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If you think Senator Chris Dodd was friendly with former Countrywide Financial CEO Angelo Mozilo, check out the bond the Connecticut lawmaker enjoys with Richard Blumenthal, the state’s attorney general. While Mr. Dodd refuses to make public the details of his sweetheart loans from Countrywide, the state’s chief lawyer not only won’t investigate; he has taken to the airwaves to proclaim Mr. Dodd’s innocence and even predict his re-election in 2010.

This is why you don’t want to live in a blue state.

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Watch the sausage being made. Bring a bag.

The rich don’t mind high taxes because, as Leona Helmsley said, “Only the little people pay taxes.”

For what it’s worth, one of Paul’s representatives told the WSJ the billionaire didn’t lobby for the windfall. It just fell into his lap, lucky dog.

I feel so much better now.

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Well, that appears to depend on whose talking. And sometimes not even then.

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Obama proclaims his stimulus bill is earmark-free, but that claim is a bit Clintonian. Turns out, it depends on what the meaning of the word earmark is. What if a provision in the bill doesn’t name one specific project, but is written so narrowly that only one project is eligible?

Sure, that doesn’t name one powerplant, and it leaves open the idea of funding multiple powerplants, but there’s plenty of evidence that this line was intended as—and will function as—an earmark for the FutureGen coal gasification powerplant in Mattoon, Illinois. “There’s no other plant that would be eligible,” says John Hart, spokesman for Sen. Tom Coburn, R-OK.  Durbin’s office, the Mattoon project’s champion, didn’t return calls for comment.

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“The government” doesn’t. Certain moronic politicians do, because they are both ignorant and stupid, but that doesn’t prevent them from getting elected — they’re “representative” in every sense of the word.

Although the post doesn’t mention it, Congressman Stupak is (of course) a Democrat.

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The problem with such huge piles of excrement legislation is that (a) nobody has (or can) read the whole thing, and (b) the Bad Guys take advantage of the complexity of the process to sneak in little goodies that advance their own (or their owners’) agenda. The health care provisions that Megan at Fox News was all over this morning (and that Rush Limbaugh has been all over for the past two days) are one such instance: Nobody knows how it got into the bill, or who put it there, or what it would mean in practice. This is another such instance, fortunately with some fairly obvious fingerprints on it.

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Hint: Probably not.

Treasury, so far, has refused to tell us where much of the money went, beyond paying for pricey canapés and comfy beds. Not surprisingly, Fox Business Network ran a half-page ad in USA Today on February 3 to announce that they “sued the Treasury and the Federal Reserve” to find out where the TARP and FRB-NY money went. The Senate is considering subpoenas to get Treasury to tell them where it all went. Talk about imperial government!

Daniel Henninger of the Wall Street Journal points out that the Stimulus Bill is mostly stimulating the government.

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Come, little piggies, gather ’round the trough.

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A stimulus they can believe in.

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Initially designed for children of working-poor families, this new Super-Schip will be double in size, and even kids whose parents make $65,000 a year will be eligible. The program will also now cover pregnant women and automatically enroll their new arrivals. The Congressional Budget Office estimates 2.4 million individuals will drop their private coverage for the public program.

Under “stimulus,” Medicaid is now on offer not to just poor Americans, but Americans who have lost their jobs. And not just Americans who have lost their jobs, but their spouses and their children. And not Americans who recently lost their jobs, but those who lost jobs, say, early last year. And not just Americans who already lost their jobs, but those who will lose their jobs up to 2011. The federal government is graciously footing the whole bill. The legislation also forbids states to apply income tests in most cases.

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So it will be the same crappy service, but this time it will be legitimate.

Yeah, that’s an improvement.

Repeal the Private Express Statutes and let FedEx and UPS get a shot at it.

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*sigh* The only thing that saves us is that we don’t get all the government we pay for.

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President Barack Obama has called for an end to “the petty grievances” and “recriminations” of Washington. John Conyers intends to find out if the new president really means it.

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Isn’t it funny how laws designed to protect us from ourselves never do, but certainly attain their main goal of making more job security for bureaucrats?

Get a government job. You’ll be a robot, but you won’t ever be unemployed.

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Welcome to the Obama Nation.

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I especially like

3. President-elect Obama has said that his proposed stimulus legislation will create or save three million jobs. This means that this legislation will spend about $275,000 per job. The average household income in the U.S. is $50,000 a year.

