Fear the sweater vest!

So much for Governor Mitch Daniels’ “truce” on social issues. Rick Santorum refused to raise the white flag on his principles and charged ahead. Tonight he celebrates a trifecta victory in Missouri, Minnesota, and Colorado, all but shattering the myth of Romney’s inevitable cruise to victory in the presidential primary.

I’ll admit it. I didn’t see it coming. To be sure, this victory comes with caveats, as I wrote here. Santorum picked up only five delegates tonight and has 22 delegates to Romney’s 106, but it’s a move in the right direction. (The delegate count is here.)

But Santorum understands something that few of the other candidates can put into words: that the power to mandate is the power to compel and compulsion must be grounded on something higher than the mere will of the sovereign. This is a very effective argument against Barack Obama, but it it also a very effective one against Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, who also supported the Wall Street bailouts, cap and trade (taxing breathing) and of course, the individual mandate in health insurance. Both Gingrich and Romney are essentially progressives in their view that there is nothing government mustn’t do.

(more…)

The Washington Post has completed an extensive study of earmarks–the process of slipping pet spending projects into bills–for all 535 members of Congress and has concluded that Rep. Nancy Pelosi added $50 million in earmarks for a light-rail project that runs near a four-story commercial building she and her husband own.

The Post says the revelation was uncovered by Breitbart editor Peter Schweizer’s blockbuster bestseller, Throw Them All Out:

Over the past decade, the House minority leader helped secure $50 million in earmarks toward a light-rail project that provides direct access to San Francisco’s Union Square and Chinatown for neighborhoods south of Market Street. Pelosi’s husband owns a four-story commercial building blocks from Union Square. These earmarks were reported in the book “Throw Them All Out.” A Pelosi spokesman said the project was requested by community leaders and that the new stations on the line will be farther away from the building than those on the existing line.

In response, Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s spokesperson, Drew Hammill, had this to say:

(more…)

Borrowing a page from Breitbart editor Peter Schweizer’s investigation of how elected officials funnel taxpayer dollars to projects that increase the value of properties they own, the Washington Post has conducted a study revealing that 33 members of Congress earmarked more than $300 million for projects within two miles of land they own.

After analyzing the holdings of all 535 members of Congress and comparing them to their earmarks for pet projects since 2008, the Washington Post found numerous eye-opening instances of potential self-enrichment at taxpayers’ expense, including:

• Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS): obtained a $900,000 earmark to resurface roads where he and his daughter own two homes.  “I didn’t say, ‘Do the street that I live on,” Rep. Thompson protested when the Washington Post confronted him.  “The earmark went to the county.  It had no designation on it whatsoever, and that was it.”
• Rep. Roscoe G. Bartlett (R-MD): secured approximately $4.5 million for an interstate interchange that leads to Rep. Bartlett’s home, his 104-acre farm, and rental properties that earn him $150,000 annually.  “He was being an advocate for what was presented to him as the highest priority,” the congressman’s press secretary Lisa Wright said.  “Coincidentally, this was around two miles from his farm.”
• Rep. Ruben Hinojosa (D-TX): bagged $665,000 in taxpayer funds to expand a road 600 feet away from his family’s food processing plant, H&H Foods.  “It helps everybody,” Rep. Hinojosa told the Washington Post.  “The only way it made sense to handle this tremendous population growth and avoid problems for the school buses that go through that intersection was to widen it.”
• Rep. Doc Hastings (R-WA): scored $750,000 for a new bridge three blocks away from a 7,000-square-foot building he and his wife own as well as Columbia Basin Paper & Supply, a janitorial supply company he previously owned that is now run by his brother.  “It never crossed my mind,” Rep. Hastings told the Washington Post.  “Every business in Pasco will benefit by that.”
• Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-MA): landed a $187,000 earmark to replenish a shoreline 90 miles away from his home district near a beach that, coincidentally, he and his wife own two condominiums by that generate $15,000 in rental income.  Rep. Ruppersberger said questioning the proximity of his properties to the project was “ridiculous.”  “That’s a stretch to say that thing’s going to benefit me.”
• Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA): secured $6.3 million to replenish a beach 900 feet away from a $142,900 cottage he owns.  “It’s absurd to suggest that this benefits me,” Kingston protested to the reporters.  “The beach doesn’t improve the real estate of a house, unless it’s on the beach.  The only thing that changes in value is the beachfront property.”
• Rep. John W. Olver (D-MA): obtained $5.1 million in earmarks to restructure a road 209 feet from Rep. Olver’s 15-acre home and several adjoining properties he and his wife own.  “I had no monetary interest whatsoever in this project,” Rep. Olver said.  “I had nothing to with the design.  I was never notified of any of the hearings.  I had no involvement whatsoever.”
• Rep. Candice S. Miller (R-MI): obtained a $486,000 earmark that helped add a 14-foot bike lane within walking distance of her house.  “People earmark for all kinds of things,” Rep. Miller said when asked about the project.  “I’m pretty proud of this; I think I did what my people wanted.  Should I have told them, ‘We can never have this bike path complete because I happen to live by one section of it’?  They would have thrown me out of office.”
• Rep. Harold Rogers (R-KY): secured $7 million in earmarks, a portion of which went to overhaul streets around the corner from a bank where he is director emeritus and owns a $1-$5 million stake in the bank’s holding company and also narrowed the street he lives on to slow traffic.  “Congressman Rogers sees no conflict of interest in helping local community leaders achieve their goals for growth,” the congressman’s chief of staff Michael R. Higdon told the Washington Post.

