The Sherrod incident is the latest in a long line of shoot from the lip misfires from the Obama administration, from the president on down.  Here is a review of some of the more egregious of them:

• President Obama, without waiting for the facts says the Cambridge, Massachusetts police department “acted stupidly,” in an incident involving African American  professor Henry Louis Gates.  A picture from the “beer summit” shows the president confidently striding toward the cameras while in the background Sergeant Crowley takes Professor Gates arm to help him negotiate the stairs, as Professor Gates walks with a cane.  Racist?
• With 13 dead Americans at the hands of terrorist Nidal Hasan, Janet Napolitano comes out and claims, “The system has worked really very, very smoothly over the course of the past several days.”  A few days later she would eat those ridiculous words.
• Not to be outdone by herself, after another terrorist attempt on our soil in Times Square, Secretary Napolitano quickly came out to label the attempt a “one-off” and the suspect a lone wolf.  As the investigation picked up steam there were all sorts links to terror groups in the Middle East.
• When the president of Honduras tried to override term limits and become the next Hugo Chavez, the Honduran government enforced its laws against the changes that its president was trying to illegally implement.  The Obama administration immediately labeled the legitimate actions of the democratically elected Honduran government a coup.  Hillary Clinton’s State department cancelled the visas of all members of the Honduran Supreme Court.  Not to be intimidated by Chavez, Castro, or Obama, Honduras stood its ground.  The Congressional Research Service looked at the Honduran Constitution and the actions of its government and found that the government acted properly and within the law.
• When Arizona reached the end of its rope and could not get the Obama administration to enforce the law on the border, they passed a law to give their police greater flexibility to determine the legal status of people stopped for another police matter.  The Obama administration immediately called the law unconstitutional.  When asked if they read the massive 10 page law, that’s right 10 pages, both Attorney General Eric Holder and Secretary Janet Napolitano (yes, her again) both said they hadn’t read it before declaring it unconstitutional.  This administration pushes through legislation running thousands of pages each and they can’t find time to read a ten page law before condemning it.
• Department of Agriculture employee Shirley Sherrod gave a speech to the NAACP where she spoke about her transformation from having a racial bias in a decision she made 24 years ago, to today where she tries to treat all individuals regardless of race.  Only the first part of the story was headed toward the airwaves, the part about her past discrimination, and before the news hit the air she was fired by the Obama administration.  Had they watched the whole tape before acting, they wouldn’t be swimming in apologies right now.

Is this just the lack of experience or does the Obama administration need adult supervision?  They jump to these wild conclusions and then end up backtracking days later.  After eighteen months in office you would think they would have learned by now how to govern.

Another case without as quick a trigger is the passage of the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill.  After taking office President Obama appointed a commission, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission to investigate the root causes of the crisis.  A prudent person might say, let’s hear what the commission finds out and then write legislation to address those root causes.  With months more to go before that commission’s work will be done, we have another 2,000+ page bill coming out of Congress and signed by the president to put new regulations in place on the financial services industry.  Why the rush?  Wouldn’t it be better to fix the real problems rather than what Chris Dodd and Barney Frank think are the problems and let them paper over their own culpability in the creating the crisis?  Why were Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac excluded?  In one of the hearings before the commission an argument was made that AIG did not have to be bailed out, that there were measures in place to ride out the crisis and that in the long run their policies would be fine.  Whether that is true or not, will have to wait for the final report, but the “just don’t stand there, do something,” mentality is disconcerting.  I certainly hope we are never faced with another Cuban Missile Crisis with this team in place.

This week we saw President Obama come out swinging to that old class warfare tune.  Lashing out at Republicans in Congress for not adding to the deficit by extending unemployment benefits, he implied they were heartless and cruel.  The president used the same tired prop of the straw man, that is, accusing “the same people” without naming any of those people.  He uses this tactic because if he actually named the people he was accusing he would have to produce facts to back up the charges and Obama, as usual, doesn’t have any.

But here’s what he does have.  He has a record of focusing his energy on passing ObamaCare instead of focusing on growing the economy.  He is layering on more uncertainty of huge government programs and impending taxes that are scaring most small businesses from any hiring until the dust settles and they can tally up the bill.  He has Republicans who are ready to go along with the extension in benefits, if and only if, they are paid for.  With only about half of the $787 billion stimulus bill money spent, which is working fabulously by the way, taking the needed $30 billion from that kitty should be obvious. 

