The California Albatross

by Meredith Turney on Townhall.com

Within a matter of weeks, the great state of California will be out of money. For months state leaders have warned of the yawning $24 billion budget deficit; even exploiting the deficit they created in a failed attempt to scare voters into increasing their taxes in the May special election. The proposed tax increases and budget gimmickry were soundly rejected by voters, sending a clear message to Sacramento that Californians will no longer finance the bloated, inefficient government’s insatiable appetite for more tax dollars. Now the day of reckoning is upon California, and how the Golden State resolves this massive problem will impact the entire nation. … The fate of the world’s 10th largest economy is inextricably linked to America’s overall economic fate. Could America’s already fragile economy absorb California’s debt? With the federal government already trillions in debt, what’s another $24 billion? The problem is not the amount of debt, but the precedent it will set if the federal government is forced to bailout one of the country’s largest states. …More

Your tax dollars at work!

NIH Funds $2.6 Million Study to Get Prostitutes in China to Drink Less

Excerpt

The federal government is spending $2.6 million to make sure prostitutes in China drink less on the job. That’s the goal of a five-year study, bankrolled by the National Institutes of Health, designed to help lower HIV infections among China’s “female sex workers,” who are referred to in the study as “FSWs.” Researchers will visit 100 houses of ill repute — a whole hamlet of harlots — to collect data on 700 prostitutes and 150 pimps and madams, referred to as “gatekeepers” in the study’s sterile abstract.

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U.S. Government Funds $400,000 Study on Gay Sex in Argentina Bars

Excerpt

Government researchers are spending more than $400,000 in taxpayer money to hit the bars in Argentina. The National Institutes of Health are paying researchers to cruise six bars in Buenos Aires to find out why gay men engage in risky sexual behavior while drunk — and just what can be done about it.

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And they wonder why we balk when they demand more of our money!

Here come the mayors, “Give us money too!”

Well, we new it was coming sooner or later.  It looks like the latest group to get in line for a federal bailout is the United States Conference of Mayors.  They’ve released a 607 page document titled “Mainstreet Economic Recovery” loaded with requests by 427 cities for funding 11,391 “ready to go” infrastructure projects they say will create jobs and reinvigorate America’s urban centers.

After the $8+ trillion bailout of the financial industry and Bush’s continuing indications that a bailout is in the works for the US auto industry, there were bound to be many more groups lining up with empty pockets and outstretched hands.  This is exactly why many of us were against the bailouts from the start.  It doesn’t take a fortune teller to know this will grow like a snowball rolling downhill.

In fact, the group uses precisely this argument to justify its request.  From page 3 of the report:

“Washington has bailed out Wall Street, banks, and insurance companies to the tune of $700 billion and hopes that its investment will eventually be returned to the U.S. Treasury and the taxpayer. It is now time for Washington to make another kind of investment, one that guarantees a return: It is time to initiate MainStreet Economic Recovery…”

Wait a minute, a guaranteed return?  Does this mean the difficulties facing America’s urban centers will be automatically resolved if the $73+ billion they’re requesting is granted?  In other words, the problems with America’s cities are symptoms of a lack of adequate infrastructure.  Don’t believe it!

Why didn’t these cities invest the taxes they collected in these improvements to begin with?  If there’s a guaranteed return, shouldn’t they have recognized it and sought to capitalize on it from the beginning? 

The fact is, this is just a group of local government officials seeking to capitalize on what they see as a federal government with loose purse strings.  Here’s a list of just a few of the cities and how much of your money they’re asking for:

Anchorage, AK	$407,982,000
Fayetteville, AR	$247,754,170
Phoenix, AZ	$1,395,027,092

The report goes on to explain this is just the tip of the iceberg.  Because there are only 427 cities represented in the report, the potential for “both the potential infrastructure investment that could be made across all of the nation’s principal cities, and the potential number of jobs that such an investment would create, are significantly larger.”

In other words, there will soon be people and groups coming out of the woodwork demanding their share of the government’s seemingly bottomless bucket of bailout money–unless we put a stop to it now!

This is why it’s so important to stop this madness these bailouts they’re calling “economic stimulus.”

Do your part. Contact the White House, your Representatives, and your Senators today and tell them to Stop the Bailouts!

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It’s kind of like a feeding frenzy. It’s a little bit unsettling to me.”–Michelle Malkin

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) Press Release on Gov’t Waste

Coburn Report Highlights Worst Waste of 2008

Report Includes More Than $1.3 Billion in Pet Projects, Frivolous Grants and Other Ridiculous Spending

 

December 12, 2008

(WASHINGTON, D.C.) – U.S. Senator Tom Coburn, M.D. (R-OK), ranking member of the Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, today released the oversight report “2008: Worst Waste of the Year.” The look back on 2008 features absurd federal spending from beltway bureaucrats and elected officials. To view the entire report click here.

“As we look back on federal spending for 2008, American taxpayers will laugh, and then cry at how their elected officials spent their hard-earned dollars. Not even these tough economic times have dulled Congress’ ability to find new and creative ways to waste taxpayer dollars,” Dr. Coburn said.

Examples of waste in 2008 include:

• $188,000 for Lobster Institute in Maine, home of the “LobsterCam”

• $1 million for bike paths on Louisiana levees while levees await basic repairs

• $2.4 million for a retractable shade canopy at a park in West Virginia

• $24.6 million for the National Park Service’s 100th year birthday in 2016 – 8 years early

• $3.2 million on a blimp the Pentagon does not want

• $367,000 wasted by a Texas school board on items like an inflatable alligator and under-the-sea waterslide, among other things

• $5 million for a bridge to a zoo parking lot in St. Louis

• $9,000 for a non-functioning airplane-shaped gas station in Tennessee

• $300,000 for specialty potatoes for high-end restaurants

“The waste highlighted in this report is only a fraction of the more than $385 billion the federal government throws away every year through waste, fraud and duplication. Yet, each example in this report is a snapshot that tells a larger story, just as the Bridge to Nowhere justifiably became a symbol of the corrupting nature of earmarks. The story the American people already understand is that Congress’ inability to make common sense decisions about spending priorities is putting our children’s future at risk. Until Congress abandons the short-term parochialism that gives us LobsterCams and inflatable alligators, we will never get a handle on the major economic challenges facing this country,” Dr. Coburn said.