Tag Archives: Deficit

News

GM laying off 1300 workers due to low Chevy Volt sales

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From the Washington Examiner.

Excerpt:

General Motors Co. announced the temporary suspension of Chevrolet Volt production and the layoffs of 1300 employees, as the company is cutting Volt manufacturing to meet lower-than-expected demand for the electric cars.

“Even with sales up in February over January, we are still seeking to align our production with demand,” GM spokesman Chris Lee said. The car company had hoped to sell 45,000 Chevy Volts in America this year, according to the Detroit News, but has only sold about 1,626 over the first two months of 2012.

“GM blamed the lack of sales in January on “exaggerated” media reports and the federal government’s investigation into Volt batteries catching fire, which officially began in November and ended Jan. 21,” the Ann Arbor (Mich.) News reported.

The laid-off employees will be rehired April 23rd, when GM resumes production of the Volt.

I find lots of wonderful stories like this one on the Bad Blue conservative news aggregator. I recommend bookmarking them.

News

Fraud and waste in government’s program to distribute “free” cell phones

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From CBS Atlanta. (H/T Wes)

Excerpt:

Georgians pay the federal government more than $262 million a year in mandatory universal service charges. That’s the hidden fee you pay on your cell phone bill every single month.

That fund is supposed to help the government pay for free phones for the poor.

But CBS Atlanta News found multiple phones being given away to people who already had a free phone, and to people who don’t need them or even want them. And the more phones these companies give away, the more money you pay.

[…]”Get your free government cell phones today, sign up today, get your free phone today,” a Life Wireless contractor yelled out the door of his car.

The pitch the salesman is making is for people to get something for nothing – a free cell phone. In some cases, they receive the phones whether they need them or not.

“I signed up for two already, I got like two of them,” one woman said.

The woman was in line to get her third free phone. In some cases, the people lining up for free phones admitted they already had three or four government-supported phones.

[…]But the bigger problem is that the FCC has no database where companies can check if a person has received one, two, three or even four cell phones from various companies. All someone has to do is show they are on government assistance, show their I.D. and they can get a free phone.

This is nothing but wealth distribution – an effort to equalize life outcomes for all regardless of prudence, thrift and hard work.

News

New government report finds $400 billion dollars of waste and duplication

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A new Government Accountability Office report uncovers massive government waste.

Excerpt:

The government could save tens of billions of dollars each year if redundant and duplicative programs were cut, according to a report released by the Government Accountability Office on Tuesday.

The GAO report examines programs and services that could be streamlined to increase efficiency of government and save money. It looked at areas of where it found either duplication or overlap of services — when “two or more agencies or programs are engaged in the same activities or provide the same services to the same beneficiaries — and fragmentation, when “more than one federal agency (or more than one organization with an agency) is involved in the same broad national interest.” Fragmentation often amounts to an overlap.

Here are some examples of the $400 billion of wasteful spending and duplication.

Excerpt:

This year, GAO identified 32 new areas of duplication and 19 additional areas of waste and inefficiency. The report cites duplication in almost a thousand individual programs, costing taxpayers over $300 billion per year. This is on top of more than $100 billion identified in last year’s report.

Examples include:

  • 37 uncoordinated EPA laboratories and 94 “green building” programs for which costs cannot be determined because “information agencies provided was incomplete and unreliable.”
  • $736 million spent on 14 different diesel emissions programs and federal funding for 55 surface freight transportation programs.
  • 160 various housing assistance programs at a cost of $170 billion annually.

But that’s not the only way for the government to waste money… they can give it to green energy companies that go bankrupt!

Excerpt:

Abound Solar Inc., which received a $400 million U.S. loan guarantee to build two factories, shut down production and fired 180 people after panel prices fell by half last year.

Abound stopped making its first-generation solar panels and will refit its manufacturing lines to produce more efficient products, the Loveland, Colorado-based company said yesterday in a statement.

The move is a response to the same forces that drove Solyndra LLC into bankruptcy after it received a $535 million loan guarantee from the same U.S. Energy Department program, said Pavel Molchanov, an analyst at Raymond James & Associates Inc. in Houston.

You can read this article to see how Abound Solar was connected to wealthy Democrat party contributors.