Each round trip cost approximately $32,000. We are just fiefs in Obama's many fiefdoms.

We are just the little people. We wouldn't understand how important he is.

Panetta says he regrets cost of trips home By LOLITA C. BALDOR Associated Press 04/16/2012 Panetta's commute costs: $860,000 so far WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Monday he regrets the cost to taxpayers for his weekend trips to his Carmel Valley home, but says it's important "just to get your mind straight and your perspective straight." Panetta said he'd try to find some savings, with each round trip costing approximately $32,000. "I regret ... that it does add costs that the taxpayer has to pick up," Panetta said during a Pentagon briefing Monday, speaking publicly for the first time about the flight costs. "A taxpayer would have to pick up those costs with any secretary of state or secretary of defense. But having said that, I am trying to look at what are ... the alternatives here that I can look at that might possibly be able to save funds and, at the same time, be able to fulfill my responsibilities, not only to my job, but to my family." The Associated Press earlier this month detailed the costs of the 27 roundtrip flights home Panetta has taken since he became Pentagon chief last July, as well as the amount he has reimbursed the government for the trips.

Here is a perfect example of the bias, Statist point of view at the Star-Ledger. How N.J. towns' countless tax appeal settlements are costing the state billions

How about this for a headline instead:

How N.J. Property Taxes are costing countless state citizens billions

NJ Towns and their Public Schools are in general, just wasteful, bloated bureaucracies, with generous wages for big staffs and automatic wage and pension increases from public sector unionized contracts. Visit a town hall, city hall or county office. Most of the time, unfortunately, employees are unresponsive, rude and lazy. Most jobs that are handled by three that can be done by one. The paperwork and reporting requirements make efficiency impossible.
Here we have the largest newspaper in the State essentially reprinting a government press release with supporting quotes. The Star-Ledger has always been the press agency tool of the State and local government agencies and should be ashamed. m/r

How N.J. towns' countless tax appeal settlements are costing the state billions | NJ.com
By Stephen Stirling and Sarah Portlock/The Star-Ledger 3-28-12

Swamped with a near-record number of tax appeals, New Jersey municipalities are choosing to settle more than ever rather than fight them, costing the state billions of dollars in lost tax base and wreaking havoc on local budgets, a Star-Ledger analysis has found.

With more than 87,000 homeowners and businesses filing appeals last year, settling has become the most cost-effective means of limiting the damage to municipalities, where in many cases properties were last assessed before the housing market crashed. Still, last year, municipalities lost more than $3.8 billion in their tax base because of reduced assessments, more than double the total from 2008.

The findings are the result of an analysis of more than 20 years of data from the state Treasury Department’s Division of Taxation.

As the April 2 deadline for property owners to file tax appeals fast approaches, administrators and finance directors across the state say the flood of appeals hasn’t abated.

"We’ve seen people at the counter continuously," said East Brunswick Finance Director L. Mason Neely. "Have you seen any major change in the housing market? Until we do, this is something we’re going to have to deal with." ...

..."Essentially, some towns were getting hit with appeals that were so bad that they didn’t have cash to refund them," said Wharton Administrator Jon Rheinhardt. "It puts them in a situation where their financial position is weakened and that can take a long time to get out of."


-More of this government biased article at the link-


There is no mention of what really needs to be done, spend less, cut their fat, always increasing budgets!

Joie de Decline - Blame Bureaucrats

Claire Berlinski is usually in Turkey and constantly writing. She has more intestinal fortitude than most of the namby pamby liberal male journalists.

"All ye Poets of the Age!

All ye Witlings of the Stage!

Learn your Jingles to reform!

Crop your Numbers and Conform:

Let your little Verses flow

Gently, Sweetly, Row by Row:

Let the Verse the Subject fit;

Little Subject, Little Wit.

Namby-Pamby is your Guide;

Albion's Joy, Hibernia's Pride."

--

by Henry Carey

Joie de Decline by Claire Berlinski - City Journal

I arrived in Paris to find commuter trains on strike, graffiti everywhere, the streets filthy, and every restaurant at which one might eat with a toddler closed. But Paris is always like this, and I saw no sign of distress at the imminent prospect of the eurozone breakup or even much evidence of a recession.

