October 20th, 2011 by John Feehery
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said yesterday: “It’s very clear that private sector jobs have been doing just fine, it’s the public sector jobs where we’ve lost huge numbers, and that’s what this legislation is all about.”
He was talking about his plan to give more money to states so they can give more money to teachers unions and public safety unions.
Joe Biden breathlessly said yesterday that if you didn’t support this plan, the chances that you might get raped (if you are a woman) or held up at gunpoint (if you run a 7-11) will go up dramatically. He said yesterday in Washington:
“In many cities, the result has been — and it’s not unique — murder rates are up, robberies are up, rapes are up and folks, there’s a simple reason for it. There’s been a perfect storm out there — these God-awful Ponzi schemes that the last outfit allowed Wall Street to engage in resulted in this gigantic collapse of the financial industry. Housing — the bottom fell out. Foreclosures increased, particularly in poorer neighborhoods. Abandoned homes are created. Drug lords move in. Arson increases. Budgets fall because the property taxes fall. Cops and firefighters get laid off. Response times increase from five minutes to 30 minutes, and people die, and people’s homes burn to the ground.” Read more...
Tags: Bloomberg New, Economy, Federal employees, foreclosures, gigantic collapse of the financial industry, Joe Biden, Kevin Zeese, Politics, Ponzi schemes, President’s jobs plan, private sector, private sector jobs, Prosperity Agenda, public safety unions, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Silicon Valley, teachers unions, Wall Street
Posted in Bad Decisions, Economy, Financial Crisis, Government, Media, Politics, Promises, Unemployment, bad news, corruption, election, housing crisis, poverty, spending, taxes | 1 Comment »
September 20th, 2011 by John Feehery
The Electronic Benefits Transfer Card is the identification card for the SNAP/Food stamp program. It works like a credit card with a magnetic strip on the back that slides through a machine at a grocery store and some restaurants (including some fast food places).
Meant as a way to help reform the Food Stamp system in 2004, the EBT card is used in all 50 states and in the District of Columbia. It has not been without some controversy.
In the State of Pennsylvania, for example, Democratic State Auditor Jack Wagner found wide-ranging fraud in the system, including one example where one EBT card holder withdrew close to $150,000 in $1,500 increments in one day. Who knows what he (or she) did with the money.
The EBT has received some unwanted attention. As one website put it: “A new music video by R&B artist Chapter for her song “It’s Free Swipe Yo EBT” mocks black women on public assistance programs. In her satirical video, Chapter plays Keywanda, a young mother of ten who deals with the “stress of her children’s fathers.” And according to the video, Keywanda lives with very few worries because she’s on several public assistance programs. Among other subjects, this song mostly takes aim at the Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) program and Section 8 vouchers, which make both food and housing available to parents.” Read more...
Tags: African-American, America, Auditor Jack Wagner, Barack Obama, Congress, Democrats, Economy, election, Electronic Benefits Transfer Card, Food stamp program, Obama, Presidential election, R&B artist Chapter, Republicans, Section 8, Tea Party activists, unemployment insurance, Welfare abuse, welfare system
Posted in Bad Decisions, Bailouts, Drugs in America, Economy, Financial Crisis, GOP, Government, Immigration, Politics, Presidential election, Religion, Scandals, Theory, bad news, corruption, medicare, poverty, spending, taxes, welfare | No Comments »
September 16th, 2011 by John Feehery
“In such condition, there is no place for industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving, and removing, such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”
That was Thomas Hobbes, who argued that implicit in civil society is a social contract that called for a strong government presence in regulating conduct. In Mr. Hobbes time, the king was the ultimate sovereign. These days, you could argue that the sovereign is the Federal government as set out by the Constitution.
Hobbes understood that the nature of man, without that social contract, would descend into chaos and ultimately darkness. In other words, without strong laws, people cheat, lie and steal.
I say this as a means of introduction to a bipartisan proposal by Jim Gerlach, a Republican from Pennsylvania, and Earl Blumenauer, a Democrat from Oregon, to get rid of fraud in Medicare. It is a modest proposal that could save tens of billions of dollars in government spending. Read more...
