Real Or Fake? Can You Spot The Bogus Government Programs Funded By The Stimulus Package?

Watch this video:

How much more evidence do we need to prove that the government has done nothing but squander our hard earned tax dollars for the past year and a half?

Remember in November.

Pigs Of Waste – The Nuge Weighs In

I think that Ted Nugent may be a better writer than Ann Coulter. He certainly has the wit and humor to match and his premises are valid and based in reality.

That’s what makes his latest column so funny, and so angering at the same time. He takes on Government waste a la the failed Stimuls package. From his article:

Fedzilla shoveled two million of our tax dollars into a fire pit so that the California Academy of Sciences could send photographers to the Southwest Indian Ocean and to East Africa to take pictures of ants. That’s right, ants. Seventy-two thousand more of our hard-earned tax dollars was given to Wake Forest University so that they could set it on fire by studying how monkeys react when stoned on cocaine. Read the Kurt Cobain story. It’s been done. If that isn’t insulting enough, Georgia State University received almost $700,000 to determine how monkeys and chimps respond to “distributional inequality” and “unfairness.” Rumor has it that Koko the gorilla responded “yes” by pressing a blue button when asked if she thought the study was discriminatory because gorillas were not included. King Kong could not be reached for comment. Jane Goodall, please report to your parole officer immediately.

Yes, this is funny. But it also highlights how asanine the pols in DC have become when it comes to spending our money. The Dem-controlled Congress has no idea that people are not able to send their high school graduates to college nor do they have any idea that people with young children need that money to feed and clothe them. No, Congress thinks that it can take your money and just give to whomever they please for whatever reason they please and your family that needs that money be damned.

November can’t come soon enough.

You can access the complete column on-line here:

Pigs Of Waste
Ted Nugent
HumanEvents.com
August 26, 2010

Joe Biden: “Everybody Guessed Wrong” About Stimulus Package

So that’s what government does? Make guesses only to have those guesses turn out wrong?

Many promises were made by those who supported the stimulus/spendulus/porkulus package, promises that those of us who opposed the measure knew could never be kept. Joe Biden finally admitted as much.

From the Associated Press:

Vice President Joe Biden said Sunday that “everyone guessed wrong” on the impact of the economic stimulus, but he defended the administration’s spending designed to combat rising joblessness. … “The bottom line is that jobs are being created that would not have been there before,” Biden said. But they are not coming at the pace first estimated. Just 10 days before taking office, Obama’s top economic advisers released a report predicting unemployment would remain at 8 percent of below through this year if an economic stimulus plan won congressional approval.

“Jobs are being created that would not have been there before.” What Biden left out (deliberately it would seem) is that more jobs that were there before are not there now. In other words, jobs are being lost faster than the stimulus/spendulus/porkulus package could have possibly created them. Why is this so?

Because government cannot create jobs. Government can destroy jobs through excessive taxation and over-regulation or can tranfer jobs from the private sector into the lower-paying government tent, but government cannot create jobs.

Therein lies the fatal flaw of the stimulus/spendulus/porkulus package; it assumes an untruth to be the truth. And that is why Joe Biden is now admitting that “everybody guessed wrong.”

His full quote:

“Everyone guessed wrong at the time the estimate was made about what the state of the economy was at the moment this was passed,” Biden said.

Not everyone, just those who supported the measure. Those of us who opposed it knew exactly what the outcome would be.

You can access the complete article on-line here:

Biden Says ‘Everyone Guessed Wrong’ On Unemployment Numbers
Associated Press via Fox News
June 14, 2009

Time has an even more scathing analysis:

Biden tells “Meet the Press” that “everyone guessed wrong” on the impact of the stimulus, economy was worse off than anyone thought. Backs away from the estimate that the funds could create or save 3.5 million jobs, instead promises 600,000 by the end of the summer.

