Let's Talk Unemployment Benefits

As the Senate considers a $6.4 billion extension of unemployment benefits, here, the right winger are stroking out over such a gargantuan public expenditure.  Congress is a crime syndicate where bribery (pay to play) divvies up nearly $4 trillion a year to powerful special interests.  Yet, there is hardly a peep from the Republican wing-nut camp over Congress polishing off its $1 trillion dollar omnibus spending bill that is loaded with special interest corporate welfare.

K St. pushes to shape $1T spending bill

Lobbyists and advocacy groups are working furiously to make their mark on an upcoming $1 trillion spending bill...

Defense lobbyists are seeking to make sure their pet programs are safe...

Congress is also finalizing a $1 trillion agricultural bill that generously rewards corporatist sugar barons and other corporate pigs lined up at the public feeding trough.

Sushi Aid in $1 Trillion U.S. Farm Bill Irks Watchdogs

Tucked deep in the 629-page U.S. House agriculture policy legislation is an initiative to guarantee prices for sushi rice....

 So too is insurance for alfalfa and a marketing plan for Christmas trees. Catfish farmers also get a morsel...

 The farm bill, which benefits crop-buyers such as Archer-Daniels-Midland Co. (ADM), grocers including Supervalu Inc. (SVU) and insurers including Wells Fargo & Co. and Ace Ltd (ACE), has been working through Congress for almost two years.

Recently, Congress had no problem whatsoever passing a $625 billion military spending bill to fund The Empire, its endless wars and the military industrial complex.

Really, in the grand scheme of the grand theft that is perpetrated upon the American people by Congress Critters, $6.4 billion is a small drop in the nearly $4 trillion bucket of bucks that rains like manna from the heavens upon well connected insiders who fill campaign coffers.

Yeah, unemployment benefits are abused.  But the poor smucks who snag a few crumbs from a corrupt to the core political and economic system that is stacked against them are petty thieves compared with the grand larceny that permeates America's political system.

Want to really cut spending?  Then start with big cuts in the hundreds of billions that go to the military industrial complex (murdering for defense contractor profits), assorted corporate welfare queens from Big Sugar and sushi,  and NSA contractors who grow filthy rich by eviscerating the 4th amendment.

Pork and Lipstick on the Republican and Democrat Pigs

Although both Republicans and Democrats are responsible for the fiscal carnage that is destroying America and the middle class, the Republicans are focused on blaming it all on Obama and the Democrats while very conveniently ignoring the fact that Bush and Gang added $5 trillion to the big pile of debt that will absolutely impoverish future generations of America.

Granted, everything that Obama has done has only made the situation a whole lot worse but the same could be said about the Republicans in control during the Bush-Cheney reign of fiscal and foreign policy terror.  The recently passed $50 billion plus Hurricane Sandy relief bill is just another classic pork laden congressional bill that is larded up with so much special interest pork that nobody in Congress evens questions the validity of the spending.

Hurricane Sandy Bill Creates Its Own Disaster

The trouble is that the House had an opportunity to pay for the core $17 billion for disaster assistance — but took a pass.

An amendment offered by Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-SC) would have paid for these core provisions with offsetting spending cuts to 1.6 percent of the discretionary budget. But 71 Republicans voted with Democrats to defeat that measure.

“This is truly a shame,” Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson responded. “After all the wrangling on sequestration about reducing the deficit, the moment Congress has a pork-laden bill they refuse to pay for it.”

He said those who refused to pay for the disaster assistance were “hiding behind those most hurt by Hurricane Sandy to facilitate a special interest agenda.”

A claim that is hard to contend with.

Heritage Action noted some of the more egregious pork in the bill: “repairs to the Smithsonian Institution to upgrades to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration airplanes to more funding for the federal government’s epic educational failure known as Head Start, among myriad other extraneous items. The inclusion of $16 billion in wasteful community development funds is also concerning, especially because the Department of Housing and Urban Development estimated it would need a comparatively much smaller $5.2 billion for its ‘unmet needs.’”

Even worse is that more than 94 amendments that might have addressed all this waste were killed by the House Rules Committee, which is run by Republicans.