President Obama also has a chief economic advisor named Larry Summers.  Mr. Summers wrote an article on unemployment for the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics while at Harvard and in it he raised the following points:

• Government assistance programs contribute to long-term unemployment is by providing an incentive, and the means, not to work.
• Unemployment insurance also extends the time a person stays off the job. [Colleague Kim] Clark and I estimated that the existence of unemployment insurance almost doubles the number of unemployment spells lasting more than three months.
• If unemployment insurance were eliminated, the unemployment rate would drop by more than half a percentage point, which means that the number of unemployed people would fall by about 750,000.
• Another cause of long-term unemployment is unionization. High union wages that exceed the competitive market rate are likely to cause job losses in the unionized sector of the economy. Also, those who lose high-wage union jobs are often reluctant to accept alternative low-wage employment.

It seems as if President Obama has painted himself into a corner.  The stubbornly high unemployment numbers are poised to ravage the Democrats in the mid-term elections.  But if his advisor, Mr. Summers, is to be believed, the unemployment benefits he is trying to use as a campaign issue against the Republicans is probably propping up the unemployment numbers.

The American people have reached their limit on deficit spending and want it reined in.  The Democrats put in place something called Paygo, which means pay as you go.  If you want something, you have to pay for it.  However, the Democrats are bypassing their own rule at every turn.  You can’t have it both ways, ceremoniously pass a Paygo rule for the purpose of the photo op and to look responsible, and then spend recklessly once the klieg lights go dark.

What prompted this president to conduct his Rose Garden show with three unemployed Americans used as props?  Could it be that Nancy Pelosi is hopping mad that this president has not been helping Democrats to get reelected in the fall?  If so, perhaps that was the point of the Rose Garden performance, nothing but election year politics.  And you wonder why the American people are becoming increasingly cynical about their government?

I do not like to throw around a charge of mendacity without good reason particularly after listening to the mainstream media and liberal blogosphere accuse Bush of this all day long.  But the more I listen to what comes out of this administration and the actions they take it is getting harder to hold my fire.

Take for example the brouhaha over the immigration law that hasn’t even gone into effect yet in Arizona.  From the start the administration has falsely portrayed the law as racial profiling, but when asked if they had actually read the ten page law, both Attorney General Holder and Homeland Security Secretary Napolitano said they had not.  How do people in such senior positions in any administration make such a bold claim without reading what they are opposing?  It begs the question, do they know they are talking about?

The federal government has gone forward and is suing Arizona over the law claiming that it preempts federal law.  But here are some interesting questions:

• If the Arizona law preempts federal law and that is a bad thing, why does the federal government not sue San Francisco and other cities who have openly professed that they are Sanctuary Cities and immigration law will not be enforced therein?
• A recent news report is that there is a law on the books in Rhode Island that is virtually identical to the law in Arizona and it has withstood judicial challenge?  Why isn’t the federal government suing Rhode Island?
• The thrust of the federal government’s pique with the Arizona law is their claim that it is discriminatory.  But this same administration has just ordered that a case be dropped against a radical hate group, the Black Panthers, for putting armed thugs outside a polling place in Philadelphia on Election Day in 2008.  According to six career Civil Rights attorneys in the Justice Department, the case was a slam dunk and they had already gotten a default judgment from the court, but this administration chose to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.  The Justice Department’s claim is that the facts did not fit the law.  Anyone who has seen the video of the incident knows that is a bald faced lie.  Is this administration for discrimination or against it?

The latest move by this administration against the rest of us is the recess appointment of Donald Berwick as the head of Medicare.  The lie in this case, is that the Republicans were stalling the appointment for “political purposes.”  Now other presidents have used recess appointments.  Both Clinton and Bush used them many times, however it was typically when they could not get the Senate to act on their nominee.  In this case, Max Baucus (D – MT), had not even scheduled hearings and eleven weeks after the nomination, the administration had not yet completed the nominating paperwork.  So was this action taken because of inaction on the part of the Senate or was the administration lying because they really didn’t want a public debate on Dr. Berwick?

Dr. Berwick has said he is, “Romantic about the National Health Service,” of Britain.  For all the false claims by the Obama Administration that if you are happy with your current health insurance you will be able to keep it, they stealthily appoint a socialized medicine disciple.  Dr. Berwick has also famously said:

 “The decision is not whether or not we will ration care – the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open.”