You can access that story on-line here:

Stimulus Concession
Mark Halperin
Time
June 14, 2009

Appropriate Cartoons Today

Our children and grandchildren may never forgive us for what Barack Obama is about to sign, nor should they.

Democrats Delay Bill Release To Conceal Hidden Agenda, Uploaded It In Non-Searchable Format

Whatever happened to the promise of making bills public for at least 48 hours before a vote so that the bill can be reviewed before debate begins? Apparently, the Dems had no intention of keeping that promise. Nor did they want the public to be able to do key-word searches on the porkulus/spendulus package going before a vote today.

From Connie Hair at Human Events:

Democratic staffers released the final version of the stimulus bill at about 11 p.m. last night after delaying the release for hours to put it into a format which people cannot “search” on their home computers. Instead of publishing the bill as a regular internet document — which people can search by “key words” and otherwise, the Dems took hours to convert the final bill from the regular searchable format into “pdf” files, which can be read but not searched. Three of the four .pdf files had no text embedded, just images of the text, which did not permit text searches of the bill. That move to conceal the bill’s provisions had not been remedied this morning at the time of publication of this article.

Why did the Democrats go to such lengths to conceal what is in this bill? Why are they making it so difficult for people to research and study its contents? It is almost like a little child trying to hide a piece of food that he/she doesn’t want to eat while not knowing that Mom and Dad are watching them search for a hiding place.

There is alot the Dems want to hide. The aforementioned Health Care provisions that allow the Federal government to step in and reverse your doctor’s decisions are among them. But, there are some more sinister ones that may even be unconstitutional:

We found one provision that may be a good example of why the Democrats are desperate to stop any exposure of what is in this bill. Like this gem: SEC. 1607. (a) CERTIFICATION BY GOVERNOR — Not later than 45 days after the date of enactment of this Act, for funds provided to any State or agency thereof, the Governor of the State shall certify that: 1) the State request and use funds provided by this Act , and; 2) funds be used to create jobs and promote economic growth. (b) ACCEPTANCE BY STATE LEGISLATURE — If funds provided to any State in any division of this Act are not accepted for use by the Governor, then acceptance by the State legislature, by means of the adoption of a concurrent resolution, shall be sufficient to provide funding to such State. This provision — apparently aimed at conservative governors such as South Carolina’s Mark Sanford who does not want the federal money — would overturn state laws and constitutions, intervening directly in the state’s government to give the legislature the power to overturn a government’s decision. This provision probably violates the U.S. Constitution, a matter which will be of no concern to Congressional Democrats.

That’s right. The Constitution of the United States guarantees each state a “Republican form of government” and the 10th Amendment relegates all powers not enumerated in that document to the several states.

Pretty easy to see why the Dems are trying to slip this one past us hoping that we wouldn’t notice.

You can access the complete article on-line here:

Democrats Delay Bill Release To Conceal Details
Connie Hair
Human Event Online
February 13, 2009

Blog Entry From Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-MI)

As Congress readies itself to spend $300 million on golf carts as part of their multi-hundred-billion-dollar stimulus proposal, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has provided some very alarming numbers – and Congress should take heed. According to the CBO, in 2009 and 2010, 98% of the tax cuts in the Democrats’ economic “stimulus” package will go into effect, providing for 1.4% growth in our nation’s Gross Domestic Product in that time. However, the other 2% of the stimulus tax cuts will go into the economy between 2011 and 2019 – along with about half the spending in the package. The problem with this equation is that the $1.1-trillion price tag (which includes the interest on the total package), our increasing debt and our crowding out of private sector activity will drive down our Gross Domestic Product to .2% less than it is today, prior to the stimulus. So what you want to take away from these numbers is this: Spending $1.1 trillion today will result in a loss of 0.2% of our wealth tomorrow. (Check out the Graph) According to the peer-reviewed research and methodology of Dr. Christina Romer, the President’s head of the Council of Economic Advisors and the nation’s chief economist, The Republican Economic Recovery Plan creates twice the jobs at half the cost. Americans know that tax cuts are a better way to immediately stimulate the economy than wasteful government spending.

