Transparency in Government, You Bet

They promised this would be the most transparent administration in American history. Most of us assumed that this meant that we'd know how every dollar was spent, and the details behind every policy enacted.

Silly us.

How about transparent lies?

Biden credits stimulus for fire station funded under Bush

You can read the details for yourself but the meaning is clear. We, the People, are stupid hicks with no long-term memories and a fondness for flim-flam artists.

Since most of the stimulus money isn't going to hit until 2010-11, you can understand why they would send out "Vice" President Joe Biden, congenital liar, to take credit for someone else's pork.

UPDATE -- 11:25 p.m. Thursday, April 2, 2009 -- Did you know that Recovery.gov, the Administration's new website on which it has promised to document transparency and on which, so far, there is nothing to see, cost the U.S. taxpayers a cool $84 million? Senator Tom is less than impressed with the results.

Another Massive Secret Spending Bill

First we had TARP. Then Son of TARP.

Then we had the huge Pork-a-Palooza, or Porkulus Bill.

Don't look now but Porkulus II is coming quickly.

As President Obama hosts a summit Monday on “fiscal responsibility,” Democratic leaders in Congress this week are preparing to ram through the House a massive spending bill that includes thousands of unscrutinized pork-barrel earmarks and the largest increase in discretionary spending since Jimmy Carter - a bill written in secret, which to date, no one in America other than the Democratic congressional leadership has read.

There's more here, and at Human Events, if you have the stomach for it.

Hypocrisy at the Highest Levels

Where could you read these words?

End the Practice of Writing Legislation Behind Closed Doors: As president, Barack Obama will restore the American people's trust in their government by making government more open and transparent. Obama will work to reform congressional rules to require all legislative sessions, including committee mark-ups and conference committees, to be conducted in public.

You will find this paragraph at President Obama's Change.gov website, or at least until it becomes too embarrassing for his people and they take it down.

Try to square this with the push to pass the Porkulus (Stimulus) Bill in which no lawmaker in either House or Senate actually had time to read the 1,071 page document. Copies of the bill were not made available until 7 p.m. EST last night. It's estimated that it would take over 36 non-stop hours of normal reading (without questions, dinner breaks, or trips to the john) to read the entire thing.

By the bye, the House voted a bit ago to pass the bill, 246-183. There was a rush on so that Speaker Nancy Pelosi could make her flight on an 8-day trip to Italy. That was more important than actually reading the bill.

Seven Democrats voted against it. Good for them.

One Democrat voted present. At least that's honest.

All but two Republicans voted "no" and the two in question did not vote.

Now it goes to the Senate where it may get a vote tonight, virtually sight unseen.

This is a sad day for America, chiefly because this bill will cause great harm, but also in some measure because there no longer is any pretense of the ruling powers paying any attention to the common sense legislative process of proposal and debate. The Congress is no longer a deliberative body, it's merely a place of power politics where the "winners" craft laws behind closed doors and ignore the voice (and desires) of We the People.

Pray for the survival of the Republic.

Three Weeks of Undivided Liberalism

With the Pork-a-Palooza in the final stages of passage before it is sent to His holiness, President Obama for the blessing ceremony, let us review, courtesy of Michael Franc of the Heritage Foundation, what unified liberalism hath wrought:

Under the guise of stimulating the economy, this one bill contains a generation’s worth of liberal policymaking, an entire Great Society-scale agenda, one that advances the liberals’ view of man and his relationship to government enough to cause LBJ himself to turn red with envy.

The pork and the overall spending are every bit as bad as the critics say, but in the long run, they are mere distractions. The real damage comes from other, less noticed provisions in the bills.

The House and/or Senate stimulus bills would undo the 1996 welfare reforms, explode entitlement spending by a cool quarter trillion dollars, lay the groundwork for the federal government’s takeover of our health care system, double Uncle Sam’s already overbearing role in education, require taxpayers to pick up the bail tab for potentially dangerous felons, allow unemployed Wall Street executives to qualify for Medicaid, and reignite the fires of trade protectionism, thereby risking a global trade war.

Not bad for the first month of unified liberal rule in Washington, eh?

There's more, if you have the stomach for it.

