Wind energy has been touted by environmentalists as clean and cheap. While it may be clean, it is far from cheap. A maze of government subsidies, mandates and crony capitalism deeply mask the true cost of wind energy production to make it extremely wasteful of citizens’ dollars. In the free market, wind energy would never be built without the massive government intervention it receives.
Payments to the Recently Deceased
A June 28, 2013 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report entitled, “USDA Needs to Do More to Prevent Improper Payments to Deceased Individuals” bluntly lays out a pervasive problem that can be easily resolved.
Panic in Detroit
On July 18, 2013, Detroit filed a voluntary petition for bankruptcy, becoming the largest American city to do so. According to CBS News, the city is more than $18 billion in debt with a current budget deficit of $380 million.
Duplication Duplication
These next few weeks, I will be pointing out areas of duplication, overlap, or fragmentation in the federal government and suggestions on how it can be eliminated that will save millions of dollars for the taxpayers. Since 2011, the General Accountability Office (GAO) has been required to “identify and report annually to Congress on Federal […]
Just Give Me More Money to Spend
Well, finally a big government politician who admits it. It’s almost refreshing. Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn) said in a July 25 Round Table with Progressive Democrats of America, “The bottom line is we’re not broke, there’s plenty of money, it’s just the government doesn’t have it.” This statement is amazing as we approach a $17 […]
It’s All in the Numbers
Last week, we got the jobs numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). They reported a job gain of 162,000 for the month of July. There wasn’t a lot of hoopla about it because the numbers were pretty pathetic. Many analysts had expected somewhere between 175,000 to 200,000 jobs. Plus, the BLS dropped the […]
Bravo Senator Coburn!
We’ve heard a lot of whining and seen a lot of hand wringing about how awful the the sequester is to the nation’s economy. (The sequestration is the automatic budget cuts imposed by Congress that is occurring in the federal government.) We hear about federal employees being furloughed, children not being able to attend school, […]
Boeing Bogusness is Business as Usual
Today, Citizens Against Government Waste expressed outrage over the revelation that laid-off Boeing workers in the state of Washington will qualify for federal Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA), an unemployment benefits program that far exceeds the benefits normally handed out to unemployed workers. According to an August 1 story in the Seattle Times, the Department of […]
Stay Vigilant!
In today’s Congressional Quarterly, the headline reads, “Senate Democrats Weigh Sequester-Replacement Plans for September Votes” immediately followed by “the White House tries to broker a bipartisan budget deal with a small group of Republicans.” We who favor reducing the size of government need to be vigilant the next few months as Congress begins to negotiate […]
Ho Hum
Yesterday, the President traveled to Tennessee to discuss his “new” proposal for spurring on the economy and creating jobs. He proposes to lower the corporate tax rate and simplify the tax code by closing tax “loopholes.” Currently, the federal tax rate in the U.S. for corporations is 35%, one of the highest among industrialized nations. […]