You can access this blog entry on-line here:

Spending Money Today To Lose Money Tomorrow
Michele Bachmann
TownHall.com
February 12, 2009

Letters to Senators Webb And Warner About The Porkulus/Spendulus Spending Bill

Here is the text of a letter that I will be faxing/emailing this morning to Senators Webb and Warner, both liberal Democrats from Virginia. Feel free to copy/paste the letter and fax or email it in yourself. Contact information is provided below.

Dear [Senator], I am writing this letter to ask you to vote “Nay” on S. 1, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. This bill was a bad idea from the beginning. It will cost $1.3 trillion that we do not have, and $1.3 trillion that our children and grandchildren will have to work to pay off. And, given the new revelations of health care provisions (which have nothing to do with stimulating the economy) that were stealthily inserted into this bill, it is even more imperative that you vote against it. In particular, I am referring to Title VII, the subsection titled “Agency for Healthcare and Research Quality.” It states: “That the funding appropriated in this paragraph shall be used to accelerate the development and dissemination of research assessing the comparative clinical effectiveness of health care treatments and strategies, including through efforts that: (1) conduct, support, or synthesize research that compares the clinical outcomes, effectiveness, and appropriateness of items, services, and procedures that are used to prevent, diagnose, or treat diseases, disorders, and other health conditions and (2) encourage the development and use of clinical registries, clinical data networks, and other forms of electronic health data that can be used to generate or obtain outcomes data: Provided further, That the Secretary shall enter into a contract with the Institute of Medicine, for which no more than $1,500,000 shall be made available from funds provided in this paragraph, to produce and submit a report to the Congress and the Secretary by not later than June 30, 2009 that includes recommendations on the national priorities for comparative clinical effectiveness research to be conducted or supported with the funds provided in this paragraph and that considers input from stakeholders: Provided further, That the Secretary shall consider any recommendations of the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Clinical Effectiveness Research established by section 802 of this Act“ This is very dangerous wording and will lead us to the socialized health care systems that have wreaked havoc on the people of Canada and Europe. Essentially, it allows the Secretary of Health and Human Services to establish a standard of who and what can be treated by doctors and hospitals and who and what cannot. In other words, it will permit the Federal Government to approve or disapprove of a doctor’s recommended treatment of a patient. It will effectively allow the Federal Government to over-ride a doctor’s decision. Given the fact that these bureaucrats will have little to no medical training themselves, that alone is reason enough to oppose this bill. Further, this provision was hidden in this bill for a specific reason. Tom Daschle, the tax-evading former HHS appointee, wrote in his 2008 book, Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis, that he supported the failed socialized medicine plan of the Clintons in 1994 and said that its failure was due to delay. (In actuality, the American people do not want the government making medical decisions for them.) Hence, Daschle wrote “If that means attaching a health-care plan to the federal budget, so be it. The issue is too important to be stalled by Senate protocol.” Thus, this socialized medicine provision was written in to the bill during some late-night session when the cameras were not rolling and the Republicans had been locked out of the proceedings. Please vote “Nay.” On this bill and help to preserve quality health care for Virginia and America and to protect our children and grandchildren from a debt that they had no hand in creating. Thank you.

Senator Webb’s contact information:

Fax: 202-228-6363
On-line contact: Contact Senator Webb

Senator Warner’s contact information:

Fax: 202-224-6295
On-line contact: Contact Senator Warner

Ruin Your Health With The Obama Stimulus Plan: Socialized Medicine Is In The Spending Bill

Not many people talking about this, but we really need to get the word out. The pork spending bill that is now speeding it’s way through Congress with the help of three RINO traitors (Specter, Snowe and Collins) contains a socialized medicine provision that we should all be aware of and call our Representatives and Senators about.