May God Have Mercy on the Republic

Well, the Pork-a-Palooza, also known as the Porkulus, also known as the Obama Stimulus Plan, survived its crucial Senate test vote on cloture today, 61-36, thanks to quisling Sens. Collins, Snowe and Specter.

May God have mercy on the Republic.

My trained eye caught a key paragraph in the AP report on the vote:

As if to underscore its prospects for passage, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a prominent and powerful business group, issued a statement calling on the Senate to advance the measure.

Oh, please! Do not bother equating Chamber of Commerce support with true conservative values. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, as well as many of the various state chambers of commerce, long since abandoned conservative principles, whether or not they pass themselves off as Republican. Remember, it was the U.S. Chamber helping lead the charge for amnesty for millions of illegal aliens.

The Chamber no longer gives a rat's behind about small business or entrepreneurship, and they never gave a damn about individual working people anyway.

Slashed Stimulus Bill May be Restuffed

There may be a deal in the Senate on the Pork-a-Palooza but the voting won't come until Sunday and weird things can and do happen.

But if it passes, it will still be a fundamentally flawed piece of legislation and there is no guarantee that the price tag, whittled back from $937 billion to somewhere between $790 billion and $830 billion, will remain low. Already there is talk among top liberals that the conference committee restructuring between the House and Senate will likely restore much if not all of the stricken spending.

Small government patriots in Pennsylvania: remember how Arlen Specter has screwed you again. The other identified GOP quislings: Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe. No surprise there.

Today's Required Reading on the Pork-a-Palooza

If you need reasons to call your U.S. Senator, or if you just want good talking points for your brain-numbed liberal friends, there are a few pieces of good reading on today's 'net.

1. "I Won," He Explained, by Rich Lowry at National Review Online. A few on-target quotes:

... Obama, a reputed master of the persuasive art, has settled on his central argument for the stimulus bill: I won.

That Obama is reduced to this crude appeal is a symptom of the intellectual collapse of the case for his stimulus bill, a congressional spendfest untethered from its stated goal of providing a rapid “jolt” to the economy.
...
The president should read the transcript of the third presidential debate. He claimed his program represented “a net spending cut.” He called himself “a strong proponent of pay-as-you-go. Every dollar that I’ve proposed, I’ve proposed an additional cut so that it matches.” He added, “We need to eliminate a whole host of programs that don’t work.”

Now, circumstances change, and no president can adhere to every jot and tittle from his campaign, but the “I won” argument only works if the campaign program matches the governing program. Obama himself seems confused on what exactly “I won” means.
...
Obama writes that the bill “is more than a prescription for short-term spending—it’s a strategy for America’s long-term growth and opportunity.” Fine. A long-term strategy deserves long-term deliberation ...

2. "The Fierce Urgency of Pork," by Charles Krauthammer (Washington Post).

"A failure to act, and act now, will turn crisis into a catastrophe."

-- President Obama, Feb. 4.

Catastrophe, mind you. So much for the president who in his inaugural address two weeks earlier declared "we have chosen hope over fear." Until, that is, you need fear to pass a bill.

...

And yet more damaging to Obama's image than all the hypocrisies in the appointment process is his signature bill: the stimulus package. He inexplicably delegated the writing to Nancy Pelosi and the barons of the House. The product, which inevitably carries Obama's name, was not just bad, not just flawed, but a legislative abomination.

It's not just pages and pages of special-interest tax breaks, giveaways and protections, one of which would set off a ruinous Smoot-Hawley trade war. It's not just the waste, such as the $88.6 million for new construction for Milwaukee Public Schools, which, reports the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, have shrinking enrollment, 15 vacant schools and, quite logically, no plans for new construction.

3. "The Great Overreach," by Jonah Goldberg (NRO).

The stimulus bill was a bridge too far, an overplayed hand, ten pounds of manure in a five-pound bag. The legislation’s primary duty was never to stimulate the economy, but to stimulate the growth of government, the scope of the state.

4. CBO: Obama Stimulus Harmful Over Long Haul, by Stephen Dinan (Washington Times).

President Obama's economic recovery package will actually hurt the economy more in the long run than if he were to do nothing, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday.