I had been in New York and then in Istanbul the week before. Of the three cities, New York is the only one where everything works reliably. In Istanbul, where I live, no one is ever on time for anything; the word “deadline” has no meaning. Once I nearly collapsed in shock after a repairman told me that he would be at my apartment within 90 minutes and was indeed there within 90 minutes. At first, I was suspicious. Was he a spy? When I concluded that he had really come to fix something, I had to fight back tears of gratitude.

The exception to Istanbul’s dysfunction is Atatürk International, one of the most pleasant and efficient airports in the world—it took me just 15 minutes, starting from my deposit at curbside, to get through check-in, security, and immigration—and Turkish Airlines, which I adore, despite those discomfiting rumors about its prioritization of customer service over pilot training. I’ll take the customer service and my chances, not to mention the certainty that Turkish Airlines won’t be on strike and the high probability that Air France will be.

No one in France seems to have grasped the connection between the country’s army of ceaselessly striking civil servants and the prospect of economic doom. For now, the cash machines still dispense euros, and the army of civil servants still makes French life more pleasant, not less. After all, they provide an agreeable diversion. My father, who lives in Paris, was taking out the garbage when he was accosted by two women in uniform, members of the ecology police, patrolling the neighborhood to make sure that tenants understood the importance of recycling. He offered them his opinion: recycling is a stupid racket. They listened and then offered the official state opinion: recycling is not a stupid racket. They were polite, well-informed, and dogged. In the end, they won: he agreed to recycle. It was all very civilized, and one could see that many people in the neighborhood found the bureaucrats’ visit pleasant.

-more at link-

Unsafe at Any Speed » The Government Does Not Care If You Die

Unsafe at Any Speed » The Antiplanner
Mar 9, 2012
Three months ago, Washington MetroRail’s Blue and Orange lines shut down when parts fell off the braking gear of one of the railcars, damaging another car. Hundreds of riders had to evacuate and train service was delayed for hours.
Metro initially blamed the malfunction on “premature wear,” but another railcar’s brakes fell apart in a similar manner just a month later.
Now it turns out that Metro knew about the potential hazard with the brakes six years ago, but didn’t have the money to fix the 190 railcars that used that type of brake gear. So, it more-or-less just forgot about it. These sorts of problems start to crop up when rail lines are about 30 years old and transit agencies haven’t budgeted for periodic rehabilitation–which they never seem to do.
Where will the next serious rail accident take place? Chicago‘s CTA and all ofBoston‘s rail lines suffer from seriously deferred maintenance. The original San Diego Trolley turned 30 last year. Parts of Atlanta‘s rail system are nearly 33 years old, and Miami‘s is 28-years old. It’s only a matter of time–and probably not much time–before one of these has a major accident.

-more at link-

It is going after anyone and anything anti-democrat - Is the IRS Attempting to Intimidate Local Tea Parties?

What kind of country has this become when its Citizen's greatest fear and expense can be letters, calls and visits from the governmeant?

The fears can be the most time and money consuming (and wasting) period in ones life.

How dare this country force its citizens to waste weeks and enormous parts of its earnings on just reporting to the wasters in government, let alone being taxed by them? m/r

Is the IRS Attempting to Intimidate Local Tea Parties? - Big Government

Is the IRS Attempting to Intimidate Local Tea Parties?

by Colleen Owens 2-27-12 [full post in case it gets shut down]

In January and February of this year, the Internal Revenue Service began sending out letters to various

local Tea Parties across the country. Mailed from the same Cincinnati, Ohio IRS office, these letters have

reached Tea Parties in Virginia, Hawaii, Ohio, and Texas (we are hearing of more daily). There are several

common threads to these letters: all are requesting more information from these independent Tea Parties

in regard to their nonprofit 501(c)(4) applications (for this type of nonprofit, donations are not

deductible). While some of the requests are reasonable, much of them are strikingly onerous and, dare I

say, Orwellian in nature.

What are local Tea Partiers to think with requests like “Please identify your volunteers” or “are there board

members or officers who have run or will run for office (including relatives)”? What possible reason would

the IRS have for Tea Parties to “name your donors” when said donations are non-deductible? These are

just a few of the questions asked by the IRS in these letters, and one cannot help but suspect an intrinsic

threat encompassing all these demands.

The other question is the timing of these IRS letters requesting reams of copies and hundreds of hours of

work and potentially thousands of dollars in accounting/legal fees (all due in two weeks). Some of these

Tea Party groups have not received anything concerning their nonprofit status since 2010 prior to these

letters.

