Ironic: Federal Government Screws Goat Herders

If you happen to notice that your neighborhood Border Collie looking a little more refreshed then normal with a Bluetooth stuck in his ear while walking the neighborhood you can thank the Obama administration.

The Obama administration is setting new workplace regulations to assist foreign workers who fill goat herding positions in the U.S. , including employee-paid cell phones and comfy beds.

Well I guess technically these new rules would only apply to Australian Sheep Dogs working in the US.

Talk about big brother besides cell phones and beds it also details what constitutes adequate lighting to how food must be prepared.

The new lighting standards say that in areas where it is not feasible to provide electrical service such as tents or mobile trailers, lanterns must be provided. “Kerosene wick lights meet the definition of lantern,” the regulations say.

How did these poor goat and sheep herders with centuries worth of practice and knowledge ever manage to bring a herd in without the assistance of the all-knowing and all-seeing federal government must be some sort miracle. Federal government. Is there anything it can't do?

I don't want to even know how many of these new rules this group of herders are violating.

2012 GOP Non-Starter Mike Huckabee Hitches His Wagon to Michelle Obama's Caboose

Not a political strategy I'd recommend, but then again what do I know?

No wonder Joy Behar loves this goofball.

That's right, he's a goofball! [Read in the voice of Mark Levin for full effect].



Anyone else sensing a potential Huckabee/Bloomberg ticket here?

OK, maybe not - but I'm going to start hoarding M&M's just to be safe.

Via Radio Equalizer. Cross-posted.

Uh - Oh Bad news For Big Retail

I say bad news because if the health insurance profits of 3.3% are considered extravagant and obscene what do you call a profit margin of 28%?

Kohl's Corp. on Thursday posted a 28% jump in profit for its fiscal fourth quarter by increasing sales and improving margins.

This simply can not be allowed to stand. C'mon you union loving, socialist pigs. I demand you devote as much attention to Big Retail as you did Big Banking and Big Health Insurers. Why I bet these executives even got bonuses, and gasp, probably went on a retreat or at least took a vacation. I wonder how many jobs were created by this explosion of profits? This can not be permitted by an entity that did not receive any stimulus funds and must be stopped now before the average citizen hears of this.

I expect President Obama to immediately address this, the most pressing of domestic issues, preferably as soon as the health care summit is over today. Big Retail can not be allowed to continue to take advantage of the poor and disadvantaged in this country. Why I bet you will even find out that they located stores based on some sort of racial profiling and either targeted the minority community like Big Tobacco and Big Liquor does, or denied access based on location.

How long can we as Americans allow this to continue? It just isn't fair. The obvious answer is for government to step in and take over right now to prevent such profit taking in the future, because if there is one thing that Big Government has proven, they certainly don't know how to turn a profit.

Not Complete Until The Paperwork Is Done

The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), has decided to go after parties that received stimulus funds but have not filed the necessary reports back to the federal government that details how the money was spent. However in typical government fashion, at least some of the missing reports are as a result of the bureaucratic red tape inherent in the system that they set up.

Propublica.org, for example, exposed this week how a report for the North Georgia city of Blue Ridge [GA] is not on recovery.gov as it should be. The city received a $12.9 million federal stimulus loan to improve and expand its drinking water system. The work is already under way, but it has not created or saved any jobs at this point, according to city clerk April Grizzell.

Grizzell said she tried several times to file her city’s report in October as required, but a federal Web site kept kicking it back. She said she later realized she had not registered some information about her city on another federal Web site as required prior to trying to file the city's report. By that time, the reporting deadline had passed and the federal system site had locked her out, Grizzell said.

Grizzell said: “It wasn’t from lack of trying.”

I am naturally suspicious of any organization which incorporates the dot org tag in their title since 9 times out of 10 they tend to be the domain of liberal progressives. They have really taken ownership of that particular label so I decided to look up the group in question and found this.

ProPublica is a team of journalists – the largest investigative staff in the nation – who produce the kind of hard-hitting and high-impact journalism that’s falling by the industry’s wayside.

I was actually kind of surprised that they actually do decent reporting and from what I could browse through, no I didn't take an in depth analysis of all of their stories, they appear to be very straight forward. They mostly link to other news agencies and their reporting and limit the amount of commentary.

The whole point though is just like several car dealerships had problems trying to enter information during the "cash for clunkers" program we have yet another example of how the federal government can't seem to get out of their own way.

Yeah I really want them running my healthcare.

Your Government In Action: Four-Year-Olds Now Qualify for Homebuyer Credit

Not only can your pre-schoolers now qualify for a first time home-buying loan, but if you've got some more kids in the pipeline they too may be qualify thanks to a helping hand from Senator Christopher Dodd.

They may not be able to cross the street on their own or color within the lines, but many kids qualified for the first-time homebuyer credit.

Due to a loophole and some odd reporting criteria, children as young as 4 received the first-time homebuyer credit that Congress passed last year, according to PoliticsDaily.com. The credit is worth $8,000 and was created to encourage first-time buyers to purchase a home.