The Washington Post report also concluded that 16 members of Congress directed taxpayer dollars to “companies, colleges, or community programs where their spouses, children or parents work as salaried employees or serve on boards.”

The practice of earmarks continues to be a source of angst for conservatives and citizens concerned with out-of-control federal spending.  In 2010, a record high 11,230 earmarks accounted for $32 billion in federal spending.

Charles Sykes is a longtime Milwaukee talk-radio host and the prolific author of a number of books that helped to shape my personal political worldview, including 1988’s eye-opening “Profscam,” and 1993’s “A Nation of Victims,’ two works as timely today as they were decades ago.

“A Nation of Moochers: America’s Addiction to Getting Something for Nothing” (St. Martin’s Press) was just released, and the fact that I’m writing this at the very moment President Barack Obama is announcing yet another government plan (his fourth, I think) to “bail out” those “victims” who bought homes they couldn’t afford, makes this informative and engaging page-turner feel about as urgent and timely as any author could hope for.

What you need to know up front is that “Moochers” isn’t an attack on the poor or needy or, for that matter, a specific political party. In fact, from beginning to end, Sykes makes clear that as a country we have an obligation to feed the hungry and offer shelter to the homeless. Moreover, he isn’t even targeting a particular group, which would be impossible without a sawed-off shotgun anyway, because America’s moochers come from every level of our society.

What Sykes is targeting is a mentality, a dangerous and un-American mentality that infects almost every aspect of our culture, and one that is currently being bred into our children by those on both the left and right who are empowered by fomenting and excusing the dependence, greed, and selfishness of others. From corporate welfare to school lunches for the well-to-do to Wall Street bailouts to paying millionaires not to grow crops to tax breaks for Hollywood gajillionires to unending unemployment benefits to disaster relief for those who haven’t suffered disasters to TARP, and finally, to the shameless who walk away from mortgages they can afford to pay — what Sykes is exposing is that we are on the march to becoming Greece. Not just a European welfare state, but the kind of welfare state where the populace has been engineered by a nanny state to riot at the very thought of not being able to mooch the life to which they have become accustomed.

(more…)

I wouldn’t say its been a well kept secret, but Santorum’s previous level of obscurity for  the GOP nomination prevented his legacy of earmarks from getting its due mention.  Senator Santorum’s career in Congress was during the heyday of big government conservatism.

I once wrote a spending bill thiiis big.

With GOP colleagues like Tom Delay and Dennis Hastert, Rick Santorum was very much apart of that infamous class. For Delay, he was then ,just as he is now, an outspoken supporter of earmarks. When the new GOP class promised to curb earmark spending, Delay was quick to voice his opposition.

