Repeal the DOE! Education Entropy - Biden’s Fourth-Grade Economics - Team Obama flunks economic stimulus

The saddest man in the world I ever knew was a school administrator. He understood the waste and economics of it.

Biden’s Fourth-Grade Economics - Mark Steyn - National Review Online

by Mark Steyn 10-22-11 - excerpts-

How to justify unaffordable and inefficient stimulus

Joe Biden ... talk to schoolchildren. Last week, it was the fourth grade at Alexander B. Goode Elementary School in York, Pa., that found itself on the receiving end of the vice president’s wisdom:
Here in this school, your school, you’ve had a lot of teachers who used to work here, but because there’s no money for them in the city, they’re not working. And so what happens is, when that occurs, each of the teachers that stays have more kids to teach. And they don’t get to spend as much time with you as they did when your classes were smaller. We think the federal government in Washington, D.C., should say to the cities and states, look, we’re going to give you some money so that you can hire back all those people. And the way we’re going to do it, we’re going to ask people who have a lot of money to pay just a little bit more in taxes.

Who knew it was that easy?...

So how come the Brokest Jurisdiction in History is able to “give you some money” to hire back those teachers that had to be laid off?

No problem, says the vice president. We’re going to “ask” people who have “a lot of money” to “pay just a little bit more” in taxes. ...

Since 1970, public-school employment has increased ten times faster than public-school enrollment. In 2008, the United States spent more per student on K–12 education than any other developed nation except Switzerland — and at least the Swiss have something to show for it. In 2008, York City School District spent $12,691 per pupil — or about a third more than the Swiss. Slovakia’s total per-student cost is less than York City’s current per-student deficit — and the Slovak kids beat the United States at mathematics, which may explain why their budget arithmetic still has a passing acquaintanceship with reality. As in so many other areas of American life, the problem is not the lack of money but the fact that so much of the money is utterly wasted.

So the president spent last week touring around in his weaponized Canadian bus telling Americans that Republicans were blocking plans to “put teachers back in the classroom.” Well, where are they now? Not every schoolmarm is down at the Occupy Wall Street drum circle, is she? No, indeed. And in that respect York City is a most instructive example: Five years ago (the most recent breakdown I have), the district had 440 teachers but 295 administrative and support staff. If you’re thinking that sounds a little out of whack, that just shows what a dummy you are: For every three teachers we “put back in the classroom,” we need to hire two bureaucrats to put back in the bureaucracy to fill in the paperwork to access the federal funds to put teachers back in the classroom. One day it will be three educrats for every two teachers, and the system will operate even more effectively. ...

-read it all at the above link-

Mark Steyn, a National Review columnist, is the author of After America: Get Ready for Armageddon.

Repeal the Dept. of Homeland Security - It is fake make work and dangerous to our freedoms

What is next, Obama Youth telling the People's State Police that their parents were acting suspicious and criticizing the administration, mass roundups and interrogations, no warrants?

This is serious stuff!

Tennessee Becomes First State To Fight Terrorism Statewide - NewsChannel5.com | Nashville News, Weather & Sports

10-20-11

PORTLAND, Tenn. – You're probably used to seeing TSA's signature blue uniforms at the airport, but now agents are hitting the interstates to fight terrorism with Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response (VIPR).

[Do they really have to keep coming up with stupid names and acronyms?]

"Where is a terrorist more apt to be found? Not these days on an airplane more likely on the interstate," said Tennessee Department of Safety & Homeland Security Commissioner Bill Gibbons.

Tuesday Tennessee was first to deploy VIPR simultaneously at five weigh stations and two bus stations across the state.

Agents are recruiting truck drivers, like Rudy Gonzales, into the First Observer Highway Security Program to say something if they see something.

"Not only truck drivers, but cars, everybody should be aware of what's going on, on the road," said Gonzales.

It's all meant to urge every driver to call authorities if they see something suspicious.

Repeal the DOE! Arrogance and Corruption rules here

DOE Pushing On With $5 Billion In Solar Energy Loans - CNBC

9-29-11

The DOE has made seven conditional commitments for additional funding by the time the loan guarantee legally expires on Sept. 30. So far, it has made 23 loans totaling $11.2 billion, said a spokesman.