More than 500 people have used their children to sign up, with one parent using a 4-year-old to get the credit, the site reported.

These types of claims are among the myriad cases of fraud that have cost the government nearly half a billion dollars, federal investigators told Congress.

Fraudulent claims include people who received the credit but have not purchased homes, who already owned homes, or who were in the country illegally. More worrying, numerous IRS employees have applied for the credit who should not have.

Chalk up another success for big gubmint.

Meanwhile, on the heels of this news comes word this program will likely be extended. Wonderful.

The temporary program was created by Congress in 2008 to jolt the weakened housing market and was renewed and expanded in 2009 by the $787 billion stimulus bill. This week Sens. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) and Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) began a push to expand the credit to all homebuyers and extend the deadline, now set for Nov. 30th, to July 2010.

Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), chairman of the subcommittee, said that 1.4 million families have claimed nearly $10 billion in credits, but that the speed of implementing the program meant policing fraud was at first unacceptably poor. "We want to and we need to stop this fraud and abuse," he said.

Good luck with that. Really instills confidence these idiots can run our healthcare system, doesn't it?

I wonder how deep the tentacles from ACORN are into the scam?

Something Smells Bad In Baltimore

And it ain't Ray Lewis.

Late yesterday word came out that the Baltimore City State Attorney's office is looking into bringing charges against the couple who went undercover into the ACORN offices and got them on tape giving them advice on how to hide the girls profession as a prostitute, how to dodge taxes, and turning a deaf ear to the fact that they wanted to import underage girls from a South American country to use as prostitutes.

ACORN of course claimed it was an isolated incident and didn't reflect the professionalism of their organization, yadda, yadda, yadda. Then the next day a video came out of the same thing happening in the Washington DC office of ACORN. ACORN fired the two employees in Baltimore and I am sure they expect this go away.

The census bureau has now pulled their contracts with ACORN also.

It appears somebody made a phone call, or maybe not, and this public servant was acting with the same zeal as the lady in Ohio who decided on her own to investigate the background of one Joseph Wierzelbacker, "Joe the Plumber" after he confronted candidate Obama about his plans to redistribute the wealth.

The public servant in question is the Baltimore City State Attorney, Patricia Jessamy.

Now that I have brought you up to speed on the story so far, I wanted to add my little bit to the storyline.

Earlier this year the mayor of Baltimore, Sheila Dixon, was indicted for corruption charges. She too was a big Obama supporter.

So when Glenn Beck says he had an epiphany and realized that the number one issue we as Americans need to attack is corruption, it appears once again he might be on the right track.

The big credit for breaking this story goes to Andrew Breitbart who launched his new blog Big Government this week with this story. He certainly knows how to make a splash at a debut.

It will be interesting how long the dinosaur news media can remain silent on this matter.

Forget Big Government; Get Ready For Massive Government

We just figured out how Barack Obama is going to "create or save" (insert number) jobs with his gradiose dreams of a socialist utopia.

They'll all be government employees.

President Obama's budget is so ambitious, with vast new spending on health care, energy independence, education and services for veterans, that experts say he probably will need to hire tens of thousands of new federal government workers to realize his goals.

The $3.6 trillion plan released last week proposes spending billions to begin initiatives and implement existing programs, and given Obama's insistence that he would scale back the use of private-sector contractors, his priorities could reverse a generational decline in the size of the government workforce.

Exactly how many new workers would be needed remains unclear -- one independent estimate was 100,000, while the conservative Heritage Foundation said it is likely to be closer to a quarter-million.

These of course will be non-partisan jobs and the employees won't be able to campaign on behalf of Democrats and the man they owe their job to.

Bwahahaha!

Stimulus, Illustrated: Yes, This Thing Really Stinks

Via Suitably Flip.

Biggest shit sandwich ever!

So how big is the resulting $1.2 trillion spending package? Big enough to dwarf any government program in history, even after adjusting for inflation. It's bigger than the New Deal and the Iraq War combined. The interest alone will be costlier than the Louisiana Purchase or going to the moon. The $18 billion in bonuses paid legally by private Wall Street firms in 2008 - decried by the President as "shameful" - is vanishingly small in comparison (smaller even than the bill's incremental food stamps expenditures).

Uncle Joe is Smiling

Today, we have look at Senator Clinton's Health Plan.

Although short on specifics, I see enough here to be convinced that it would be, like Barack Obama's plan, turning us into the People's Republic of America.

Some items of note from her website:

Americans can keep their existing coverage or access the same menu of quality private insurance options that their Members of Congress receive through a new Health Choices Menu, established without any new bureaucracy as part of the Federal Employee Health Benefit Program (FEHBP). In addition to the broad array of private options that Americans can choose from, they will be offered the choice of a public plan option similar to Medicare.

Translation: Expansion of Medicare to the general public.

By removing hidden taxes, stressing prevention and a focus on efficiency and modernization, the plan will improve quality and lower costs.

Translation: We are planning on some imaginary savings to make this work.

By creating a level-playing field of insurance rules across states and markets, the plan ensures that no American is denied coverage, refused renewal, unfairly priced out of the market, or forced to pay excessive insurance company premiums.

