Congress Makes Christmas Come Early! Did Uncle Santa Bring You A Gift?
Published on Dec 18, 2014” Merry Christmas, Everybody!
The $1.1 trillion budget passed by congress sure can buy lots of gifts and presents for everyone. Are you on Uncle Santa’s list? These lucky bastards are.
Approximately 1:30 minutes.
Written by Nick Gillespie. Produced by Meredith Bragg “
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” Americans love meat. In fact, we eat more of it per capita than almost any other country in the world. (Luxembourg has us beat by about 31 pounds per person per year. La vache!)So it’s surprising that only four states—Louisiana, Maryland, Oklahoma, and Texas—name meaty dishes among their official state foods. And Maryland doesn’t really count—its state food is the blue crab, which is more like an edible bug than a meat. Thankfully, Oklahoma picks up the slack by having three carnivorous state meals—barbecued pork, chicken-fried steak, and sausages with gravy. But still! That’s only five meats, and one crustacean, representing the entire meat-eating country. Meanwhile, the list of U.S. state foods contains approximately 30 fruits (seven of which are apples—boring), 20 vegetables, and five muffins. Now, I know fruits, vegetables, and muffins are delicious. But surely they play a smaller role in our national food culture than brisket, hamburgers, hot dogs, steaks, and barbecued pork.
Outraged by this oversight, and inspired by my colleague Josh Levin’s diligent effort to assign every state a sport, I decided to assign a meat to every U.S. state. This was an arduous undertaking—how to choose only 50 among the bounty of American foods containing animal flesh?—so I set myself some ground rules.”
Read the rest and go interactive at Salon
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From Rand Paul Comes This Reminder Of Why Everything Government Costs So Much
In the event that our readers had any doubts as to why a proposed $60 million project , as mentioned in our previous post , ends up costing $94 million this picture should serve as a stark reminder of the cost of government business .
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Catfish Oversight, Weather Radios And A Christmas Tree Tax: Meet The Pork-Filled $956 BILLION Farm Bill
- ” The massive five-years agriculture spending plan, signed Friday by President Obama, includes a $3 million plan for Christmas tree taxes
- Most of the bill covers food stamps, with the number of benefit recipients doubling since Obama took office
- The U.S. will spend $1 billion per year loaning money to sugar barons so they can keep prices stable and avoid overseas competition
- Another $100 million will go to study how to get Americans to buy more maple syrup
- $1 million will buy weather radios for rural Americans, despite plunging hundreds of weather apps for smartphones and plunging access rates”
” The federal government pays for a $15 million ‘wool trust fund,’ runs a $170 million program to protect catfish growers from overseas competition, sets aside $3 million to promote Christmas trees, funds another $2 million to help farmers sell more sheep, and plunks down $100 million researching how to get Americans to buy more maple syrup.
And that spending is just three one-hundredths of one per cent of the Farm Bill that President Barack Obama signed Friday in Michigan.
Liberal and conservative watchdogs alike are hopping mad at what they say are pork-barrel projects included in the five-year agriculture spending law as home-state perks to lawmakers that are unneeded or redundant.
There’s a new 15-cent levy on every live-cut Christmas tree, a proposal that Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack had blocked but will now be beyond his control. Tree growers will put the money into a fund for ‘industry-funded promotion, research, and information program[s],’ but the cost will inevitably be passed on to consumers.”
While there is plenty of pork to feed Congress’ corporate cronies the lion’s share of the “Farm” bill goes to foster government dependency for the individual …
” One in five American households receive food stamps today. More than 1 million people were added to the rolls in 2013, including residents who live in the country illegally.
In the year 2000 the entire food stamp program cost $17 billion. Last year that figure was $78 billion.
The rest of the Farm Bill, all $200 billion of it, includes some subsidy payments to members of Congress and their families who are engaged in agriculture.”
Read the rest if you can stomach it .
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The Farm Bill: A Lesson In Government Failure
” As a consumer and as a taxpayer, the farm bill is a monstrosity. But as someone who teaches public finance and public choice economics, it is a great teaching tool.