“I am not one of those guys. The purse strings belong to the House of Representatives, and earmarks are one of the ways to keep the executive-branch honest,” DeLay said. “Why would you give up your responsibility and your authority to the executive branch?”

As for Dennis Hastert, the former longest serving speaker in Republican history left a long legacy of earmarks and questionable deals (but not illegal from Congress’s exemption to insider trading laws) that netted both him and his associates major profits. The story goes that Hastert owned some land that was of minimal worth, so he used appropriated funds stuffed inside a transportation bill that funded a highway project near the property. The new access road caused the value to increase. Hastert then later sold the property for a substantial profit, clearing $2 million. That seems easier than bending down to pick up a quarter on a sidewalk.

These were the dark days of “compassionate” conservatism, where wild discretionary spending was available for anyone in Congress with a pen. For Rick Santorum, he used his pen towards the sum of at least $1 billion in pork-barrel projects.

(more…)

We last week passed the $15 trillion national debt mark.  It continues hurtling upward, almost completely unabated.

We the People did our job and then some in the historic 2010 election, delivering more than 70 new Republicans to the Congress – on their promises to rein in out-of-control Washington spending.

We sent these folks to D.C. in large part to prohibit President Barack Obama and his Democrats from continuing to explode the budget – and the deficits and debt along with it – the way they had when exclusively in the Majority in 2009 and 2010.

So when President Obama campaigns asking for reelection and more D.C. Democrats – to undo this “do nothing” Congress – remember that stopping Obama and his Party colleagues was what We the People elected these “do-nothings” to do.

Serving as an impediment (modest though it may be) to the Democrat fiscal train wreck is, in fact, doing something.

(more…)

Despite all the talk of fixing it, California’s budget is still a mess. One of those “fixes” was implemented last summer when the state Legislature increased revenue projections by $4 billion to avoid balancing the budget. Of course, the problem with using such “phantom money” is that it often has a habit of disappearing when you need it most. And it has disappeared just when money for schools is needed. Now deep cuts are on the table. The people lose again.

Naturally the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office recently reported that the state will receive virtually none of the $4 billion in projected revenue, forcing the state to make some tough decisions in the coming weeks. On the table are major cuts to the education budget, including shortening the school year by a week, not to mention cuts to in-home healthcare programs, and programs for people with developmental disabilities.

Obviously Californian’s budget needs all the help it can get but it looks like it’s business as usual in Sacramento. For instance, an upcoming ballot measure sponsored by a career politician would baffle anyone that truly understands the mess California is in. The so-called California Cancer Research Act coming before voters in June, asks California voters to raise taxes by nearly $1 billion for a whole new perpetual bureaucracy. That is unacceptable to voters. Maddeningly this new program doesn’t even guarantee that the money will be spent in the state! Apparently former state Sen. Pro Tem Don Perata, the career politician pushing the measure, thinks Californians who already paying some of the highest taxes in the nation should reach deeper into their pockets just to potentially send that money across state lines to benefit others. And all the while the budget for the education for those same taxpayer’s kids is about to be slashed.

So, what is the “solution” proposed by Democrats in Sacramento? Raise taxes, of course.

(more…)

At least ten members of President Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign finance committee, plus more than a dozen of his campaign bundlers, benefited from sweetheart loans through the Department of Energy (DOE) that collectively dwarfed those given to Solyndra and Fisker.

Investigative journalist Peter Schweizer, who is also a Breitbart editor, reveals the full extent of the DOE scandal in his explosive new book, Throw Them All Out. The book is featured in this week’s Newsweek, and was the subject of 60 Minutes this past Sunday, Nov. 13.

Schweizer’s research reveals that of the $20.5 billion in the DOE’s 1705 Loan Guarantee Program, $16.4 billion in taxpayer money–roughly 80% of all loans in the program–went to green enterprises “either run by or heavily owned by Obama financial backers–individuals who were either bundlers, members of Obama’s national finance committee or large donors to the Democratic Party.”

In 2009, President Obama had promised that the allocation of all federal stimulus monies would be nonpartisan, ethical, and fair. “Let me repeat that: Decisions about how Recovery money will be spent will be based on the merits. They will not be made as a way of doing favors for lobbyists,” Obama said.

