Read it. And watch the video.

On Tuesday, Jeff Sessions, ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, asked acting OMB Director Jeffrey Zients a simple question: Does President Obama’s FY 2013 budget–the matter on which Mr. Zients had come to the Senate to testify–increase spending compared with current law (most recently, the debt ceiling compromise that was reached last summer). For some reason, Zients was utterly stumped. He was never able to come up with a coherent answer, let alone a straight one.

Today it happened again. Tim Geithner took his turn at the Budget Committee, and Sessions asked him the same thing. Geithner, like Zients, was confounded. The concepts of “more” and “less” seemed to be too much for him.

It is hard to know what to make of this arithmetic ineptitude on the part of the Obama administration. Is it possible that they don’t know the answer? No. The only explanation is that they know the answer, but prefer that the American people don’t find it out.

Walter Olson points out that most of the jobs government creates are pure waste.

Not long ago I took note in this space of how some people conceive of government regulation as a way to create jobs among lawyers, fillers-out of paperwork forms, installers of state-mandated equipment, and so forth. In case you thought I was exaggerating, here’s a new Business Week article arguing in all earnestness that “Regulations Create Jobs, Too.” Given the wounded state of the U.S. economy since the 2008 crash, it laments, “government rules have become politically toxic.” But never fear: “The Obama Administration, girding for election-year attacks on its record, is trying to highlight the upside of government rules.”

Read it.

The reports I allude to, contended that many went on disability.  In fact, they projected that nearly 25% of those not actively seeking a job had applied for, and been accepted, by disability – mostly Social Security.

And why not? ‘It’s free! It’s free! Just swipe your EBT!’

he cost to the federal budget of these programs has escalated along with the number of claimants, and now runs around $200 billion per year—more than the budgets of the Departments of Commerce, Energy, Homeland Security, Interior, Justice, and State combined.

Thus a quarter of people who drop out of the workforce and come off the unemployment benefits, simply move to receiving disability payments. And most stay there until they roll into the social security program when they retire – from their disability. The same source, a different program.

My, what a surprise. Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

Steven Hayward at Powerline doesn’t know where to start.

First, out of California—good news!  Fewer solar projects in California will fail in the future!  This is chiefly because the state is simply mandating that utilities buy their power, no matter what it costs.  Pretty easy for your business model to work when you have tax credits and the government mandating that people buy your product.  Where can I signup for this deal?  (Oh yea, the White House.   I forgot.)  Try this headline out as a thought experiment: “Fewer Oil Wells Will Lose Money.”  Doesn’t seem too likely, does it?

Read it.

Overall, the Post found that $3.9 billion in federal grants and financing flowed to 21 companies backed by firms with connections to five Obama administration staffers and advisers.

My, what a surprise. Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

‘And I say to you: Make unto you friends of the mammon of iniquity; that when you shall fail, they may receive you into everlasting dwellings.’

George Will nails it.

The U.S. defense budget is about 43 percent of the world’s total military spending — more than the combined defense spending of the next 17 nations, many of which are U.S. allies. Are Republicans really going to warn voters that America will be imperiled if the defense budget is cut 8 percent from projections over the next decade? In 2017, defense spending would still be more than that of the next 10 countries combined.

Do Republicans think it is premature to withdraw as many as 7,000 troops from Europe two decades after the Soviet Union’s death? About 73,000 will remain, most of them in prosperous, pacific, largely unarmed and utterly unthreatened Germany. Why do so many remain?

The American message to the world: We spend all this money so you don’t have to!

Read it.

Stockman writes: “If you spend a little time with these numbers you will know that they are being made up.”

I’m shocked, I tell you, shocked.

Read it.

The Pentagon doesn’t know what happened to more than $100 million in cash held at Saddam Hussein’s palace in Baghdad during the Iraq war, according to a new report by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction.

What’s more, the Pentagon can’t find documents to explain what it spent as much as $1.7 billion on from funds held on behalf of the Iraqi government by the New York Federal Reserve, the report says.

