Time for Thorns

A cousin emailed me this and as I usually do,  I checked it out.   It’s real,  so I provided you the link.

The money quote is the very first sentence:

“Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them.”

Were truer words ever spoken?

57% would like to replace the entire Congress,  according to this new Rasmussen poll,  while only 25% want to keep it.    If I were a sitting politician,  this would make me very,  very nervous,  because it means that not even Democrats want to retain the current crop of fools on the Hill.

Don’t  you love the smell of panic in the morning?

The WSJ reports that Congress critters haven’t been personally totally immune from the bad economy,  either.    I view this as just,  since they bear a large portion of the responsibility for the fiscal mess.

Check out  Legistorm, which includes many kinds of disclosures among the public documents it posts.    The site is searchable,  and includes tidbits such as the ethics investigation into  Reps. Linda and Loretta Sanchez,  which I was unaware of.

Of course, there are many facts lawmakers are not required to disclose,  such as home mortgages.

The House has passed a bill creating the Independent Financial Crisis Commission,  modeled on the 9/11 commission,  which got nearly everything wrong,  since the Clintonites,  especially Jamie Gorelick, knew their task was to protect the Clinton legacy,  blocking real investigation.

Let’s see,  Congress did much to create the financial mess,   so now they have a commission to pretend to discover what went wrong and who was at fault,  and then to come up with plans to prevent future disasters.    Read the entire list of wonderful things this collection of fools from the Hill will accomplish.    I’d laugh if it weren’t  so corrupt,  so utterly contemptible.    It also shows just how stupid Congress thinks you are.

South Carolina Gov.  Mark Sanford is taking the General Assembly to court after lawmakers required him to accept $350 million in disputed federal money by overriding his budget vetoes.

Remember that in the stimulus bill, Congress basically wrote state law by saying a state legislature could ignore their governor’s  refusal of stimulus funds.  I have no idea where the lawsuit will go, but it should be interesting to watch.

UPDATE:  The SC Supreme Court has  ordered Gov.  Sanford to request the stimulus,  ruling he had no say in the matter .

Remember  that Rep.  James Clyburn (D-SC)  inserted an amendment in the stimulus that legislators could go around a governor’s refusal. The legality of that was later questioned,  but on Monday,  U. S. District Judge Joseph Anderson cited Clyburn’s amendment in saying it was clear Congress intended to allow legislators to get around governors who didn’t want the money.

Gov.  Sanford won’t appeal,  so the citizens of South Carolina are about to get shafted.   However,   give Sanford’s administration full credit for having found a novel way to raise some cash using Confederate money!

I found a column by  JB Williams which gives a neat history of the damage Congress has done to the country through the vehicle of  Government-Sponsored Enterprises.     GSEs are a clever means to accomplish things which can’t be managed legislatively,  and allow Congress to avoid responsibility for the disasters they perpetrate.

It should be no surprise that Democrats have always been extremely fond of GSEs, which serve handsomely to increase the reach and power of the federal government.  Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are but two of the GSEs which haven’t turned out well.  And of course, one must not point out that Pres.  George W. Bush sounded the warning on both entitites many years ago.

In December of last year, the NY Times editorialized grandly:  “The real issue is whether enhanced unionizing would worsen the recession, and there is no evidence that it would.”

That editorial is here.

Today the Washington Post is reporting that the Times is threatening to kill off the Boston Globe if its unions don’t agree to sweeping concessions.

Of course, Congress has always taken a similar position in refusing to allow itself to be organized, claiming it would hamper its flexibility, which is so vital to the institution of crooks and dunces.

The entire stimulus package is online, in a searchable format, at ReadTheStimulus.org.   It is updated whenever changes are made.

In its present form, the bill, which contemplates spending about $825 billion, runs to 940 pages.  That comes to about $877 million per page.

Call your Congress critters and start beating them over the head.  Call the White House and tell them that Robert Gibbs told a whopper in his presser this morning when he claimed that “about 1 in every 6 dollars is for small business.”   Small business gets about 41 million at present, far below the 600 million allocated for landscaping national monuments.

Again, PLEASE publicize this website far and wide.  Your wallets depend on it.

Yes, various economists warned Congress last week that we are on our way to becoming a banana republic, but do you imagine anyone listened?

http://washingtontimes.com.nyud.net:8090/news/2009/jan/16/policies-on-debt-a-risk-to-economy/

There were grim prognostications all around, but I don’t recall anyone directly making the point that government now consumes more than all the citizens are worth, as Ilana Mercer does here:

http://wnd.com.nyud.net:8090/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=86240