CBO, the official scorekeepers for legislation, said the House and Senate bills will help in the short term but result in so much government debt that within a few years they would crowd out private investment, actually leading to a lower Gross Domestic Product over the next 10 years than if the government had done nothing.

It isn't too late to make a call, especially those of you with Democrat senators.

More Mendacity on Capitol Hill

What is it about the concept of "principles" that is so difficult for Congress to understand?

Most of us would be very grateful if our elected representatives would actually stand for something. Freedom or tyranny. Capitalism or collectivism. Morality or licentiousness. One side or the other, where ever that happens to be. Vote that way. Sponsor legislation that way. Stand up for what you really believe.

Then we can evaluate whether you represent our views, and we'll vote to keep you or toss you out on your ass next election so that you can pursue your agenda outside of government.

My ire is raised this morning by a couple of paragraphs in an Associated Press report on the progress of the Pork-a-Palooza package, which reflects the sad state of things on Capitol Hill. The first paragraph:

Democrats also upheld a so-called Buy American provision that requires projects financed by the measure to be built with domestically produced iron and steel.

Hmmm, I thought, when I read this. The Democrats are bucking their own president on this one. (Obama has warned that the provision could trigger a trade war.) Good for them, sticking up for their beliefs, I thought. Much too prematurely. The next paragraph:

But with Obama voicing concern about the provision, the requirement was changed to specify that U.S. international trade agreements not to be violated.

In other words, Democrats can claim they want to "Buy American" but the reality will be that nothing will change. It's a sham designed to give them cover come the next election period.

My opinion on this subject isn't the issue.* What is at issue is this stupid Washington game of playing us all for ignorant, gullible suckers who will believe whatever they happen to want to tell us. This mendacious habit of playing everything right down the middle so that anything can be justified.

Spineless.

*My opinion? The Buy American provision was never serious since we've shut down most of our steel-making capability in this country. We couldn't provide the product if we wanted to. However, we never should have agreed to these stupid trade provisions in the first place that crippled our own steel industry. It was short-sighted and dangerous. Solution? Require that a percentage of U.S. iron and steel be used, and work to increase that percentage. Meanwhile, return to the negotiating table and get our steel industry back.

Reflections on the Pork-a-Palooza

This has been a long day away, by necessity, from Oklahomily HQ, but it's given me a chance to catch up on the news and commentary while driving across the Sooner state. A few impressions on a very short post.

1. The Stimulus Bill, aka the Pork-a-Palooza or, as Rush would say, Porkulus, is in deep trouble with the American people, mostly because they are beginning to read what's actually in the thing. However,

2. I expect that pressure will be applied by Harry Reid & Co. to get it passed pretty much as it appears tonight. That passage could come as early as tomorrow (Friday). If it passes with few GOP votes, it will become The Litmus Test for the 2010 midterms. If the economy continues to tank, especially after the president's exhortation that only passage of this bill will save it, the blame will rest squarely with the Democrats. For the sake of the economy and the people who will be hurt, I would rather see the bill go down in flames and either do nothing (preferable, but it won't happen) or start over to craft a real, but smaller stimulus bill.

3. President Obama is pushing too hard, too soon. He's maxed out his bets and is rolling the dice on a very flawed package. I watched a bit of Obama's speech tonight at a restaurant while eating dinner. I couldn't make out everything he was saying because of the noise levels, but it appeared that he was not just annoyed, which he often seems, but genuinely angry. That is not the image he projected in his campaign and it is not one which the American people are going to welcome. A man who loses his cool is not in control, and Americans do not want to see their presidents out of control.

4. The embarrassment of liberals over the exposure of details of the stimulus package is triggering calls for "hearings" into the lack of balance on talk radio, as if that should be any business of the government, regulating free speech. Considering that liberals control academia, most of the mainstream media, most of the federal government, and the National People's Radio, do they really need to regulate talk radio and the internet?

5. Speaking of NPR, I tried to listen to some of it this evening. I really did try. But after the third or fourth story glorifying the Obama Era, or hailing the heroism of some environmentalist student who fraudulently bid on oil and gas leases in Utah, I began to realize that the editors are so far gone on their leftist agenda that they no longer view the world as the rest of us do. The latter story in particular was illuminative in that NPR somehow had audio recordings of the lease auction proceedings, leading a listener to conclude that they were in on the 27-yer-old student's plan from the git go. And yet they portrayed him as a lone vigilante for environmental justice. Not bloody likely. And we're paying for this stuff!

