In case you’re filled with too much holiday cheer this Christmas season, the latest edition of Sen. Tom Coburn’s “Wastebook”, chronicling wasteful federal spending, is now available. You might just want to put an extra shot in the egg nog and take a look. The dollar amounts aren’t always shocking, but the blatant waste of taxpayers’ money is. The full report is below.

ULTIMATE FINAL-Wastebook2010December20final

In case you’re filled with too much holiday cheer this Christmas season, the latest edition of Sen. Tom Coburn’s “Wastebook”, chronicling wasteful federal spending, is now available. You might just want to put an extra shot in the egg nog and take a look. The dollar amounts aren’t always shocking, but the blatant waste of taxpayers’ money is. Number 2 on the list:

The city of Shreveport, Louisiana misspent $1.5 million in stimulus funds on mold remediation for a housing complex it was considering for demolition, according to a federal audit.

To obtain the stimulus money, the city‘s housing authority promised the federal government it would spend the money on improving a number of low-income homes it managed. Those projects included a mere $100,000 for combating mold and mildew at an apartment complex named Wilkinson Terrace.

More than ten months after awarding the grant to Shreveport, officials from the Department of Housing and Urban Development noticed the city had failed to spend most of the money. Under the rules of the stimulus, the money was to have been spent within one year. The agency reminded Shreveport that the funds needed to be put to work, or they would be rescinded.

In the span of a few weeks, Shreveport officials cut contracts worth over $1.5 million for mold remediation at Wilkinson Terrace – fifteen times what they told the feds they would spend, and much more than a site facing possible demolition likely deserved.

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In case you’re filled with too much holiday cheer this Christmas season, the latest edition of Sen. Tom Coburn’s “Wastebook”, chronicling wasteful federal spending, is now available. You might just want to spike the egg nog and take a look. The dollar amounts aren’t always shocking, but the blatant waste of taxpayers’ money is. Number 9 on the list:

Our nation currently faces many challenges; a shortage of poetry in our nation‘s zoos, however, is rarely cited as one of them. It is not widely viewed as an example of our nation‘s crumbling infrastructure or a contributor to our national economic crisis. Nor is it a dangerous disease in need of curing.

Nevertheless, a federal grant program has directed a million dollars from the public coffers to infuse zoos around the United States with snippets of poetry.

Hence, the Little Rock (Ark.) Zoo now touts a sign sharing a bit of wisdom from Hans Christian Andersen: ―Just living is not enough, said the butterfly. One must have sunshine, freedom and a little flower. Zoos in Chicago, New Orleans, Milwaukee, and Jacksonville, Florida, will also sport bits of poetry, thanks to the U.S. taxpayer.

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In case you’re filled with too much holiday cheer this Christmas season, the latest edition of Sen. Tom Coburn’s “Wastebook”, chronicling wasteful federal spending, is now available. You might just want to spike the egg nog and take a look. The dollar amounts aren’t always shocking, but the blatant waste of taxpayers’ money is. Number 12 on the list:

The Government Printing Office (GPO) is using a ―video game space mouse (and nearly $60,000 in taxpayer funds) to teach children the history of printing.

In September, the GPO released its first-ever comic book, ―Squeaks Discovers Type, in which Squeak the Space Mouse explores the history of the printed word, from cuneiform to the Internet age, and explains ―why printing is important.

The opening page features a school boy grumbling about the report he was assigned on the invention of printing, leading the superhero rodent to exclaim, ―He thinks printing is boring! This is a job for Squeaks!

Anticipating high demand, the office printed 5,500 copies of the title.

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In case you’re filled with too much holiday cheer this Christmas season, the latest edition of Sen. Tom Coburn’s “Wastebook”, chronicling wasteful federal spending, is now available. You might just want to spike the egg nog and take a look. The dollar amounts aren’t always shocking, but the blatant waste of taxpayers’ money is. Number 18 on the list:

A ranch house in a closed park that has been unused for a decade has received $440,000107 for green energy upgrades.

The 345-acre Gibson Ranch Park, where the ranch house is located, was partially closed due to budget and staff cuts109 in 2009 and is currently closed to the public while county officials develop a long-term plan to keep the park open.