Let’s see, the Obama Administration appoints Dr. Berwick head of Medicare.  Medicare is the health care program for the elderly.  Dr. Berwick is plain about health care rationing and suggests the way to do it is with our eyes open.  While the term “death panel” may have been used by Sarah Palin partially for its shock value to drive home her point, changing the name to a “rationing” panel would make it different in what way?

Here is the key distinction.  In the hands of the individual and their family, they can decide what kind of care they want to provide their loved ones.  They can decide when enough is enough or whether to press on.  In a free market, insurance policies would be true insurance not medical payment plans.  But regardless you would have the liberty to decide.  In this administration’s world, some bureaucrat makes the decision and after they have driven all the alternatives out of business, other than those available to the wealthy, you will have no choice but to succumb to the will of Big Brother.

We are currently surrounded by news of massive government failures in regulation in the areas of finance and the oil industry and we are to believe that they will be superb in running one-sixth of the economy.  Do you believe the lies?

The news on the economy this morning is not encouraging.  The GDP numbers have been revised downward to an anemic 2.7%.  When asked to identify the Obama administration’s greatest accomplishments so far, one of his ardent supporters identified: 1) ObamaCare and 2) Afghanistan.  Yikes!  60% of the country remains opposed to ObamaCare with 55% supporting its repeal and Afghanistan is in need of a complete overhaul, especially on the civilian side meaning the Ambassador and special envoy Holbrooke.

President Obama now travels to the G8 and G20 meetings this weekend to try to get the rest of the major economies in the world to follow Obama’s leadership into recreating the Great Depression.  The good news is that the other heads of state are not members of the Democratic Party or beholding to Obama.  They are responsible to the citizens of their own countries.  For the European countries, they cannot go on a similar spending binge that Team Obama has embarked upon, if for no other reason than their declining birth rates will not create a new generation of people to hand the bill to.  They see the flashing warning lights that emanated from Greece and are rapidly changing course.

Either President Obama will use his silver tongue to convince the others to open the spending spigot or he will come home with his tail between his legs, his policies discredited worldwide.  Either way it will not be positive for the United States of America.

President Obama has demonstrated, as much as he would like to deny it, a strong anti-business sentiment.  He has acted in ways that remind one of a Castro or Chavez in that he is doing it in the name of the people against the greedy profiteers.

General Motors and Chrysler were bled dry by union contracts.  Management is culpable for agreeing to those contracts so they don’t get a pass in my view.  But government also piled on with CAFÉ mileage requirements that forced the auto companies to build cars at a loss (because of the union contracts) to meet this standard.  In the midst of the financial crisis the auto companies were running out of cash.  The Obama administration, rather than let them go into bankruptcy, muscles in and turns over major ownership stakes in GM and Chrysler to the unions who are loyal supporters of the Democrat Party, rather than pay bondholders who were entitled to be paid first.

The housing bubble was driven by government policies going back years.  The stated goals of the Clinton administration was to increase home ownership to as many people as possible.  When the bubble burst, the Obama administration forced TARP money on healthy banks who neither needed it nor wanted it.  The reason was to avoid showing who the real basket case banks were.  But these banks were forced by their government to take the money and then the Obama administration created a pay czar to make sure any company that took TARP money, voluntarily or not, could not pay their executives more than Team Obama said they could.

Lax regulation on the Deepwater Horizon platform in the Gulf of Mexico permitted BP to take short cuts that led to disaster.  President Obama is put in an embarrassing position, so he cranks up the Public Relations machine to throw maximum ire upon BP.  He then tries to be a hero by shaking down BP for $20 billion.  BP has never said they would not pay.  BP waived the limit on damages that was set by, you guessed it, the government and has steadfastly said they would make things right.  But President Obama wanted to look like he was actually doing something and by taking $20 billion and putting it under his control it might look like he was.  I agree with many that President Obama did not cause the leak in the Gulf any more than Bush created Hurricane Katrina, but if, as Obama likes to say, the buck stops here, then he is responsible for the lax enforcement by his administration that could have prevented it.

To create jobs this administration created a $787 billion bailout package that did next to nothing to create real jobs.  It was pork to be paid to union members such as teachers, contractors, and not to grow the economy and create sustainable jobs.

