Few noticed but at last week’s Rose Garden announcement by the president that his administration’s signature healthcare initiative had exceeded his 7 million signups goal by the end of March, he failed to mention Kathleen Sebelius’ name even though she was sitting right in front of him. On Thursday Sebelius made it official: she was leaving her post as head of Health and Human Services.
More than a month earlier
This article was first published at The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Wednesday, March 26, 2014:
On February 2, Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow, signaling six more weeks of winter. He also signaled to pollsters that it was time for them to
Governor’s Agreement With State Employees (Photo credit: CT Senate Democrats)
In a remarkable display of hubris and economic ignorance, Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy proudly announced on Thursday that his state is the first to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour:
This is just a step in moving people in the right direction.
We will be lifting people out of poverty in the state of Connecticut. Increasing the minimum wage is not just good for workers, it’s also good for business.
What the new law will really do as it is phased in over the next three years is
Alan Abramowitz (Photo credit: flguardian2)
Despite the elections being seven months away – a virtual lifetime in politics – pollsters are coming out of the woodwork to offer their statistical opinions on the outcome in November. Most of them agree that control of the Senate, now firmly in Democrat hands, is
In the space of 10 days the president has seen his Democrat-controlled Senate either reject outright or put “on hold” two of his most vicious anti-American appointments, despite all the pressure the president could bring to bear on those recalcitrant Senators who voted against them. In short, these are back-to-back victories for the American people and for the Constitution of the United States.
The first was the rejection, 47-52, by the Senate of
The so-called “grand bargain” that Detroit’s emergency financial manager rolled out on Friday – all 440 pages of it – was welcomed by Michigan Governor Rick Snyder with words that perfectly encapsulated the nearly year-long effort to settle the city’s bankruptcy:
Kevyn Orr has submitted a thoughtful, comprehensive blueprint directing the city back to solid financial ground … [but] there will be
Mike Rowe, the popular host of Dirty Jobs on the Discovery Channel and frequent voice behind ads for Ford, Caterpillar, Motorola and Lee’s Jeans, learned how thin his popularity is among some of his fans when he touched the third rail of retailing: Walmart. In his voiceover of Walmart’s ad appearing during the Olympics, Rowe announces the retail giant’s plans to
Immediately after former Governor Robert McDonnell and his wife Maureen were charged with 14 counts of fraud and conspiracy, McDonnell responded with a 7-minute-long declaration of innocence while his attorneys filed a motion challenging the government’s legal theory used in bringing the charges. The charges stem from a
This article was first published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Friday, December 20th, 2013:
In his press release announcing the publication of his annual “Wastebook” summarizing 100 examples of egregious, wasteful, and outrageous government spending, Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn tried to make himself appear “holier than thou” by
When Karl Pierson entered his Arapahoe High School last Friday wearing a black face mask, dressed in a black hoodie, and carrying a shotgun over his shoulder, he briefly appeared to present another opportunity for the media to promote its anti-gun agenda. Within 80 seconds Pierson proved them wrong,
In Tuesday’s press release Senator Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) announced the publication of his annual “Wastebook” which highlights Congress’ “most egregious spending” while at the same time distancing himself from the big spenders and earmarkers in Congress who provided fodder for his book:
While politicians in Washington spent much of 2013 complaining about sequestration’s impact on domestic programs and our national defense, we still managed to provide benefits to the Fort Hood shooter, study romance novels, help the State Department buy Facebook fans and even help NASA study Congress…
What’s lacking is the common sense and courage in Washington to make those choices – and passage of fiscally-responsible bills – possible.
Coburn then provided some teasers out of the 100 examples in his Wastebook:
The Popular Romance Project has received nearly $1 million from the National Endowment of the Humanities (NEH) since 2010 to “explore the fascinating, often contradictory origins and influences of popular romance as told in novels, films, comics, advice books, songs and internet fan fiction…
The military has destroyed more than 170 million pounds worth of useable vehicles and other military equipment [in Afghanistan] … rather than sell it or ship it back home…
In January, 2013, Congress passed a bill to provide $60.4 billion for [victims of] Hurricane Sandy. However, instead of rushing aid to the people who need it most, state-level officials … spent [$65 million of it] on tourism-related TV ads…
Since NASA is no longer conducting space flights, they have plenty of time and money to fund … the “Green Ninja” in which a man dressed in a Green Ninja costume teaches children about global warming.
While promoting his book recently on CBS News, Coburn tried to distance himself from any responsibility for such “egregious spending” by asking rhetorically: “Where was the adult in the room when this was going on?” Interviewer Nancy Cordes then asked if any of his previous editions of Wastebook had made any impact or had reduced or eliminated any of the more outrageous examples of waste:
Cordes: Have you ever gotten any traction in Congress, where members say “We’re actually going to get rid of this?”