"We are committed to ensuring that every deal closed before Sept. 30 is fully vetted and will not close any deal that has not received full due diligence by September 30,” said Damien LaVera, a department spokesman.

“We are not rushing to complete deals, we are using the full amount of time Congress allocated for the program so we can ensure that we fully complete all due diligence and make informed decisions based on the most recent data.”

LaVera declined to specify how many companies would get the new loans, or name them, citing potential market impact.

REPEAL THE Department of Illegal Labor

Here is why, from John Derbyshire from Radio Derb - Sept. 2, 2011

Department of Illegal Labor.

The big event of the coming week is Labor Day, a day of relaxation and celebration for American workers and their families.

Our federal government has a Department of Labor, headed up by a Secretary of Labor. That position is currently held by 53-year-old Hilda Solis of California. What better person to check in on this Labor Day weekend? So, what has Ms. Solis been up to by way of safeguarding the interests of American workers?

Let's see … Oh, here's a news story from Monday this week. Quote:

U.S. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis today signed "partnership" agreements with ambassadors from a group of Latin American nations aiming to protect what she described as the labor rights of both legal and illegal migrants working in the United States.

Say what? "Both legal and illegal migrants"? What about actual, you know, Americans? Ah, screw them. They're probably just a bunch of old white racists anyway.

O-kay; but what are these labor rights Secretary Solis is so zealously defending? Let the lady speak for herself.

[Solis clip] No matter how you got here or how long you plan to stay, you have certain rights. You have the right to be safe and in a healthy workplace and the right to a legal wage. We gather here today to strengthen our shared commitment to protect the labor rights of migrant workers in the United States. Unfortunately, due to language barriers and immigration status, migrant workers can be those that are most vulnerably abused.

Some of us, Madame Secretary, might say that American workers are being abused when government turns a blind eye to unscrupulous employers, with the connivance of paid-off politicians, bringing in cheap foreign workers, legal and illegal, to undercut American wages. But go on, please.

[Solis clip] We're committed to ending that abuse and in a few moments we'll sign new partnerships between the Department of Labor and the embassies of Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, and El Salvador. These are pledges between our governments to work together to educate migrant workers about their labor rights and prevent abuses in the workplace. During the past year, we've signed similar agreements with the embassies — and I'm very proud of this — the embassies of Mexico, Nicaragua, and Guatemala.

Certainly labor conditions in the U.S.A. are the proper business of the U.S. Secretary of Labor; but why are they any business of the ambassadors from Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Guatemala? I can't see … [Klaxon] Sorry, hold on a minute, I set off the PC alarm there somehow. [Aside] What'd I do?… Oh right. [Full voice] I should of course have said Co'tah Reeca, Nee-ha-rah-wah, and Gwah-thay-mah-lah. Deepest apologies, más profundos disculpas.

Bottom line here: All these corrupt junkyard countries to our south export their surplus peasants to the U.S.A. Joe Taxpayer here gets stuck with the cost of their medical care, food stamps, and kids' education. Meanwhile remittances flow south to prop up the junk economies of the junkyard countries. And our Secretary of Labor is, quote, "very proud" of her contribution to this shameless racket.

Anyone know the Spanish for "impeachment"? Perhaps they don't have that concept down in Nee-ha-rah-wah.

A Billion per Mile - and that is just to Grant Street

The American Spectator : A Billion per Mile

By Ralph R. Reiland on 8.30.11

President Obama's constant refrain about the government's unprecedented levels of red ink points to "millionaires and billionaires" as the problem, not the massive amounts of waste, fraud, and inefficiency in government operations.

Remember when a million per mile seemed like a crazy price for a new road? Now it's a billion per mile for a transportation project and the politicians are just fine with it, even if the project is totally unnecessary, even if we're already broke.

To make it allegedly easier for people in San Francisco to get in and out of Chinatown in a hurry, a new 1.7 mile subway line is in the works.

The original projected cost was $647 million. Now it's $1.6 billion, and growing.