Want to explain the concept of dead-weight loss? The farm bill’s insurance subsidies are a perfect illustration of the concept. They transfer resources from taxpayers to farm producers; but taxpayers lose more than producers gain.
Want to illustrate the folly of price controls? Sugar supports which force Americans to pay twice what global consumers pay are a fine illustration.”
Big Government means Big Money … Big Money means Big Corruption … It’s been the same since the beginning of the State and WILL NOT CHANGE !!!
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Published on Feb 4, 2014
” Opening Line: “This Farm Bill is a monument to every dysfunction Washington indulges to bend our politics and twist our economy to benefit itself at the expense of the American people.” “
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Who Read 1,582-Page $1.1T Spending Bill? Congressman: ‘Nobody Did’
” When asked whether he read the 1,528-page, $1.1 trillion government spending bill before he voted for it yesterday, Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) said, “Nobody did!”
On Capitol Hill on Thursday, CNSNews.com asked Blumenauer: “The omnibus bill yesterday, it was 1,582 pages, did you have a chance to read all the pages before voting on it?”
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Your Money In Pictures: The Top 5 Charts Of 2013
” As part of our countdown to the new year, here are Heritage’s top five must-see charts of 2013.”
Each American’s Share of Publicly Held Debt
” As Washington lawmakers continue to spend more and pile on debt, each American’s share of public debt has risen to $36,000—about six times more than in 1970—and is set to rise astronomically in coming years. Without reform, the government will have borrowed $135,547 in public debt for each American, or almost three times the current median income, by 2036. This chart shows that serious consequences lie ahead if the government continues on its current path of reckless spending with no reform in sight.”
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Works with chicken as well
Ingredients:
6-9 pork chops (not too thick, you can use boneless pork loin)
2 eggs
4 Tbs water
2 cups flour
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. black pepper
1 tsp. garlic powder
Canola or vegetable oil for frying chops
Glaze:
1 1/2 cups honey
1/2 cup brown sugar (I added this)
1/2 tsp. ginger
dash of cayenne pepper (to your taste)
1/2 cup soy sauce
1 Tbs chopped garlic
2 Tbs butter
Directions:
” Whisk the eggs and 4 Tbs. water together in a shallow dish.Mix the flour, salt, pepper, and garlic powder in another shallow dish.
Dip the chops in the flour, then over into the egg.Then back over into the flour mixture once again. This is what puts the extra crispy coating on the chops. Be sure to get plenty of flour on in this last coating, then shake them a little and place in a pan with about a half inch of oil. Be sure the oil is hot, but not too hot or the chops will cook too fast. You need to get it good and hot and then turn to about medium.
Cook for about 6 minutes on each side. Try not to turn more than twice or your breading will come off.
Remove from the pan to a 9″x13″ baking dish.Saute the garlic a little in the butter.
Add the honey, soy sauce, brown sugar, cayenne, and ginger. Bring to a boil then reduce to low and simmer for about 5 minutes. Watch this carefully because it will foam and might boil over.
Pour 1/2 of the glaze over the pork chops. Flip them over and pour the other 1/2 over the other side. Place uncovered in a preheated 350 degree oven for about 20-25 minutes. This sets the glaze and finishes them to be sure they are cooked through.”
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” The Farm Bill is currently moving through Congress, and it’s bigger and more bloated than ever. This year’s version will spend nearly a trillion dollars on broken food and farm welfare over the next decade. Unfortunately, Congress is poised to rubber-stamp this bloated welfare bill known as the Farm Bill.
Americans For Prosperity strongly encourages Capitol Hill to consider real reforms and meaningful savings to the 2013 Farm Bill.”