If a business that is solidly behind the Obama agenda, like General Electric who owns the NBC and MSNBC cheerleaders, and wants to be a key player in the cap and trade exchanges, this President will treat them kindly.  But if you are an independent business trying to grow, you will be taxed to your eye sockets.

We pride ourselves on being a nation of laws not a nation of men, but since this President has taken office he has a view that he is above the law and can do whatever he feels he needs to do.  It was somewhat surreal to have Congressman Joe Barton, apologize to BP for the shakedown.  No one owes BP an apology but I understand Congressman Barton’s distaste for the administrations boorish behavior.  No one has the right to demand another’s property without due process of law, and that’s what happened.  Perhaps Tony Heywood should be fired for going along with it.

Let’s keep this in mind.  We need BP to continue to be a viable profitable company, so that every last claim can be paid.  If this administration succeeds in driving BP into the ground, guess who will be next in line to pick up the tab?  That’s right, gentle readers, you and me;  the American taxpayers.

The above chart was produced by President Obamas’s economic team to pitch the stimulus.  As you can see, they projected that with the stimulus unemployment would peak at about 8% by the third quarter of 2009 and then steadily fall, passing through about 7.3% by now.  But if we didn’t spend $787 billion dollars to enact the stimulus plan, unemployment would grow to about 9% in mid 2010 before falling.  The Obama administration passed the stimulus by a straight party line vote and the unemployment rate is currently at 9.7%.

So what does the president have to say about this? 

“If the just-say-no crowd had won out—if we had done things that way—we’d be in a deeper world of hurt,” he told workers at the V&M Star steel plant in Youngstown. “The steady progress we are beginning to see across America just wouldn’t exist. … So I invite anyone who thinks we shouldn’t have taken those actions or made those investments to come to places like this and tell us why.”

Does the man have no shame?  In February he tells us that if we did nothing we would be better off than we are today (9% unemployment vs. 9.7%).  Today, he says wasting $787 billion on dubious pork barrel spending is working just swell.  So, let me tell you Mr. President, we shouldn’t have made those investments because we are worse off now than you said we would be and you added nearly a trillion dollars to our national debt.  We knew it.  We opposed it.  You ignored us.  Now you are trying to tell us up is down and down is up. 

President Obama is telling us that if we did nothing unemployment would be much worse.  He didn’t know then.  He doesn’t know now.

The situation down on the Arizona border has reached crisis proportion.  With no help from Washington in defending our borders, the state of Arizona has passed a law that will help it identify illegal immigrants.  This has sparked a controversy because protecting the border is a federal function.  Gee, imagine that, something that is actually in the Constitution that the Obama Administration is supposed to do, they don’t seem to have time for because they are too busy doing what they are prohibited by the Constitution from doing.

This is probably the last thing that Obama wanted.  If he agrees with Arizona he essentially has abdicated his federal responsibility to that state as well as shown he cannot carry out his duties.  If he disagrees with Arizona, he seems to be saying he doesn’t care if Arizona is being overrun by illegals, he wants them here.  So true to form, he punts.  He said he wants the Congress to take up comprehensive immigration reform right away.  What happens in Arizona in the mean time?

Whatever Happened to the Fence?

I have seen a number of estimates on the cost to build the fence along the Mexican border.  Michael Chertoff, former head of the Department of Homeland Security, estimated that a 2,000 mile “state of the art” fence would cost between $4 and $8 billion.  Other estimates range as high as $50 billion.  Didn’t we just squander $787 billion in stimulus money that did nothing?  Why didn’t we take that money and finish the fence?  A real fence like the Israelis put up?  Isn’t there a large amount of the so-called stimulus money unspent?  This is a national security issue.  Why doesn’t this administration get on it?

I received an e-mail from Congressman Tim Bishop to tell those on his mailing list that we are better off this tax day.  Having stood with thousands of fellow Tea Party protesters, a very polite crowd I might add, I don’t share his mirth.  So I penned him the following reply:

Dear Congressman Bishop,

 I received your e-mail today with the subject line, “Better Off This Tax Day”.  That is a statement I find both bold and curious.  It is a statement that you seem to share with President Obama who was surprised that the Tea Party gatherings were not organized to blow him a kiss and say “thank you.”  I would like to address some of the points in your e-mail.

