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Tonight's Crazy Story:
Man Steals Cars with Stolen Tow Truck
A Florida man stole a tow truck so that he could steal cars more easily.
Topic One: Government Spending
HUD spends $70 million to teach how to spend money: "At one federal agency, it takes money to spend money. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development recently announced it is spending $70 million to improve the way its grant recipients spend billions in taxpayer cash. Most of the $70 million will go to consulting companies that provide “technical assistance” to HUD-funded communities and non-profit organizations. The consultants will help the communities and nonprofits “improve their use of federal funds to revitalize neighborhoods, help the homeless and produce more affordable housing,” a May 15 new release said. CNSNews.com asked a HUD official, "If I’m reading this correctly, this is a grant to teach people how to spend money they already have?"
State Department buys Kindles for 3500% of retail: "The State Department will spend $16.5 million on 2,500 Kindle e-book readers from Amazon, which amounts to a whopping $6,600 per Kindle device that retails for $189. Nextgov.com first reported this news by looking at procurement databases and discovered the State Department awarded a no-bid contract to purchase the kindle devices at a 3,500 percent markup."
Townhall contributor Daniel Mitchell points out some other examples of government waste: "Should we send more money to Washington when the federal government is: Forcing taxpayers to pay millions of dollars for pro-Obamacare and pro-IRS propaganda. Doing interviews about erectile dysfunction for $6,000 each and sticking the tab on us. Hiring bureaucrats to monitor school lunches and replace healthy turkey sandwiches with processed chicken nuggets. And those are just examples of nickel-and-dime programs. The bigger outrage is that politicians have created costly, inefficient, and bankrupt entitlement programs that threaten our fiscal future."
Time for a Laugh:
"It's great to be back in Chicago. Illinois Rep. Derek Smith has been accused of accepting a $7,000 bribe. If he's found guilty, he could serve up to four years as the state's governor."
-Conan O'Brien
Topic Two: Who Will Be Your Doctor?
Deane Waldman explains how two trends will impact health care in the future: "Whom do you want to operate on your heart: a doctor or a bureaucrat? This scenario is neither a joke nor an exaggeration. Two trends happening right now make it likely that the person who will provide your health care will have a BA or MBA after his name rather than "MD" or "RN."
Trend 1: Losing doctors
Doctors are increasingly refusing to see government-insured -- viz., Medicare -- patients, or leaving medicine altogether. With our government attacking our doctors, why should they keep seeing government-insured patients? And the word "attack" is truth, not hype.
Trend 2: Increasing government control of health care
The doctor is held responsible for a patient's outcome. Is the doctor in control of that outcome? The answer is a resounding No! Imagine that your doctor knows that drug A is the best medicine for you. The government pays only for drug B. Which drug will you get? Who is in charge of your health care?
Your doctor wants to refer you to the specialist with the best track record of outcomes for patients with your condition. The government insurer tells the doctor to send you where the cheapest contract is. That is the only referral the government will authorize. Is the doctor in control? Of course not. A government bureaucrat is in charge and is practicing medicine, yet the doctor is held responsible for the outcome."
Debt Watch:
$15,737,910,187,514.88
(
As of Monday, June 11, 2012
)
Change: +$2,546,514,269
Your share as a citizen: $50,331.01
Share per household: $137,766.65
Debt since Obama inauguration: $5,111,033,138,602
Topic Three: College Debt
Congratulations America! Our rate of freshmen graduating college within six years is the worst among the among the 18 OECD nations. MSN Money listed the ten public universities with the worst graduation rates. Topping the list was Southern University in New Orleans, which saw only 4% of its students graduate within six years.
College debt is soaring, while colleges continue to add students: "College-loan debt has soared to nearly a trillion dollars, more than credit-card debt or auto-loan debt. Financial commentators are beginning to compare college-loan debt to the housing bubble that nearly brought down the banking system in 2008. However, it's not the banks that will be the big losers if the bubble bursts. It's the taxpayers, because the government is now on the hook for the majority of student loans. Even worse is the burden on students. The debt requires students to keep paying for a product that lacks its advertised value either in education or employment opportunities. College education has been dumbed down to enroll more and more taxpayer-subsidized students, even if they take only remedial (aka high school) courses."
Tweet of the Day:
Jim Geraghty (@jimgeraghty):
Does Obama suffer any penalty in the public's eye for ditching the "governing" part of his job and fund-raising all the time in JUNE?
Topic Four: Voting Rights
The Obama administration and the state of Florida are now suing each other over Florida's plans to clean up its voter rolls. Florida filed a suit against the Department of Homeland Security, claiming that the department has kept the state from accessing its database allowing it to verify the citizenship of voters. Now, the Justice Department sent the state a letter saying that it has authorized enforcement action against it over the purging of the voter rolls. This sets the stage for potential legal action against the state if it refuses to comply.
At the center of the issue is the blindness of our Attorney General to the fact of voting fraud. Holder continues to maintain that fraud is uncommon, so therefore, there is no need to do anything more about it. However, Florida's voter registration review has found the opposite: over 50 people have already been identified as voting illegally in Florida's elections. "Earlier counts by Florida officials suggested that they'd found 87 non-citizens on the voter rolls, 47 of whom had voted. That was out of a list of 2,700 potential names pared down from an original catalogue of around 182,000. The final list was also judged to have contained 500 names of voters who were legitimate U.S. citizens."
Food for Thought - A Quote from our Founders
"The way to have safe government is not to trust it all to the one, but to divide it among the many, distributing to everyone exactly the functions in which he is competent....To let the National Government be entrusted with the defense of the nation, and its foreign and federal relations..... The State Governments with the Civil Rights, Laws, Police and administration of what concerns the State generally. The Counties with the local concerns, and each ward direct the interests within itself. It is by dividing and subdividing these Republics from the great national one down through all its subordinations until it ends in the administration of everyman's farm by himself, by placing under everyone what his own eye may superintend, that all will be done for the best."
-Thomas Jefferson
Topic Five: A Conflict of Vision
Rich Lowry explains the difference in the vision of the two political parties: "President Barack Obama thinks Republicans are in the grips of a “fever.” Only if they can be coaxed back to rationality, through the calming effects of his reelection and perhaps some aromatherapy and a deep-tissue massage, will Washington ever work again."
"By work, he means pass his priorities, of course. That is the operative definition, too, for all the liberal analysts rending their garments over the breakdown of our governing institutions. If only everyone could sit around a table and agree that President Obama is the personification of reasonableness, the country’s faith in government could be restored."
"Instead, Republicans insist on the extreme tactic of . . . blocking the president’s agenda. Eminent Washington-based think-tankers Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein have devoted a book, It’s Even Worse Than It Looks, to explicating the horrors of an opposition party opposing things. It’s a nightmare brought about by Republicans who are “dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.” The duo writes this, unironically, at the end of a paragraph calling Republicans extreme and immune to facts and evidence. How very civil."
Tomorrow in History
June 13, 1966
-
The Supreme Court ruled in Miranda v. Arizona that Police must inform suspects of their rights prior to questioning them.
Grab Bag - Interesting and Important Stories to Conclude Your Evening:
68 hot dogs: good. 32 oz. soda: bad
White House spokesman tells press how it should do its job
New York court says landlord can't evict renter who has not paid in six years
Texas father kills man attempting to molest his daughter
Obama's hypocritical immigration stance
Congress's approval rating is up
The top ten reasons to vote Obama
Holder: 'I stuck by my guns'
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