The Cynical Economist

You Paid for It! Stimulus Dollars Fund Studies into Sexual History and Erectile Dysfunction

The NBC Investigative Unit has raised questions about two grants totaling nearly $1.5 million dollars distributed to the University of California San Francisco. The money was part of the federal stimulus program and went to studies into the erectile dysfunction of overweight middle aged men and the accurate reporting of someone’s sexual history.

HHS Sends $5.9 Million to Program Run by Obama Buddy

The Department of Health and Human Services last week announced it had awarded a $5.9 million grant to a University of Chicago Medical Center program tied to Michelle Obama and run by Eric Whitaker, one of President Obama’s closest friends.

The Urban Health Initiative, which received the award, was originally based on a smaller program launched during the last decade by Michelle Obama, who was an executive at the University of Chicago Medical Center before she departed to become first lady. The UHI is headed up by Obama basketball and golf buddy Whitaker, who has known the president since Obama’s days in law school and who also vacations with the first family

Barack Obama’s convenient Wall Street hypocrisy

PUBLIC EMPLOYEES SECOND ONLY TO FINANCIAL PROS IN FRAUD, STUDY SHOWS

Government workers are among the employees most likely to cheat their employers, according to a new study.

The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE), the world’s largest anti-fraud organization, found that public-sector administration employees are responsible for more than 10 percent of fraud cases, ranking behind only financial professionals. In 141 cases examined, the group found that a crooked employee costs taxpayers a median loss of $100,000.

Union Bosses’ Hypocrisy

The leaders of America’s unions have been very vocal lately in their criticism of Republicans and of business. According to them, Republicans care only about the wealthy and are unfairly targeting the workers of America with their reforms. These union leaders insist that only they can speak for regular Americans. In fact, their own salaries suggest that they have nothing in common with the average citizen. Here is a short list of some of the highest-earning, and most hypocritical, union presidents:………

DEVASTATING GRAPH REVEALS OBAMA’S UNEMPLOYMENT ECONOMY

Of the 13.3 million Americans who were unemployed in the first quarter of 2012, a staggering 29.5% have been out of work for 52 weeks or more (the official definition of long-term unemployment).   As the Pew Charitable Trusts point out, that works out to roughly 3.9 million people, or more than the population of Oregon.

The Fraud Of Austerity

When the current economic crisis began — largely caused by a government-created housing bubble — we were told that if the government spent an extra trillion dollars or so and ran up the deficit, all would be well. Did it work as advertised in the United States? No. In the United Kingdom? No. In France? No. In Italy? No. In Spain? No. And not even the left wants to talk about Greece.

The chart below shows that rather than the austerity the left is whining about, government spending has risen as a share of gross domestic product (GDP) in all of the major economies. Again, the left said unemployment rates should have come down by now, but the opposite is happening. The U.S. “official” unemployment rate has come down slightly, but the percentage of the labor force at work continues to decline, so the real unemployment rate is approximately 15 percent.

50 Years Of Government Spending, In 1 Graph

Of each dollar the federal government spends, how much goes to defense? How much goes to Social Security? How much goes to interest on the debt? And how has this sort of thing changed over time?

The graphic below answers these questions. It shows the major components of federal spending 50 years ago, 25 years ago, and last year.

Florida says 180,000 non-citizens may be on voter rolls

Florida election authorities are examining about 180,000 people who they say may not be U.S. citizens but are registered to vote in the state, an official said on Friday.

Project Veritas exposes non-citizens, dead people registered to vote in NC 

Federal Workers’ 2011 Salary Data Exposed Online

Can California Be Fixed?

To sum up why California has yet another deficit — this time a $16 billion whopper — is pretty easy: The number of demonized one-percenters who pay over 10 percent in their salary to the state has been shrinking, as thousands flee with their ideas, energy, business, and capital to nearby no-tax states, and others make less money due to more and more costs and regulations — while the number of those receiving all sorts of state housing, food, medical, education, and legal support is soaring

GEORGIA WELFARE DOLLARS SPENT AT CASINOS, LIQUOR STORES, SIX FLAGS

Obama’s Budget Would Double the Interest Rate on Student Loans–After the Election

President Obama’s fiscal 2013 budget proposal would double the interest rate on federally backed student loans from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent–eight months after the November presidential election.

The White House fiscal year 2013 plan calls for maintaining the current 3.4 percent interest rate for federally guaranteed student loans, but only through July 1, 2013, at which point it would automatically increase to 6.8 percent. Neither the president’s plan nor the Democrats’ legislation would extend the low rate beyond another year.

From Townhall
by Daniel J. Mitchell

I’ve occasionally commented on foolish public policy in the United Kingdom, including analysis on how the welfare state destroys lives and turns people into despicable moochers.

But if you really want to understand the horrifying absurdity of the welfare state, check out these passages from  a report in the Daily Mail.