Yeah, I really want the government in charge of our health care. Think of the efficiency! Think of the savings! Think of how much better everything will be!

Read it.

New York City, of course. Welcome to the Other Left Coast.

The NY Post introduces the world to 66 year old New York City public school teacher Alan Rosenfeld, the rajah of the city’s “rubber room,” or holding pen for teachers on full pay who are kept away from the classroom.

In 2001, Rosenfeld was accused (but not convicted) of “ogling eighth-grade girls’ butts at IS 347 in Queens” and the typing teacher has been kept away from students as a result. He pulls a salary of $100,049 and can’t be fired or forced to retire.

Ooh, ooh,  I want to be a typing teacher when I grow up. Make money! Meet girls! Can’t beat it, son.

Read it.

“Good” is very much a sliding scale when you’re a government agency that combines the incompetent brusqueness of classic security theater with the thoroughness of an overenthusiastic gynecological exam.

So, what sort of “epic gets” made the TSA’s list? Well, there’s a variety of weapons, ranging from normal loaded handguns in carry-on bags to something called a “Tactical Spike” to throwing knives to a taser disguised as a cellphone. There’s also a science project, some wildlife, inert landmines, some chunks of C4 explosive and a flare gun. There’s a lot of items that sound dangerous, but Bruce Schneier points out what’s missing from the TSA’s collection:

That’s right; not a single terrorist on the list. Mostly forgetful, and entirely innocent, people. Note that they fail to point out that the firearms and knives would have been just as easily caught by pre-9/11 screening procedures. And that the C4 — their #1 “good catch” — was on the return flight; they missed it the first time. So only 1 for 2 on that one.

At your expense.

Read it.

You might as well read about it, since you’re paying for it.

Read it.

Chinese honey, once ubiquitous, was largely shut out of the American market through anti-dumping measures. So, this article from NPR.org alleges, it started to be sold through a third country (perhaps Indonesia, Thailand, or Malaysia) and was falsely labelled to evade the duties. (Apparently we know this because the honey can be tested for peculiar types of pollen.) The U.S. government wasn’t having any of thatof course, and so they held up suspicious shipments through regulations, inspections, and documentary requirements.  So now the Chinese honey is allegedly being sold through India.

The domestic honey industry is now starting to worry that all of this nefarious, subversive honey-related activity will suppress the market for all types of honey, including their own, and are starting a fair trade-esque system called True Source Honey, which will trace the honey to a proper, ‘merican source. None of that Chinese muck.

Like many other ‘progressive’ scare-words, ‘dumping’ is just a noise meaning ‘foreigners selling stuff for less than American producers want to sell it while keeping their previously fat profit.’ No consideration, of course, for those actually buying the honey, because they don’t have trade associations with expensive lobbyists to look after their interests. (You might think that, you know, elected representatives were there to look out for consumers, but that’s wrong, wrong, wrong; they only look out for the fictional consumers that ‘consumer advocacy’ groups tell them about.)

Read it.

The Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution declares that no person shall be “deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” This means that if the government infringes on your rights, you are entitled to mount a timely and meaningful defense of those rights in court. It’s one of the cornerstones of our entire legal system, with roots dating back at least as far as the Magna Carta, which declared, “No free man…shall be stripped of his rights or possessions…except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land.”

Unfortunately, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) prefers a less venerable form of justice, as the Supreme Court will hear next month during oral arguments in the case of Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency. At issue is the EPA’s enforcement of the Clean Water Act through so-called administrative compliance orders, which are government commands that allow the agency to control the use of private property without the annoyance of having to subject its actions to judicial review.

Read it. And watch the video.

Despite repeated warnings from the Pentagon, Barack Obama rejected three plans to recover or destroy the US drone that was intercepted over Iranian territory.

I wonder whether Jimmy Carter has an arrangement to pay Obama to make sure that Carter isn’t remembered as the worst President in recent history.

Read it.

