In Defense of #Infrastructure Spending

At the federal level, TEApublican types have decried our national deficit, much – if not most – of which came about as a result of placing the price of a decade of warfare on a proverbial credit card. I refer, of course, to the Persian Gulf War, Gulf War II, Operation Desert Shield/Storm and the invasion of Afghanistan, etc., all of which occurred during the previous administration.

Compounding that problem was that corporate and personal income tax rates upon the wealthiest was cut, while simultaneously, the veritable house of cards was crumbling, having been built upon the miry, sinking sands of Wall Street deregulation & greed gone wild.

Nevertheless, as our nation has struggled and clawed its way back to some semblance of fiscal sanity, there have been voices arising whom assert that the federal government’s “bailout” of banks & other large, corporate enterprise has been a gross mistake, and that such a bailout should have never occurred. And, while there will doubtless be volumes written, and debates held about the good and the bad of the ordeal, what’s been done, has been done, and it’s practically all over, but the crying. So the only thing we can do now, is live & learn, and move on.

And yet, respecting one underlying problem which arose corollary to the matter, is the loss of jobs here at home. Again, it was complicated by ‘globalization,’ which – good, bad, or indifferent – is

Alabama Medicaid Incompetency: State must repay Federal Childrens Health Insurance Program $88,197,498

Did you know? (No, you probably didn’t.)

In a report dated August 2013, the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General (HHS OIG) conducted a criminal and administrative investigation and found that Alabama claimed, and was paid millions in unallowable performance bonus payments under the Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act (CHIRPA).

This FRAUD was because of INCOMPETENCY in Alabama governance.

The HHS OIG found that the Alabama state agency overstated its FYs 2009 and 2010 current enrollment in its requests for bonus payments. The State agency overstated its current enrollments because, rather than

GAO Report: Pentagon spending out of control – Rumsfeld reported same in 2001

[UPDATE – Friday, September 4, 2020: The DOD link for SECDEF Rumsfeld’s remarks “DOD Acquisition and Logistics Excellence Week Kickoff — Bureaucracy to Battlefield” made Monday, September 10, 2001 has been relocated/obfuscated/archived. The PDF file of his remarks may now be found on/downloaded from this site, on Donald Rumsfeld’s archival site, or from the Homeland Security Digital Library, a site “sponsored by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s National Preparedness Directorate, FEMA and the Naval Postgraduate School Center for Homeland Defense and Security.” Ed.]

• SECDEF Donald Rumsfeld remarks Monday September 10 2001 DOD Acquisition and Logistics Excellence Week Kickoff — Bureaucracy to Battlefield,

• http://library.rumsfeld.com/doclib/sp/115/Remarks%20Launching%20DoD%20Acquisition%20and%20Logistics%20Excellence%20Week%2009-10-2001.pdf#search=%22pentagon%20bureaucracy%22 ,

• or https://www.hsdl.org/?view&did=2423 . Ed.]

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What does Alabama U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions think about the March 2012 Government Accountability Office report to Congress that found the 96 highest-priority defense programs in the Pentagon acquisitions system represented an estimated total cost of $1.58 trillion, and had actually “grown by over $74 billion or 5 percent in the past year”?

The report, entitled DEFENSE ACQUISITIONS: Assessments of Selected Weapon Programs – may be downloaded from the GAO website: http://www.gao.gov/assets/590/589695.pdf

Or from this blog internally: GAO 3/12 report – DEFENSE ACQUISITIONS Assessments of Selected Weapon Programs

And then, there are the Remarks as Delivered by Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, The Pentagon, Monday, September 10, 2001 entitled “DOD Acquisition and Logistics Excellence Week Kickoff — Bureaucracy to Battlefield,” in which he said “According to some estimates, we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions.”

How many variety of voices over an extended period of time do we need before we heed their warnings?

His speech, in its entirety follows.

George H.W. Bush NRA Resignation Letter

Increasingly, the National Rifle Association has demonstrated that it is little more than a high-powered group of radicals Hell-bent on passing legislation that benefits anything and everything related to firearms, all unrestrained.

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Letter of Resignation Sent By George H. W. Bush to National Rifle Association

Published: May 11, 1995

Following is the letter of resignation sent last week by former President George Bush to the National Rifle Association: May 3, 1995

Dear Mr. Washington,

I was outraged when, even in the wake of the Oklahoma City tragedy, Mr. Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of N.R.A., defended his attack on federal agents as “jack-booted thugs.” To attack Secret Service agents or A.T.F. people or any government law enforcement people as “wearing Nazi bucket helmets and black storm trooper uniforms” wanting to “attack law abiding citizens” is a vicious slander on good people.

Al Whicher, who served on my [ United States Secret Service ] detail when I was Vice President and President, was killed in Oklahoma City. He was no Nazi. He was a kind man, a loving parent, a man dedicated to serving his country — and serve it well he did.

In 1993, I attended the wake for

Sure, money is power. But, is it also liberty and freedom? Or, is it a tool?

As Bob Dylan sang some years ago, “The times, they are a-changin’.” Our laws should reflect those changes while adhering to the values ensconced in our Constitution. In essence, the argument is about freedom – freedom from the large corporations that supply “content” via the Internet. As well, openness and honesty – popularly termed as transparency – should be the hallmark of all dealings, by government and enterprise.

In short, what we’re encountering in this age, in this era, is an almost unprecedented and wholesale onslaught of money and the power that comes with it. It is, in essence, a corrupting influence. It is, in essence, a type of bribery – and bribery is itself, a form of theft. Bribery is a form of theft because it takes away, removes, or forbids resources from going where they ought, or rightfully should. In this case, it robs freedom from the people. Not only does it usurp their decision-making capacity, it is a blatant announcement and condemnation of freedom, because it says that the rich, the wealthy have freedom, while the poor and disenfranchised have none.

If – as the Supreme Court has declared – money is the equivalent of free speech, and neither cannot, nor should not be limited, what freedom does the poor man have? Again, if money is equated with free speech (that is, our First Amendment rights), the poor man has none. And that, my dear readers, is but one reason why such a ruling is not only ANTI-Constitutional, but is antithesis of freedom.

Making a further case, our nation’s specie – that is, the currency and coinage – is the property of the United States government. It is NOT private property. Money is a thing used to represent something else. So again, I ask rhetorically… in such instances, and in this case, what does it represent?
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Google Says “It’s Our Web”–and they bought it fair and square

April 23, 2012 Chris Castle

Who can forget then-candidate Ronald Reagan’s classic line at the 1980 New Hampshire candidate’s debate:  “I’m paying for this microphone!”  And Google probably is wishing that whichever Ivy League idiot thought of rebranding their anti-SOPA campaign site with the double entendre “It’s Our Web” had not been quite so…uh..transparent…about it all.

President Obama had dinner with technology moguls February 17, 2011 in California’s “Silicon Valley” at the home of John Doerr, venture capitalist and partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, in Woodside, California. Flanking the president are (L) the late Steve Jobs, Founder/CEO of Apple Computer, and (R) Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of FaceBook. Also present are:Cisco CEO John Chambers, Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo and Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz. Art Levinson, chairman and former CEO of Genentech, is on the Apple board of directors, and was also present. White House press secretary Jay Carney said after the dinner President Obama exchanged ideas with the business leaders “so we can work as partners to promote growth and create good jobs in the United States,” and discussed research and development spending proposals with the CEOs. (Official White House photo by Pete Souza)

Because it certainly is “their web” and they bought it fair and square according to