These documents are further undermined by a letter sent to the IRS Commissioner Shulman. Signed by six

Senators, it requests that the commissioner investigate 501(c)(4) groups to determine whether they are

engaging in substantial campaign activity, including opposition to any candidate. Who signed this letter?

Senators Schumer, Franken, Udall, Shaheen, Whitehouse, Merkley and Bennet — all Democrats.

Could it be that these Senators want the IRS to investigate the nonprofit status of Media Matters and its

coordinated political activity with the White House? Or perhaps they are concerned with nonprofit ACORN

groupsʼ record of voter fraud, and other previous campaign abuses including alleged close ties with

President Obamaʼs Project Vote? No, when these Senators sent this letter to the IRS commissioner, the

message would be very clear. The 501(c)(4) groups they want investigated are not those with Democratic

liberal ties.

But why would a department like the IRS cave to Democrat demands? Could it be because this Democratic

administration proposed a budget earlier this month that would result in “$1.1 billion in new funds for

the Internal Revenue Service… that would translate to 5,112 new hires, or a 5 percent expansion of

enforcement operations”? Colleen Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, couldnʼt

contain her glee at the prospect of over 5,000 new union hires, exclaiming in response to the

announcement that “the administrationʼs 2012 funding level for the IRS would permit the agency to

improve services through increasing response rates to inquiries, deploying enforcement resources to

what the White House called high-return integrity activities and by modernizing information technology

systems.”

The IRS is already focusing on “deploying enforcement resources,” as Kelley put it, toward targeting small,

local Tea Parties; weʼre sorry to report that these “high-return integrity activities” are generating a higher

fear factor, not necessarily higher returns.

In the near future, the Affordable Healthcare Act mandate and all things related to healthcare are to be

policed and enforced by the IRS. This means thousands more IRS agents will be added, but the actual

number is yet unknown. Considering that healthcare accounts for 1/6th of the U.S. economy, it will

probably be a significant number of additional agents. According to the tax administration inspector

general, Russell George, “The new Affordable Care Act provisions represents the largest set of tax law

changes in 20 years.” Thatʼs an overwhelming thought considering there are over 70,000 pages of federal

tax code.

The Tea Party movement is well known for wanting to shrink the size of government and decrease

government spending because of the ballooning deficit. This means that unionized government

employees that may be out of a job if the Tea Party is successful also have the power to choose whether or

not Tea Party groups get nonprofit status. And those same employees are also requesting names and

information of board members, volunteers, donors, invited speakers(and party affiliation) and just about

anyone that has had any association with the Tea Party.

It is apparent that there is a potential conflict of interest and it could be used to stifle the right to free

speech of the Tea Party members, or any other citizen willing to question the system and powers that be.

Many Tea Party boards are afraid to speak out publicly about these intrusive requests because of fear of

being personally targeted and singled out by the IRS. This is especially scary to citizens of modest

incomes that donʼt have the financial means to hire accountants or tax attorneys. And that is probably the

point. Cower and fade away, or face possible persecution at the hands of government bureaucrats.

Some people may read this article about this possibly-coordinated effort against Tea Parties and be glad.

But, the tables can easily be turned if and when another party takes control. The potential of using the IRS

as a weapon against those that disagree with the people in power is exactly why the Tea Party fears the

growth of government.

If your Tea Party has received similar letters, please let me know (Colleen Owens, citizenczar@gmail.com)

and I will put you in contact with other Tea Parties that have also received them. I will not publish your

Tea Party or names publicly.

Remember the words of Ben Franklin, “We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang

separately.”

The Fix is in to Skew You - Never Trust Government Numbers

Their stats seem to almost always be outcome based - their outcome!

Never Trust Government Numbers - Reason Magazine

Like most politicians, Obama misleads with his latest budget.

John Stossel | February 16, 2012

President Obama said in his State of the Union speech, “We’ve already agreed to more than $2 trillion in cuts and savings.”

That was reassuring.

The new budget he released this week promises $4 trillion in “deficit reduction”—about half in tax increases and half in spending cuts. But like most politicians, Obama misleads.

Cato Institute economist Dan Mitchell, a recent guest on my Fox Business show, cut through the fog to get at the truth of the $2 trillion “cut.”

“We have a budget of, what, almost $4 trillion? So if we’re doing $2 trillion of cuts,” Mitchell said, “we’re cutting government in half. That sounds wonderful.”