The illegals don’t need to be “brought out of the shadows” because they live and work openly. DREAM Act students demonstrate about their status and nobody gets deported. Illegal kids get free K-12 on the backs of the taxpayers courtesy of the Supreme Court, and they are now demanding a “right” to a subsidized college education as well.

Read it.

Apparently the lady had a design of a gun (not a gun, a design of a gun) on her handbag.

Even after they figured out the gun was a fake, TSA officials still wouldn’t let her take the purse into the cabin. They also took so long that Gibbs missed her flight.

Fly the friendly skies. I like to think that Muslim terrorists are even partly as inconvenienced by the Gestapo TSA as ordinary citizens are, but I’m not going to bet on it.

Read it.

Former Philadelphia schools superintendent Arlene Ackerman, who was given a nearly $1-million buyout earlier this year, has applied for unemployment.

School District spokesman Fernando Gallard today confirmed that Ackerman wants to collect state unemployment benefits.

I guess black people just assume they’re entitled to money from the taxpayers, whether they deserve it or not.

Read it.

Proposals to cut Saturday service and close underused post offices in order to save billions of dollars have met united opposition from Democrats and many of the conservative Republicans who swept into office campaigning on smaller government.

Cornell University associate professor Richard Geddes compared efforts to save the postal service to the closures of under-used military bases. In concept, lawmakers support closing unneeded facilities — just not those in their own congressional districts.

Read it.

It was a tradition at bars like the ones in Sardi’s in the theater district: a communal cheese pot with a knife sticking out, and some crackers. First-nighters or late-nighters grabbed the knife and a cracker, spread the cheese — cheddar — and ate. Some called it dinner.

Now, after a health department inspection that complained about “food not protected from potential source of contamination,” the communal pot is gone.

Other bar-food staples like peanuts and pretzels in little bowls? Sardi’s has taken them off the bar, too.

Bureaucrats are never happy unless other people aren’t.

Read it.

If they don’t straighten up, next time we’ll send Michelle.

Read it.

Some school districts are moving beyond school lunches and school breakfasts to free school dinners. The Memphis Commercial Appeal reports: “As part of Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids legislation passed in 2010, the federal government is now in the supper business, budgeting $641 million over 10 years to make sure children in the nation’s ever-growing poor pockets get one more balanced meal a day.”

Next step: Putting them up overnight. SURPRISE! The government just (re)invented boarding school.

Read it.

Andrew Stiles notes a report from Green Technology that Solyndra’s executives substantial bonuses shortly before their company declared bankruptcy, having run out of your money. The taxpayers likely will be stuck with a $530 million bill.

Aren’t you proud?

Read it.

Last year, Amit Aharoni, an Israeli national and a graduate of Stanford Business School, secured $1.65 million in venture capital funding with two cofounders to launch CruiseWise.com, an online cruise booking company.

Business Insider ranked the company, which is set to launch its website in just a few weeks, one of the “20 Hot Silicon Valley Startups You Need to Watch,” and Aharoni has already hired nine Americans.

But this story of entrepreneurship and job creation is hitting rough waters because Aharoni is not American. On Oct. 4, Aharoni received a letter from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services denying his request for a visa and notifying him that he needed to leave the country immediately.

They can’t find hundreds, maybe thousands, of Mexican drug mules, but they can find this guy. Your tax dollars at work.

Immediately after receiving the letter denying his visa application, Aharoni left for Vancouver, where he now tries to guide his company from a friend’s living room. He says he believes his San Francisco headquartered business could create hundreds of jobs in the next five years, a plan that is now in jeopardy.

He ought to have stayed. As an illegal immigrant, he would get free health care, loving support from ‘sanctuary cities’ like San Francisco, free schooling at public expense should he care to have a child or two, and many other benefits. If he registers as a Democrat, he can even vote … possibly more than once.

Read it.

In 2002, federal reguators predicted it would take between 18-months and three-years for the proposed Cape Wind energy project in Nantucket Sound to receive federal approval.  Nearly ten years later, the project is still awaiting full federal clearance, and has yet to begin construction.  Full operation remains at least two years away.

