Free Republic

In the current debate over the lame duck deal, the focus seems to be solely on the issue of taxes. Raising rates or closing loopholes: which will it be? After all it’s essential that the federal government increase its revenues, right? Everyone knows the government has run out of money, and talk of another debt limit debacle is already surfacing. Is the cause of the deficit declining federal revenues? Perhaps it's those pesky billionaires moving jobs and profits overseas? Or, there's always some way to blame oil companies or George W. Bush. The reality is far less flattering for...

"Mary X I've always said that I prefer government waste over corporate greed because more people benefit. Different perspective than you. That's all. I won't try to convert you, and you won't convert me. Have a great day." There you go, that just about says it all.

The nation’s First Voter has cast his ballot – and, once again, made history. President Obama voted about 5:20 p.m. at a community center in his hometown of Chicago, punching his choices into a touch-screen machine after signing forms and showing his driver’s license. He is the first president to vote before election day. “Now ignore the fact that there’s no gray hair on that picture,” Obama cracked to an election official. “I’m just glad I renewed my driver’s license.” Obama declined to reveal his choice for president, a subject of much humor over the past two days during his...

What do robotic squirrels, menus for Martian meals and a musical about climate change have in common? They've all been made possible with taxpayer assistance, according to the latest survey of government waste put out by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla. Known simply as the Waste Book, the report is a watchlist of eye-opening expenditures, which Coburn blames on a "let them eat caviar" attitude in Washington -- at a time when "23 million of our fellow Americans do not have good jobs," Coburn notes. Coburn, while chiding the agencies that spend this money for their "lack of judgment," said Congress...

This isn't the first time I have written about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau or waste and abuse in the federal government. I have opined on more than one occasion that the powers given to the CFPB were suspect. This is especially true since their funding doesn't even have to go through Congress. With a funding setup like that, one can't help but wonder who will watch the CFPB, while they are supposedly watching out for the American taxpayer. This is, however, the first time the CFPB and waste and abuse have been tied together. They are getting off to...

Driving on West Ox Rd in Ffax County today I noticed that there are now "One Way" signs by the dozens posted in the median strip on a 3 to 4 mile stretch of the road. Most of these have been erected in the median opposite of where someone's driveway intersects the road. In one stretch there are 6 or 7 in a 50 yard stretch of road, some within ten feet of each other. I hesitate to guess how many $$ it cost to manufacture, ship, and install these signs, but I can think of a thousand ways this...

PolitiJim readers will remember the retired, 30 year school teacher who began to expose a “fake” school district in Houston that collects millions of tax payer dollars but has no official students.  She hasn’t stopped her crusade against waste and, in fact, has nearly single handedly taken this $100 million monstrosity on by herself which should be a lesson to all T.E.A. Party patriots everywhere.   By attending meetings, filing Freedom of Information Act requests and publicizing her findings through TexasTrashTalk.com, she has begun to get the attention of the State Attorney General and others.Sarah P: Here is your power...

PolitiJim readers will remember the retired, 30 year school teacher who began to expose a “fake” school district in Houston that collects millions of tax payer dollars but has no official students.  She hasn’t stopped her crusade against waste and, in fact, has nearly single handedly taken this $100 million monstrosity on by herself which should be a lesson to all T.E.A. Party patriots everywhere.   By attending meetings, filing Freedom of Information Act requests and publicizing her findings through TexasTrashTalk.com, she has begun to get the attention of the State Attorney General and others.Sarah P: Here is your power...

Without authorization, for instance, the feds spent $19.6 million annually on the International Fund for Ireland. Sounds like a noble cause, but the money went for projects like pony-trekking centers and golf videos. Congressional budget-cutters spared the $440,000 spent annually to have attendants push buttons on the fully automated Capitol Hill elevators used by Representatives and Senators. Last year, the National Endowment for the Humanities spent $4.2 million to conduct a nebulous “National Conversation on Pluralism and Identity.” Obviously, talk radio wasn’t considered good enough. The Pentagon and Central Intelligence Agency channeled some $11 million to psychics who might provide...

Another MAP recipient, the Cotton Council International, received $20 million in 2011 to produce and promote Let’s Design, an Indian reality television show where contestants make clothing out of cotton. The council has reaped more than $169 million in the last decade.

Navy’s green fleet runs into fiscal storm Demo still on for next month, includes San Diego ship Republicans in Congress are blocking the Navy’s march toward a future in which jets and ships run on biofuels, saying the “green” most in question is whether the United States has the money, with a shrinking military budget, to invest in a pricey fuel experiment. The Navy will demonstrate its “great green fleet” concept next month, a toe in the water toward easing the country away from dependence on unfriendly foreign oil. But opposition in Congress could push the effort onto the rocks...

