Moonage Political Webdream

David Bernstein over at Volokh talks of an anecdote regarding earmarks.  Basically a guy working for a defense contractor is hired to do nothing but spend money regardless of whether the product works or not.  I have heard several stories like this over the years.  Quite frankly, have done it to some degree with other [...]

Seems the federal budget deficit dropped.  Again.  Seems all of a sudden hardly anyone really seems to care.  Wasn’t that an issue last fall?  Didn’t people totally ignore the numbers of a shrinking deficit and decide to buy the rhetoric that the budget was out of control?  Why did they do that?  Now, what’s getting [...]

Michael Chertoff created a buzz, and has done a weak job dealing with it. Basically he insinuated there’s a growing threat from Al Qaeda due to increased chatter. What he has not done is say there is an increased threat from Al Qaeda due to increased chatter. He upped that concern by [...]

Got this from Citizens Against Government Waste:
Dear Representative,
The new House leadership promised to bring to Washington, ��the most honest, most open and most ethical Congress in history.�� The recent announcement by House Appropriations Chairman David Obey (D-Wisc.) that earmarks will only appear in conference reports, and not in committee bills where they would be [...]

The National Association of Broadcasters has enlisted the recently re-minted lobbying firm of Bluewater Strategies in its quest to combat the proposed merger of XM Satellite Radio and Sirius Satellite Radio.In a Wednesday filing at the Senate Office of Public Records, lobbyists Tim Kurth, Andrew Lundquist and George Nethercutt, former Republican representative from Washington, said [...]

Here’s their message:

Letter to House Committee on Agriculture Subcommittee on Specialty Crops, Rural Development, and Foreign Agriculture

Dear Member,
Tomorrow you will have a hearing on the nation��s current rural broadband programs. The Rural Utilities Service (RUS) is responsible for the Rural Broadband Loan Program, which subsidizes broadband service in rural areas. RUS has spent more [...]

In 2003, the US destroyed many leftover flu shots.  In 2004 thru 2006, near hysteria was experienced due to a shortage of flu shots.  This year, the Feds may destroy 10,000,000 excess flu shots at the end of the flu season.  The logic to doing that is fairly simple, they want to be sure they [...]

Nancy Pelosi has assigned fifteen members to her new Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. These folks are listed below with some of their other sponsored legislations:

Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), who will chair the committee

To preserve the Arctic coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Alaska, as wilderness in recognition of [...]

Earlier this year, several reports started circulating once again about the end of the world as we know it. This time via an asteroid that has an incredibly remote chance of hitting Earth somewhere around 2036. This was fairly immediately after Congress told NASA in 2005 it needed to spend more time finding [...]

Bet you didn’t know that yesterday was the National Methamphetamine Awareness Day?  That was the day the country, according to this label, was to become aware of Meth.
Now, I know what the intent was.  But, as usual, the feds are absolultely clueless to what they are trying to do.  Do we really want more people [...]