The new funds are from a federal Energy Efficiency Block Grant program and will pay for new windows, HVAC system, lighting and roofing.

Some have called the project a misuse of money, including Lisa Morris of the neighboring Rio Linda and Elverta Recreation and Park District.112 Another local horse owner who uses the park stables called the money ―squandered.

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Quantitative Easing at Least Modestly Successful: Bullard
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If you’re going to be required to pay for something, common sense would say that you should have the right to know how much it costs, right? After all, no one likes surprises—especially if those surprises cost trillions and you, your children and your children’s children are likely going to have to pay for it for decades to come.

Yet, there are those who seem to think that the American taxpayers will forever just keep shoveling our money into the furnace of bailing out banks, car companies, and union pensions funds. Moreover, these same putrid people (be they bureaucrats, bankers, or union bosses) seem to think that, if they hide the truth from the the American taxpayer, we will just blindly and willingly keep bailing out failure. Have they learned nothing over these past two years?

The Ticking Time Bomb

On Saturday, three examples were given of the public pension Ponzi scheme that is beginning to unravel. In one case (Central Fall, RI), the costs have put a city into financial ruin. In Chicago, Mayor Daley is openly talking about reorganizing the city’s pension through bankruptcy. Then , of course, there’s California and newly retread governor Jerry Brown and the 30-year old legacy of union domination in the tarnished Golden State.

However, just so you know that Saturday’s three examples are not mere isolated incidents, you might want to know the following:

• In 2011 70% of Decator, Illinois’ property taxes will go to fund union pensions (h/t anacreon)
• Illinois, as a state, has $54.4 billion in unfunded liabilities
• New Jerseyans owe their public pension plans up to $173.9 billion and it was discovered the Democrat-run state allegedly defrauded investors without disclosing the debt as bonds were sold from 2001 through 2007
• New York State may have $120 billion in unfunded pension debt
• New York City, on the other hand, may have had up to $76 billion in unfunded liability before 2008’s market slump
• The City of Philadelphia’s public pension plan is nearly $5 billion underfunded
• Oklahoma has $12 billion in unfunded pension liabilities
• Colorado has $16.8 billion in unfunded pension liabilities
• …And the list goes on and on…

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This is but the latest in Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Julius Genachowski’s ongoing terrible interpretation of his self-appointed role as Captain Transparency.

As we have much discussed, the FCC has decided to power grab Internet authority on December 21^st.  The Commission must seize said authority because it does not have it unless and until Congress writes a law saying so – which The Chairman himself admits Congress has not done.

The Chairman will do so via a three unelected bureaucrat Democrat Party-line vote (that’s counting him).  He intends to do so under cover of Christmas – slamming it through less than 96 hours before the Big Day.

The Chairman will do so by writing (and rewriting, and rewriting some more, and rewriting again) an 80-plus page “order” – which sounds an awful lot like he’s appropriating Congress’ job and writing law.  (Because, again, Congress has never written a law that allows him to do this.)  He is in perpetual revision mode to continue to capitulate to the demands – and induce the vote – of the FCC’s most Leftist member – Commissioner Michael Copps – driving this Web takeover to the outer limits of illegal usurpation.

The Chairman will do so without a new Public Comment period on this (law and) order.  A new Public Comment period would be most appropriate given the continuing newness and dramatic scope of the Internet control he is writing and voting for himself.  (The Internet is now 1/6^th of our nation’s entire economy – and [for now] growing.)

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Yesterday, the U.S. Senate bowed to the inevitable and repealed President Clinton’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. No doubt there will be legal complications and unintended consequences, but Clinton’s policy was a bit of an anachronism, especially in time of war.

The mainstream media has treated accusations of large-scale fraud in the Pigford settlement with overt skepticism and a distinct lack of journalistic curiosity. The press has blindly repeated the Obama Administration’s claim that there are only a handful of fraud cases among the twenty thousand or so paid Pigford claims.  Worse, the media has helped promote the narrative that those raising concerns about fraud in Pigford are racist.