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But the “change” Mr. Obama really needs is to avoid the fate of the last two Democratic presidents, both sabotaged by their own majorities. So far, not good. Mr. Obama has yet to assume office, and already his own party is beating his priorities like a conga drum.

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This entire treatment, of course, begs the question — just because the kirpan is “a dangerous weapon” does not automatically disqualify it from being carried in most circumstances.

Needless to say, if an IRS agent can’t be trusted with “a dangerous weapon”, then on what basis ought she to be an IRS agent?

Bureaucratic whim masquerading as policy. And YOU get to pay for it. Aren’t you proud?

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Question is, do we really need (or want) another government-paid nanny?

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Well, that didn’t take long. Democrats are planning to kick off the legislative portion of the 111th Congress as early as today with two big donations to one of their most loyal retainers: the plaintiffs bar. Higher labor costs will result from a pair of bills designed to create new lawsuit possibilities in cases of alleged wage discrimination.

The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act is an effort to overturn a 2007 Supreme Court decision, Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber. Lilly Ledbetter had worked for Goodyear for almost 20 years before retiring. Only in 1998, after she took her pension, did she sue and allege wage discrimination stretching back to the early 1980s. The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 against her, noting the statute clearly said claims must be filed within 180 days, or sometimes 300 days, of the discrimination.

Hey, you dance with the one that brung you.

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“Of gods we believe, and of men we know, that those who have power will exercise it.”

The law clearly gives him the right to appoint somebody to the vacant Senate seat. Absent any evidence that the appointment is corrupt, this is a blatant and illegitimate power-play by the Senate Democrats.

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If the smell is so bad that even the Washington Post can tell, then it must be really bad.

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Government administrators in charge of an almost $6 billion cleanup of the Chesapeake Bay tried to conceal for years that their effort was failing — even issuing reports overstating their progress — to preserve the flow of federal and state money to the project, former officials say.

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

Pournelle’s Iron Law of Government states that government is in the business of hiring and paying government workers, whatever its formal business may be.

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Why hasn’t a manufacturer come out with a device like this? Because it would take 20 years and 20 gazillion dollars to get it approved by the FDA, and it’s just not worth the hassle.

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

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The National Veterans Business Development Corp., also known as the Veterans Corp. (TVC), grossly mismanaged taxpayer dollars — including lavish spending on costly dinners and luxury hotels, first-class travel, and compensation for its top two executives that amounted to nearly a quarter of the charity’s federal funds, according to a report obtained by The Washington Post.

But … but … but … that’s what “federal funds” are for….

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

And their stands Charlie Rangel in the midst of them, looking as if nobody has offered him a taste.

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C’mon, do you seriously think you’d see a headline in the Washington Post saying, “Ridership Down Because People Think Mass Transit Sucks”?

But economically, this is no surprise — who wouldn’t prefer taxpayer subsidized mass transit to pay-for-your-own transportation, especially when local government are spending the money that they ought to be spending on repairing and enlarging roads on their favorite create-more-union-jobs projects like mass transit?

Dana Milbank is a leftoid twit, so when he criticizes a government program it must really be bad.

What was conceived in the 1990s as a sensible $71 million celebration of democracy turned into a half-billion-dollar shrine to legislative excess: an extra $4.2 million for congressional seals, an orientation film and backpack storage space, $30 million more for extra tunnels, elevators and the like, and $85 million for a TV studio for senators (makeup facility included) and a two-story hearing room for House members. By the end, even the lawmaker whose committee monitored the visitor center said she’d “never seen a bigger boondoggle in my life.”

But, you will note, it still happened. A government project is the closest thing to eternal life we will see in this world.

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The final version of the study, released yesterday by the U.S. Department of Education, found that students in schools that use Reading First, a program at the core of the No Child Left Behind law, scored no better on comprehension tests than students in similar schools that do not get the funding.

There’s a shocker: Government program doesn’t work while costing a bundle. Stop the presses.

The only surprise here is that they’re actually admitting it.

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God gave us the TSA because the Post Office quit being a sufficiently bad example.

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Reminder: Government is the problem, not the solution.

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Well, they had to get Capone on tax evasion; we work with the tools we’ve got.

A federal jury found Alaska Republican Sen. Ted Stevens guilty today of accepting and concealing tens of thousands of dollars in free home renovations and other gifts, a felony conviction that likely spells the end of a legendary Senate career.

