Where Are My Keys?

Ahh, what's another billion dollars or so?

Are you paying attention on the Pigford vote?  For those not aware of what is going on, some backstory here:

This is the second payoff from a 1999 class action settlement, known as Pigford vs. Glickman, in which the original plaintiff Timothy Pigford, along with 400 others, sued USDA for discrimination in its allocation of loans. The plaintiffs won, but since then, the number of claimants have vastly ballooned to unanticipated levels.

Over $1 billion has already been paid out to over 16,000 people, and this second round is expected to pay off an additional estimated 70,000 – 80,000 who missed the deadline to file their initial claims.

King told The Daily Caller that the process by which the money has been allocated is flawed.

“This new settlement, Pigford II, is not a class action lawsuit. This has not been approved by the court. This is something that has been negotiated by Eric Holder, Tom Vilsack and John Boyd,” King said. “They just sat down and made a deal. Congress doesn’t know what they’ve done [by passing it].”

Originally, John Boyd, the President of the National Black Farmers Association testified under oath that there were 18,000 black farmers.  To date, more than 94,000 claims have been filed.

The USDA and FBI can understand the math, and recognize rampant fraud when they see it:

USDA employees and FBI officials estimate that the number of fraudulent claims range from 50 percent to 95 percent.

With some in Congress referring to Pigford as "institutional racism", and over 94,000 claims of racism, certainly there have been firings because of all of this discrimination, right?

Bachmann told TheDC that despite all the fuss over discrimination, there has not been one firing, reprimand, censure or fine at the USDA.

“Everything has been hurry, hurry, hurry. We have to funnel the money out the door. Especially when it comes just before the election,” she said. “There was every incentive for individuals to scam the taxpayer and there was no down side because a Democrat controlled Congress failed to look into oversight of the issue.”

In addition to the money each claimant receives, USDA will forgive all their debt. Indeed, some have gone so far as to consider Pigford another form of reparations, pointing to the Pigford Judge Paul Friedman’s reference to “Forty acres and a mule” in the opening line in his consent decree.

Amazing, isn't it?  Over five times as many claims as there are black farmers (as identified under oath by the President of the NBFA) claim they were discriminated against, and not one person in the USDA was fired, written up, or fined.

If this thing makes it out of the House in the lame-duck session, the Republicans need to see that not only is every single claim investigated, but that the fraudulent ones are punished to the fullest extent of the law.

I don't doubt that there was some discrimination that took place.  But there is clearly fraud running wild, and you and I are paying for it.

 

How many questions does this raise?

1. Why is the son of a Congressman driving a Government vehicle he shouldn't be driving?
2. Any sensitive info on those laptops, Congressman?
3. $27,000 in concert tickets?  Is your son a concert promoter?  Why did he have 1000 tickets?
4. Why is the Congressman driving an Escalade, when it's a well-known fact in Democrat circle that SUV's contribute to the killing of the planet?
5. What does the Congressman feel is an appropriate punishment for breaking standing rules?

 

Bank of America the next target of WikiLeaks?

If it's true, get ready for more turmoil in the financial sector.  You know BofA will use the "everyone else does this" defense, which will prompt a Congressional inquiry with the heads of the banking families.  Can't imagine the stock market will respond well to this. 

[A]n eagle-eyed reader has sent me a link to a quote from a Computer World interview with Assange from October of 2009, which, if true, may contain a clue to that bank’s identity:

“At the moment, for example, we are sitting on five gigabytes from Bank of America, one of the executive’s hard drives,” he said. “Now how do we present that? It’s a difficult problem. We could just dump it all into one giant Zip file, but we know for a fact that has limited impact. To have impact, it needs to be easy for people to dive in and search it and get something out of it.”

The Feds may be sitting around wringing their hands, trying to figure out what to do.  Now that Big Bank is involved, Woody's suggestion may bear fruit.

By a 2-1 margin, people want spending cuts over tax hikes..

Can't say I'm surprised:

Asked to choose between two paths for balancing the budget, 59 percent in the AP-CNBC Poll preferred cutting unspecified government services while 30 percent picked unspecified tax increases. Republicans leaned heavily toward service reductions while Democrats, usually staunch advocates of federal spending, were about evenly split between the two alternatives.

The results underscored the political peril legislators face in considering tax boosts, especially with the struggling economy, rampant joblessness and ascendant tea party supporters insisting Washington is too powerful.

"We've got an awfully big government and a lot of waste," said Jackie Hallock, 53, a writer from Pawleys Island, S.C. "I think we should cut taxes, not raise taxes. They're already too high."

 

 

A step in the right direction..

Of course we aren't all the way to the finish line, but today's vote shows promise:

Tuesday’s vote 56-39 vote on the moratorium contrasts with one last March in the Senate defeating a similar ban by a larger margin: 68-29.

Since November’s elections, the Senate Republican Conference has embraced a two-year moratorium beginning in the next Congress. Tuesday’s amendment, offered by Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, ups the ante by including this budget year and is very much in line with the thinking of incoming House Speaker John Boehner. (See: GOP backs earmarks ban in vote)

Coburn had hoped to get to 40 and was hurt by the defections of eight Republicans, many prominent in the Appropriations Committee. But the House GOP leadership has been unyielding thus far, and with the Democratic defections, hopes to put pressure on Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to accept a temporary ban.

Those that continue to play by the "old" Washington rules will suffer at the ballot box, both Democrat and Republican.

Democrats showing how much they care about small businesses..

Glad to see that we can all agree that the new 1099 filing rules are stupid and extremely expensive, but can't seem to find a way to make them go away.  Of course, had the folks in D.C. actually read the bill before they voted for it, it could have been stripped out ahead of time.