You begin by saying, “There is bipartisan agreement that tax cuts help spur economic growth…”  Well, yes and no.  I agree as do many conservatives that less taxes are good for both our liberty and our economy.  But to be truly effective, the tax cuts have to give the individual the greatest freedom to use their money as they see fit, after all it is their money being given to the government and not the other way around.  Tax cuts are least effective when used to encourage people to engage in some specific activity the government wants them to do.  In other words, the tax cuts should go toward growing the economy, not getting politicians re-elected.

As you know, the unemployment rate stands at 9.7%.  A year ago President Obama told us, in the strongest of terms, that it was imperative that we pass a $787 billion stimulus package.  If we did not pass that package the unemployment rate would rise to 9%, whereas if it was passed the unemployment rate would peak at 8%.  That’s $787 billion to restrain the unemployment rate by 1%.  Conservatives disagreed that this would work.  It didn’t work.  Not only was the unemployment rate not capped at 8%, it went above the “do nothing” case of 9%.  Now we have $787 billion dollars that we have to pay back and it got us exactly nothing, other than the new Obama administration “metric” of “jobs saved” which no one outside of the administration or Democratic party knows how to measure.

Let me take a moment to address some of the specific tax breaks you are touting.

• Making Work Pay tax credit – this works out to about $8 per week for a taxpayer.  Where I live in the district, this won’t buy a pizza.  If I team up with my wife, it may.  So pardon me if I don’t get too jazzed up about this.
• The rest of the tax breaks are all great if you have income to take them against.  The problem is 9.7% unemployment and you and this administration seem to be working on anything but putting people back to work.

Tax cuts that actually spur the economy and create growth and jobs are tax cuts at the margins.  Cut the marginal tax rates for everyone, even the evil rich people who pay 70% of the total taxes.  Congressman as much as you hate to read this, when people in the upper income brackets get a tax cut, they do not put the money under their mattress.  They spend it or they invest it, both of which lead to job creation.  When jobs are created, people have income and they start spending and then maybe some of the tax cuts you are boasting about will be meaningful, but until then they are just brochureware that is something that looks nice in your campaign literature, but is otherwise meaningless.

Instead of doing what worked in the 1980s and 1990s, this administration insists on doing what didn’t work in the 1930s.  It’s time for this administration to propose something that might actually work and then you may see bipartisanship in support of that proposal instead of bipartisan opposition.

President Obama has just created a panel to figure out how to get our debt under control.  Even when he makes a decision, such as this one, it is to pass the buck to someone else to do the heavy lifting.  His attempt to overhaul health care turned into the Harry and Nancy Show.  Obama campaigned and gave speeches while Pelosi and Reid shut out the Republicans and created the bill that could not be passed.  Obama is now trying to put lipstick on that pig, by calling for a bipartisan meeting.  But instead of starting over and getting ideas from everyone, they are basically going to pick over the stinking corpse of the bill that the Democrats could not get passed.  It is obvious that the real objective is to either get some Republicans to sign on or to use the meeting as a club to beat the Republicans as the “party of No.”

Stop Me Before I Spend

This president can’t seem to control himself and he finds that he painted himself into a corner.  If he tries to raise taxes on those who make less than $250,000 per year he will be breaking a major campaign promise.  If he stops spending on his own, he will lose the left which is about the only support he has remaining.  So he calls in Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles to co-chair a committee charged with making the president a tailor made fig leaf, to allow him to cut spending and raise taxes, while shrugging his shoulders and saying, “I can’t go against the excellent advice of this august commission.”

If he wants to cut spending, he can just cut spending.  He doesn’t need a commission to do so.  How about an across the board spending freeze, except for national defense, until the economy grows enough to balance the budget and not with gimmicks like increasing discretionary spending now 24% and then saying you will freeze that same spending for the next three years?  How about freezing government hiring?  How about returning $500 billion in unspent stimulus money and $400 billion in repaid TARP money, plus interest, to the Treasury?  Don’t hold your breath.  That would require someone with executive experience who knows how to make a decision, rather than deliberating, like a legislator.  Sarah Palin comes to mind, as does George Bush (I & II), Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan.  These experienced executives knew how to put together a budget and make decisions.  Chris Christie in New Jersey was just sworn in last month as governor and he immediately identified the problem as too much spending and got to work cutting it back.  All that President Obama seems to know how to do is talk. 

If we start advertising now, we may get enough resumes to review to find a replacement by 2012.

