Freedom Line Blog

Ironically, the Obama Administration projected when he entered office that unemployment wouldn’t exceed 8% after his massive spending “stimulus.”  Instead, the rate has exceeded 8% for 38 consecutive months, the most since the federal government began keeping records.  Over three long years.  Of course, Obama can at least claim something on which he has proved reliable.

Today, the Labor Department announced that only 120,000 new jobs were created last month, well below expectations of over 200,000.  That number is insufficient to reduce unemployment by even a single percentage point over a year, and the only reason the rate fell from 8.3% in February to a still-miserable 8.2% in March was that more people gave up and abandoned the workforce altogether.  Under Obama, we have witnessed record spending, record deficits, record regulation and record hostility toward private employers.  So what does he have to show for that?  As detailed this week by The Wall Street Journal, the worst economic recovery in history.  Those straightforward facts speak for themselves.

Clean energy is the dream that refuses to die. From the Obama Administration on down, liberal politicians throughout the nation are constantly promising “green jobs” boomlets, acting as though the only thing standing between a better future where energy is both cleaner and more affordable is political will and obstructionist special interests. In reality, the real hurdle to achieving their dream is substantially higher: the economics just don’t work out. A recent initiative in Nevada shows the complete fiscal folly underpinning clean tech. From the Las Vegas Sun:

The electricity produced by NV Energy’s $46 million wind rebate program has fallen far short of expectations.

In a startling example, the city of Reno’s wind turbines — for which the city received more than $150,000 in rate-payer funded rebates — produced dramatically less electricity than the manufacturers of its turbines promised.

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As first reported by the Reno Gazette-Journal, one turbine that cost the city $21,000 to install saved the city $4 on its energy bill. Overall, $416,000 worth of turbines have netted the city $2,800 in energy savings.

That means that the savings from the Nevada program have equaled only about 2/3 of 1% of the cost of installing the turbines. Remind me again, isn’t the oft-cited goal for this new era of technological progress to promote science and math?

Politico reports that an Inspector General’s investigation concluded the Department of Energy’s loan to Solyndra corrupted a process to serve a political agenda.

The Treasury Department’s review of Solyndra’s $535 million federal loan guarantee was “rushed” through in about one day in March 2009, “based on an expedited review request from DOE so that a press release could be issued,” according to a Treasury inspector general report that gives further evidence of the early Obama administration’s eagerness to announce progress in funding clean energy.

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The report also found that DOE didn’t consult with Treasury on the terms and conditions of the loan deal before or during the Energy Department’s own review process, including the review of Solyndra’s credit worthiness.

Nor did DOE include Treasury in negotiations that later allowed private investors to skip past taxpayers in the repayment line in the event – which turned into a certainty – that Solyndra went bankrupt.

The corruption in the Solyndra loan process is unique in that – so far – no one inside the government has been accused of being bribed for making so many financially ruinous decisions with taxpayer money.

The only explanation is the triumph of ideology over process.

In the Teapot Dome scandal members of the Harding administration got kickbacks for no-bid contracts on oil drilling.  The HUD scandals of the late 1980’s made some officials, lobbyists, and construction companies rich at the expense of the poor.  But with Solyndra and other failed alternative energy busts, Obama’s DOE blew billions of dollars on nothing more than a bankrupt ideology; namely, the fantasy that green technology can be subsidized into sustainability.

At least with bribes you can follow the money.  The Obama administration’s version of corruption is something arguably new.  The only way to ensure its eradication is to fire the people who hire the ideologically-driven bureaucrats.

President Barack Obama’s controversial warning to the Supreme Court that a vote to overturn ObamaCare would be “unprecedented” is getting push-back from the federal judiciary.

During oral arguments on a different ObamaCare provision than those argued before the Supreme Court last week, Fifth Circuit Judge Jerry Smith asked a Department of Justice lawyer for clarification.  “Does the Department of Justice recognize that federal courts have the authority in appropriate circumstances to strike federal statutes because of one or more constitutional infirmities?”

To drive home the point, Judge Smith ordered DOJ to provide a written explanation of its views “no less than three pages, single spaced.”

The only problem with the homework assignment is that it wasn’t directed to the right person.  President Obama, that one-time constitutional law professor at the University of Chicago, should be the one sitting at the keyboard relearning first year law.

At least then he’d be aware that what’s truly unprecedented is his belief that federal courts are rubber stamps for his liberal agenda.