You’re about to watch a video clip where Othello Cross, an attorney for Pigford claimants with about fifteen years of experience on the case, admits that he is personally aware of hundreds of cases of fraud in the state of Arkansas alone. Furthermore, he explains how easy it was to commit that fraud and receive a $50,000 check from the government; it’s appropriate to deduce from Cross’s revealing statement that the actual number of fraudulent claims is likely much higher than the hundreds he knows about.

You’re about to watch this clip for the first time, but the USDA watched it over a week ago — I sent it to them for comment about 10 days ago.

After a number of phone calls to the USDA, I was given the response that Secretary Vilsack now acknowledges around ten cases of fraud, up from his original statement that there are only three known cases. If I were inclined to spin the government’s response, I’d praise the USDA for finding 300% more instances of fraud in just a few days, but the reality is that the USDA can watch a video where a pro-Pigford claimant lawyer says in no uncertain terms that he knows about hundreds of cases of fraud — over ten million dollars worth at bare minimum — and still will only acknowledge ten cases.

As Andrew Breitbart points out, the media simply doesn’t want to cover Pigford. I also sent this video to a few major media outlets that stated they wanted to “research” this. I haven’t heard back from any of them. (more…)

Both left media and right media are afraid to report the Pigford story.

Those on the left are fearful that BigGovernment.com’s reporting is true – and our biggest detractors are conspicuously silent since we launched our report two weeks ago.

And the right media is fearful of the story because of race.

So far Rep. Steve King is already proving that to discuss Pigford on TV means having to deal with unfounded knee-jerk accusations of racism. First King was swarmed by the left-wing word police for using the word “urban” when describing Pigford legislative champion then Sen. Obama (D-Ill.).

Spend five minutes investigating Pigford the words “urban” and “rural” are integral to report the story.

Then Rep. King was castigated by Anderson Cooper on CNN for using the word “reparations.”

In fact, most of the key Pigford advocates not only use the word “reparations,” but Pigford has been sold to claimants as “reparations,” even at yearly “reparations conventions.”

Accepting the premise that “reparations” was the context that churchgoing folk were rounded up to sign up for Pigford by glorified carnival barkers, who illegally financially profited by signing up prospective claimants for $100 per person per year, will go a long way to explain why so many non-farmers signed up to get a piece of the action. They were fraudulently induced into the Pigford class and, in essence, signed off without reading like many of us do when signing a Blockbuster Video user agreement.

But so far the media has not only been cowed not to dig deeper into Pigford by those who would be exposed as billion dollar fraudsters, the media has been doing some of the heaviest lifting, as evidenced by Cooper’s attack on Rep. King opposite John Boyd, president of the National Black Farmer Association (NBFA).

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Anne C. Heller’s critically acclaimed and best-selling 2009 book, Ayn Rand and the World She Made, is new in paperback (we’re tempted to say that it makes a great Christmas gift, though it’s clear that Rand didn’t believe in the holiday or the altruism that attaches to it!).

Reason’s Nick Gillespie talks with Heller about Rand, whom the biographer says remains the great explicator of capitalism’s virtues and remarkably undervalued by the literary establishment.

“How many novelists of ideas do we have in post-war America?” asks Heller, who says the most surprising thing she learned about Rand during her research was her fearfulness. From double-locking doors to wearing heavy rubber gloves while washing dishes to avoid germs, Heller argues that Rand bore the scars of a Jewish childhood spent in the virulently anti-Semitic confines of czarist Russia and the fledgling Soviet Union.

As Gillespie noted in his review of Ayn Rand and the World She Made and Jennifer Burns’ Goddess of the Market, Heller’s biography is a rich, sympathetic treatment of a major cultural figure that simultaneously analyzes and humanizes Rand’s major, continuing influence on 20th- and 21st-century America.

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From Michael Barone’s in the Washington Examiner:

It is a source of continuing fascination for me to watch the interaction between public opinion, as measured in polls and election results, and the actions of members of Congress, elected in one political environment and looking in most cases to be re-elected in one that may be quite different.

Eleven months ago, after the Massachusetts Senate election, I was convinced that Democrats could not jam their health care bill through because voters had so clearly demanded they not do so. But Pelosi proved more determined and resourceful than I had imagined, and found enough House Democrats who were willing to risk electoral defeat to achieve what Democrats proclaimed was an historic accomplishment.

