08/25/10 by David.

The House Oversight Committee proudly states its concise mission: “The House Oversight Committee is determined to root out waste, fraud and abuse throughout the federal government.”

Fantastic.

But they need to narrow it down just a little. We don’t think it’s quite in the purview of the Federal Government to root out waste, fraud and abuse in all areas of American life. Roger Clemens has been indicted for lying to this committee. The Oversight Committee should indict itself for conducting hearings on baseball players. Even if MLB was conducting an international drug and child trafficking ring, the Oversight Committee would be responsible only for investigating how law enforcement agencies were spending/allocating resources.When a congressional committee can flatly ignore its purpose and conduct under-oath hearings of individuals for activities conducted in the context of their non-government job, every citizen can be placed under the same scrutiny. Sure, he could have invoked his right to not incriminate himself, but he isn’t being charged with controlled substance crimes. The prosecution believes Clemens lied to a congressional committee that had no right to question him.

So the moral of this story is; if ever you do something to enhance you performance at work, even if you are unlikely to be prosecuted for the act, don’t lie to people who shouldn’t be questioning you.

David

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08/25/10 by David.

Nancy Pelosi has kind-of clarified her comment on investigating the funding of people opposing the building of a mosque two blocks from where terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center complex in the name of Islam.

We have been trying for some time to get funding for just thinking to no avail. With any luck, she’ll let us know how it works. We have not seen anything that would require funding to be investigated. If you go out and ask someone if they thinks it’s a good idea to build a 15 story building to celebrate the religion invoked on 9/11 so close to ground zero that the original structure was hit by an aircraft landing gear, they say “no” and no funding is needed for the decision.

The Imam has indicated that the mosque is for building bridges. If 68% of Americans believe it is at least in poor taste and shouldn’t be built, we don’t understand how pissing off two thirds of a nation helps. It doesn’t help when the Imam has been taped blaming the United States for 9/11.

Jonah Goldberg wrote an interesting piece about anti-Islamic hate crimes. We looked into his numbers and a little more. In 2001, anti-Islamic hate crimes peaked at well under half the number of incidents aimed at Jews, then settling at about 10%. Of more interest though, the number of incidents reported as anti-Jewish has changed very little every year over the last 15 years. Perhaps we should be investigating how Jew haters have maintained funding for so long.

David

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08/24/10 by David.

When we hear people argue that some European country has socialized medical care or wage controls or command/control employment and makes it work, we immediately think; and they also have really good beer. And, that’s brilliant; we should try that here in a similar way. And because every country over there has a state of equivalent population or economic scale, that’s where it should be tried.

One of the main reasons our country was conceived in the way it was is precisely so individual states could try new things without destroying the nation if it failed. The Constitution has precious few limitations on state governments for that very reason.

Massachusetts has a variation of government health care. Fine. If they want it, let them have it. They may need to rethink how much it’s costing them though. California is facing similar budget issues as Greece and they should probably do something about it. But the point is; some ideas are better than others and on paper or in your heart are not realistic ways to test which is best. History is often a good guide, but people and attitudes do change and sometimes things should be tried in the real world of today. In America we have a huge advantage over the rest of the world, if we take advantage of it. We can test variables in states that actually want to implement ideas to see if they work. If so, other can adopt the legislation. If the concept fails when implemented in real life, only one state has to reconfigure back to the previous status quo.

The feds maintain interstate highways but if a state wants to pay for ultrahigh speed highways and have minimum speed limits of 75 mph and maximum of 150 mph, why should the feds say anything? Let them try it and see if the residents believe it’s worth the price of the road and the potential loss of life. If a state wants to ban the driving of gasoline powered vehicles on public roadways, let them.When the residents get hungry they will probably change the laws, but they should have the ability to try their dumb ideas out. If we keep letting the Federal government imposing dumb ideas on all of us, we won’t have any breathing room for the good ideas. The feds aren’t as good at getting rid of laws as they are at implementing them.

David

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08/24/10 by David.

Education is wonderful. Everyone should get some. Much like most good things, it isn’t free. So, who should pay for yours? If your answer involves another state, you don’t know the Constitution as well as you should.

There has been some traffic given to an  article about how the stimulus has cost more than the Iraq war. Well that’s like shooting fish in a barrel with dynamite. They don’t even account for the fact that the stupid Keynesian theory is costing much more in terms of the economy’s overall suffering. It did however touch on a couple of important points of comparison. Medicare and education each received more funding than the Iraq war.

People can have very defensible positions as whether going to war in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the other related expenses to the war on terror (as it’s called in Government documents).  The Department of Education should not exist according t0 the Constitution. Federal health care programs should not exist either.

If you are someone that believes that we should not be spending so much money the fighting in Iraq, please explain why the Federal government is spending more money per year on education than  the ENTIRE war on terror.

Like it or not, defense is part of the Federal Government’s job. If you don’t like our military being sent to fight in places you think we should be fighting, vote for people that agree with you. If you think the Government should be paying for health services for those in need and education, your probably right, you just need to remember that it’s the state you live in that has the Constitutional authority to do it.

David

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