But what the president was talking about is not even a cut. The politicians just agreed that over the next 10 years, instead of increasing spending by $9.48 trillion, they’d increase it by “just” $7.3 trillion. Calling that a “cut” is nonsense.

Mitchell gave an analogy: “What if I came to you and said, ‘I’ve been on a diet for the last month, and I’ve gained 10 pounds. Isn't that great?’ You would say: ‘Wait, what are you talking about? That’s insane.’ And I said: ‘I was going to gain 15 pounds. I’ve only gained 10 pounds, therefore my diet is successful.’"

Democrats use this deceit when they want more social spending. Republicans use it for military spending.

And the press buys it. The Washington Post has been writing about “draconian cuts.”

-more at link-

'Howdy Doody's' Luker | Travel Costs To Indiana | Taxpayer Money

Richard Lugar | Travel Costs To Indiana | Taxpayer Money | The Daily Caller

By Will Rahn - The Daily Caller 2-8-12

When Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar visits the Hoosier State, he often does it on the taxpayers’ dime.

The Daily Caller previously reported that Lugar, currently the longest-serving Republican in the Senate, has not owned a home in Indiana for over 30 years. However, Lugar is still registered to vote at 3200 Highwoods Court in Indianapolis, a property he sold in 1977.

Lugar, who now lives in Virginia, mostly spends his time in hotels during trips back to Indiana. And these trips, Fox News reports in a story citing Indiana Democratic Party research, have cost taxpayers nearly $50,000 in travel expenses.

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/02/08/lugars-trips-back-to-indiana-cost-taxpayers-nearly-50000/#ixzz1lvU8l7Il

How Jack the Ripper's first victim puts America's literacy level to shame.

Mark Steyn's "After America" is a deeply important book. It makes historical, political, economic and literary connections not seen since James Burke's "Connections" in the 1970's.

Why does Jack the Ripper continue to fascinate? Because it feeds into Victorian myths – Telegraph Blogs

By Ed West Politics Last updated: August 31st, 2011

...Yet despite the caricature of pre-statist Victorian society that we are all taught, English society had made tremendous progress since the 1830s in reducing squalor. The East End was poor, but absolute poverty was easing, and this had much to do with both physical and spiritual improvements in people’s lives. And this often had little to do with the state. As Mark Steyn notes in his new book about statism, After America, a letter sent by Jack the Ripper’s first victim Mary Ann Nichols shows a level of literacy that would shame many of today’s university students – and she was born in Holborn, arguably London's worst slum, 25 years before the Education Act.

Crime was relatively low by 1888, which is why such murders were shocking. The English homicide rate by the end of the 19th century had reached under 1/100,000 after decades of improvement, and would continue a decline until the mid-1950s, after which it would rise to its current level of 1.2-1.3/100,000. How was this achieved? Education and material improvement helped, but it’s telling that when Nichols’s body was found, at 4am in the worst district in London, three policemen were found within ten minutes, each walking the beat. ...

-go to the link-

AeroShot caffeine inhaler - American caffeine addiction races full speed ahead

In the 1930's through the 1950's housewives and teenagers and a good part of the population were chronically sticking Benzedrine inhalers up their noses. Most used this for nasal congestion relief, some found something else, an over-the-counter fix of an amphetamine.

Now there is a new fix.

Coffee and its pick-me-up caffeine is a wonderful thing, but it is a natural part of a good brew. It's just not the same thing as a powder, or up the nose. What's to follow, in the vein?

At any rate, a pot of coffee is much more preferable to a quart of Scotch. And either is better than ridiculous legislation introduced à la Schumer.

American caffeine addiction races full speed ahead - Washington Times

By Patrick Hruby 1-17-12

When future talking-monkey archaeologists sift through the detritus of postapocalyptic America, they would do well to ignore the usual culturalRosetta Stones - the Statue of Liberty, Mount Rushmore, seven seasons and counting of “The Real Housewives of Orange County.”

They should focus instead on a single artifact: the AeroShot caffeine inhaler.

Sleek and plastic, the size of a lip balm tube, the AeroShot is the brainchild of David Edwards, aHarvard professor of biomedical engineering who also invented breathable chocolate. (Don’t ask.) The AeroShot contains a puff of lime-flavored caffeine powder; one squeeze, and it dispenses about 40 mg of the drug in your mouth, like an asthma inhaler.

A startup product recently released in the Boston area, the AeroShot already has drawn the ire of Sen. Charles E. Schumer. [who else?] In December, the New York Democrat expressed concern that the inhaler would be used as a “party enhancer” and asked the Food and Drug Administration to review the safety and legality of selling it to children.