I guess that is asking too much of our elected officials.

At least the Senate was able to add more spending and beauracracy to the FDA, in passing a law that won't really do much more than the ones already on the books.  We sure can afford an additional $1.4 billion in the budget, and an additional 250 pages of regulations, right?  Bad move on the part of both Republicans and Democrats in voting for this measure.

The so-called FDA Food Safety Modernization Act of 2010, which the Senate will vote on after Thanksgiving, only expands a disjointed, duplicative and ineffective food safety bureaucracy. The Government Accountability Office has consistently called this bureaucracy "high risk due to (its) greater vulnerabilities to fraud, waste, abuse and mismanagement."

Far from offering common-sense reforms, this bill doubles-down on the status quo — which failed to prevent the salmonella outbreak — with 250 pages of new bureaucracy and regulations. Expanding the Food and Drug Administration will harm small businesses and raise prices at the grocery store — all without having a meaningful impact on food safety.

Throughout the debate, proponents have claimed we haven't modernized food safety laws in 100 years. That proves my point. For the past 100 years, the free market, not the government, has been the primary driver of innovation and improved safety. Consumer choice is a far more effective accountability mechanism than government bureaucracies.

I am offering an alternative bill to require better coordination among agencies and improve badly outdated information technology systems and other processes agencies use to protect our food supply. My plan leverages the free market by utilizing private inspections and allowing the FDA to focus on bad actors.

Rather than spending billions of dollars, forcing food companies to comply with new regulations, and saddling consumers with increased food prices, we should pursue reforms that will allow regulatory agencies to more effectively and efficiently prevent outbreaks. When Congress returns, my colleagues should reject the false assumption that growing government means safer food and instead promote market forces that work. 

Keep in mind that the bill would not apply to meat, poultry or processed eggs, which are regulated by the Agriculture Department. Those foods have long been subject to much more rigorous inspections and oversight than FDA-regulated foods.

How did that "more rigorous oversight and inspection" do with the egg scare this year?  More money (that we don't have), and more regulations that won't help.  Well done, Senate.

Dead man walking..

Michael Steele has rightfully come under fire for some of his leadership issues/decisions since his term began as head of the RNC.  With more information coming to light about his spending habits recently, I'm guessing he won't be a two-term Chairman.

Some members of the Republican National Committee are grumbling about Chairman Michael Steele’s hiring of Belinda Cook as the RNC’s liaison to the 2012 convention — a full two years before the event. John Hayward at Human Events details Cook’s plush gig:

Her compensation package is astonishing: a $25,000 signing bonus, a $180,000 annual salary, and accommodations at a luxurious waterfront house in the Tampa-St. Petersburg area, where the convention will be held.  Her son and sister have also been hired by Steele, the latter for “hotel management consulting” to the tune of $25,000.  All told, payments to the Cook family over the last three months have exceeded a hundred thousand dollars. . . .

This all amounts to roughly 18 times the usual spending on convention preparation at this point in a presidential election cycle… shoveled out by a Republican National Committee that’s having trouble paying its bills from the 2008 midterm elections. 

Displeasure with Steele may fuel a challenge — or even several challenges. Politico’s Jonathan Martin says Ann Wagner, former chairwoman of the Missouri Republican Party, is taking to the field. She joins former Michigan GOP chair Saul Anuzis, the only other declared candidate in the race so far; 2008 GOP convention chair Maria Cino, who’s planning a run; and a stable of dark horses.

See? Everything is fine in California!

Brett Arends educates us all.

Back in the Silicon Valley glory days, in the late 1990s, California attracted an incredible 42 cents of every venture capital dollar invested in America. Ah, those were the days — when the private sector was still willing to back California with its own money. As any conservative will tell you, that’s the real voting in the economy.

How far has California fallen from those giddy days?

According to the latest data from PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association, in 2010 California just got a miserable, er, 50 cents of every venture capital dollar invested in America

See, everything is great!  California is getting more money than ever from venture capital!

Tim Cavanaugh has a somewhat different perspective.

So, how much, according to NCVA and PWC, does that actually come to? About one-third as much as in 1999, when VCs put up more than $51 billion in funding, and less than a fifth as much as in 2000, when they put up more than $100 billion. Nationwide, VCs spent an anemic $17 billion in 2009. It's true that California attracts a slightly larger piece of the venture capital pie than it did 11 years ago, but the pie is geometrically smaller than it was then. If you think venture capital is going to lift the Golden State out of the dumps, you're wrong.

Funny how Arends neglected to realize that when he read the same data tables Cavanaugh did.  Must be a Left "thing" when it comes to understanding fancy charts and graphs.

Oprah goes nuts!

Probably not quite what the audience was expecting..

 

Another "green shoot"?

Certainly looks that way.  Restaurant spending is up to its highest point in three years:

 

Eating out is a luxury to most, regardless of the restaurant.  In good times, folks that brown-bag it might go to McDonald's, in bad times, those that eat at a casual dining spot (think Chili's, Applebee's, etc) drop "down" to McDonald's.

This uptick suggests that people are more confident about their finances, and are okay with spending a few bucks on lunch or dinner.  My past history in the restaurant business tells me that it is a normal occurrence for people to eat out more over the holidays (too tired to cook after all that shopping), but we haven't seen that over the last few years.  Why the difference now?

Like the lower IUC numbers last week, this data suggests things might be getting somewhat better (or have at least stopped getting worse).  Still empty seats when I have gone out, but there do seem to be more people dining away from home lately.

Stay tuned.