“The worst of the tax-and-spend liberals”

Who could possibly deserve that label?

President Obama?  No.

Charles Shumer (D-NY)?  Close, but no.

Al Franken (D-MN)?  Not yet, anyway.

According to Dallas-Fort Worth’s ABC affiliate WFAA and Public Citizen’s Tom Smith, it’s none other than the recently re-elected junior Republicrat Senator from Texas, John Cornyn:

He’s now known as the U.S. Senate’s biggest spender on domestic travel, according to official travel records found in The Report of the Secretary of the Senate.

That’s right—to the tune of $152,766.63.  In the first six months of the fiscal year.  Granted, the left-populist watchdog group Public Citizen isn’t exactly the most politically conservative or even neutral organization, but I think they pretty much nailed this one.  The numbers pretty well speak for themselves.

For comparison, über-parasite Chuck Shumer came in second at $144,014.22.  Texas’ real fiscal conservative is Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, who was only the eighth-biggest spender.

[Cornyn's] amount is more than any other senator. “His excuse is, ‘Well, it’s a big state,’” said Tom Smith, of the watchdog group Public Citizen. “I agree senator. It is a big state, and most big cities where he’s spending most of his time have real good airline service. He should be flying coach with the rest of us.”

But, Texas’ senior senator, fellow Republican Kay Bailey Hutchison, only spent $88,000 during the same time period. That’s a little more than half of Cornyn’s bill.

Plus, California’s two senators combined spent a little over $101,000 on travel, according to the same record.

Senators Patty Murray (D-Wash.), Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) and Kit Bond (R-Mo.) all spent more than $100,000 on domestic travel for the first half of the fiscal year.

The remaining 95 senators spent less.

But at least we know it’s all well-spent, and in the public interest, right?

Wrong:

[Cornyn]’s biggest, and perhaps most questionable travel expense, was a retreat he took his staff on in February. For three days, the staff stayed in St. Michaels, Maryland, which is just outside D.C. It cost taxpayers more than $55,000.

That’s correct:  fully one-third of his exorbitant travel expenditures went to a retreat for his over-worked, under-paid “poor widdle staff.”

“He claims to be a fiscal conservative,” Smith said. “This to me is the worst of the tax-and-spend liberals in Congress. He’s spending more money than New York senators are on travel. If that doesn’t put a ring of shame on John Cornyn’s face, I don’t know what does[.]“

Apparently, the cretinous parasite knows no shame.  Still, though,

Cornyn can spend his travel budget however he wants and let voters decide if his trips are worth the price.

And please, Texas, let’s do weigh his expenses (not to mention his votes for government bailouts, illegal alien amnesty, and imperial warfare) and find him wanting.  And while we’re waiting to kick Cornyn out, let’s get rid of the rest of the bums, too.

Return of the Jedi

I think it’s very interesting that the cattle at Faux News—who engineered Dr. Ron Paul’s exclusion from key primary debates and general marginalization in presidential primary reporting, conspiring with other MSM to virtually hand Obama victory by handing McCain victory first—now can’t get enough Paul.  Since the bailout of AIG and the collapse of Lehman last fall, and certainly since the November election, Faux news in particular and the MSM in general have been giving Paul more uninterrupted on-screen time in a given week than he got during his entire presidential campaign (which lasted nearly a year and a half, if you’re not keeping score).  Now that the good Doctor has been vindicated by unfolding events, his wisdom is seen for its merit, rather than being dismissed, Cassandra-like, as lunatic raving.

Nor is he still a lone voice, crying in the wilderness.  His cohort of congresscritters have begun collectively pulling their heads out of their (presumably) proverbial asses.  They begin, in this age of blatant fascism, to see the wisdom—or at least the political expediency—of auditing the Fed.

From FAUXNews.com:

All of a sudden, Congress is paying close attention to Ron Paul.

The feisty congressman from Texas, whose insurgent “Ron Paul Revolution” presidential campaign rankled Republican leaders last year, now has the GOP House leadership on his side — backing a measure that generated paltry support when he first introduced it 26 years ago.

Paul, as of Tuesday, has won 245 co-sponsors to a bill that would require a full-fledged audit of the Federal Reserve by the end of 2010.