The Pentagon is about to waste $1.5 trillion, 38% of entire defense budget for a "virtual flying piano". That may sound preposterous, and it is. Unfortunately, it is also true. Foreign Policy Magazine discusses the sad saga of The Jet That Ate the Pentagon. This month, we learned that the Pentagon has increased the price tag for the F-35 by another $289 million -- just the latest in a long string of cost increases -- and that the program is expected to account for a whopping 38 percent of Pentagon procurement for defense programs, assuming its cost will grow no...

Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and fights government corruption, announced today that it obtained documents from the United States Air Force and the United States Secret Service detailing costs associated with Michelle Obama’scontroversial August 2010 vacation to Spain. According to a Judicial Watch analysis, the records indicate a total combined cost of at least $467,585. Judicial Watch obtained the Secret Service records pursuant to an August 2010 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. (The agency notified Judicial Watch that it withheld 78 pages of responsive records in their entirety.) Judicial Watch obtained the U.S. Air Force records...

Want to Deprive a Liberal of An Expensive Taxpayer Dinner? Here's a way to IMMEDIATELY take out some of your angst | http://bit.ly/I1XTS2 Texas Trash Talk is attempting to shut down the pilfering of Harris County Texas taxpayers who have been paying for a “fake” school district for nearly 50 years. These bureaucrats had the audacity to ask for MORE tax money after paying the former Superintendent (now Mayor of nearby KATY) $100K and trips to Four Seasons in Washington DC among other things. (They meeting PolitiJim went to the board had a catered lunch and jazz music if you...

What can we learn from allegations against a half-dozen supervisors in the Government Services Administration for wasting, and perhaps stealing, taxpayer dollars on foolishness in Las Vegas, and against a dozen Secret Service agents for dangerously procuring prostitutes in Cartagena, Colombia, while there to prepare for a visit by the president? If the allegations are true -- and they seem to be -- the behavior of these government workers reflects a view of government hardly consistent with the idea of limited government and public trust. The United States is the only nation in history founded on the principle that...

Full Title: DOE’s Vehicle Fleet Roughly The Size of Its 15,000+ Staff, Inspector General Calls The $60M it Spends Annually on Travel a ‘Paltry Sum’ During a hearing before a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee Wednesday, Department of Energy Inspector General Greg Friedman told Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) that compared to amount of money spent by DOE contractors, the $60 million the department spends annually on travel is a “paltry sum.” A “paltry sum”? Think that’s bad? How about this: according to Christopher Johns, director of the Energy Department’s budget office, the DOE’s vehicle fleet is roughly the size of...

Stop the presses: Big-spending Democrats are finally up in arms over a federal boondoggle. Details of the U.S. General Services Administration bacchanalia get worse by the day. We've graduated from overpriced breakfasts in Vegas, friends-and-family junkets galore and in-house videos mocking their own profligacy to extravagant bonuses, alleged kickbacks, obstructionism and bribes. But the scandal is still small potatoes compared to the potential billions GSA is pouring down the Big Labor drain. Whistleblowers and an independent inspector general investigation estimate that the GSA's Sin City conference cost taxpayers an estimated $1 million in 2010. Washington bureaucrats squandered another $234,000...

So, is there anyone left who still doesn’t recognize the absurd upside-down priorities of government driven by political correctness and environmental extremism? If so, get a gander at this news out of San Franciso (where else?): (CNSNews.com) – The government spent at least $205,075 in 2010 to ‘translocate’ a single bush in San Francisco that stood in the path of a$1.045-billion highway-renovation project that was partially funded by the economic stimulus legislation President Barack Obama signed in 2009. Yeah, a couple hundred grand of your tax money to move a bush. “Why?” you might ask. . .

The recent exposé of clowns and mind-readers as critical support elements of government training at a U.S. General Services (GSA) conference in Las Vegas has served as a politically expedient way for Barack Obama to pretend to be tough on the issue of wasteful spending. There can be no doubt that cracking down on a federal agency that was so misguided that it spent almost a million taxpayer dollars on a training conference (where clowns were considered essential personnel) is a good thing--especially when GSA is the very agency that determines the travel, meals and per diems for the rest...

Say goodbye to Martha Johnson. This week, she was forced to resign as chief of the General Services Administration, the federal agency that manages real estate for the government. Somehow Johnson managed to spend an incredible $820,000 for a conference outside of Las Vegas. Among the expenditures she okayed: $31,000 for a "networking reception," $146,000 for catered food and drinks, as well as $130,000 in expenses to "scout" the conference's hotel location. Apparently, Johnson's advance team had to travel to Vegas six times to get a handle on where best to discuss GSA business. Somebody had to do it. In...