Thursday, September 15, 2011

Obamas' spendthrift ways continue

  So why wouldn't you want to know the truth about a growing scandal that had wasted half a billion taxpayer dollars, Michael Graham asks of Ed Markey:
Is it because he’s such a die-hard Democrat he doesn’t want to know what Obama did? Or is it because Markey’s so devoted to the ongoing disaster of taxpayer-funded “green jobs” he doesn’t care what they cost? 
Either way, Democrat opposition to disclosure in a corrupt, $535 million mess like this is one reason why polls show most Americans don’t believe the “new-new” jobs plan will lower unemployment.
  Graham's point is that, with POTUS jonesing for more taxpayer money to save his reelection campaign, why should we give him more if we don't know what happened to the previous trillion?
  The WSJ today has a sharp and disturbing perspective on the destination of that half trillion dollar Easter basket Obama wants to deliver to Democrat friendly unions and blue states:
These vast contributions to the coffers of state and local governments, though pitched as a jobs bill, are in reality the latest in a series of bailouts for debt-ridden state and local governments. They are of special benefit to states in the blue regions of the country where the president's most fervent supporters reside.
In many blue states, legislators have copied the politicians in Washington by running up state debts to extraordinary levels. Nationwide, state debt is running around $3 trillion. If unfunded pension liabilities are factored in, estimated liabilities leap forward by another $1 trillion to $3 trillion, depending on the optimism of the assumptions made.
  So the unions promise their people billions of dollars; the baby boomers hit retirement age and fewer workers are available to subsidize this enormous generation (many of whom are now Tea Partiers, I might add) who will likely live longer than any other generation and there isn't enough money to pay for all the promises so naturally they go to the bailout friendly feds for a bailout, while their people are still in office handing out goodies.
  Michelle Malkin's column today discusses the explosion of green "boondoggles" that have cost the taxpayers' billions and billions of dollars. In this snippet, she discusses the federal government's effort to weatherize homes in low income neighborhoods:
Intended to "green" low-income homes, at least three of the original participating organizations have been shut down due to chronic mismanagement, fraud allegations and shoddy workmanship. Baylor University economist Earl Grinols summed up: "First, it is not an appropriate government function to provide weatherization of private homes. Second, even viewed as a stimulus measure, it is not very effective as a stimulus based on cost-per-job, and third, it appears not to be well-managed." 
  In Texas alone, look at the cost of these jobs:
What was to have been a Frankenstein-like lightning strike to the economy and to unemployment, the Weatherization Assistance Program today in Texas has spent more than $226,000 on each of 1,041 jobs the program is said to have created or saved. 
  In Seattle the cost for these same jobs was enormous:
Seattle reaped the benefit of a $20 million federal grant to weatherize homes in one of America’s "greenest" cities, and 16 months later, a whopping 14 jobs were created — making the cost per job a wondrous $1,428,571. "The jobs are not there," Todd Myers, author of the book Eco Fads, told Fox News. "So we’re training people for jobs that don’t exist." (In his famous October 27, 1964 speech in behalf of presidential candidate Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan noted that Lyndon Johnson's "War on Poverty" proposed job training camps "that we're going to spend each year just on room and board for each young person we help 4,700 dollars a year. We can send them to Harvard for 2,700!")
  These financial scandals, in addition to FLOTUS's spending which seemed to strike home with more people than all the other foolish federal expenditures, are numerous, and will be with us through 2012. 
  Good luck with that, White House occupants. 

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