Paul attracted just 18 co-sponsors when he authored a similar bill, which died, in 1983. While the impact Fed policies have on inflation is once again a concern, fears about loose monetary policy and excessive federal spending appear even more widespread in 2009.

“In the past, I never got much support, but I think it’s the financial crisis obviously that’s drawing so much attention to it, and people want to know more about the Federal Reserve,” Paul told FOXNews.com.

With the Federal Reserve holding interest rates at rock-bottom levels, pumping trillions into the economy and now poised to have new powers to oversee the financial system under President Obama’s proposed regulatory overhaul, Paul said lawmakers want transparency.

“If they give them a lot more power and there’s no more transparency, that’ll be a disaster,” he said.

The bill would call for the comptroller general in the Government Accountability Office to audit the Fed and report those findings to Congress. The GAO’s ability to conduct such audits now is severely restricted.

A slew of top Republicans are backing the bill, as are many Democrats.

It seems much more like they’re giving him credit because they can’t find a way not to.  I’m sure that if they could pin this on their own neocon Sean Hannity or pseudo-libertarian Glenn (“I’m a libertarian, but…”) Beck, they certainly would.  Despite the final line in the above excerpt, the article leaves one with the impression that this is actually a spontaneous and solely GOP-backed initiative [it's actually (as of this writing) about 30% bipartisan; 72 of the current 245 cosponsors are Demoblican], instead of the most recent battle in a nearly three-decade-long struggle on Paul’s part.

I guess the “perfect storm” of a Democratic Congress, a Democratic President, and an unmitigated economic disaster finally goaded the Republicans into actually acting republican for a change.

Like the Tea Parties.  But who am I to criticize?

Years ago, Murray Rothbard laid rest to the idea that the perfect is the enemy of the good.  In “Why Be A Libertarian?,” Rothbard opined

Antilibertarians, and antiradicals generally, characteristically make the point that such “abolitionism” is “unrealistic;” by making such a charge they are hopelessly confusing the desired goal with a strategic estimate of the probable outcome.

In framing principle, it is of the utmost importance not to mix in strategic estimates with the forging of desired goals. First, goals must be formulated, which, in this case, would be the instant abolition of slavery or whatever other statist oppression we are considering. And we must first frame these goals without considering the probability of attaining them. The libertarian goals are “realistic” in the sense that they could be achieved if enough people agreed on their desirability, and that, if achieved, they would bring about a far better world. The “realism” of the goal can only be challenged by a critique of the goal itself, not in the problem of how to attain it. Then, after we have decided on the goal, we face the entirely separate strategic question of how to attain that goal as rapidly as possible, how to build a movement to attain it, etc.

Obviously, Paul’s ultimate goal remains unchanged:  End the Fed.  But an open audit is a logical first step, and ultimately serves the purpose of liberty — if the purse strings are first cut, it follows that all publicly funded abrogations of liberty will eventually have to end.  The Fed is the enabler of all of the graft the infects Capitol Hill.  It drives Americas foreign adventurism.  It makes the domestic welfare/police state possible.  Auditing the Fed will bring down the American Empire and return us to a manageably-sized, more constitutional republic.

Of course, no Empire means no killing the “little brown people” in other countries.  It also means no more handouts, whether personal, corporate, or international.

Far too many modern Americans are bound to their pet projects, their imperialism, their fascism, or their socialism.  I include these tea-partying, politically “born again” conservatives.  They trust their government far too much.

Previously Defaulting Homeowners Defaulting Again

Central Planners everywhere are shocked.

From the “give a drunk a drink” department:

Homeowners who modified loans are in trouble again
Monday December 8, 1:14 pm ET
By Alan Zibel, AP Real Estate Writer

Banking regulators say more than half of homeowners who modified loans are in default again

WASHINGTON (AP) — More than half of all homeowners who had their loans modified to make the payments more affordable in the first half of the year are already in default again, banking regulators said Monday.

The new data raise questions about whether government money may be better spent on creating jobs, rather than averting foreclosures, said John Reich, director of the federal Office of Thrift Supervision office at a housing industry forum sponsored by his agency.

“I do have concerns about allocating federal resources” Reich said.

(Read the rest)

I, too, have concerns about allocating federal resources, Herr Reich, but probably different ones than yours.