Why does Congress keep spending money it does't have while running  trillion dollar a year plus deficits that require massive debt?  The short answer is that congress critters are indeed wholly owned subsidiaries of the special interests that fill their campaign coffers.  America is no long a nation "of the people,  by the people and for the people".  America has morphed into hideously fascist statism that exclusively serves special interests and at the top of the pyramid sits defense contractors and banksters.  Unfortunately, America has a long history of doling out special interest pork as eloquently disclosed by Wendy McElroy.

PORK-BARREL SPENDING: THE HISTORY OF LIPSTICKING PIGS

The history of the American pork barrel

The phrase “pork-barrel spending” is said to derive from a practice of antebellum slaveholders; they would give a barrel of salt pork to their slaves, who scrambled and fought with each other for a share. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term acquired its political meaning in the early 1870s. Webster’s traces the American usage back to the turn of the 20th century.

Advocates draw upon two clauses from article 1, section 8 of the United States Constitution for legitimacy.

The first is called the general-welfare clause. It states, “The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defence and general welfare of the United States.” Pork is said to provide for general welfare, and thus to be permitted by this clause.

The second is the so-called postal clause. It authorizes Congress “to establish post offices and post roads” as a way to expedite interstate communication. This is now construed to give the federal government the power to appropriate money for public works. (The expenses not covered by section 8 were left to the states. The Tenth Amendment later clarified, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution … are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”)

Senator Reid is correct in that pork has been around since the first Congress. Up until the 1980s, however, it was not widespread, and it was often discouraged. Some Founding Fathers were uncomfortable even with the funding of postal roads. In a 1796 letter to James Madison, who is often called the father of the Constitution, Thomas Jefferson argued against the postal clause.

Have you considered all the consequences of your proposition respecting post roads? I view it as a source of boundless patronage to the executive, jobbing to members of Congress & their friends, and a bottomless abyss of public money. You will begin by only appropriating the surplus of the post office revenues; but the other revenues will soon be called into their aid, and it will be a source of eternal scramble among the members, who can get the most money wasted in their State; and they will always get most who are meanest.

The first Congress (1790) authorized pork in the form of $1,500 to complete a lighthouse in Maine, which was then part of Massachusetts. The expenditure had the active support of President George Washington and of Rep. George Thatcher of Massachusetts. On constitutional grounds, however, the same Congress rejected a bill to aid a glass manufacturer. Perhaps the second bill lacked presidential support.

Contrary to Reid’s suggestion, however, pork-barrel spending did not become common practice. The second Congress solidly rejected a cod fishery bill intended to assist New Englanders. The South Carolina representative Hugh Williamson argued that the Constitution had anticipated “the time might come, when, by greater cohesion, by more unanimity, by more address, the representatives of one part of the Union might attempt to impose unequal taxes, or to relieve their constituents at the expense of the people.”

He pointed to constitutional provisions that clearly indicated “Congress might not have the power … to gratify one part of the Union by oppressing another.”

The practice of doling out pork, while clearly out of control, was once questioned and debated on constitutional and moral grounds.  These days, there are no such restraints because the Constitution is no longer even relevant and the morality of elected officials is merely a relic of the past.

The GOP Panics and Shows a Spine that Resembles Cooked Spaghetti

OKAY, I'm not going to scream one more time "Just Cut the Damn Spending!". Disturbingly, Politico is reporting that the GOP is ready to give in on Obamacare and higher taxes.

 How red-state governors are opening the doors to Obamacare

Bobby Jindal’s got a funny way of showing how much he hates Obamacare and Washington bureaucracy: The Louisiana governor’s about to invite the feds to set up a health insurance exchange right in his backyard. So is Rick Perry in Texas. Ditto for John Kasich in Ohio. And Scott Walker in Wisconsin. These Republican governors, and more than a dozen others in red states around the country, have decided it’s better to have Obamacare forced on them than to legitimize it by setting up their own exchanges, even if that means empowering the federal government at the expense of the states.

Whatever happened to all the Republican talk about nullifying Obamacare and refusing to comply with the implementation of the healthcare exchanges? On the tax front, the situation is equally bad.