You want ‘green jobs’? Surprise — for all the rhetoric, the government is the chief impediment. (OF COURSE we want to have the Post Office provide our health care!)

The Cape Wind experience also shows that it does not take much to gum up the regulatory gears for new projects of this sort.  Opposition to Cape Wind has been driven by a few dozen families willing to invest their time and money to influence the regulatory process — and it’s worked.  It does not matter whether a proposed project is popular with local residents, as a relatively small group of naysayers can exploit existing regulatory requirements to slow things down in the hope of eventually killing the project altogether.  If other offshore wind projects are to succeed where Cape Wind has (thus far) failed, they will must prepare for similar opposition, and encourage regulatory reforms that will streamline wind project development and approval.

Meddle not with the environment of the Crust, for they are subtle and quick to anger.

Read it.

Now we learn that an important witness, illegal alien Luis Acosta, in the dragging death of young Matthew Denice (pictured) in Milford, Massachusetts, cut off a tracking bracelet and may have escaped to Ecuador. Acosta was a passenger in the truck driven by Nicolas Guaman when he dragged Denice for a quarter mile, killing him.

Milford Police Chief Tom O’Loughlin said he was “beside himself” with anger at the ineptitude of ICE officials and their statement that the loss of Acosta was his problem, not theirs.

Read it.

The East and West Wings of the White House are guilty of more cheesy stage-managing than the Emmy, Oscar, and Tony Awards shows combined.

Last week, the glamour queen wore more than $40,000 worth of diamonds while partying with hubby at several high-priced fundraisers in New York. Her bling made international headlines and photos.

To counter the negative diva buzz as most Americans face hard economic times, Mrs Obama somehow managed to turn up at an Alexandria Va. Target (with her “shopping assistant” in tow).

And somehow, coincidence of coincidences, an Associated Press photographer just happened to be there to snap her.

Snortalicious headline: “Michelle Obama shops incognito at Target (Photo).”

Movin’ on up (movin’ on up) … to the East Wing (movin’ on up) … they’ve finally got a piece of the pie.

And it’s a pretty big pie.

Read it.

In the 2008 presidential campaign, two projects in Alaska were ridiculed as examples of pork-barrel spending. Each sought more than $200 million from Washington to build a bridge to a sparsely populated area with light traffic. In the end, neither received earmarked federal funding.

But the Knik Arm Bridge and Toll Authority, or KABATA — the group behind a bridge project that would link Anchorage to a peninsula nearby — is still wooing private investors and trying to pry loose a considerable amount of state financial backing. And more than $50 million it has spent on promotion has been federal money.

Although earmarks for the bridge were eliminated, some of the redirected federal money has still made its way to the bridge authority for research and promotion.

(Emphasis added)

Read it.

We’d be better off just picking random unemployed people and cutting them a check for $200k.

But, of course, that wouldn’t ‘create or save’ any government jobs, which is the real objective of this boondoggle.

John Stossel lays it out.

School spending has doubled over the past 30 years. Yet what do we get? More buildings and more assistant principals—but student learning? No improvement. If you graph the numbers, the spending line slopes steeply, while the lines for reading, math, and science scores are as flat as a dead man’s EKG.

Why no improvement? Because K-12 education is a government monopoly, and monopolies don’t improve.

Read it.

No one knows for sure exactly how much fraud exists in the Medicare system, but most experts agree that it costs billions of dollars each year. Between 2007 and early 2011, the federal government reports having won convictions against 990 individuals in fraud cases totaling $2.3 billion. In 2010, it recovered an additional $4 billion through collection of non-criminal penalties on health providers who improperly billed the government. But that’s just a fraction of the total problem.