In doing so, Mr. Schumer overlooked the obvious: When it comes to the nation’s predilection for energy-boosting enhancement - at parties, at the office or anywhere in between, for young and old alike - the horse has long since left the barn, if only to lap up a double espresso at the neighboring Starbucks.

-read on at link-

Companies Face Fines for Not Using Unavailable Biofuel

REPEAL the Environmental Protection Agency!

Companies Face Fines for Not Using Unavailable Biofuel - NYTimes.com

By MATTHEW L. WALD

Published: January 9, 2012

WASHINGTON — When the companies that supply motor fuel close the books on 2011, they will pay about $6.8 million in penalties to the Treasury because they failed to mix a special type of biofuel into their gasoline and diesel as required by law.

But there was none to be had. Outside a handful of laboratories and workshops, the ingredient, cellulosic biofuel, does not exist.

In 2012, the oil companies expect to pay even higher penalties for failing to blend in the fuel, which is made from wood chips or the inedible parts of plants like corncobs. Refiners were required to blend 6.6 million gallons into gasoline and diesel in 2011 and face a quota of 8.65 million gallons this year.

“It belies logic,” Charles T. Drevna, the president of theNational Petrochemicals and Refiners Association, said of the 2011 quota. And raising the quota for 2012 when there is no production makes even less sense, he said.

Penalizing the fuel suppliers demonstrates what happens when the federal government really, really wants something that technology is not ready to provide. In fact, while it may seem harsh that the Environmental Protection Agency is penalizing them for failing to do the impossible, the agency is being lenient by the standards of the law, the 2007Energy Independence and Security Act.

The law, aimed at reducing the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions, its reliance on oil imported from hostile places and the export of dollars to pay for it, includes provisions to increase the efficiency of vehicles as well as incorporate renewable energy sources into gasoline and diesel.

It requires the use of three alternative fuels: car and truck fuel made from cellulose, diesel fuel made from biomass and fuel made from biological materials but with a 50 percent reduction in greenhouse gases. Only the cellulosic fuel is commercially unavailable. As for meeting the quotas in the other categories, the refiners will not close their books until February and are not sure what will happen.

-more at link-

Bravo - Here is the Perfect Personification of our personal right to bear arms! Mother With a Gun

This was not something done lightly. She called for help, asked for advice and saved her baby and herself. Life fell in hard on this lady and she ended up ONLY relying on herself. She teaches us all a lesson. [What would the small minded Major Bloomberg have to say?]

Unfortunately, her ordeal is not over.

Rich Lowry writes on the sad juxtaposition of our rights.

She and her baby are alive, and their would-be killer is dead, because she was armed.

Mother With a Gun - Rich Lowry - National Review Online

Jan. 6, 2012

If the National Rifle Association had an award for Mother of the Year, it might already have a winner. When two men began to break into her home on New Year’s Eve, Sarah Dawn McKinley of Blanchard, Okla., popped a bottle into her crying three-month-old baby’s mouth and reached for her guns.

According to her account and that of police, she defended herself and her child in terrifying circumstances. To say McKinley was in the middle of nowhere would exaggerate the centrality of her location in a sparsely populated area about 25 miles outside of Oklahoma City. To say her home was vulnerable would exaggerate the security of a trailer with no alarm system or safe rooms. To say she was on her own would probably exaggerate her sense of connectedness, by herself, tending to her infant, after her husband had died of lung cancer on Christmas Day.

#ad#This is the stuff of nightmares. But McKinley never lost her cool. We know because, after shoving the couch in front of her door, she called 911 from her cell phone. The recording of the call should be put in a time capsule to capture the odd juxtaposition in 21st-century America of hardscrabble common sense on the one hand and a polite solicitousness toward the authorities on the other.

“I’m here by myself with my infant baby, can I please get a dispatcher out here immediately?” she asked. Note the instinctive civility of the “please.” The answer was basically “no.” With three deputies covering 12,000 square miles, no one could get to her soon. McKinley stayed on the line an incredible 21 minutes. Then, she got to the crux of the matter. “I’ve got two guns in my hand,” she told the operator. “Is it OK to shoot him if he comes in the door?”