Translation: We are going to regulate the insurance industry from top to bottom, including price fixing.

The refundable tax credit will be designed to prevent premiums from exceeding a percentage of family income, while maintaining consumer price consciousness in choosing health plans.

Translation: We will use income redistribution to give preferential treatment to our special interest groups.

The Plan will fix the holes in the safety net to ensure that the most vulnerable populations receive affordable, quality care.

Translation: We will expand the role of government in controlling your life.

A new tax credit for qualifying private and public retiree health plans will offset a significant portion of catastrophic expenditures, so long as savings are dedicated to workers and competitiveness.

Translation: A little something for the retiree vote. Question: How do you dedicate saving to the "workers" in a retiree health plan? Their spin is not in sync with itself here.

Over half the savings come from the public savings generated from Senator Clinton's broader agenda to modernize the heath systems and reduce wasteful health spending.

Translation: Hillary thinks she knows how to run your hospital better than the doctors do. My guess is this will include fee and income caps on health care providers.

The plan protects the current exclusion from taxes of employer-provided health premiums, but limits the exclusion for the high-end portion of very generous plans for those making over $250,000.

Translation: We will punish success and call that "fairness".

There are no deatils that I could find on what happens to you if you don't pay for your coverage, other than some references to a tax credit (income redistribution).

Here's an indication of how Hillary looks at America:

"How Hillary's plan affects:

• Women
• African-Americans
• Americans with Disabilities
• Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders
• Hispanics
• Seniors"

Look who is missing from that group. White males, of course.

When you read through those sections, the class envy and special interest group pandering is enough to make you sick. These people see the country as a combination of special interest groups, all of whom are dependent upon handouts from Big Brother.

Somewhere, Joe Stalin is smiling.

Obama's Health Scare Plan

Want to read something really frightening? Get a load of Barack Obama's Health Care Plan on his website.

Plan for a Healthy America

Plan to create the People's Socialist Republic of America is more like it. Buckle up, gang, here are some bits and pieces:

Subsidies. Individuals and families who do not qualify for Medicaid or SCHIP but still need financial assistance will receive an income-related federal subsidy to buy into the new public plan or purchase a private health care plan.

Translation: Income redistribution and a recreation of the welfare state.

Participating insurance companies in the new public program will be required to report data to ensure that standards for quality, health information technology and administration are being met.

Translation: They will regulate how insurance companies operate.

The Obama plan will create a National Health Insurance Exchange to help individuals who wish to purchase a private insurance plan. The Exchange will act as a watchdog group and help reform the private insurance market by creating rules and standards for participating insurance plans to ensure fairness and to make individual coverage more affordable and accessible. Insurers would have to issue every applicant a policy, and charge fair and stable premiums that will not depend upon health status.

Translation: Even more big government. They will regulate operations and prices. Notice the use of the word "fair". As defined by whom? Look for more income redistribution, more tax increases and a lot more beauracracy.

Employer Contribution: Employers that do not offer or make a meaningful contribution to the cost of quality health coverage for their employees will be required to contribute a percentage of payroll toward the costs of the national plan. Small employers that meet certain revenue thresholds will be exempt.

Translation: Meaningful contribution? This will be used as license to extort payments from private business. They will pick and choose who they hammer.

Expansion Of Medicaid and SCHIP: Obama will expand eligibility for the Medicaid and SCHIP programs and ensure that these programs continue to serve their critical safety net function.

Translation: More big government.

Obama will establish an independent institute to guide reviews and research on comparative effectiveness, so that Americans and their doctors will have the accurate and objective information they need to make the best decisions for their health and well-being.

Translation: More big government.

Obama will invest $10 billion a year over the next five years to move the U.S. health care system to broad adoption of standards-based electronic health information systems, including electronic health records, and will phase in requirements for full implementation of health IT.

Translation: $50 billion government spending program, and a grab of your medical records.

Obama will strengthen antitrust laws to prevent insurers from overcharging physicians for their malpractice insurance.

Translation: Use of anti-trust to regulate the insurance industry.

I predict insurers will stop writing malpractice coverage if this happens.

Barack Obama will prevent companies from abusing their monopoly power through unjustified price increases. His plan will force insurers to pay out a reasonable share of their premiums for patient care instead of keeping exorbitant amounts for profits and administration. His new National Health Exchange will help increase competition by insurers.

Translation: They will regulate prices, profits and will use anti-trust to go after these people.

Barack Obama has consistently supported funding for the national institutes of health and the national science foundation. Obama strongly supports investments in biomedical research, as well as medical education and training in health-related fields, because it provides the foundation for new therapies and diagnostics.

Translation: More government spending to create moonbat farms.

This goes on and on. More big government, more regulation of private business, more taxes and income redistribution. In the FAQ they say they will pay for all this through these imaginary savings and eliminating the Bush tax cuts.

Rather than increase competition and lower prices, this plan will chase providers and underwriters out of the business. The supply curve will shift in, the demand curve will shift out, and you will have shortages and low quality health care, and a whole lot of voters dependant upon big government for health care.