However, Schweizer alleges, the Obama administration may be guilty of “the greatest–and most expensive–example of crony capitalism in American history.” (more…)

President John F. Kennedy’s nephew, Robert Kennedy, Jr., netted a $1.4 billion bailout for his company, BrightSource, through a loan guarantee issued by a former employee-turned Department of Energy official.

It’s just one more in a string of eye-opening revelations by investigative journalist and Breitbart editor Peter Schweizer in his explosive new book, Throw Them All Out.

The details of how BrightSource managed to land its ten-figure taxpayer bailout have yet to emerge fully. However, one clue might be found in the person of Sanjay Wagle.

Wagle was one of the principals in Kennedy’s firm who raised money for Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. When Obama won the White House, Wagle was installed at the Department of Energy (DOE), advising on energy grants.

From an objective vantage point, investing taxpayer monies in BrightSource was a risky proposition at the time. In 2010, BrightSource, whose largest shareholder is Kennedy’s VantagePoint Partners, was up to its eyes in $1.8 billion of debt obligations and had lost $71.6 million on its paltry $13.5 million of revenue.

Even before BrightSource rattled its tin cup in front of Obama’s DOE, the company made it known publicly that its survival hinged on successfully completing the Ivanpah Solar Electrical System, which would become the largest solar plant in the world, on federal lands in California. (more…)

With a new congressional insider trading scandal unfolding in Washington, another name has been added to the hit parade:  U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA).

In the new blockbuster tell-all Throw Them All Out, investigative reporter and Breitbart editor Peter Schweizer reveals that on November 18, 2009, Sen. Feinstein and her husband invested $1 million into Amyris Biotechnologies, a “green” company focused on plant-based renewable fuels and chemicals. The Feinsteins’ million-dollar investment was their only stock transaction for the entire year.

Feinstein, however, had good reason to feel that all her investment eggs were secure in the biotech basket, because just weeks after her seven-figure investment in Amyris, the company scored a $24 million grant from the Department of Energy (DOE) to build a pilot plant where altered yeast would turn sugar into hydrocarbons.

The company went public the following year with an IPO that raked in $85 million. Currently, it’s unclear exactly how much money Senator Feinstein and her husband made off their investment, “but it’s safe to assume that they did well,” concludes Schweizer. (more…)

Reuters recently offered an apologetic profile on Solyndra figurehead, RockPort Capital Managing Partner, and Solyndra Board Member David Prend.

The article, a fawning exhibition of non-investigative journalism, referred to Prend as the “Guru of Green.” Reuters neglected to question whether Prend’s close government connections had created conflicts of interest as he secured multi-million dollar government loans and grants for his investments.

Prend lobbied the Director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy, Carol Browner, for Solyndra’s doomed $535 million DOE loan and presidential endorsement. Prend also visited the White House at least twice and discussed two companies with Browner while lobbying for Solyndra. (The White House refuses to release the second company’s name.)

Prend’s other investments suggest that he is benefiting from taxpayer support for far more than just two companies.

Prend is a board member for scandal-plagued concrete sealant manufacturer Hycrete. Around 2008, Hycrete received a $2 million Corps of Engineers earmark from Rep. Pete Visclosky (D-IN) shortly before company executives donated $20,000 to his campaign and the DCCC. In July 2009, former Hycrete CEO David Rosenberg was invited to a WH Summit on Energy Innovation and Jobs where Obama praised Hycrete as a job creation leader.

Prend was apparently involved in another RockPort Capital investment, Soliant Energy. Soliant went bankrupt even after receiving a $4 million DOE grant. Prend also apparently sits on the board of SustainX, which recently secured a $5.39 million DOE grant. (more…)

For nearly three years as Americans have struggled through this Great Recession, President Obama has given speeches that relied on failed Keynesian economic theory and the politics of class warfare and envy. As his big government policies have spent this nation to the brink, the employment picture continues to worsen.

Tonight, President Obama will deliver a major economic address before a Joint Session of Congress. The MacIver Institute expects it will be more of the same rhetoric and promotion of government solutions we’ve been hearing for the last 3 years.