Coburn: No. They don’t pay attention to it. It’s hard work to get rid of junk, it’s hard work to do oversight, it’s hard word to hold agencies accountable. And so what they would rather do is look good at home, get re-elected, and continue to spend money, and that’s Republican and Democrat alike.
What Cordes failed to ask at that moment would have been the perfect follow-on question:
How does your effort, then, and your voting record, separate you from them? Doesn’t this Wastebook of yours cost a lot of taxpayer money? Isn’t this part of your attempt to look good at home while providing cover for your own votes for some of these projects? Isn’t this part of your attempt to continue to get reelected?
Unfortunately there is no record of Cordes asking, or of Coburn’s response. But in July 2007 when Coburn criticized pork-barrel spending by Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson that would benefit Nelson’s son’s employer with millions of dollars of taxpayer money, newspapers in both Nebraska and Oklahoma noted that Coburn himself failed to criticize similar earmarks that he voted for that benefited his own state of Oklahoma.
In May, 2012 Coburn voted for H.R. 2072, to reauthorize the Export-Import Bank with increased lending limits backed by taxpayer monies from $100 billion to $140 billion. According to analysts assessing his vote, the federal government has no constitutional authority to risk taxpayers’ money “to provide loans the private sector considers too risky to provide.” Those analysts added:
Indeed, U.S. government-backed export financing is a form of corporate welfare, and if the Ex-Im Bank goes bust (as happened to Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae), the taxpayers will get stuck holding the bag.
Perhaps Coburn can be forgiven for not knowing that such wasteful spending is part of a plan to reduce America’s influence in the world, first clearly laid out when Coburn was just 10 years old, in 1958 in Indianapolis, Indiana. At a meeting in December, candy maker Robert Welch spoke for three days to some friends about the direction the country was headed, claiming it was part of a plan to “surrender American sovereignty, piece-by-piece and step-by-step, to various international organizations…”. Part one of that plan was:
Greatly expanded government spending for every conceivable means of getting rid of ever larger sums of American money as wastefully as possible.
Other parts included:
Higher and then much higher taxes…
An increasingly unbalanced budget despite the higher taxes…
Greatly increased socialistic controls over every operation of our economy and every activity of our daily lives. This is to be accompanied naturally and automatically by a correspondingly huge increase in the size of our bureaucracy and in both the cost and reach of our domestic government.
Coburn’s report illustrates the success of that plan to which he himself is contributing. The man has feet of clay. He not only is the author of Wastebook but a contributor to it as well.
This article first appeared at The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Friday, December 13th, 2013:
The old saying, “The measure of a man is the size of the thing that gets his goat” certainly applies now to the erstwhile conservative Republican from Wisconsin, Rep. Paul Ryan. Working in closed-door sessions with liberal Democrats over the past two weeks, Ryan has finally revealed the size of his goat:
When Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan opened debate over his bill designed to solve the state’s $100 billion shortfall in funding four of its five public pension plans, he said:
There will be changes here, much-needed changes, but this bill is a well-thought-out bill, a well-balanced bill that deserves the support of this body, the state Senate, and the approval of Governor Quinn.
Something’s got to be done. We can’t go on dedicating so much of our resources to this one sector of pensions.
Madigan instead birthed a
Last Tuesday the White House issued a Thanksgiving Day reminder: “The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) helps millions of Americans put food on the table.” Then began a litany of statistics and charts along with explanations of how wonderful SNAP is, even getting in a dig at those selfish “House Republicans [who] would cause nearly 4 million Americans to lose access to SNAP next year.”
Harold Maass, writing at the liberal TheWeek.com blog, explained all the reasons why conservatives hate food stamps:
In anticipation that the recall movement that had successfully ousted two other Colorado state senators over gun control issues this past summer was about to overwhelm a third, state senator Evie Hudak abruptly resigned on Wednesday, rather than face a recall. By resigning, under Colorado law her successor must be appointed by the Democrat party, thus preserving a one-vote margin in the senate. If she had been ousted, she likely would have been replaced with a Republican.
The recall movement claimed it had 18,900 valid signatures which it was going to submit to the Colorado state’s secretary on Monday, and it was becoming more and more obvious that Hudak
President Obama’s luster as leader of the Democrat party continues to fade as one after another poll shows declining ratings in the areas of competence and trust. The latest Quinnipiac poll taken among Ohio voters which was released on Wednesday showed his job approval rating there dropping to the lowest
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