In short, this provision will make the federal government the final dicision maker in what treatments your doctor may or may not prescribe. In other words, a bureaucrat will have override authority with the power to say “no” to any treatment even if your doctor says “yes.”

Writing for Bloomberg, Betsy McCaughey has this:

The bill’s health rules will affect “every individual in the United States” (445, 454, 479). Your medical treatments will be tracked electronically by a federal system. Having electronic medical records at your fingertips, easily transferred to a hospital, is beneficial. It will help avoid duplicate tests and errors. But the bill goes further. One new bureaucracy, the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, will monitor treatments to make sure your doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and cost effective. The goal is to reduce costs and “guide” your doctor’s decisions (442, 446). These provisions in the stimulus bill are virtually identical to what Daschle prescribed in his 2008 book, Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis. According to Daschle, doctors have to give up autonomy and “learn to operate less like solo practitioners.”

And what happens if doctors and hospitals don’t want the government to override their decisions?

Read on:

Hospitals and doctors that are not “meaningful users” of the new system will face penalties. “Meaningful user” isn’t defined in the bill. That will be left to the HHS secretary, who will be empowered to impose “more stringent measures of meaningful use over time” (511, 518, 540-541) What penalties will deter your doctor from going beyond the electronically delivered protocols when your condition is atypical or you need an experimental treatment? The vagueness is intentional. In his book, Daschle proposed an appointed body with vast powers to make the “tough” decisions elected politicians won’t make. The stimulus bill does that, and calls it the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research (190-192). The goal, Daschle’s book explained, is to slow the development and use of new medications and technologies because they are driving up costs. He praises Europeans for being more willing to accept “hopeless diagnoses” and “forgo experimental treatments,” and he chastises Americans for expecting too much from the health-care system.

In other words, if the government decides that you aren’t worth saving, medical treatment will be withheld from you. If the government decides that your children are not worth saving, the government will withhold treatment from them.

Can you imagine the impact this provision is going to have on organizations like St. Jude’s Children’s Research Centers? How many children will the feds give up on due to what the bureaucrats rule a “hopeless diagnosis?”

For those of you who voted for “change,” congratulations! You got it.

But, who will be the hardest hit? In the beginning, it will be the elderly.

Daschle says health-care reform “will not be pain free.” Seniors should be more accepting of the conditions that come with age instead of treating them. That means the elderly will bear the brunt. Medicare now pays for treatments deemed safe and effective. The stimulus bill would change that and apply a cost- effectiveness standard set by the Federal Council (464). The Federal Council is modeled after a U.K. board discussed in Daschle’s book. This board approves or rejects treatments using a formula that divides the cost of the treatment by the number of years the patient is likely to benefit. Treatments for younger patients are more often approved than treatments for diseases that affect the elderly, such as osteoporosis. In 2006, a U.K. health board decreed that elderly patients with macular degeneration had to wait until they went blind in one eye before they could get a costly new drug to save the other eye. It took almost three years of public protests before the board reversed its decision.

But the socialists who support this abomination claim that individuals will “benefit in younger years and sacrifice later.” Until the inefficiancy that is inherent in federal bureaucracies catches up and the available care needs to be rationed further. Then, the “hopeless diagnosis” will be a death sentence for patients of all ages.

Why was it hidden in this pork-laden spending bill?

Here’s why:

Hiding health legislation in a stimulus bill is intentional. Daschle supported the Clinton administration’s health-care overhaul in 1994, and attributed its failure to debate and delay. A year ago, Daschle wrote that the next president should act quickly before critics mount an opposition. “If that means attaching a health-care plan to the federal budget, so be it,” he said. “The issue is too important to be stalled by Senate protocol.”

For an administration that claims to be the most transparent of all time, they sure do seem to be hiding alot.

We need to kill this bill before we get saddled with the nationalized health-care disasters that are Canada and Europe.