Carl Cooper thought he was doing a public service by offering seven benefits claimants the chance to work for him. But the company boss was flabbergasted when none of them turned up on the first day. Astonishingly, not a single one even had the courtesy to tell the marketing firm boss they would not be coming in. Mr Cooper and other staff members called the new employees to ask them where they were. Initially, some refused to answer their phones  when they recognised the number calling them. When the staff finally got through, five said they would be better off staying on state benefits rather than doing the commission-based work. Four of the seven also claimed  torrential rain had put them off.

Wow. Five out of seven admitted that mooching off the taxpayers was a better way to live. What does that tell us about the over-generosity of handouts?

Let’s continue.

Mr Cooper, who runs Car Smart, a marketing firm for independent car dealers in Canterbury, Kent, criticised the benefits system and said it rewarded people for doing nothing. He added: ‘I was left stunned when none of the new recruits turned up for work. They are a bunch of workshy layabouts. ‘These are people who are so morally twisted that they would rather stay on the dole than work. ‘People keep saying there are not enough jobs in the UK but the real problem is that there are not enough determined or ambitious people. ‘The benefit system is too generous and encourages the unemployed to stay unemployed and just breeds more laziness.’

But it’s even worse than Mr. Cooper realizes. He’ll still be paying these people, but in the form of taxes that then get redistributed to subsidize idleness.

You might think the moochers would lose their benefits because they chose laziness over work, but you would be wrong.

Mr Cooper said all his employees received a basic retainer of £100 a week initially and are enrolled on to the company’s commission structure, which could see earnings rise to up to £400 a week. The jobseekers who failed to turn up will not lose their benefits because the basic pay is under the minimum wage.

I found the above story via Kyle Smith, who also cites a story from the Times about a crazy proposal to have bureaucrats scrub floors and serve as human alarm clocks for the welfare class.

Town hall officials have been told to get down on their hands and knees and “clean the floors” of the homes they visit under David Cameron’s Troubled Families programme. They have also been urged to turn up at family homes at 7am if necessary to get parents out of bed and children ready for school on time. The orders were issued by the programme head, Louise Casey… “I want to see people rolling up their sleeves and getting down and cleaning the floors if that is what needs to be done. If a family needs to be shown how to heat up a pizza, show them how to do it. If it takes going round three times a week at 7am to get Mum up, then do it.”

I would have included a link to the underlying story, but the Times has the most incompetently designed website I’ve ever encountered (presumably because they want to charge, but they don’t even give you a chance to click on the story and then pay).

Anyhow, I have three quick reactions to this bit of foolishness.

1. I’d like to see the head bureaucrat, Ms. Casey, spend a month scrubbing floors and waking people up at 7:00 a.m. She strikes me as the typical leftist clown, sitting in an office enjoying a cushy and overpaid job while dreaming up absurd ideas on how to waste taxpayer money. Maybe if she gets her hands dirty by “rolling up [her] sleeves,” she’ll learn the difference between blackboard theorizing and the real world.

2. My gut reaction is that the government should cut the handouts to these dysfunctional households. For every day the welfare bums aren’t up on time to get their kids to school, they lose 10 percent of their loot. If their floors are dirty, that’s another 10 percent. If you want to change their behavior, start cutting into the budget for cigarettes and booze.

3. More realistically, we’re dealing with a problem of people who have little if any self-respect, and they pass horrible habits to their children. Kicking them off the dole might wake up some of them, but I suspect more than a few of them are past the point of no return. Society would probably be better off if their kids were put in foster homes, but I’m sure government would screw that up as well.

Stories like this leave me increasingly convinced that the only good approach is radical decentralization. Get these programs out of capital cities like Washington and London. The U.S. welfare reform was a decent start, but get responsibility to the local level. And in cities, put neighborhoods in charge. Have those small communities in charge of raising the money and spending the money.

That approach is far more likely to generate good ideas and good solutions, though I confess I’m pessimistic about anything working.

But we should figure out ways to stop inter-generational poverty and welfare. I gather it’s considered bad form to suggest mandatory birth control for welfare recipients, so has anyone proposed a different approach that might work?

From The Washington Times
By Victor Morton

The Obama campaign apparently didn’t look backwards into history when selecting its new campaign slogan, “Forward” — a word with a long and rich association with European Marxism.

Many Communist and radical publications and entities throughout the 19th and 20th centuries had the name “Forward!” or its foreign cognates. Wikipedia has an entire section called “Forward (generic name of socialist publications).”

“The name Forward carries a special meaning in socialist political terminology. It has been frequently used as a name for socialist, communist and other left-wing newspapers and publications,” the online encyclopedia explains.

The slogan “Forward!” reflected the conviction of European Marxists and radicals that their movements reflected the march of history, which would move forward past capitalism and into socialism and communism.

