Comes in bulk, union members
The Democrats want to bail out private union pension funds to the tune of…. infinity.
Although right now taxpayers could possibly be on the hook for $165 billion, the liability could essentially be unlimited because these pensions have to be paid out until the workers die.
Sorry… not interested. You’ve already cost the nation too much in productivity, lost jobs, and bailouts. Suck eggs union members.
Large percentages of them think price controls are a good idea.
We need to replace EVERY elected official in D.C. None of them can be trusted to not be tainted.
Letter from Orrin Hatch:
I want to bring to your attention an upcoming town hall meeting in your area.
Utahns from every corner of our state are tremendously concerned with recent actions taken in Washington, D. C. including a takeover of the nation’s health care system, forced unionization, out of control federal spending, cap and trade, closing Guantanamo, more taxes, taxpayer-funded abortions, and an ever-increasing federal deficit that threatens the security and well-being of generations to come.
For this reason I am continuing my initiative to hold town hall meetings throughout the state. I would like to ensure Utahns are able to share their concerns with the direction of our country and talk about solutions that will help our country live up to the greatness envisioned by our founding fathers.
Please join me for the following town hall meeting.
June 1, 2010
6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.
Gardner Center Ballroom
Dixie State College
250 South 700 East
St. George, UT 84770
I think I’ll go and ask him why he isn’t rejecting Kagan, and also why he doesn’t resign and spare us 4 more years of him.
All the press can speculate on is “will he run for President”. Maybe he will, maybe not. They even speculate his speech was about “big ideas for the nation”:
Still, some attendees of the dinner, upon listening to Petraeus, said they couldn’t help but hear a candidate laying out his vision for governing the nation as the general developed his theme of how "big ideas" turned around a lost cause in Iraq.
http://www.aei.org/speech/100142 has the entire speech, which wasn’t about transforming a nation, but about how they quickly transformed the Army of 2005 into the surge Army of 2007:
So tonight, I want to talk about the effort that developed and institutionalized those ideas–ideas that ushered in a generational transformation that touched all aspects of our Army, from the doctrinal manuals that describe our operational concepts to the education of our leaders, from the training of our forces and the conduct of actual operations to the ways we sought to capture and share lessons identified in training and on the battlefield.
Would he be a good President? Yes. Probably better than we’ve had since Eisenhower. The RISK however is that he may be competent, but in support of what ideology? The next 3 or 4 Presidents will be choosers – of who wins and who loses, I need to know he will choose productive people as winners, because lacking that our nation will spiral out of control into chaos and disintegration.
I’m still on Tim Bridgewater’s e-mail list. I got this from him today:
"It’s time to cut government spending, balance budgets, and return to limited, Constitutional government."
Hey… I agree.
Question… you are managing partner of a firm that takes money from government programs that I feel are excellent candidates for the budget axe. Will you cut the very programs your business depends on?
Whenever I write something damaging to a political office holder or candidate I get nasty messages saying “but they are brave to run for office” or “he’s done a lot for Utah” or “he may have issues but the other guy….”.
Whenever I write something damaging to those running in a primary, their supporters write imploring me to “be nice – we have to have a candidate in the general election”.
Sorry. But “good enough” isn’t “good enough” for me.
It isn’t brave to run for office. It may be stupid, but it isn’t brave. It maybe narcissistic, and not good for your family, but it isn’t “brave”. Brave is Lech Walesa. Brave is Sam Adams. Brave is Nelson Mandela. What’s brave about going for a job that makes most of its office holders millionaires?
I hold candidates to a George Washington test. Are they as honorable, as self-sacrificing, as noble or as humble, as George Washington? If not, I don’t like them.
The sad thing is that my test doesn’t exclude most Americans just most candidates.
Why don’t these modern George Washington’s run? Because they, like me, think the system unsolvable, and they have just one life to live. So we are left with people mostly running to exploit the system, not help it.
Update: Maybe Chris Christie meets the test.
Commies should ride in commie cars
HotAir reports that David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett get driven around town by military chauffeurs:
Valerie Jarrett and David Axelrod, both senior advisers to the president, have been given the luxurious and prestigious perk of being picked up at their homes and driven to work or around town throughout the day in government vehicles chauffeured by military drivers, according to a list of those given the benefit provided to The Daily Caller by the White House.
It seems to me that Obama can pay for his own political help.
This isn’t the whole picture. In pure cash terms, trilions are in boxes not shown and paid out to TARP, Fannie Mae, GM and other “off the books” fiscal activities.
Also, not shown, is a box roughly 50 TIMES bigger that represents obligations not backed by savings.
It won’t end well. Obama’s not here to help, just to allocate pain away from his donors.