Now, some of you may think that you are going to be able to pay for private care to cover what the government denies. But don’t count on it. In Europe and Canada, it is illegal to get private care because that makes the system “unfair towards the rich.” How long before the socialist Barack Obama and his socialist allies in Congress get that rule passed?

Contact your Representatives and Senators now and ask them to kill this bill before it is too late.

You can access the complete article on-line here:

Ruin Your Health With The Obama Stimulus Plan
Betsy McCaughey
Bloomberg.com
February 9, 2009

And you can find your Congressional delegation contact information on-line here:

Congressional Email Directory

National Republican Trust Political Action Committee Vows To Oppose Three RINOs

Specifically, Arlen Specter (R-PA), Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and Susan Collins (R-ME). Those three have been a traitor to Conservative principles for far too long. It is time to get rid of them.

So, Scott Wheeler of Republican Trust PAC has gone on record and put those three on notice that the GOP Trust PAC will provide support to whomever challenges these three in the Primary Elections when they come up for re-election in their home states.

From the GOP Trust Press Release:

Today, Scott Wheeler, Executive Director, National Republican Trust PAC, announced that his organization would support challengers in primaries of any Republicans who vote for the stimulus bill. The NRT PAC spent the third largest amount of any independent organization in the 2008 campaign; $6 million in advertising through the November election, and $750,000 in the runoff for the U.S. Senate seat in Georgia. “The American people don’t want this trillion dollar political payoff that will just line the pockets of non-governmental organizations who supported Obama in the election,” Wheeler said. “Republican Senators are on notice. If they support the stimulus package we will make sure every voter in their state knows how they tried to further bankrupt voters in an already bad economy.”

Specter, Snowe and Collins have rightly earned the ire of the GOP base. With the help of those three, the Dems have effectively mortgaged our childrens’ future on a spending package that is more about repaying political allies than it is for getting the economy going.

I wonder what those three were promised in return for their back-stabbing?

You can access the original press release on-line here:

National Republican Trust PAC Will Support Candidates That Challenge Republican Senators Who Support Stimulus Bill
Scott Wheeler
National Republican Trust
February 9, 2009

And you can donate to the efforts to get rid of the three traitor RINOs on-line here:

Donations – National Republican Trust

Fact Checking Obama’s Claims About The Pork Spending (Stimulus) Bill

Okay, all is not well with the Obamanation. Here are some facts that have been checked by the Associated Press and have been found wanting:

OBAMA: “My bottom line is, are we creating 4 million jobs?” he told the news conference. He said in Indiana, “The plan that we’ve put forward will save or create 3 million to 4 million jobs over the next two years.” THE FACTS: Job creation projections are uncertain even in stable times, and some of the economists relied on by Obama in making his forecast acknowledge a great deal of uncertainty in their numbers. The president’s own economists, in a report prepared last month, stated, “It should be understood that that all of the estimates presented in this memo are subject to significant margins of error.” Beyond that, it’s unlikely the nation will ever know how many jobs are saved as a result of the stimulus. While it’s clear when jobs are abolished, there’s no economic gauge that tracks job preservation.

In the long run, this bill will cause a loss of jobs. The money to pay for this massive spending must come from somewhere. Ultimately, it will come out of our economy and hurt our ability to create jobs.

OBAMA: “They’ll be jobs building the wind turbines and solar panels and fuel-efficient cars that will lower our dependence on foreign oil and modernizing our costly health care system that will save us billions of dollars and countless lives.” THE FACTS: The economic stimulus bill would allocate about $20 billion to help hospitals and doctors transition from paper charts to electronic health records for their patients. Research has shown that in some instances, electronic record keeping can eliminate inappropriate services and improve care, but it’s not a sure thing by any means. “By itself, the adoption of more health IT is generally not sufficient to produce significant cost savings,” the Congressional Budget Office reported last year.

Only proven technology leads to new job creation. Unproven technologies rely on government subsidies to continue, like wind farms that need government dollars to remain on-line. Again, this will lead to fewer jobs in the long run.