There's already bus and light-rail service that covers the same route -- plus roads for cars if you're still the un-green and independent type who enjoys riding alone and listening to the radio and maybe even downing a good hoagie while driving between points A and B.

The 1.7 mile subway line "misses connections with 25 of the 30 light-rail and bus lines that it crosses, and there's no direct connection to the 104-mile Bay Area Transit line or to the ferry," stated the Wall Street Journal in a recent editorial.

There's also the problem of going eight stories underground to get to the new super-short subway -- not a good underground place to be during an earthquake, or during a terrorist attack.

-read on at above link-

Obama's Gestapo, KGB and Stasi all together - Ten Job-Destroying Regulations

These are just the 10 big ones for now, there are thousands of regulations enacted that add up to the death of our freedom and happiness. Who won the cold war after all?

Ten Job-Destroying Regulations - Andrew Stiles - National Review Online

AUGUST 30, 2011

The GOP takes aim at the Obama administration’s worst moves.

When Congress returns from recess next week, the political conversation is going to be all about jobs. As President Obama prepares to outline his “very specific” jobs proposal in a speech, House Republicans are readying a plan of their own. A key element to the GOP jobs agenda will be identifying and eliminating federal regulations that are needlessly burdening business owners and in many cases preventing them from hiring new employees. To that end, House committee chairmen have put together a list of “the 10 most harmful job-destroying regulations,” and plan to take action over the coming weeks and months to repeal or forestall these restrictive measures.

The following ten federal regulations — some of them pending, some of them already in effect — are, according to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R., Va.), “reflective of the types of costly bureaucratic handcuffs that Washington has forced upon business people who want to create jobs.”

NLRB’S BOEING COMPLAINT

MACT AND CSAPR UTILITY STANDARDS

BOILER MACT RULES

CEMENT MACT REQUIREMENTS

‘COAL ASH’ REGULATIONS

GRANDFATHERED HEALTH PLANS

EPA OZONE RULE

PA FARM-DUST REGULATIONS

EPA GREENHOUSE-GAS REQUIREMENTS

NLRB ‘AMBUSH’ ELECTIONS RULE

[read on at above link]

REPEAL THE EPA & Interior Dept. - Environmental Enforcement Leaves Musicians in Fear | Postmodern Times - WSJ.com

Do you ever get the feeling that that the government is just a bunch as assholes looking for something to justify their own existence!

Guitar Frets: Environmental Enforcement Leaves Musicians in Fear | Postmodern Times - WSJ.com

Federal agents swooped in on Gibson Guitar Wednesday, raiding factories and offices in Memphis and Nashville, seizing several pallets of wood, electronic files and guitars. The Feds are keeping mum, but in a statement yesterday Gibson's chairman and CEO, Henry Juszkiewicz, defended his company's manufacturing policies, accusing the Justice Department of bullying the company. "The wood the government seized Wednesday is from a Forest Stewardship Council certified supplier," he said, suggesting the Feds are using the aggressive enforcement of overly broad laws to make the company cry uncle.

It isn't the first time that agents of the Fish and Wildlife Service have come knocking at the storied maker of such iconic instruments as the Les Paul electric guitar, the J-160E acoustic-electric John Lennon played, and essential jazz-boxes such as Charlie Christian's ES-150. In 2009 the Feds seized several guitars and pallets of wood from a Gibson factory, and both sides have been wrangling over the goods in a case with the delightful name "United States of America v. Ebony Wood in Various Forms."

The question in the first raid seemed to be whether Gibson had been buying illegally harvested hardwoods from protected forests, such as the Madagascar ebony that makes for such lovely fretboards. And if Gibson did knowingly import illegally harvested ebony from Madagascar, that wouldn't be a negligible offense. Peter Lowry, ebony and rosewood expert at the Missouri Botanical Garden, calls the Madagascar wood trade the "equivalent of Africa's blood diamonds." But with the new raid, the government seems to be questioning whether some wood sourced from India met every regulatory jot and tittle.

It isn't just Gibson that is sweating. Musicians who play vintage guitars and other instruments made of environmentally protected materials are worried the authorities may be coming for them next.