According to a 2011 report from the Government Accountability Office, Medicare makes an estimated $48 billion in “improper payments” each year, an estimate that’s almost certainly lower than the actual amount since it doesn’t include bad payments within the prescription drug program. Some of that money, perhaps a lot of it, is fraud, but experts differ on exactly how much. On the very low end, the National Health Care Anti-Fraud Association has estimated that about 3 percent of all U.S. health care spending is fraud. Assuming fraud is distributed equally across payment systems, that would mean Medicare’s share is roughly $15 billion a year. But almost all analysts believe fraud is much more common in Medicare than in it is in payments by private insurers. Toward the high end, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) once suggested the number could be as much as $80 billion a year. In March, the executive director of the National Health Care Fraud Association told members of Congress that total health care fraud losses likely range from $75 billion to $250 billion each year.

Read it.

Read it.

Valerie Jarrett, a close friend of the Barack and Michelle Obama is the former CEO of Habitat Company, which managed Grove Parc, a federally subsidized apartment complex on Chicago’s South Side that can be accurately described as a slum. Jarrett is now a senior adviser to the president.

On Wednesday with great fanfare the awarding of a $30.5 million federal grant to revitalize Grove Parc–by tearing it down–was announced.

The irony is thick here. Jarrett’s Habitat runs Grove Parc into the ground, and now the federal government funding its demolition and the building of its replacement.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan, Sen. Dick Durbin, and US Rep. Bobby Rush attended the Grove Parc ceremony. Jarret was not there. In fact, no mention of her role in mismanaging the unhappy homes was mentioned by the Chicago Sun-Times or the Chicago Tribune.

Read it.

Hint: No, it just shuffled around already-employed people.

How very stimulating.

Read it.

The Obamas’ summer break on Martha’s Vineyard has already been branded a PR disaster after the couple arrived four hours apart on separate government jets.

There’s a carbon footprint for you. I’ll bet those jets weren’t powered by ‘green’ energy, either.

White House sources today claimed that the First Lady has spent $10million of U.S. taxpayers’ money on vacations alone in the past year.

‘Movin’ on up (movin’ on up)/ to the East Side … we finally got a Piece of the Pie.’

The magazine also reported that Mrs Obama, whose fashion choices are widely followed, had been going on ‘wild shopping sprees’, much to the distress of her husband, who, its sources reveal, is ‘absolutely furious’ at his wife’s ‘out-of-control spending’.

Hey, somebody whose makework job (created specially for her as a politicians wife) was bumped to $317,000 a year when her husband became a Senator (and was then conveniently abolished once she Moved On) isn’t about to flinch from a few perks.

Read it.

 The Obama administration argued that last year’s health care overhaul was a necessary step toward restraining the growth of health spending. One of the ways it was supposed to do that was by encouraging medical providers — physicians, specialists, and hospitals — to find better ways to coordinate the delivery of health care. Highly integrated provider networks, encouraged and regulated by the federal government, would help make health care cheaper and better at the same time.

With the law’s incentives in place, some providers are indeed working on mergers intended to help coordinate care. But it turns out that in some cases, they’re running into resistance… from the federal government, in the form of Federal Trade Commission antitrust action. That’s what’s happening in Toledo, Ohio, where a hospital merger is taking heat from the FTC’s antitrust enforcers. The New York Times looks at the latest round of docs-vs.-the-FTC and reports that ongoing legal battles illustrate “the risks that arise when competing health care providers try to collaborate, as they are racing to do all over the country, in part because of incentives built into the new health law.”

Boy, don’t you just love that government-run health care?

Read it.

How dare a public health official have an opinion on public health? The nerve!

John Derbyshire surveys the state of diversity.

In Britain, the USA, and the other Anglosphere nations, there seem to be Somalis all over.

Here’s one: Mr. Saeed Khaliif. I should actually have said “here’s ten,” as Mr. Khaliif has a wife and eight children. (Though eight is only our best estimate. No one seems to know the exact number.)

The Khaliifs arrived in Britain three years ago as refugees from Somalia. In their three years of residence, neither has had paid employment, nor have they learned to speak English. What they have mainly spent their time doing is gaming Britain’s welfare system. Most recently they have moved into a seven-bedroom house in tony West Hampstead—Emma Thompson lives nearby. The house is worth $3.2 million. Monthly rent—paid for by British taxpayers—is $13,000.