 Some Republican governors soften on taxes

Some Republican governors are softening on the party’s hard-line toward tax increases for the wealthy, suggesting that GOP congressmen at least be open to rate hikes in exchange for a comprehensive fiscal agreement on taxes and entitlements. “The people have spoken, I think we’re going to have to be [flexible] now,” said Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, when asked if his party would now have to be open to taxes on the highest earners. “Elections do have consequences. The president campaigned on that.”

McDonnell, the outgoing head of the Republican Governors Association, made clear that raising taxes isn’t his first choice. But he said that the political reality of a Democratic president and Democratic Senate makes it unlikely that a grand bargain can be struck without some compromise on raising revenues.

Such spineless statist rhetoric isn't going to win over the conservative voters who have been opining for less government, less spending and lower taxes for years. Quite frankly, the Republicans are admitting that they are scared of the Democrats and even more scared of raising the issue of spending cuts.

Earth to GOP: We Can Save the Party

The Newsweek cover is vile and even overtly racist. Still, it's a bitter reminder of a big election day fail for the GOP.

The Republican base is hopping mad and, quite frankly, very disgusted with their party. Republican voters keep voting for less government, lower taxes and balanced budgets. Instead they get Democrats in elephant suits who spend, increase the debt, endorse entitlements and pursue an insane foreign policy that is bankrupting the nation.

The battle for the heart and soul of the GOP has always been the fiscal conservatives and liberty activists vs. the statist GOP elites. It wasn't just Ron Paul supporters who didn't show up to vote Republican. Many independents and very angry Republicans finally refused to vote Republican.

There's a WAR going on in the GOP and unless grassroots activists, Paulites, Libertarians, fiscal conservatives and independent voters can wrest control of the GOP from the clueless and revoltingly obnoxious elites who lord over the GOP, the Republican Party will be headed straight to the trash heap of history. Many who comprise the Republican base have been furious for a long time over what they perceive as a betrayal of conservative principles.

The independent Internet media and even mainstream media has been buzzing with tales about disgruntled Republicans.

There Is A Brutal Civil War In The GOP, And It Looks Like Karl Rove Will Be The First Casualty

Grassroots Republican operatives and Movement conservatives are quickly turning against the GOP Establishment in the wake of the party's expensive defeat this election cycle.

Republicans we spoke to this week voiced a near-universal disgust with the national Republican Party leaders and Washington political class, who are seen as having put their personal financial interest above winning the election.

What is finally happening is something that should have happened a long time ago - conservatives are finally revolting against their own damn worthless fraud of a party.

The GOP is not a unified party and never was.  The GOP has always been a fragile configuration of establishment Republicans, fiscal conservatives, paleo-conservatives, Buchananites, social conservatives, Libertarians and independents. That constituency fractured in 2006 because conservatives, diverse as they are, were thoroughly disgusted with the Republican Party and they still are.

The Republican Party didn't lose because of the Ron Paul voters and the fact that the Paulites were treated like pond scum at the RNC Convention but the Paulite vote definitely contributed to the Republican defeat because it combined with other disaffected conservative factions to deliver a decisive rejection of the GOP.

So how do we bring the cantankerous conservative factions together?  Actually, it's not that hard.  Stop spending money.  Stop building mountains of debt.  Stop the unconstitutional wars.  Balance the budget and don't spend anymore than is collected in taxes.  Stop corporate welfare and subsidies.  Stop draconian regulations that are killing entrepreneurship and driving business and capital offshore.  Endorse sound money and an end bankster bailouts.

Why is this so difficult?  It's not.  In fact, it's pretty straight forward conservatism.  But try finding one Republican who would agree and vote accordingly.  The voting records of nearly all Republicans are atrocious and an absolute affront to conservatism.

American isn't starved of conservatives or small government advocates.  America is swimming with conservatives, albeit very angry and frustrated conservatives who are delighting in extracting their pound of flesh from the GOP that betrayed them.

Conservatives need a platform of core issues that they can rally around and such a platform must be devoid of all the social conservative issues that are best handled at the state level.  Marriage has no business being a national campaign issue.

The best place for conservatives to start is with the specific enumerated federal powers stated in the Constitution.  Just stick with the Constitution and reject everything that is unconstitutional and, therefore, not authorized by the Constitution.

I suffered through the Republican debacle on a balanced budget amendment that was a total farce because it was loaded with more loopholes than Swiss cheese.  Why should a Republican need a balanced budget amendment just to balance the budget?  Just balance the damn budget.  Period.

