“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.

Please Help American!

DEAR AMERICAN:

I NEED TO ASK YOU TO SUPPORT AN URGENT SECRET BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP WITH A TRANSFER OF FUNDS OF GREAT MAGNITUDE.

I AM MINISTRY OF THE TREASURY OF THE REPUBLIC OF AMERICA. MY COUNTRY HAS HAD CRISIS THAT HAS CAUSED THE NEED FOR LARGE TRANSFER OF FUNDS OF 800 BILLION DOLLARS US. IF YOU WOULD ASSIST ME IN THIS TRANSFER, IT WOULD BE MOST PROFITABLE TO YOU.

I AM WORKING WITH MR. PHIL GRAM, LOBBYIST FOR UBS, WHO WILL BE MY REPLACEMENT AS MINISTRY OF THE TREASURY IN JANUARY. AS A SENATOR, YOU MAY KNOW HIM AS THE LEADER OF THE AMERICAN BANKING DEREGULATION MOVEMENT IN THE 1990S. THIS TRANSACTIN IS 100% SAFE.

THIS IS A MATTER OF GREAT URGENCY. WE NEED A BLANK CHECK. WE NEED THE FUNDS AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE. WE CANNOT DIRECTLY TRANSFER THESE FUNDS IN THE NAMES OF OUR CLOSE FRIENDS BECAUSE WE ARE CONSTANTLY UNDER SURVEILLANCE. MY FAMILY LAWYER ADVISED ME THAT I SHOULD LOOK FOR A RELIABLE AND TRUSTWORTHY PERSON WHO WILL ACT AS A NEXT OF KIN SO THE FUNDS CAN BE TRANSFERRED.

PLEASE REPLY WITH ALL OF YOUR BANK ACCOUNT, IRA AND COLLEGE FUND ACCOUNT NUMBERS AND THOSE OF YOUR CHILDREN AND GRANDCHILDREN TO WALLSTREETBAILOUT@TREASURY.GOV SO THAT WE MAY TRANSFER YOUR COMMISSION FOR THIS TRANSACTION. AFTER I RECEIVE THAT INFORMATION, I WILL RESPOND WITH DETAILED INFORMATION ABOUT SAFEGUARDS THAT WILL BE USED TO PROTECT THE FUNDS.

YOURS FAITHFULLY MINISTER OF TREASURY PAULSON

[H/T Lew Rockwell]

How Do You Spell “False Dichotomy”? (Updated)

A friend at work recently sent me the following email, which I’m sure has been bouncing around the ether for years and doubtless surfaces during the home stretch of every presidential campaign cycle:

As I was talking to this little girl Catherine, the daughter of some friends, she said she wanted to be President some day.

Both of her parents, liberal Democrats, were standing there with us - and I asked Catherine – “If you were President what would be the first thing you would do?”

Catherine replied – “I would give houses to all the homeless people.”

“Wow – what a worthy goal you have there, Catherine.”  I told her,”You don’t have to wait until you’re President to help the homeless, you can come over to my house and clean up all the dog poop in my back yard and I will pay you $5 dollars. Then we can go over to the grocery store where the homeless guy hangs out, and you can give him the $5 dollars to put toward a new house.”

Catherine (who was about 4) thought that over for a second, while her mom looked at me seething, and Catherine replied, “Why doesn’t the homeless guy come over and clean up the dog poop and you can just pay him the $5 dollars?”

And I said, “Welcome to the Republican Party.”