This would seem a superfluous question if you believe your safety is at risk at the hands of someone forcibly entering your home. But not all states have the same “castle doctrine” as Oklahoma that gives homeowners an unambiguous right to shoot unlawful intruders. And not all jurisdictions are rational about firearms. Visiting New York City from Tennessee, where she has a gun permit, Meredith Graves brought a pistol in her purse to the 9/11 Memorial. When she saw a sign saying “No Guns Allowed,” she innocently asked guards where she could check her pistol. This query prompted her arrest on — yes — suspicion of carrying a loaded weapon. She could face jail time, in what promises to be the most pointless trial of the century.

-more at link-

How Regulations Work to Destroy Work

If you have ten thousand regulations, you destroy all respect for the law. Sir Winston Churchill

Paper, forms and fees are devised by bureaucrats that conspire with lobbyers to bury small businesses in favor of major crony corporations. These weigh the smaller companies down with time and money wasting regulations that put them into the red. ♘

How Regulations Work: Ready, Fire, Aim! | FrontPage Magazine

By Tait Trussell On January 5, 2012

The federal government tends to follow a bass-ackward approach to regulating business activity.

First, it decides what it wants. Then it writes a regulation. Then it does an analysis to justify the regulation.

In other words, a procedure of “ready, fire, then aim.”

This disoriented approach helped to bring about many of the more than 165,000 pages of federal regulations, close to 20,000 added in the past few years, according to the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.

In its attempt to assume the job of “protecting the safety and health of consumers and workers, the federal government places an enormous load on business and industry as well as, often, average Americans,” a report from the Mercatus Center said.

Psychology, economics, and organized science, however, suggest that too many regulations—particularly highly detailed regulations—may make society less, rather than more, safe. In the Center’s study, “Regulatory Overload: A Behavioral Analysis of Regulatory Compliance,” psychologists and economists examined behavioral effects of regulatory overload on business. They discovered that too many and too detailed regulations can reduce compliance, discourage innovation, and fuel uncertainty, “ultimately making Americans less safe.”

A recent example: Automakers were required by the administration to double current fuel economy by 2025. Of course, the specific standard was picked without rationale—after first publicly floating other standards. Cost of compliance will be $8.5 billion a year.

It also will costs “untold numbers of jobs and–most inexcusable—the loss of lives.” Regulations in recent years forced car makers to downsize vehicles to meet standards that increased traffic fatalities by the thousands, according to the EPA’s own Inspector General’s Report.

An Environmental Protection Agency regulation to try to keep soot from power plants from drifting across state lines was suspended by a federal court Jan. 1, as reported by The Wall Street Journal. The court ruling “recognizes the irreparable harm that would have resulted from the short time line for compliance” said CEO David Campbell of Luminant, a Texas power company.

The EPA rule was stayed for the time being. But the court’s stay of the regulation for soot that may waft across a state line disheartened EPA bureaucrats, who couldn’t enforce their regulation immediately. The rule would affect about 1,000 power plants in more than two dozen states. It would have required them to cut emissions of sulfur dioxide by 73 percent—not 72 percent or 74 percent—and nitrogen oxide by 54 percent—not 53 or 55 percent from 2005 levels by 2014. One might well ask who chose and why did they choose such specific figures that could be changed by so many factors during the EPA’s timeline. Ready, fire, aim.

-read on at link-

They are not 'workers,' merely employees - Federal "worker" productivity less effective than 1969?

Experience has taught us the hard way that there are very few government workers. There are very many government employees however.

Federal worker productivity less effective than 1969? - Atlanta Pop Culture | Examiner.com

December 31st, 2011 by Radell Smith

As Georgians get despairing news on high joblessness rates of 12.7 percent in Polk County, 12.3 in Murray and 11.3 in Whitfield at year's end, Congress is considering what to do about job opportunities for federal employment in 2012.

The Georgia Department of Labor released a report in late December, pointing out the end of year jobless rates for counties around the state. And just as their report sought to reflect the current economic status--to help drive future economic plans to address the problem--Congress is taking a serious look at federal employment to do the same.

Job performance productivity down at federal level

But job performance productivity at the federal level is so lacking in comparison to other business entities in the economy, according to the American Enterprise Institute, that it may not make sense to put anyone else on the payroll.

Technological advances and better worker skills and education should have resulted in greater productivity in 2011 than their federal counterparts of 1969, but AEI says that isn't the case. Instead, there are 16 percent more workers on the federal payroll now than there should have to be in order to have the same amount of productivity as back then.