We can only hope. This arrogant thief has been a chancre on Alaskan politics and the Republican party for most of my lifetime; I thank God that I may live to see the day he goes to jail.

Next, let’s see if we can arrange to put Robber Byrd in the next cell.

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Insurers, automakers and American subsidiaries of foreign banks all want the Treasury Department to cut them a piece of the largest government rescue in U.S. history.

Who couldn’t see this coming?

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U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer said the federal government is considering outlays of as much as $25 million to help ethanol plants, which have been hit by volatile commodity prices.

Ethanol? Brass. Big ones. No doubt in compensation for the little teeny tiny ones on most of this supposedly-Republican administration.

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“It was a take it or take it offer,” said one person who was briefed on the meeting, speaking on condition of anonymity because the discussions were private. “Everyone knew there was only one answer.”

Well, that’s what happens when the government is involved.

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Former Countrywide Financial loan officer Robert Feinberg says Mr. Dodd knowingly saved thousands of dollars on his refinancing of two properties in 2003 as part of a special program the California mortgage company had for the influential. He also says he has internal company documents that prove Mr. Dodd knew he was getting preferential treatment as a friend of Angelo Mozilo, Countrywide’s then-CEO.

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Mr. BUFFETT: Well, it’s really an incredible case study in regulation
because something called OFHEO was set up in 1992 by Congress, and the sole job of OFHEO was to watch over Fannie and Freddie, someone to watch over them. And they were there to evaluate the soundness and the accounting and all of that. Two companies were all they had to regulate. OFHEO has over 200 employees now. They have a budget now that’s $65 million a year, and all they have to do is look at two companies. I mean, you know, I look at more than two companies

So, of course: The government’s response to this failure of regulation is — more regulation! With more government employees and a higher budget, of course.

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Nixon without the 5-o’clock shadow.

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If a liberal Democratic administration had put hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money at risk by bailing out Bear Stearns and nationalizing American International Group (AIG), Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, wouldn’t conservatives accuse Democrats of “socialism”? Can Mr. McCain now square a circle by calling himself a conservative while favoring increased regulation?

When even Democrats can smell the coffee, what is the problem with John McCain?

Now I know what former Sen. Gary Hart meant when he told an audience of wealthy Republican businessmen during his 1984 presidential campaign, “I know why you are conservatives — you favor private enterprise for the poor and socialism for the rich.”

And that, sad to say, is the plain truth — certainly when it comes to Republican Congressmen.

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The Environmental Protection Agency has done little to curb the export of discarded electronic products containing hazardous waste, much of which ends up in poorly regulated countries and harms the environment and public health, the Government Accountability Office concluded in a report being released today.

And how is that any business of the American EPA? Other countries would appear to be, oh, I don’t know, OUTSIDE OF THEIR JURISDICTION.

I’d heard tell that they’d changed what “GAO” stands for, but I didn’t realize that they’d changed it to “Government Asininity Office”.

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From the perspective of each individual taxpayer or voter, and from the perspective of each elected official, what government spends is unconnected with what government receives as tax revenues, and what Uncle Sam receives as tax revenues is unconnected with what it spends.

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Of course, a legislator doesn’t need to know what’s in the tax code, any more than the girl at McDonald’s needs to know what in an Egg McMuffin. Take  the money, order up, next customer.

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Whenever laws distort the market, politicians and their friends will get rich off of the situation. That’s as close to a universal truth as we have in human affairs.

David Friedman takes a look.

he plan includes a bunch of “refundable tax credits.” It is not at all clear to what extent they ought to be counted as reductions in taxes, and to what extent as increases in expenditure.

The accurate term for “refundable tax credits” is “welfare”, since it’s a “refund” of a tax that was never paid.

Transfer payments make up a very large share of the federal budget. With sufficient ingenuity, one could eliminate essentially all of them from the expenditure side by relabelling them refundable tax credits, thus producing, on the books, an enormous reduction in both expenditures and taxes, while actually changing nothing at all. Obama seems to be moving things at least a little farther in that direction.

Oh, there’s a shock….

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Judgments of young Americans’ civic knowledge range from “grim” (Stephen Goldsmith, chairman of the Corporation for National and Community Service) to “abysmal” (Diane Ravitch, New York University historian of education) and “disturbing” (George W. Bush). None is overstating the case. Last year, the Education Department’s National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) revealed that less than a quarter of grade-school students are proficient in civics and American history, the subjects meant to prepare them to be responsible citizens.

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