Tags: America, American Express, Common Access Card, Congress, Democrats, dentity verification, Department of Defense, DoD, Earl Blumenauer, Federal government, fraud in Medicare, Government, government spending, health care, Jim Gerlach, medicare, Republican, senior citizens, the Constitution, Thomas Hobbes, Visa
Posted in Bad Decisions, Government, Laws, Politics, Theory, corruption, health care, national security, spending, taxes | No Comments »
July 29th, 2011 by John Feehery
I like to call myself a Libertarian, but I am really not.
I don’t really want government to disappear. While I read The Fountainhead in college, and I admit I have found it to be influential in my life, I think Ayn Rand was a little kooky and her objectivism philosophy is unworkable in the real world.
My brother, the Tea Partier is a Libertarian. He wants government to shrink dramatically. He wants police forces to be shrunk, he wants teacher’s pensions cut, he wants most regulatory bodies eliminated. He finds government to be oppressive and he wants it to be gone.
He also believes that for the last forty-five years, America has been living a lie. He hates the military industrial complex, he hates the Federal Reserve, he wants to go back to a Gold Standard. He thinks we should never
have gone into Iraq and believes that the Soviet Union would have fallen without the Reagan buildup, and he believes that the banking system in this country is essentially corrupt.
He also finds Michele Bachmann to be appealing and he appreciates what Joe Walsh is doing in stopping the debt limit extension. Read more...
Tags: Ayn Rand, Federal Reserve, Gold Standard, Government, Internet poker, Iraq, Joe Walsh, John Boehner, Libertarian, medicare, Michele Bachmann, national defenses, Social Security, Soviet Union, taxes, Tea Party, Tea Party libertarians, The Fountainhead
Posted in Economy, Financial Crisis, Food, Foreign Relations, GOP, Government, History, Laws, Media, Politics, Promises, Theory, corruption, election, health care, medicare, national security, spending, taxes, war | 1 Comment »
June 14th, 2011 by John Feehery
I actually thought he would survive.
When I first heard the allegations against Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.), I assumed he would stick it out and stay in Congress.
After all, this was a sex scandal without the sex — a goofy and, yes, creepy case of tweeting without any sense. It seemed pretty harmless at the beginning, but it quickly devolved into a career-ender.
When Weiner faced the New York media last week, seven truths became evident that sealed his fate.
1. He is a liar, big-time: You can expect a politician to lie, initially, about a sex scandal. The last thing anybody wants to do is have that uncomfortable conversation with a spouse. But Weiner’s lies were so elaborate, so practiced and so high-profile that his credibility as a political leader could never recover.
2. He went all in on a losing hand: Weiner tried to bluff Andrew Breitbart, not realizing that the conservative newsmaker had all the cards. Either Weiner didn’t realize that Breitbart had the whole story or is such an idiot that he decided to bluff anyway. Read more...
Tags: Andrew Breitbart, Congress, Democrats, Eliot Spitzer, Government, Media, Nancy Pelosi, Politics, Rep. Anthony Weiner, Republicans, sex scandal
Posted in Bad Decisions, Government, Media, Politics, Scandals, Theory, corruption, tragedy | No Comments »
June 7th, 2011 by John Feehery
Posted in Scandals, Theory, corruption | No Comments »
June 7th, 2011 by John Feehery
There are more than a few politicians at the federal level who share two conflicting traits: They believe they are the center of the universe, but they also believe that they are anonymous.
That is especially true for Anthony Weiner, but he is not the first and certainly not the last political figure to be beset with controversy brought on by his own stupid actions.
These politicians believe that they should be able to get free drinks at a bar, but are shocked when a reporter calls them on it. They believe that they can pick up girls who are not their wives and are shocked when somebody notices. They believe that they can get away with low-grade corruption, but are devastated when they end up serving time in a minimum security jail.
These politicians are not babes in the woods. They learn a great deal about life and about hard-ball politics when they run for office. They are used to people combing through their garbage, pouring over their tax returns, having every inch of their lives examined with a fine-tooth comb.
But somehow, after the campaign is over, they drop their defenses. Or after they have spent decades in Congress, they figure that they are invulnerable. Read more...