The Obama campaign released its new campaign slogan Monday in a 7-minute video. The title card has simply the word “Forward” with the “O” having the familiar Obama logo from 2008. It will be played at rallies this weekend that mark the Obama re-election campaign’s official beginning.

There have been at least two radical-left publications named “Vorwaerts” (the German word for “Forward”). One was the daily newspaper of the Social Democratic Party of Germany whose writers included Friedrich Engels and Leon Trotsky. It still publishes as the organ of Germany’s SDP, though that party has changed considerably since World War II. Another was the 1844 biweekly reader of the Communist League. Karl Marx, Engels and Mikhail Bakunin are among the names associated with that publication.

East Germany named its Army soccer club ASK Vorwaerts Berlin (later FC Vorwaerts Frankfort).

Vladimir Lenin founded the publication “Vpered” (the Russian word for “forward”) in 1905. Soviet propaganda film-maker Dziga Vertov made a documentary whose title is sometimes translated as “Forward, Soviet” (though also and more literally as “Stride, Soviet”).

Conservative critics of the Obama administration have noted numerous ties to radicalism and socialists throughout Mr. Obama’s history, from his first political campaign being launched from the living room of two former Weather Underground members, to appointing as green jobs czar Van Jones, a self-described communist.

From The Daily Mail

Barack Obama has already held more re-election fundraising events than every elected president since Richard Nixon combined, according to figures to be published in a new book.

Obama is also the only president in the past 35 years to visit every electoral battleground state in his first year of office.

The figures, contained a in a new book called The Rise of the President’s Permanent Campaign by Brendan J. Doherty, due to be published by University Press of Kansas in July, give statistical backing to the notion that Obama is more preoccupied with being re-elected than any other commander-in-chief of modern times.

read the rest here

LOL America! We Have The Best Government that Money Can Buy…

By the way, I am really curious how much nepotism and cronyism is there in Washington DC? 

White House Opens Door to Big Donors, and Lobbyists Slip In

Last May, as a battle was heating up between Internet companies and Hollywood over how to stop online piracy, a top entertainment industry lobbyist landed a meeting at the White House with one ofPresident Obama’s technology advisers.

The lobbyist did not get there by himself.

He was accompanied by Antoinette C. Bush, a well-connected Washington lawyer who has represented companies like Viacom, Sony and News Corporation for 30 years. A friend of the president and a cousin of his close aide Valerie B. Jarrett, Ms. Bush has been to the White House at least nine times during his term, taking lobbyists along on a few occasions, joining an invitation-only forum about intellectual property, and making social visits with influential friends.

At the same time, she and her husband, Dwight, have donated heavily to the president’s re-election effort: Mr. Bush gave $35,800 on the day of his wife’s White House meeting last year, and Ms. Bush contributed the same amount a month later. In November, they hosted a $17,900-a-plate fund-raiser at their home, where Mr. Obama complained that the nation’s capital should be more “responsive to the needs of people, not the needs of special interests.” (LOL was he sober when he said that?)

read the rest here

That is actually the good news. Can you imagine what would today’s America look like, if the democratic controlled senate was really “taking care of business”? 

The bad news – we pay a lot of money for those lazy bastards in Washington DC to do nothing all day long!

Report: Democrat-controlled Senate laziest in 20 years

For those who need proof that the Senate was a do-nothing chamber in 2011 beyond the constant partisan bickering and failure to pass a federal budget, there is now hard evidence that it was among the laziest in 20 years.

For example, while the Democratically-controlled Senate was in session for 170 days, it spent an average of just 6.5 hours in session on those days, the second lowest since 1992. Only 2008 logged a lower average of 5.4 hours a day, and that’s when action was put off because several senators were running for president, among them Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John McCain.

On the passage of public laws, arguably its most important job, the Senate notched just 90, the second lowest in 20 years, and it passed a total of 402 measures, also the second lowest. And as the president has been complaining about, the chamber confirmed a 20-year low of 19,815 judicial and other nominations.

read the rest here

Are Voter I.D. Laws Racist? (03/23/2012)

Eric Holder: Voter ID Laws Hurt Minorities (12/13/2011)

“It is time to ask: What kind of nation and what kind of people do we want to be? Are we willing to allow this era — our era — to be remembered as the age when our nation’s proud tradition of expanding the franchise ended?” Holder said in a speech at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum in Austin, Texas.

US Attorney General Eric Holder’s Ballot to Vote Offered to Total Stranger (Eric Holders vote offered to complete stranger)(04/09/2012)

US outsources election  vote counting to European Company…

SCYTL Acquires SOE Software, Becoming the Leading Election Software Provider (01/11/2012)

GLOBAL INTERNET VOTING FIRM BUYS U.S. ELECTION RESULTS REPORTING FIRM(01/12/2012)

Bias in new vote-counting system? National security concerns also raised(01/18/2012)

Michael Savage: How Obama fixed 2012 election (04/04/2012)