Every week or so it seems there’s another story out of Washington about the federal government spending an eye-popping amount of money on something that’s either dramatically overpriced or outright unnecessary: $115,000 a year for someone to update the Interior Department’s Facebook page, for instance, or the Maryland town where more than $800,000 of stimulus money was spent in order to publicize how well stimulus money was being spent.

Perhaps, in a fit of rage at one of these stories, you’ve wondered why there isn’t a government watchdog tasked with reining in these expenditures. Though it’s little know outside of Washington, there actually is such an organization, the colorlessly named General Services Administration (GSA), which describes its mission as “to use expertise to provide innovative solutions for our customers in support of their missions, and by so doing, foster an effective, sustainable, and transparent government for the American people.” And now the head of the organization, Martha Johnson, is stepping down after the GSA went on a taxpayer-funded spending binge.

From the Federal Times:

GSA’s Public Buildings Service spent $822,000 on the biennial Western Regions Conference in Las Vegas for only 300 employees, according to an inspector general’s report.

The expenses included $147,000 for airfare and hotel lodging for six planning trips by conference organizers. That figure included $100,000 on two “scouting trips” and five off-site meetings and an additional $30,000 on catering costs for those trips, according to the report.

Among the other expenses were $3,200 for a mind reader; $6,300 on a commemorative coin set displayed in velvet boxes; and $75,000 on a training exercise to build a bicycle, according to the IG report, which was obtained by Federal Times.

GSA also promised the hotel an additional $41,480 in catering charges in exchange for the “concession” of the hotel honoring the government’s lodging limit.

The agency also spent $44 a person per breakfast and $95 per person for its closing reception dinner.

The agency also spent money on mementos for attendees, clothing for GSA employees and tuxedo rentals, according to the report.

The GSA: Looking out for the taxpayers since 1949. But who will watch the watchmen?

h/t — Mollie Hemingway at Ricochet.

Below is one of the latest cartoons from two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.

The Daily Caller makes hilarious use of Karl Rove’s analysis comparing the spending rates for the Bush and Obama reelection campaigns.

But there’s plenty of evidence that the campaign isn’t bringing in as much money as it wants.

For example, data from the campaign’s earlier quarterly reports to the Federal Election Commission show that Obama’s spending is growing faster than revenues.

“The Obama campaign’s high burn rate doesn’t come from large television buys, phone banks or mail programs that could be immediately stopped … [but] from huge fixed costs for a big staff and higher-than-expected fund-raising outlays,” according to a March 14 article by Karl Rove, chief political strategist for George W. Bush.

In the second quarter of 2011, Obama’s “campaign spent 25% of what it raised… while Mr. Bush’s campaign spent only 9% in the second quarter of 2003,” Rove said. Since then, the spending pace has accelerated, he said, pointing out that in January “the Obama campaign spent 158% of what it raised, while the Bush campaign spent 60% in January 2004.”

Also, his supporters initially predicted a $1 billion reelection fund, but campaign staffers are quick to deny that is a goal.

Rove argues that one reason the re-election campaign might be running lighter-than-expected on cash is that many of Obama’s 2008 supporters are not opening their checkbooks this time around.

Spending growing faster than revenues (158%!).  Huge fixed costs triggering obscene debt.  An unsustainable burn rate.  Grandiose predictions cratering on fiscal reality.  Contributors unwilling or unable to pony up more cash.

Whether it’s managing the federal government or his own campaign, Barack Obama is as unbalanced with money as he is with policy.

Over at the Wall Street Journal, James Grant, editor of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer has a perceptive review of the new book, “White House Burning: The Founding Fathers, our National Debt, and Why it Matters to You,” by former IMF Chief Economist Simon Johnson and University of Connecticut law professor James Kwak. Two passages deserve special attention.

On the banking system, Grant writes:

Here’s an idea: Let’s try capitalism for a change.

Rather than the bureaucratic monstrosity called the Dodd-Frank Act, for instance, why not hold the bankers personally accountable for the solvency of the institutions that employ them? Until 1935, bank stockholders would get a capital call if the company in which they had invested became impaired or insolvent. It was their problem, not the government’s. In the same spirit, suggests the New York investor Paul J. Isaac, let the bankers forfeit a portion of their past compensation—say, that in excess of 10 times the average manufacturing wage—if they steer their employer on the rocks. And let them surrender not just one year’s worth but rather seven year’s worth—after all, big banks don’t go broke all at once. Proceeds would be distributed to the creditors, as in days of yore. Bankers should not only take risks. They should also bear them.

