Tag Archives: political parties

Federal Waste, Climate Change, and Federal Outsourcing

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Fox News ran an article late last week concerning the State Department’s own Office of the Inspector General’s report concerning State’s handling of taxpayer funding of activities in support of the climate change meme—in other countries, yet.  The OIG audit itself can be read here, and the auditors’ list of State programs sampled can be seen here.

What the OIG found in State’s Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs and its Office of Global Change (OES/EGC), “the nerve center of the Obama administration’s international climate change policy,” was…interesting.  The findings, which included aggregate overspending of some $214 million over the period 2006-2010 that was the subject of the OIG audit, included these:

  • 7 of 19 program totaling $34 million in grants had no particular plans for results monitoring.  Thus, as OIG wrote, “…[State] may not always have reasonable assurance that federal funds were spent in accordance with the grant award; that the grant recipient performed program activities as dictated in the grant award; and that the program’s indicators, goals and objectives were achieved.”
  • [G]rant oversight officers failed to provide written reviews of compliance with State Department reporting standards….
  • [V]isits to climate change sites were rare, and then little effort went into actual examination.  [R]eports “typically summarized meetings held with grantee officials where only the statuses of the programs were discussed.”
  • Requirements that grant recipients submit quarterly financial statements seemed routinely to be ignored.  [A] recipient in Hyderabad, India, who got two separate grants totaling $1.1 million continued to receive funding, even though reporting requirements were not followed.
  • Indeed, reporting requirements for detailed results were not included in any of the seven grants examined by OIG.

Regardless of what anyone might think of the idiocy of spending taxpayer money on the chimera of man-caused global warming, here is a potful of that money being shipped overseas for…well, just because, apparently, given the interest in oversight shown here.  At least, had that money been spent at home, there might have been one or two domestic jobs created or saved, instead of those jobs being outsourced.

Winston Churchill’s Advice to Americans

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OK, actually he was talking to his party about how to talk with the British public at the end of WWII, but the advice is valid here, too.  Republican Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney’s choice for his Vice Presidential running mate indicates that he’s following the first part of Churchill’s advice.  Now the team needs to follow the rest—that seems to be their intent—and we need to support them in that.

This is no time for windy platitudes and glittering advertisements.  The Conservative Party had far better go down telling the truth and acting in accordance with the verities of our position than gain a span of shabbily-bought office by easy and fickle froth and chatter.

All my experience of the British people, which is a long one, convinces me that never at any moment more than this have they wished and meant to face realities, and woe betide those public men who seek to slide into power down the slippery slope of vain and profligate undertakings.

This is no time for humbug and blandishments, but for grim, stark facts and figures, and for action to meet to immediate needs.

What he said.  Americans aren’t as dumb as the Progressives insist on making us out to be.

 

h/t Power Line

Progressives and the Republican VP Choice

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The immediate, and so far sole, response to the Republicans’ selection of Congressman Paul Ryan (R, WI) as their Vice Presidential Candidate has been to attack the man and the man’s budget—which one branch of Congress thought well enough of to pass twice, and from which the Do-Nothing Democrat-controlled Senate has run screaming, not even allowing a debate of it.

Here’s a sampling of the Progressives’ response.

  • A claim that the Ryan budget (summarized nearby) would increase taxes on the middle class so millionaires can continue to get tax cuts.  Their position is, then, that reducing the existing 6 tax brackets to two—10% and 25%—is a tax increase.
  • Obama Campaign Manager, Jim Messina:
    • [the Ryan budget will] end Medicare as we know it and slash the investments we need to keep our economy growing the all while cutting taxes for those at the very top [and]
    • doubled down on his commitment to take our country back to the failed policies of the past
    • Mitt Romney has chosen a leader of the House Republicans who shares his commitment to the flawed theory that new budget-busting tax cuts for the wealthy, while placing greater burdens on the middle class and seniors, will somehow deliver a stronger economy
  • Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid echoed Messina’s claim:
    • doubled down on his commitment to gut Social Security and end Medicare as we know it
  • Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley (D), continuing the Medicare theme:
    • a strong commitment to end Medicare as we know it