Tags: America, Anthony Weiner, Barney Frank, Bob Ney, Chris Lee, Congress, Democrats, Duke Cunningham, Eliot Spitzer, Ethics Committee, Gerry Studds, Government, Jack Abramoff scandals, James Traficant, Joe Early, John Boehner, John Doolittle, John Edwards, Mark Foley, Nancy Pelosi, Newt Gingric, political ethics, Politics, Republicans, Rostenkowski, sex scandal, Tom DeLay, Tony Coehlo, Washington, Weiner-gate
Posted in Bad Decisions, Government, History, Politics, Scandals, Theory, bad news, corruption | No Comments »
May 19th, 2011 by John Feehery
Where does our money go?
In 1994, Congressional Republicans promised during the campaign to audit the books of the House of Representatives in their famous Contract with America.
This promise came in response to years of financial mismanagement and scandal.
The audit proved to be extraordinarily helpful in figuring out where the taxpayers’ money was spent and where it needed to be cut in the Congress.
17 years later, the American people are again wondering: Where does our money go?
They believe that their hard-earned tax dollars are flushed down the drain on worthless programs, fraudulent scams and just plain old waste.
And they are probably right.
There is plenty of evidence that the federal government is losing billions and billions of dollars in Medicare fraud, in earmarked money that is no longer needed, in duplicative job training programs, and in countless other ways.
The problem is that we simply don’t know where all the money is going.
Uncle Sam needs an audit.
Before we raise taxes, before we extend the debt ceiling again, before we spend any more money, we need to find out where the money is going. Read more...
Tags: audit, Congressional audit, Contract with America, debt ceiling, Democrats, House of Representatives, Rupublicans, taxes, Uncle Sam
Posted in Bad Decisions, Economy, Financial Crisis, Government, History, Politics, Theory, corruption, spending, taxes | No Comments »
May 9th, 2011 by John Feehery
There is a reason that the baby-boomers have baby in their nickname. Generationally, they have acted collectively as a bunch of spoiled brats. They were the “me” generation, the disco generation, the greed-is-good generation, the housing bubble generation, and now they are the keep your hands off my Medicare generation.
They have done a good job in keeping the focus on them throughout their birth and now into their retirements. And the baby-boomers aren’t going away anytime soon. They have been so focused on themselves, in all likelihood, they are going to live a long time.
Republicans have decided that if they are going to do anything on Medicare reform that nothing they do will impact the baby-boomers. They have decided that the under 55-year-old set will have to bear the burden for all of the excesses of those who are older then 55.
That sounds all well and good if you are over 55. And if you are older than 55, you probably are ok with this thing. Republicans I talk to have found that this is an effective talking point when they go into town hall meetings. Read more...
Tags: baby-boomers, medicare, medicare reform, Paul Ryan, Republicans, Retirement
Posted in Bad Decisions, Economy, Financial Crisis, Government, History, Politics, Promises, Theory, corruption, health care, spending, taxes | 1 Comment »
May 5th, 2011 by John Feehery
America loves conspiracy theories. Franklin Roosevelt knew about Pearl Harbor before it happened. The CIA killed Jack Kennedy. George Bush blew up the Twin Towers. The Trilateral Commission runs the world. Elvis has not left the building. Jim Morrison is still alive.
Our current President is particularly good at spawning conspiracy theories. He is a Muslim. He hates America. He is a racist. He worked with Bill Ayers to overthrow America. He wasn’t born here. He never actually went to college. He is the Manchurian candidate. He is actually a space alien.
Conspiracy theories are fun for the whole family. It gives a purpose to all things. It means that somebody has a plan somewhere.
There are a number of good conspiracy theories that will come out of this Osama Bin Laden assassination. First, of course, is that he is still alive. No matter if those photos are released or if they are not released, some percentage of the population will believe that Mr. Bin Laden is still alive.
Another conspiracy theory is that Bin Laden has been dead for months and that the President finally revealed this today because he wants an excuse to pull our troops out of Afghanistan and to prop up his popularity ratings. Read more...
Tags: CIA, Conspiracy Theory, Franklin Roosevelt, George Bush, govenment, Jack Kennedy, Muslim, Osama Bin Laden, Pearl Harbor, President Obama
Posted in Foreign Relations, Fun, GOP, Government, History, Humor, Media, Politics, Religion, Scandals, Theory, corruption, just made up, middle-east, national security, terrorism, war | No Comments »
Loading ...