Big government conniver
Wikipedia defines “rent seeking” as:
In economics, rent seeking occurs when an individual, organization or firm seeks to earn income by capturing economic rent through manipulation or exploitation of the economic or political environment, rather than by earning profits through economic transactions and the production of added wealth.
So, you tell me, if this company is “rent seeking”:
We access funding for international projects using government support from U.S., European, Asian, and Multilateral Developmental Institutions .
In other words, using political connections to profit, not adding wealth as a by product of their economic transactions.
Hold on… let’s add some more to this tale:
The original company was founded by Tim Bridgewater and Neil Bush to focus on business relationships between the U.S. and Southeast Asia. Today we have business relationships and a focus that has broadened to include Latin America, Africa, Middle East, Eastern Europe, and the former Soviet Union.
Oh, a PRESIDENT’s son and BROTHER founded the firm. But it isn’t preying on political connections. Nope.
Who is the other founder? Tim Bridgewater. He is running for Senate in Utah.
He’s the candidate that reportedly dealt with the devil to gain a temporary lead in the delegate counts. What was the deal Tim? A cushy gig for Bennett’s son? Will Utah’s sophomoric media even ask?
If Utah jumps from Bennett to Bridgewater we probably won’t be changing much.
What a political class and state we have. The true conservative was ousted because she was a woman. The only conservative in the race is a lawyer (like we don’t have enough of them running around D.C.). And the front runner is a rent seeking DC insider that runs a business raking off a take from government financing of “green” investments outside the U.S.
Sigh… this would be funny if it weren’t so damn sad.
Democratic thugs: How I view government
The debate rages in the post I put up about NASA’s propulsion strategy. Commenter Carl, true to roots, asked me to give up some other federal function to pay for my preferred strategy. He knows I could easily cut 2/3rds of the government and not blink. So I didn’t treat his question as serious. I joked “your pension”. Anyway, after a bit of discussion we seemed to have arrived at this…
They think pension promises are sacrosanct. But not promises to me about Social Security. I’m supposed to honor pensions of government employees, while that same government rips me off about $1500month in FICA payments supposedly in my “trust fund” but long gone before they even take it.
This is the type of argument that makes me think, actually, know, that our end will be sooner than we think and violent.
I mean, how can you resolve this? They want my money, I want my money. They want my time. I want my time.
You can’t sort this type of thing out. The guy with the biggest stick wins. Our true protections from the Constitution died in 1913, we now near the end game.
Commenter Carl seems to think this is Democracy. It is thuggery. I may put up with it. Just one life to live after all, and I’d like it to be a long one. But the problem with thugs is they don’t know their limits. They will take, push, take until it breaks.
Update: The pushing continues. Can’t touch those pensions, but stealing social security trust funds is cool, and now that they have run out, how about Ken’s 401K.
I’d put it more generically that if you aren’t a donor, you are at risk.
I don’t recall liberals bitching, like they do now about Arizona’s immigration law, when California and other states took on federal roles regarding global warming and C02 emissions. These are actions that clearly affect outside state lines.
I know it’s too much to ask for no hypocrisy, but could you at least make it less obvious?
The ONLY common factor in what liberals bitch about is if the law in question is good for America. It’s almost like they hate us and want us to fail.
Arizona here I come!
Fear of losing future illegal voters drives the liberal hysteria over Arizona’s new immigration law. They don’t care a rats ass about civil rights – just try and not recycle and see how many of your rights they trample.
I’m ignoring boycotts and, instead, starting my own “visitcott”.
That’s right… I’m heading to good old Arizona tomorrow for a few days. I’m darned sure my civil rights won’t be violated. But I hope I’m racially profiled… I tend to fair well when people make snap judgments about my civility, honesty and integrity.
Profile me!
Liar
I have to wonder how the people I know that support Obama deal with the constant revelations of lies from him. They seem like normal relatives, friends, neighbors and acquaintances on the outside, but they must be quite warped to continue to support such a blatant liar.
The latest Obama scam is that while he was touting how much the Obamacare would save the nation and cut medical costs, his administration actually had a report from Health and Human Services saying it would increase costs:
The economic report released last week by Health and Human Services, which indicated that President Barack Obama’s health care "reform" law would actually increase the cost of health care and impose higher costs on consumers, had been submitted to the office of HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius more than a week before the Congressional votes on the bill, according to career HHS sources, who added that Sebelius’s staff refused to review the document before the vote was taken.
You have to wonder why the HHS staff didn’t leak it. Everybody else leaks in DC and I have trouble believing they are honest, because, well, nobody is honest in DC.
Anyway, back to Obama supporters who ignore his lying ways… I just don’t understand you. You seem…. well, you seem sick. Get better. The nation needs you.