What are the Progressives’ alternatives?  Raise taxes on a group of Americans whom they routinely vilify.  Block all efforts to reform, and so save, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security (and yes, the reform will change these programs “as we know it;” that’s kind of the nature of reform.  Without reform, though, these programs will be bankrupt in 10-20 years).  Otherwise, the Progressives’ alternatives—since they decry earlier policies—seems to be to continue their current, destructive policies; policies that over the last three years have exploded our deficit, exploded our debt and earned our nation its first credit rating downgrade, suppressed an economic cycle recovery and held us in a post-recession recession with 8.1+% unemployment the entire three years, stalled GDP at 1.5%-1.8% growth that doesn’t even keep up with population growth,….

In the end, by focusing on attacking the Republican ticket and the only budget passed by one house of Congress, without offering any meaningful alternatives, the Progressives are simply confessing that they have no alternatives.  That they have no idea at all about how to fix our country’s ills.  That they have no clue about how to put Americans back to work in a burgeoning, free economy.

Are Harry Reid and Joe Biden Bigots?

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Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said this the other day on the Senate floor—and it’s the second time he’s made this particular accusation:

The word’s out that [Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney] hasn’t paid any taxes for 10 years.  Let him prove that he has paid taxes, because he hasn’t.

What’s with this religious bigotry?  What does Reid have against Mormons?

And this, according to Mark Halperin and John Heilemann:

He [Reid] was wowed by Obama’s oratorical gifts and believed that the country was ready to embrace a black presidential candidate, especially one such as Obama—a “light-skinned” African American “with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one[.]”

Reid did apologize for these racist remarks, but still.  Would he have made either set of remarks (he refuses to apologize for his religious assault) in the first place were he not prejudiced?

Next, there’s then-Senator Joe Biden about then-candidate Barack Obama:

I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking buy.  I mean, that’s a storybook, man.

Biden did issue a caveated statement that he masqueraded as an apology, but again—would he have made these remarks in the first place were he not prejudiced, just a little?

By Reid’s own logic, it’s not on the questioner to provide any proof at all (although I have offered their own words in support of my questions, which is more than they have done).  It’s entirely on the target to provide the proof of their innocence.

I ask, again: are Harry Reid and Joe Biden racists?  They have a lot to answer for.  Where’s their proof?

Democrats Do Axelrod

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As Fox News reported last week, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid—again—went onto the Senate floor and accused Republican Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney of not having paid any taxes for a decade.

The word’s out that he hasn’t paid any taxes for 10 years.  Let him prove that he has paid taxes, because he hasn’t.

Never mind that the “word is out” because it’s Reid putting it out.  And that Reid refuses to identify his “source.”  But I have to wonder: is Reid’s source President Obama?

And then there’s this:

House Democrats’ campaign arm is retracting claims it made that Las Vegas casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, a prominent Republican donor, was financially tied to prostitution—claims it now says “were untrue and unfair.”

The retraction comes after Adelson’s lawyer sent a letter last month to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee asking it to “retract and apologize for” what it called defamatory and libelous claims that Adelson, who heads Las Vegas Sands Corp, encouraged and profited from prostitution in Macau and donated “Chinese prostitution money” to Republican leaders.

Of course, it’s an easy retraction to make, now that they’ve done the smear and caused the damage.  It’s of a piece, too, with the smears the Democrats do, generally, on those who support people and causes of which they disapprove.

But it’s all part of the tactic President Obama’s campaign mouthpiece David Axelrod so dishonestly first put into play in the 2010 election campaign, when he asked why the US Chamber of Commerce was using foreign funding for campaign matters—which would have been a felony, if true—and then refused to cite any evidence.  He just asks questions, he said; it’s on his targets to prove their innocence.

Evidently, this is the level of integrity to which we can look forward from the Democrats this campaign season.