For nearly eight years we heard the left scream, “Bush Lied!” over the decision to invade Iraq.  One decision and the same refrain repeated over and over again.  Where is the scrutiny of the truth police where President Obama is concerned?

In his State of the Union address he took the unprecedented step of calling out the Supreme Court and encouraging his minions to give that rebuke a standing ovation.  Shameful.  This is not to say that Obama cannot criticize other branches of government, but there is a time and a place.  When Joe Wilson called out “LIAR!” during a previous speech by President Obama he was roundly criticized and rightly so.  Not for the criticism, but for the time and the place.  Joe Wilson called the president to apologize.  Did Obama do the same?

The timing of the act was bad enough, but the accusation he made was not true, as Samuel Alito could be seen saying, if you can read lips.  In the midst of his constitutional duty to report to Congress on the State of the Union, he uses a blatant lie to attack his guests. But that wasn’t all.  His speech was sprinkled throughout with falsehoods, not least of which was his statement on jobs.

Counting the Uncountable

To try to put a positive spin on his porkulus bill, he had to make up a statistic that no reputable economist can endorse, “jobs saved”.  In his State of the Union speech and on the Sunday morning talk show circuit, Obama and his team talked about 2 million jobs created or saved. But they weren’t all on the same page, some said 1.8 million, but regardless it is blatant dishonesty.

Jobs created is a real statistic.  As a small business owner I can tell you that when you hire someone there are a number of government agencies that you have to report it to and you have a deadline in which to do so.  There is also some paperwork involved when you eliminate a job.  But I have never, never had to report to any agency when I thought about eliminating a job and then changed my mind.  After all wouldn’t that be the definition of a job saved?

If I never thought about eliminating the position, then the job is not “saved” it just continues to exist.  If I thought about eliminating the position and did so, it would not be a job “saved” it would be a job eliminated, no?  So it is this two step process of thinking about the action and then not following through that could reasonably be thought of as a “job saved”.  How do you measure that thought process?  Hiring someone is an observable action.  Eliminating a job is an observable action.  Saving a job are two related thought processes not externally observable, they can only be “reported” by the decision maker and it cannot be independently verified.  Is that the kind of statistic upon which you want your government to base billions of dollars in spending decision?   The only added feature of Obamanomics is that some money changes hands.  Money that comes from you, dear taxpayer, and goes to the businessman.  Can you see why such a statistic is ridiculous?

Which One Is It Mr. President?  Mr. Biden? Anyone?

Let’s pretend for a moment that “jobs saved” is a real statistic.  If the president has a figure in his head of 2 million jobs created or saved, and for the aforementioned reasons the number of jobs created is a hard number reported to some agency, then the number of jobs saved should be a matter of simple math.  2 million minus the number of jobs actually created equals the number of jobs saved.  So why not report it as such?  100,000 jobs created and 1.9 million jobs saved, for example.  Why lump them together?  Because when you lump them together its harder to tell how big of a lie the president is telling.

Stimulus recipients previously reported that they had directly “created or saved” 640,329 jobs by Sept. 30, but their filings were criticized after it emerged that some people had reported saving jobs when they had actually spent the money on pay raises or paying employees who were not in danger of being laid off.

In December, the White House Office of Management and Budget changed its guidance, telling recipients they should start counting every worker whose salary was funded with stimulus money, rather than guessing whether the jobs would have existed in the absence of the federal plan. Opponents of the program accused the administration of “moving the goal posts” to make the plan appear more successful. — Wall Street Journal, Latest Stimulus Report Fuels Jobs Pressure, Feb. 1 2010

So companies using stimulus money to give people raises was counted as jobs saved!  We have 10%-17% of our workforce idled and taxpayers are being fleeced to give people raises and this administration is calling that successful policy.  When do we start firing people in this administration?  How about Janet Napolitano?  How about Eric Holder?  or are we saving their jobs too so that the numbers look good?  The other reports are just as galling: $1000 purchase of a lawn mower is credited with saving jobs;  using stimulus money to purchase boots with each boot (left and right) being counted as a job saved because someone had to make the boots; stimulus money going to create jobs in Congressional districts that do not exist.  Does anyone have any confidence that this administration has a clue about how to run a government?  This is beyond embarrassing.

The Next Stimulus

But fear not, since the first stimulus was so successful, President Obama is teeing up the next one, but don’t worry this one is only $100 billion.  Doesn’t that just make you feel warm all over?