Members of Congress Get Millions in Farm Subsidies
Rural Broadband Program in Farm Bill is Woefully Broken
Update on the Farm Bill: Good News and Bad News
What savings? 2012 Farm Bill is agribusiness as usual (The Hill)
New farm bill: Welfare in disguise (POLITICO)
End direct payments to find spending savings (Real Clear Policy)
Farm Bill is Welfare Bill (Des Moines Register)
The Farm Bill is Bloated (Billings Gazette)
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” Adam Andrezejewski, who ran as the Republican candidate for governor of Illinois in 2010, believes passionately that American taxpayers should know how government spends their money. Andrewzejewski and a team of designers have now realized that dream by creating Open the Books, a free app that creates a searchable database allowing America’s shareholders (i.e., taxpayers) to see how the federal government is spending their money. The app works on both Apple and Droid platforms. If you don’t have a smart phone, the same information can be viewed at http://www.openthebooks.com. All you need to do to find out about local spending is to enter your zip code.
In a Wall Street Journal article alerting Americans to this oversight program, Andrewzejewski details just three of the unpleasant surprises about federal spending he was able to find using Open the Books:
• The brother of a former state director of agriculture under former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich has received nine federally guaranteed loans totaling $1.67 million since 2006. He has also received hundreds of thousands in direct payments and subsidies from the federal government, all based on his ownership of a single hog farm in Teutopolis, Ill.”
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Editor’s Note : This story first appeared a year ago but we missed it . However , in light of recent revelations regarding what seems to be normal procedure for various agencies of the federal government we thought it would be of interest to our readers .
Dept. of Homeland Security Forced To Release List Of Keywords Used To Monitor Social Networking Sites
” In a story appearing earlier today on the U.K’s Daily Mail website, it was reported that the DHS has been forced to release a list of keywords and phrases it uses to monitor various social networking sites. The list provides a glimpse into what DHS describes as “signs of terrorist or other threats against the U.S.”
The list was posted by the Electronic Privacy Information Center who filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act, before suing to obtain the release of the documents. The documents were part of the department’s 2011 ’Analyst’s Desktop Binder‘ used by workers at their National Operations Center which instructs workers to identify ‘media reports that reflect adversely on DHS and response activities’.”
” (Update 1: Reading through the Desktop Binder, I discovered the DHS Twitter account is @dhsnocmmc1 and DHS appears to be using tweetdeck to monitor the various keywords. See Page 38 – Also interesting to note they seem to be using a Mac Mini as a server, and no password vaults. All Passwords appear to be shared in a plain text word document.)
(Update 2: On page 37, DHS instructs analysts to accept invalid SSL certificates forever without verification. Although invalid SSL warnings often appear in benign situations, they can also signal a man-in-the-middle attack.Not a good practice for the security conscience. Thanks to @obra on twitter for the tip.)”
You can read the original article at the DailyMail.co.uk
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” Where do food stamps come from?”
” They come from taxpayers—certainly not from family farms. Yet the “farm” bill, a recurring subsidy-fest in Congress, is actually 80 percent food stamps and other government nutrition programs.
It has become the norm that Congress lumps billions—even trillions—of dollars in taxpayer-funded programs together into huge bills. This allows them to sneak in plenty of special-interest pork.”
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” “At one point several weeks ago,” Mr. Boehner told Wall Street Journal writer Stephen Moore, “the president said to me, ‘We don’t have a spending problem.’ “
Such began the divinely timed epiphany of Speaker Boehner that the president is an ideologue who perhaps can’t be reasoned with. Thus, the Speaker’s eyes were opened during the fiscal cliff negotiations that the president is out to draw political blood on Republicans, and really isn’t all-too-concerned about compromise. Well, unless you consider “compromise” making an outrageous offer and then getting 90% of what he wants. ”
“A grant program administered by the Department of Homeland Security has morphed from a fund designed to fight terror into a pork-barrel program that pads local governments’ budgets, according to a report to be released Wednesday by Sen. Tom Coburn (R., Okla.).
The report, titled “Safety at Any Price: Assessing the Impact of Homeland Security Spending in U.S. Cities,” focuses on Homeland Security’s Urban Area Security Initiative (UASI).
“Since 2003, DHS has spent $35 billion on grant programs that were intended to make Americans safer from terrorist attacks,” a spokesman for Sen. Coburn wrote in an email. “But DHS failed to establish goals or metrics to ensure that funds were used to make Americans safe and cannot say how much safer we are today after spending $35 billion.” “
Eric Allie’s Furious Diaper
Newsmax
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