The conservative base must fight for control of the GOP.  We need to get rid of a ton of corrupt dead weight Republican statists in Congress and at the state and local level.  The Republicans in Congress vastly contributed to the fiscal and economic nightmare we now face.  These folks need to be FIRED and replaced with true liberty candidates in the mold of Justin Amash and Rand Paul, and, of course, America's strongest constitutionalist and consistent advocate for peace, liberty and prosperity - Ron Paul..

Judge Andrew Napolitano took a swipe at the Republicans in his explanation of what 4 more years of Obama will deliver.

Four More Years for the Unwitting Authoritarian

What's going on here?.

What is going on is the present-day proof of the truism observed by Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, who rarely agreed on anything in public: When the voters recognize that the public treasury has become a public trough, they will send to Washington not persons who will promote self-reliance and foster an atmosphere of prosperity, but rather those who will give away the most cash and thereby create dependency. This is an attitude that, though present in some localities in the colonial era, was created at the federal level by Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt, magnified by FDR, enhanced by LBJ, and eventually joined in by all modern-day Democrats and most contemporary Republicans..

Mitt Romney is one of those Republicans. He is no opponent of federal entitlements, and he basically promised to keep them where they are. Where they are is a cost to taxpayers of about $1.7 trillion a year.....

As a practical matter, we are in for very difficult times during Obama's second term. Obamacare is now here to stay; so, no matter who you are or how you pay your medical bills, federal bureaucrats will direct your physicians in their treatment of you, and they will see your medical records. As well, Obama is committed to raising the debt of the federal government to $20 trillion. So, if the Republican-controlled House of Representatives goes along with this, as it did during Obama's first term, the cost will be close to $1 trillion in interest payments every year. As well, everyone's taxes will go up on New Year's Day, as the Bush-era tax cuts will expire then. The progressive vision of a populace dependent on a central government and a European-style welfare state is now at hand.

Judge Napolitano raises a significant issue because the biggest problem facing America and the debt ridden west in general is that they've been borrowing so much money for such a long time that they now face a most hideous fate, namely that the debt burden reaches a point where nearly all tax revenues go to debt service and nations no longer have any money to fund social programs and other government expenditures.  This is precisely what is happening in Greece.  The Greeks who supported cradle to the grave entitlement programs that were funded with massive debt are now facing forced austerity as benefits are cut to service the debt.

So long as Republicans remain focused on the social issues and the pursuit of endless wars, they will continue to lose.  Most of the Republicans that currently hold congressional seats have as much backbone as cooked spaghetti.  Moving forward, the 'business as usual' attitude won't fly for a conservative base hungry and starved for real conservatism.

Republicans need to understand that their own party played a critical role in delivering the nightmare we are facing.  Americans, meet your future neighbors:

Trillions for Endless Wars in a Busted Economy and Bankrupt Nation

Decades ago, economic professors used the analogy of 'guns and butter' to differentiate the economic systems of the Soviet Union and America. America allowed its citizens to work, keep their money and spend it however they wanted - lots of butter aka consumer choices and middle class prosperity. By contrast, the Soviet Union forced its proletariat workers 'paradise' to work in state run factories that fueled its global covert and overt military operations - the Russian people existed for the sole purpose of sustaining the 'guns' of militarism.

Fast forward to today. Has America become the Soviet Union, an evil empire and a nation that squandered the wealth and prosperity of its people for militarism gone mad? Have we sown the seeds of our own destruction? With $16 trillion in national debt and chronic trillion dollar plus deficits every year, the one thing in America that isn't out of the closet is military spending, the military empire and its gargantuan cost.

Even in warmongering America, folks of all ideological stripes are beginning to raise the issue. Over at Fox News, aka Neocon Central, the despicable Bill O'Reilly raised the issue of the War on Terror.

Bill O'Reilly:  On this 11th anniversary of the 911 attacks

http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/oreilly/2012/09/12/bill-oreilly-11th-anniversary-911-attack

According to the Congressional Research Service, the War on Terror has cost America $1.4 trillion. That includes the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and money for veterans, also a bunch of other military expenditures. It does not include... it does not include security within the USA....

Mr. Obama has added about $5.4 trillion to the debt during his time in office...