Here is another Somali, Mrs. Hailmo Bokh of Memphis, Tennessee. “Somalian Woman and 11 Kids Call Memphis Home,” reads the headline.

To America’s shame, Mrs. Bokh and her kids have not been given a seven-bedroom house in an upscale neighborhood, only a three-bedroom apartment in a middling neighborhood. Like the Khaliifs, though, the Bokhs will be fed, clothed, and educated courtesy of native taxpayers. “The Catholic Charities of West Tennessee…will help them get on their feet in Memphis,” says the news story, but that’s disingenuous since: (a) CCWT gets at least half its revenues from government grants (see Part VIII here); and (b) as soon as they can—a few months at most—CCWT hands off refugees to the general welfare system.

Read it.

President Obama is barnstorming the heartland to boost US jobs in a taxpayer-financed luxury bus the government had custom built — in Canada, The Post has learned.

Hey, he doesn’t get his political ideas from America — why should he get his bus from America?

Read it.

The Washington Post has a look at the economy of the national capital, which is booming.

My, what a surprise. Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

You’ll wonder where the money went
If you make Obama President….

Read it.

And YOU, the American taxpayer, paid for it! Aren’t you proud?

Read it.

Santa Clara County’s housing authority could have spent $16 million of federal funds to help more struggling families put a roof over their heads. Instead, it chose to more than double the value of its employees’ retirement benefits.

That may sound unusual, but federal housing officials say it was an allowable expense. Still, the switch from a 401(k)-style retirement plan to a pension allowing workers to retire early — with guaranteed lifetime payments — is raising eyebrows at a time when generous public employee pensions are under fire.

As Jerry Pournelle is fond of saying, the purpose of government is to hire and pay government workers. If there’s any money left over, it gets used for government.

Read it.

A firefighter who retired on a $74,624 disability pension, only to compete in mixed-martial arts matches, will be allowed to keep collecting his tax-free checks for life even after being found fit to go back to work.

The city decided to throw in the towel in the groundbreaking case of John Giuffrida, 43, following a deadlocked vote last month by the Fire Department Pension Fund Board over whether he should have to return to his job once an independent medical review determined he was no longer disabled.

All the city officials on the board voted he should. All the fire-union officials voted he shouldn’t.

And you know that not one of those officials, on either side, is a Republican.

Read it.

Wearing a linen trouser suit, neon-green Nike trainers and a CNN lapel-mic, Jill Biden sat in the shade of an acacia tree and listened solemnly to Fatuma Adem’s story.

Read it.

Now: Imagine what the press reaction would have been had Cheney done that.

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The Food and Drug Administration has banned the only over-the-counter asthma inhaler, Primatene Mist, on the grounds that it releases chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and is thus bad for the ozone layer.

We’re from the government, and we’re here to help … everybody but you.

Read it.

…just ask yourself this simple question: When did it become the primary function of the federal government to send millions of Americans checks?

When Medicare began in 1966, it cost $3 billion; congressional estimates were that, by 1990, it would cost about $12 billion, allowing for inflation. The actual figure turned out to be $107 billion. Today, Medicare’s future unfunded obligations total at least $36 trillion. Other estimates run even higher.

Read it.

This comes as no surprise whatsoever.

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As you sit out there, those of you foolish enough to work in the Private Sector or those of you stupid enough to work for state governments that are tightening their belts, wondering if you’ll have a job in six months or if you’ll be forced to take a cut in pay just to keep you job, I’m sure you’ll be happy to know that the fifty-four percent of The White House staff each got, on average, a sixteen percent raise between 2010 and 2011. Of course, that was down from the seventy-five percent got raises between 2009 [the first year of this Administration] and 2010.

Democrats — hands in your pockets since the Great Depression.

Read it.

I am not making this up.