Pelosi and Obama predicted that Obamacare would become more popular as voters learned more about it. Those predictions were based on the theory that in times of economic distress Americans would be more supportive of or amenable to big government policies.

That theory has been disproved about as conclusively as any theory can be in the real world, and most of the Democrats who provided the key votes for Obamacare were defeated on Election Day.

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Next month the Republican National Committee will elect a chairman to lead their party into the 2012 presidential election.

Current chairman Michael Steele, who has been a source of controversy throughout his two year tenure, is being challenged by a number of candidates.

Many Republicans are unhappy with Steele’s leadership style and management. But despite the relevance of these concerns, they should not be the central issue.

Of central concern should be crystallizing the Republican Party’s vision for our nation and electing a chairman in tune with this vision, committed to it, and capable of rallying the party and the nation around it.

Despite the sweeping Republican victory in the 2010 congressional elections, there’s little evidence that the election reflected a new love affair between voters and the Republican Party. Much work remains to be done to restore party credibility.

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Today, in 1777, the Continental Army went into winter’s quarters at Valley Forge, PA.

The hopes and dreams of conservatives around the nation came to fruition, at least partially, on Monday as President Obama’s healthcare bill finally found resistance from the judicial branch. With another lawsuit backed by twenty states hitting the docket, Obamacare is no longer looking unstoppable. It will ultimately be heading to the Supreme Court where conservative appointees outnumber liberals by a slim 5-4 margin.

Does this mean that we can expect to see Obamacare on the trash heap of failed legislation in the near future? I believe it does. The political groundswell that has been growing in the conservative ranks has Democrats running for the bipartisan cooperation, they abandoned when Obama came into office.

If Obama’s reach across the aisle last week to strike a deal with Republicans on tax cuts is any indication, the next two years could be very interesting indeed. Obama now seems to understand what is at stake: he is fighting not only for political capital and his (failed) platform, but also for his legacy. If his presidency ended today, he would be remembered for failing to live up to his outlandish campaign promises, while burdening us, the American taxpayers, with trillions of dollars of debt, faster and greater than all presidents before him….combined!

Many conservatives are doing one of two things right now: gloating about the possible repeal of Obamacare or calling Obama weak for reaching across the aisle. I will do neither; instead I’m concerned about what this means for the next two years.

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On a historic night this past Thursday, a new Tea Party Republican Congress completely transformed U.S. economic policy. Elections matter, and so do their ideas. Smaller government, low taxes, and less spending were key election themes in the Republican landslide. And those themes triumphed this week as a large tax-cut bill finally passed the House and a monstrosity of a spending bill was defeated in the Senate.

In one fell swoop, Obamanomics is out the window. Reaganomics 2.0 is now in the driver’s seat.

Perhaps the most amazing part of the story was the work of Mitch McConnell and John McCain (among others) to kill the 2,000-page, $1.2 trillion omnibus spending bill in the Senate, along with its 6,600 earmarks totaling $8 billion. This budget monster dripped with contempt for voters and taxpayers. But business as usual was overturned.

I had an inkling of this when Sen. McCain told me in a CNBC interview earlier that night that, if need be, he would favor a government shutdown over passage of the spending bill. And now, under a short-term continuing resolution, the whole current-services budget baseline can be lowered by anchoring it to 2008 spending.

Hundreds of billions of dollars can be saved, producing a smaller government that will be, in effect, a tax cut for the private economy. And the symbolism of overturning massive spending only two years after Obama’s debt-laden stimulus package is enormously important.

Of course, the tax deal is far from perfect. But low tax rates will be preserved for personal incomes, capital gains, dividends, and estates. This is pro-growth and pro-capital formation, and it’s a confidence builder, too.

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From AFP:

The US Senate on Saturday blocked a White House-backed bill to offer a path to citizenship to young undocumented immigrants who attend college or enroll in the military.

Lawmakers voted 55-41, largely along party lines, to end debate on the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, falling short of the 60 needed to do so and effectively killing the legislation.

Some of President Barack Obama’s Democratic allies sided with most Republicans to defeat the measure, which opponents had charged amounted to amnesty.

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