The timing of the speech also conflicts with the pomp and circumstance surrounding the kickoff of the 2011 NFL season. As a Packers’ fan and in the spirit of public service, I directed our staff to comb through the hundreds of speeches President Obama has already made to give you a concise two-minute preview of his latest ‘big speech.’

(more…)

From Accuracy in Media’s Ben Johnson:

Have you ever been taken hostage by an 86 year old white haired lady in pink glasses?  I have.  I am lucky to be alive today and writing this after my near death experience with the terrorists of the Tea Party in Waco, TX.  AIM present’s to you, the face of evil in America.

With elected officials scrambling for a cross to hang their economic failure upon, the Obama administration has declared open season on the Tea Party.  This is our generation’s form of McCarthyism.   Witch-hunting at its finest.  Attack, blame and demonize the Tea Party for all of America’s troubles.  Never mind the fact that the TP has never acted violently and is packed with veterans who served our country and sweet old ladies who love America.  The administration is enthusiastically joined by a chorus of vitriol and hate by the likes of Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-FL) and every on camera personality at MSNBC.

I guess innocent American citizens are an easy a target for Washington when policies fail.

(more…)

Circular firing squads are very helpful…when they’re done on the other side of the aisle. That is why Democrats are so happy lately, sitting back and watching all the Republican in-fighting over deft ceiling deals. Sadly, Republicans have been all too happy to oblige. It’s time for them to stop and shift the onus to Democrats in the Senate and the White House, where it belongs.

The normal way passing legislation works is the House passes a bill, the Senate passes a bill on the same subject, they come together in a conference committee to hammer out the differences to form one bill, then both chambers vote again on the finished product. The way this debt negotiations have been going is the House passes a bill, the Senate and the President say they don’t like it. The House passes another bill, the Senate and the President say they don’t like it. Lather, rinse, repeat.

While this kabuki dance goes on, Republicans keep offering more and more plans, fighting amongst themselves and the media reports it as if they are the ones being unreasonable. This needs to stop.

It’s too late to stop a vote on the latest plan introduced by Speaker Boehner, it’s out there and everyone is expecting a vote on it. But that should be the last vote the House takes on the issue until the Senate acts on something.

What good will that do?

(more…)

Last year,  the federal government  funded  the National Science Foundation (NSF ) to the tune of $6.9 billion.  Each year, the NSF disburses much of this government funding in the form of grants.  These include graduate research fellowships.  According to the NSF, the grants “fund specific research proposals that have been judged the most promising by a rigorous and objective merit-review system.”

The University of Washington recently received graduate research fellowship funding from the NSF in excess of $14 million.  The Computing Research Association received an additional $14 million from the NSF.  Ostensibly, projects funded by NSF grants further the noble goals set forth by Congress in its establishment of this leading proponent of scientific research.   These goals are “to promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare; to secure the national defense…” A new study funded by these grants from these two organizations calls this presumption into question.

“That’s What She Said: Double Entendre Identification” summarizes research dedicated to the double entendre “that’s what she said”.  The researches assigned values for “noun sexiness”, “adjective sexiness”, and “verb sexiness”.  Once inserted into a mathematical equation, these values predict whether use of this double entendre would be appropriate.  According to the authors, “Experiments on web data demonstrate that our approach improves precision by 12% over baseline techniques that use only word-based features.”  Notably, the researches make no mention regarding how this discovery will advance the NSF’s stated goals of scientific progress, more secure national defense, or increased national prosperity.

(more…)

Saying Mitch McConnell is a weak leader is like saying the sun is hot, there’s little point in stating the obvious. The earmark-loving leader of the Senate Republicans leader has a plan to avert the debt ceiling “crisis” – punt. The possible deal being reported is that Congress will give the President increases in the debt ceiling unless, basically, a veto-proof majority rejects it. It’s more involved than that, but that’s the gist of it.

Senator McConnell announced last week a contingency plan. The plan basically would give the President $2.4 trillion in debt limit authority in three tranches (Washington word for stacks of your money) and the President would be empowered to marry cuts to these increases in debt limit authority. The Congress would be empowered by a 2/3rds vote to legislatively veto any proposed cuts by the Administration, as a package deal, with these three increases in debt limit authority.