Mine are along the lines of the cascading bailouts to which we’ve been subjected.  Where does it end?  We can bail out the mortgagees again; we can re-restructure their loans.  And re-re-restructure.  And re-re-re-restructure.  At some point  it will become patently absurd [too late] and we’ll have to let big boys and girls take their licks like… well, like big boys and girls.

And BTW, what’s all this about “federal resources”?  Let’s call a spade a spade, gentlemen!  Let me be clear:

The gummint has no “resources” except those which it takes forcibly from its subjects.  Therefore, “federal resources” means “forcible redistribution of private resources.”

But Herr Reich seems to think it’s not theft and subsidization that’s to blame.

No, no–it’s that the money hasn’t been wasted thrown down the right hole properly redistributed.  If only gummint intervened in the right way, all this bad debt would evaporate like a bad dream in the morning sun.  [As if it were possible for the Gummint to do,] Gummint needs simply to create more jobs.  Private industry is incapable of doing this, you see [the objectionable logic goes], because capitalists are only interested in making obscene profits, not in employing people to do the work that allows them to make profits.

[The official story never explains how such profits are possible without someone working, somewhere.  Then again, it doesn't have to, in this nation of somnabulents.  The severity of the accusation suffices.]

Wake up, America.  Turn off the Wii and read a friggin’ book, for Pete’s sake.

Once Upon a Time on Wall Street…

I thought I’d let the professionals tell you a little bedtime story. Things in our economy ain’t looking so hot right now, and stand to get worse before they ever get better, especially what with all the cooks in DC sticking their fingers in the soup.

So here’s the story, told with their words.  We join our tale just as the ties that bind up the golden kingdom are starting to fray and break…

[Chapter One]

Threatened by a “financial tsunami,” the world must consider building a financial order no longer dependent on the United States, a leading Chinese state newspaper said on Wednesday.

The commentary in the overseas edition of the People’s Daily said the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc “may augur an even larger impending global ‘financial tsunami’.”

[…]

China’s central bank earlier this week cut its lending rate for the first time in six years, a move analysts said was aimed at bolstering the economy and the battered stock market.

“The eruption of the U.S. sub-prime crisis has exposed massive loopholes in the United States’ financial oversight and supervision,” writes the commentator, Shi Jianxun.

“The world urgently needs to create a diversified currency and financial system and fair and just financial order that is not dependent on the United States.”

[Chapter Two]

Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke have saved us, for now, from a market meltdown – but at the cost of allowing the folks who caused the current crisis to keep ducking reality.

In the long run, guess who gets to bear that cost?

A Conversation with John Carter — UPDATED

Turns out, he’s not actually from Mars…  Who knew?

I recently had the pleasure of contacting Mr Carter, the honorable US Representative for my Congressional district, in regards to the abhorrent levels of immigration our proud country now enjoys.  And make no mistake:  when I say, “immigration,” I mean both the legal and the illegal varieties.

The event that made this conversation both necessary and possible was the confluence of (1) a trip by the likes of none other than William T. “Bill” Gates to Washington, DC, and (2) the Mr Carter’s coming re-election bid.  I have come to realize that every time Mr Gates flies from Washington (the state) to Washington (the city) — if he’s not fending off charges of breaching antitrust laws — it’s to bemoan the  perennial dearth of “qualified” software and design engineers.

At this point in the discussion, one must be aware that when Mr Gates says “qualified,” what he in fact means is “willing to subject themselves to indentured servitude.” And of course, when he offers this gleaming opportunity to American software geeks, he runs up against a shortage of people willing to prostitute themselves out like $5 dollar whores after getting a highly technical four-plus year degree (something a younger, perhaps less savvy Bill Gates likely would have been hesitant to do, himself).

Anyhoo… I expressed my concern to the honorable Mr Carter that the H-1B levels were fine “as is,” perhaps even a bit high.  I expressed to him my further concern that perhaps the levels of immigration across the board might be a mite bit high as well.

I then suggested to this worthy that perhaps we should take a new tack on the entire immigration question:  border enforcement, deportation, and reduction in legal immigration levels (which currently exceed the “limits” by at least a factor of two).

This was Mr Carter’s response: