart who masterminded the strategy of releasing the videos one at a time on his Web site, Big Government, as a way of maximizing exposure of the campaign against ACORN. And it is Breitbart who is being heralded as the conservative movement’s new Web wizard and the answer to liberal sites such as the Huffington Post and Talking Points. (more…)

California sculpture competition paid for with a Federal Transportation Enhancement Activity grant

A top FEMA official admitted there is no way to assess the effectiveness of homeland security improvements made from the $29 billion spent since 2002

Homeland Security funds spent on a equipment that was never used and probably will be never needed

$1.5 million federal grant will pay to renovate a train station which hasn’t been used in three decades and may never be used again

A $78,280 federal Transportation Enhancement Grant paying to relocate and renovate a caboose not used in decades

Department of Commerce pays to send Ohio Chamber of Commerce members on a two week junket to China

$500,000 in federal funds expected to pay for a party to celebrate St. Augustine’s 450th birthday

The National Park Service will spend more than $300,000 to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Blue Ridge Parkway

KPMG has released its annual global survey of corporate tax systems. For the 10th-consecutive year, the average corporate tax rate fell, and it is now down to 25.5 percent (just 23.2 percent in the European Union!).

In the United States, unfortunately, the corporate tax rates remains stuck at about 40 percent. Only one developed nation, Japan, has a more punitive regime.

Something to keep in mind the next time a politician complains that jobs are going to China (corporate tax rate of 25 percent).

(more…)

The health care bill recently unveiled by Speaker Nancy Pelosi is over 1,900 pages for a reason. It is much easier to dispense goodies to favored interest groups if they are surrounded by a lot of legislative legalese. For example, check out this juicy morsel to the trial lawyers (page 1431-1433 of the bill):

Section 2531, entitled “Medical Liability Alternatives,” establishes an incentive program for states to adopt and implement alternatives to medical liability litigation. [But]…… a state is not eligible for the incentive payments if that state puts a law on the books that limits attorneys’ fees or imposes caps on damages.

So, you can’t try to seek alternatives to lawsuits if you’ve actually done something to implement alternatives to lawsuits. Brilliant! The trial lawyers must be very happy today! (more…)

Alan Grayson.  How did this clown get elected?  Even Democrats are asking themselves that.

The man who delighted in claiming Republicans want the sick to die to save the taxpayers money, was so proud of his obnoxiousness that he started a website to celebrate himself, www.congressmanwithguts.com.

No sooner did his self promotion tour get off the ground before his mouth got some more attention, calling one of Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke’s aids a “K Street whore.”  After 24 hours of defending the outrageously out-of-bounds slur, and after pretty candid criticism from his fellow Democrats, Mr. Manners finally apologized.

(more…)

Yesterday, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other House Democrats unveiled H.R. 3962, their latest version of the health care legislation that’s been hotly debated for months in Congress and across the country. (Read it here.) 

One thing is clear. Your concerns about a government takeover of health care have been totally ignored by Speaker Pelosi and her allies, who worked behind closed doors to write this bill. After months of debate, the bill they introduced today is essentially the same bill the American people have already flat-out rejected. 

Government-run insurance? Still in the bill. Higher taxes? You betcha. An individual mandate that restricts choices and innovation by requiring Washington to define what qualifies as health insurance? Check. A job-killing employer mandate, a budget-busting expansion of the Medicaid entitlement, and countless provisions that set Washington bureaucrats firmly between you and your doctor? Better believe it.

(more…)

We should be happy. The Bureau of Labor Statistics announced a 3.5 percent growth in this year 3rd quarter. Yet, most of us aren’t. At least I know I am not. Why? Because I have no faith in the numbers.

First, the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) numbers include government spending. So, when the government pumps thousands of billions of dollars into the economy it will look as if GDP is growing.

What’s more, the way the GDP accounts for government spending is totally biased: It assumes that if the government is spending $200,000 on a contractor to repave a road in the middle of nowhere that it will create $200,000 of genuine economic value.  By contrast, GDP measures are tougher on private-sector spending. As my George Mason university colleague Garett Jones explained to me recently “So if Exxon Mobil pays an engineer $200,000 per year, that only shows up in GDP if the engineer finds an extra $200,000 of oil to sell, or builds a new machine that sells for $200,000, something like that.  So our GDP measures of “government spending” are awful–and when the government is in a race to spend money as quickly as possible, these measures are going to be even worse than usual.”

(more…)

[Editor: Big Government's news partner, Washington News Observer, caught up yesterday with GOP Leader John Boehner. We welcome WNO to the Big Government team and look forward to future news reports and interviews.]

As mentioned earlier (here ), the financial crisis was fueled by the government’s obsession with home ownership. Yet, last year the Bush administration decided that it was wise to continue to encourage people to buy houses that they couldn’t afford. That’s why it came up with a refundable tax credit, worth up to $8,000 for the purchase of a first home.  Refundable tax credit means that the claimants will get cash back even if they paid no taxes.  The low level of documentation required to get your credit makes it also a low hanging fruit for potential scammers. Is anyone surprised?

“The Treasury’s inspector general for tax administration, J. Russell George, recently told Congress that at least 19,000 filers hadn’t purchased a home when they claimed the credit. For another 74,000 filers, claiming a total of $500 million in credits, evidence suggests that they weren’t first-time buyers.

(more…)

Recently, Michelle Malkin reported on a scandal brewing in President Obama’s other party, the Working Families Party.

The Working Families Party, an ACORN front group whose ballot line Newt Gingrich-endorsed radical leftist Dede Scozzafava has embraced on multiple occasions, is up to no good again.

And now, Big Government is reporting on the birth of a new website entitled Nutbusterz, devoted to aggregating all of the scandal coverage of the working Families Party.

Nutbusterz will serve serve as a clearinghouse for media coverage of the illegal activities of ACORN. Media reports on ACORN and the New York Working Families Party (WFP) will be updated daily. Candidates and causes that ally themselves with ACORN will be exposed and held to account.

We would like to point all interested parties toward a series of articles which warrant consideration for inclusion at Nutbusterz, written by a local NY publication called City Hall.

(more…)

THESE are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.

– Thomas Paine, The Crisis, December 23, 1776

For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to royal position for such a time as this?”

– Esther 4:14

These are interesting times. Under President Obama and the most liberal Congress since 1965, the United States government is expected to borrow a trillion dollars per year for the next decade while the size and power of our federal government will grow at the expense of our liberties. 

(more…)

On Thursday, the United States House of Representatives passed a continuing resolution funding the Federal Government through December 18^th.  The continuing resolution was passed as part of the behemoth Interior-Environment Appropriations conference report.

A continuing resolution is a stop-gap provision which allows the government to continue its operations until Congress can determine the next year’s appropriations.  The actions taken today merely extended the expiration date of the resolution which went into effect on October 1^st.

By extending the existing continuing resolution Congress has continued to deprive ACORN and its affiliates of federal funds until December 18^th.

(more…)

The Tea Party movement has been quiet since the September 12 massive rallies in Washington, Quincy, Dallas, and elsewhere.  Paul Krugman was so bold as to write on October 26, “the tea baggers have come and gone.”  On the same day, CBS News blogger Charles Cooper asked rhetorically, “Did the Tea Partiers Party Too Soon?”  The message from the White House talking points memo was clear:  that annoying fit of folksy patriotic crap is over, and we in the political class can get back to the business of tyranny.