6. And speaking of paying for this stuff, if you want to know where many, many billions of the Pork-a-Palooza would be spent - and we're talking much more than 1 percent here, Mr. Obama - you might want to check out this fact-filled report on the 50 most egregious items (so far). Among the items:

$83 billion for the earned income credit. This is just a tad under 10% of the total cost of the Porkulus Bill. There are no other details. I assume that it would be used to paid earned income credit checks to all those people who are getting them already, you know, those reverse income tax checks that largely go to people who pay no net federal income taxes. It might actually be somewhat stimulative, but it's an accelerating of wealth redistribution and not particularly healthy when it comes to encouraging people to work harder.

$4 billion for job-training programs, including $1.2 billion for “youths” up to the age of 24. Doing what? Is this a "down payment" on Mr. Obama's Civilian Security force that he has proposed?

$4.2 billion for “neighborhood stabilization activities”. A whopping Pork-a-Palooza for community organizer's including ACORN, the lead agency in voter fraud and fraud related activity.

There are 47 more items detailed. Read it and weep.

Sen. Coburn: Successfully Fighting the Pork-a-Palooza

U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma continues to do heroic work opposing wasteful spending and we need to let his office know how much we appreciate his efforts.

Though part of the GOP minority of 41 -- actually smaller because several GOP senators are really big spending liberals -- Coburn has actually made a dent in the Economic Recovery Act of 2009. The name is too long so let's call it what it really is: The Pork-a-Palooza!

The Senate voted late Tuesday to strike $246 million that had been earmarked to "rescue" Hollywood from these depressed economic conditions. This was a Coburn amendment, and it passed 52 to 45. The money would have come in the form of tax breaks to major Hollywood studios. (By the way, aren't these the same people who are always lecturing the rest of us on our patriotic duty to pay higher taxes?)

Coburn made an impassioned speech on the floor of the Senate in which he declared, among other things:

“When the American people learn what this bill contains they will reject it. This bill is about spending money we don’t have on things we don’t need. We got into this mess by spending and investing money that didn’t exist. We won’t get out of this mess by doing more of the same. Yet, that is precisely what we are doing.”

“Instead of delivering change, this bill celebrates the politics of the past. The bill represents both the mindless partisanship of recent decades, and the failed interventionist policies of the 1930’s. The Senate can, and must, do much better. As currently written, this bill represents the worst act of generational theft in our nation’s history.”

There's more in the Wall Street Journal op-ed piece he's written.

According to Michelle Malkin, Coburn has offered several amendments designed to mitigate or eliminate the wasteful spending in the Pork-a-Palooza. But he is still working to get the entire thing tossed, which would be the best of all possible, albeit unlikely, outcomes.

One last thought: As awesome as Coburn has been on fighting the Pork-a-Palooza, do not forget two years from now that Second Dist. Congressman Dan Boren had no trouble at all voting for the House version of same. This so-called conservative Democrat is proving to be nothing more than another of Nancy Pelosi's lap dogs. We need to get beyond the Pavlovian response to campaign ads like "Sportsmen for Boren." So he likes the 2nd Amendment. Who shouldn't? But if he continues to vote for Pelosi's radical agenda for America, it isn't going to matter much a few years down the road.

Speaker Pelosi: 500 Million Americans Lose Jobs Every Month

Drudge linked to the Youtube video, which means it probably will be taken down very soon. The print version of the Speaker of the House talking to reporters:

"Every month we don't have an economic recovery package, 500 million Americans lose their jobs. I don't think we can go fast enough."

For the record, right now there are about 500 THOUSAND layoffs and lost jobs each month. That's bad enough without giving it a 1,000 multiple.

My first thought: With math skills this poor, no wonder Nancy Pelosi and her liberal friends think we need to spend a trillion dollars in economic stimuli. We know she confuses thousands with millions; perhaps she thinks millions are really billions.

Second thought: Why is less than 25 percent of the stimulus-pork-a-palooza going to be spent in the first fiscal year if the situation is so time sensitive?