And on the endless invocation of the Great Depression as the sole object lesson in how to respond to a severe economic downturn:

Messrs. Johnson and Kwak, who draw the usual conclusions from 1929-33, fail to mention the depression of 1920-21. Yet this cyclical downturn was as instructively brief as it was ugly. Peak to trough, nominal GDP plunged by 23.9%, wholesale prices by 40.8% and the CPI by 8.3%. Unemployment, as it was then inexactly measured, soared to 14% from a boomtime low of 2%. And how did the successive administrations of Woodrow Wilson and Warren G. Harding, along with the Federal Reserve, meet this national disaster? Why, they balanced the budget and raised interest rates. Yet for reasons never examined in the pages of this book, that depression promptly ended and the 1920s roared.

Grant’s theme? Responsibility, both personal and collective. That has the great virtue of being the right thing to do. It also has one even greater virtue: it works.

It’s been a rough re-launch into the public consciousness for former Senator Arlen Specter (R/D-PA) since switching parties and losing the Democratic primary in 2010.

While hocking his memoirs during media appearances Specter has made off-color comments about Ronald Reagan, Sarah Palin, and Rick Santorum, insulted at least one radio host, and drawn attention to his book’s portrayals of former fellow senators Ted Kennedy (D-MA) as a “walrus” and John Thune (R-SD) as looking like a movie star “in or out of clothes.”

The Blaze website has a helpful compilation of Specter’s lowlights during his media blitz, including Glenn Beck’s radio show co-host reading excerpts from Specter’s book; such as the nugget about the time another senator cut in front of Specter to get a ‘free’ (i.e. taxpayer-funded) massage in the Senate gym.  Arlen’s take-away from the experience: collegiality is dying in the upper chamber.

Ronald Reagan once said, “Politics is not a bad profession.  If you succeed there are many rewards, if you disgrace yourself you can always write a book.”  In Specter’s case, Reagan’s observation still holds true.

Joe Mathews blogs at NBC Bay Area on the people and institutions most at fault for California’s budget fiasco.

The system makes the decisions, not lawmakers. And that system — the formulas and court decisions and constitutional spending mandates and tax restrictions — does not exist in any particular place that can be protested.

That’s the strange genius of this system, which is really a set of complex formulas. You can’t picket a formula’s house.

Indeed, protesting at the Capitol may be counterproductive — because it advances a false public narrative that the legislature is the problem here. The problem is the people of California, especially voters of the present and of the past.

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Two years ago, in this piece for Fox & Hounds Daily, I suggested five alternative locations for protests: highways, gas stations, the prison guards’ union, retirement communities, and unsold homes.

Since then, I have one additional idea: California cemeteries.

Many of the spending mandates and tax restrictions that are strangling the budget, and higher education in particular, were put in place long ago by voters.

So long ago that many of those voters are dead. What better way to represent this problem of the dead governing the living than by taking the protest to those voters?

And what better way to show the crisis of California’s politics than to act as if politically-imposed spending formulas can’t be politically reformed?

The Arab Spring has changed shapes so many times in the year since it started — with the most recent development coming in the form of a Muslim Brotherhood bid for the presidency of Egypt — that it’s easy to forget the relatively small act that kicked it off: the self-immolation of Tunisian street vendor Mohammed Bouazizi, who took his own life in protest of state-sponsored oppression.

There’s at least one place outside of the Middle East where that example hasn’t been forgotten, however: Tibet. From a report in the Washington Post:

More than 33 Tibetans … have set themselves on fire in a recent wave of … acts of resistance against Chinese rule. The self-immolations are a reaction to what many Tibetans see as a systematic attempt to destroy their culture, silence their voices and erase their identity — a Chinese crackdown that has dramatically intensified since protests swept across the region in 2008.

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In the spring of 2008, as the Beijing Olympics approached, Tibet was once again engulfed in protests and riots in which hundreds were killed and thousands were arrested. The response has been brutal, human rights groups say.

A program to resettle Tibet’s nomads into apartments or cinder-block houses and fence off their vast grasslands has gathered pace, the replacement of Tibetan by Chinese as a medium of instruction in schools has been expanded, and government control over Tibet’s Buddhist monasteries, the center of religious and cultural life, has been tightened.

The Post‘s report goes on to chronicle other horrors in detail (one Buddhist monk who set himself aflame in 2009 with a picture of the Dalai Lama and a Tibetan flag was shot to death by Chinese police). With that kind of merciless force — and the sheer scope of Chinese power — it is doubtful that Tibet will ever earn its freedom by any means other than Chinese fatigue or outside intervention, neither of which look to be anywhere on the horizon. Against such dire odds, the courage of resistant Tibetans is all the more remarkable — and the necessity of publicizing their plight all the more acute.