For example, the first batch of $750 billion in new borrowing authority might be conditioned by the President on massively cutting defense spending. Then Congress would have to vote, in both chambers by a 2/3rds vote, to stop these cuts. This seems at first glace to be a ill conceived and desperate idea out of the Republican “Leadership” to save face. It also may be unconstitutional, in that the legislature can’t delegate this type of authority under the Constitution.

(more…)

Judicial Watch recently found that the Obama Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) issued a $79,819 grant to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) offshoot Affordable Housing Centers of America (AHCOA). This is an apparent violation of an ACORN funding ban passed by Congress and signed into law by President Obama in 2009.

On October 1, 2009, President Obama signed the Defund ACORN Act into law, effectively prohibiting the federal government from funding “ACORN and any ACORN-related affiliate.” ACORN challenged the law in court and lost. The federal courts in New York upheld the constitutionality of the funding ban on August 13, 2010. The Supreme Court last month refused to hear ACORN’s appeal of this funding ban.

A Judicial Watch investigation has revealed that on March 1, 2011, HUD announced a $79,819 federal grant to ACHOA to “educate the public and housing providers about their rights and obligations under federal, state, and local fair housing laws.”

In an apparent effort to remedy the prohibition against funding ACORN or its affiliates, the Government Accountability Office issued an opinion in September 2010 claiming that ACHOA is a separate entity from ACORN. Nonetheless, the government’s own website that lists federal expenditures identifies the organization receiving the $79,819 grant as “ACORN Housing Corporation Inc,” and lists ACORN’s New Orleans, Louisiana, address. Moreover, ACHOA maintains the same board of directors, executive director and offices as its predecessor, ACORN Housing Corporation, Inc.

Fraudulent activity on the part of ACORN Housing/ACHOA is nothing new.

(more…)

The White House and the Democrats may be at it again!  Senate Republican leaders are worried the White House will shovel a last-minute budget deal into the Congress shortly before the August 2, 2011 debt ceiling deadline. The GOP fears an “urgent” proposal on the eve of this date will give the Congress little time to review what’s in it, and the exigent nature of the deal will hamstring them into rushing it through to a vote.

They are right to worry. In all likelihood, the White House (and its willing accomplices among Democratic lawmakers) will pork-up a deal with “investments” (spending increases) and tax hikes. Both are anathema to the GOP right now, and the desperadoes of the left will see this as the only way to continue 60 years of progressive policies. Any deal from the White House is bound to be a Trojan Horse.

Then there’s the emergency nature of the offer the GOP fears, for good reason. Rahm Emanuel’s haunting advice comes to mind: “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” If there were to be a corollary to his maxim, it would be: “If you don’t have a serious crisis, then create the perception of one.” That seems to be what’s been happening with the looming debt ceiling deadline.

(more…)

Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) unwittingly highlighted the corruption inherent in congressional earmarks today, in an op-ed published in the Chicago Tribune.

Calling for Congress to “raise taxes on millionaires and billionaires,” Schakowsky quoted a constituent who supports her:

“Our country is not really broke,” said Cynthia Carranza, who directs a food pantry in Niles. Carranza has watched the increase in hungry people at her food pantry door even as government support for her program is slashed. “We’re an incredibly rich and prosperous nation. But our wealth is skewed to a very few fortunate at the top. We’re not broken, just twisted.”

Carranza’s support for government redistribution of wealth is no surprise. She may complain about the rich, but she has benefited richly from federal largesse: Carranza’s food pantry was the recipient of a $250,000 earmark requested by Schakowsky for FY 2011 in the run-up to last year’s congressional election.

Schakowsky laments that “government support” for the Niles Township Food Pantry has been “slashed,” but she certainly knows that is not the whole truth.

Schakowsky slipped the earmark request into a transportation, housing and urban development appropriations bill loaded with earmarks by other representatives. (The same bill was used by Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) to direct $1 million to the National Council of La Raza for “Capitalization of a Revolving Loan Fund to be Used for Nationwide Community Development Activities.”)

(more…)