I believe most historians will look back on the Iraq war as being a mistake. We could have brought Saddam to his knees by blockading his country. We didn't have to invade it.

O'Reilly, like every other Republican socialist lover of military empire, can't resist disclosing the debt attributable to Obama and the Dems while totally ignoring the fact that Bush and Gang added $5 trillion to the debt pile.

Between the Republicans and the Democrats, the national debt increased over $10 trillion since the War on Terror began. McClatchy attempted to analyze its cost in 2011.

True cost of Afghan, Iraq wars is anyone's guess

Yes, Congress has allotted $1.3 trillion for war spending through fiscal year 2011 just to the Defense Department....

But all those numbers are incomplete. Besides what Congress appropriated, the Pentagon spent an additional unknown amount from its $5.2 trillion base budget over that same period. According to a recent Brown University study, the wars and their ripple effects have cost the United States $3.7 trillion, or more than $12,000 per American.

Defense and military analyst Chris Hellman employed a different but more accurate approach in ascertaining the true cost of military and national security spending.  As America morphs into a full fledged Nazified Police State and militarized global empire, the national security apparatus costs include far more than what is deceptively disclosed as mere defense spending.

Tomgram: Chris Hellman, $1.2 Trillion for National Security

For 2012, the White House has requested $558 billion for the Pentagon’s annual “base” budget, plus an additional $118 billion to fund military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. At $676 billion, that’s already nothing to sneeze at, but it’s just the barest of beginnings when it comes to what American taxpayers will actually spend on national security. Think of it as the gigantic tip of a humongous iceberg....

Missing from the Pentagon’s budget request, for example, is an additional $19.3 billion for nuclear-weapons-related activities...

And then, don’t forget an additional $7.8 billion that the Pentagon lumps into a “miscellaneous” category -- a kind of department of chump change...

$703.1 billion dollars.

For starters, that $117.8 billion war-funding request for the Department of Defense doesn’t include certain actual “war-related fighting” costs....

$711.8 billion.

The White House has also requested $71.6 billion for a post-2001 category called “homeland security” -- of which $18.1 billion is funded through the Department of Defense. The remaining $53.5 billion goes through various other federal accounts, including the Department of Homeland Security ($37 billion), the Department of Health and Human Services ($4.6 billion), and the Department of Justice ($4.6 billion). All of it is, however, national security funding which brings our total to:

$765.3 billion....

The U.S. intelligence budget was technically classified prior to 2007, although at roughly $40 billion annually, it was considered one of the worst-kept secrets in Washington....This work done by federal agencies like the CIA and the National Security Agency consists of keeping an eye on and trying to understand what other nations are doing and thinking, as well as a broad range of “covert operations” such as those being conducted in Pakistan...

$818.4 billion....

Veterans programs are an important part of the national security budget with the projected funding figure for 2012 being $129.3 billion. Of this, $59 billion is for veterans’ hospital and medical care, $70.3 billion for disability pensions and education programs...

$947.7 billion.

If you include the part of the foreign affairs budget not directly related to U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as other counterterrorism operations, you have an additional $18 billion in direct security spending....

$965.7 billion.

As with all federal retirees, U.S. military retirees and former civilian Department of Defense employees receive pension benefits from the government. The 2012 figure is $48.5 billion for military personnel, $20 billion for those civilian employees, which means we’ve now hit:

$1,034.2 billion. (Yes, that’s $1.03 trillion!)

When the federal government lacks sufficient funds to pay all of its obligations, it borrows. Each year, it must pay the interest on this debt which, for FY 2012, is projected at $474.1 billion. The National Priorities Project calculates that 39% of that, or $185 billion, comes from borrowing related to past Pentagon spending.

Add it all together and the grand total for the known national security budget of the United States is:

$1,219.2 billion. (That’s more than $1.2 trillion.)

Not only is $1.2 trillion dollars a whole lot of guns and an obscene amount of military spending on an annual basis, the American military empire has stripped the people of their prosperity and liberty.  America is spending about $3.8 trillion a year on tax revenues of about $2.3 trillion.

Will the American people ever wake-up to the stone cold reality that the military empire has destroyed us and bankrupted us?

We need to kill the empire before the empire kills us.