-read on at link-

License to License - Government Adds A New Layer

Chicago now requires a license for anyone who wants to help people obtain licenses!

Is a license to license Licenses next? "What comes first? Second Base."

License to License - Reason Magazine

Second City swindle

Tim Cavanaugh from the December 2011 issue [full short post]

Want to help someone get a license to cut hair or open a business in Chicago? First you’ll need a license. Since 2009 the City of Big Shoulders has required a license for anyone who wants to help people obtain licenses by working as an “expediter” within the city’s vast and famously corrupt bureaucracy.

“An expediter is a person who, for compensation, seeks to obtain licenses, permits and certificates for another person,” Chicago’s Department of Business Affairs & Consumer Protection explains. “Expediters work on the behalf of developers, contractors, businesses and homeowners in obtaining permits, licenses and certificates. An expediter also monitors the progress of applications through any stage of the application review process or inquires as to the status of an application within any City department. An expediter may also pick up a license or permit application or certificate from any City department.”

Nationwide, Reason Foundation analyst Adam Summers estimated in 2008, occupational licensing imposes costs of $35 billion to $42 billion per year (in 2000 dollars). He also found that licensing requirements reduce competition, thus reducing the annual rate of job growth by an average of 20 percent.

Although the expediter’s license requirement raises questions about freedom of trade and the First Amendment right to petition government for a redress of grievances, it has so far escaped legal challenge in Chicago, where the unemployment rate as of July was 9.9 percent.

The Government needs this lesson: "Poverty is to be stayed away from even for the purposes of Study"

Here is a replay of true wisdom. The Butler in "Sullivan's Travels" speaks about poverty.

Bureaucracy: Hopeless From the Start

“For the main thesis of Professor von Mises is that bureaucracy is merely a symptom of the real disease with which we have to deal. That disease is excessive State domination and control.”

Bureaucracy: Hopeless From the Start | Foundation for Economic Education

By Nicholas Snow
Published: 27 December 2011

Incentives matter! This simple two-word sentence is the heart of Economics 101. Ask any economist, and she will tell you, “Yes, incentives do matter!” It also seems so simple and obvious when you stop and think about it. Sadly, as we start to think of more complex issues and problems, the importance of this little phrase seems to get lost in the shuffle.

Take for example the issue of bureaucracy. Most bureaucracies are seen as terribly inefficient. The average person may even rant about how terrible the DMV or post office is (no matter how much it tries to appear like a normal business). Most people may understand that the problem has to do with incentives, but they will still probably think there is no choice but for the State to perform such functions. They likely believe that making a few changes or putting in the right bureaucrats can fix things.

Today’s document, Henry Hazlitt’s New York Times review of Ludwig von Mises’s Bureaucracy, shows why we come to view bureaucracies as inefficient. They simply lack the knowledge and incentive to perform efficiently no matter how benevolent the bureaucrats may be. As Hazlitt states, “For the main thesis of Professor von Mises is that bureaucracy is merely a symptom of the real disease with which we have to deal. That disease is excessive State domination and control.”

-more at link-

We know best (how to really make a mess out of this)! - U.S. Proposes Unmanned Border Entry With Mexico

And they will. Why not also open a "Fast and Furious Gun Shop," run by BATF, at this crossing and cut out the middle man?

U.S. Proposes Unmanned Border Entry With Mexico | Fox News

December 11, 2011

| Associated Press

"People that want to be engaged in illegal activities along the border, ones that are engaged in those activities now, they're still going to do it," said William Wellman, Big Bend National Park's superintendent. "But you'd have to be a real idiot to pick the only place with security in 300 miles of the border to try to sneak across."

The proposed crossing from Boquillas del Carmen leads to a vast expanse of rolling scrub, cut by sandy-floored canyons and violent volcanic rock outcroppings. The Chihuahuan desert wilderness is home to mountain lions, black bears and roadrunners, sparsely populated by an occasional camper and others visiting the 800,000-acre national park.

Customs and Border Protection, which would run the port of entry, says the proposal is a safe way to allow access to the town's residents, who currently must travel 240 road miles to the nearest legal entry point. It also would allow park visitors to visit the town.

If the crossing is approved, Border Patrol would have eight agents living in the park in addition to the park's 23 law enforcement rangers.

"I think it's actually going to end up making security better," CBP spokesman William Brooks said.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/12/11/us-proposes-unmanned-border-entry-with-mexico/#ixzz1gGy6sTGm