OBAMA: “I’ve appointed hundreds of people, all of whom are outstanding Americans who are doing a great job. There are a couple who had problems before they came into my administration, in terms of their taxes. … I made a mistake. … I don’t want to send the signal that there are two sets of rules.” … Obama previously acknowledged he “screwed up” in making it seem to Americans that there is one set of tax compliance rules for VIPs and another set for everyone else. Yet his choice for treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, achieved the post despite having belatedly paid $34,000 to the IRS, an agency Geithner now oversees. That could leave the perception that there is one set of rules for Geithner and another set for everyone else.

And let’s not forget how Obama went on a tirade about lobbyists in John McCain’s campaign and yet Obama himself appoints lobbyists to his own staff.

Anyone else think that there aren’t two set of rules here?

OBAMA: “We also inherited the most profound economic emergency since the Great Depression.” THE FACTS: This could turn out to be the case. But as bad as the economic numbers are, the unemployment figures have not reached the levels of the early 1980s, let alone the 1930s — yet. A total of 598,000 payroll jobs vanished in January — the most in nearly 35 years — and the unemployment rate jumped to 7.6 from 7.2 percent the month before. The most recent high was 7.8 percent in June 1992. And the jobless rate was 10.8 percent in November and December 1982. Unemployment in the Great Depression ranged for several years from 25 percent to close to 30 percent.

When we do reach the unemployment levels of the 1930′s, it won’t be because of the Bush Administration and the economy growing tax-cuts they enacted. It will be because of the socialist policies the Dems are trying to force down our throats right now.

You can access the complete article on-line here:

FACT CHECK: Examining Obama’s Job, Pork Claims
Calvin Woodward
Associated Press via Yahoo News
February 10, 2009

Obama Breaks Another Promise

Obama Bans Earmarks From Stimulus Package
84rules
January 6, 2009

Well, it didn’t take long for Obama to break that promise. Or maybe he forgot to tell the Dems who control Congress that pork was banned. Here is a listing of what this pork-laden, useless spending bill contains:

- $1 billion for Amtrak, which hasn’t earned a profit in four decades.

- $2 billion to help subsidize child care.

- $400 million for research into the junk science of global warming.

- $2.4 billion for projects to demonstrate how carbon greenhouse gas can be safely removed from the atmosphere, another junk science project.

- $650 million for coupons to help consumers convert their TV sets from analog to digital, part of the digital TV conversion.

- $600 million to buy a new fleet of cars for federal employees and government departments.

- $75 million to fund programs to help people quit smoking.

- $21 million to re-sod the National Mall, which suffered heavy use during the Inauguration.

- $2.25 billion for national parks. This item has sparked calls for an investigation, because the chief lobbyist of the National Parks Association is the son of Rep. David R. Obey, D-Wisc. The $2,25 billion is about equal to the National Park Service’s entire annual budget. The Washington Times reports it is a threefold increase over what was originally proposed for parks in the stimulus bill. Obey is chairman of the House Appropriations Committee.

- $335 million for treatment and prevention of sexually transmitted diseases.

- $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts.

- $44 million to renovate the headquarters building of the Agriculture Department.

- $32 billion for a “smart electricity grid to minimize waste.

- $87 billion of Medicaid funds, to aid states. This earmark amounts to the first installment of a Socialized Health Care system just like the disasters that have a hold of Canada and Great Britain.

- $53.4 billion for science facilities, high speed Internet, and miscellaneous energy and environmental programs.

- $13 billion to repair and weatherize public housing, help the homeless, repair foreclosed homes.

- $20 billion for quicker depreciation and write-offs for equipment.

- $10.3 billion for tax credits to help families defray the cost of college tuition.

- $20 billion over five years for an expanded food stamp program.

Not to mention the potential $5 billion for ACORN to commit more voter-fraud.