Tag Archives: Government waste

News

AFL-CIO union boss says that there is no budget deficit problem

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Here’s the video from Gateway Pundit.

Ooops:

I wonder how the union boss missed that graph.

And when you look at that graph remember that the Democrats controlled the House and the Senate starting in January of 2007. When things started to fall apart, and Bush didn’t have the political capital to pull out his veto pen and cut wasteful spending and bailouts.

Michele Bachmann doesn’t like unions

Anyway, here’s Michele Bachmann explaining what the 26 billion dollar union bailout will mean for the November elections. (H/T Gateway Pundit)

That’s why government should be limited. You only get to choose how to spend your money in a free market. If the government takes your money, then they get to decide how it’s spent, e.g. – on special interest groups that voted for the party in power. A dollar is either going to be spent by you on what you want – or it’s going to be spent by them on what they want. Think about it – who knows more about what to do with YOUR money – you or a politician who wants to be re-elected? The only solution is to keep government small – and only the Republicans (some of them – not all) are willing to try to do that.

News

Milwaukee teacher union fights for right to taxpayer-funded Viagra

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AP story is her. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

With the district in a financial crisis and hundreds of its members facing layoffs, the Milwaukee teachers union is taking a peculiar stand: fighting to get its taxpayer-funded Viagra back.

The union has asked a judge to order the school board to again include Pfizer Inc.’s erectile dysfunction drug and similar pills in its health insurance plans.

The filing is the latest in a two-year legal campaign in which the union has argued, so far unsuccessfully, that the board’s policy of excluding erectile dysfunction drugs discriminates against male employees. The union says Viagra, Cialis, Levitra and others are necessary treatment for “an exclusively gender-related condition.”

But lawyers for the school board say the drugs were excluded in 2005 to save money, and there is no discrimination because they are used primarily for recreational sex and not out of medical necessity.

Teacher unions are overwhelmingly Democrat.

My previous story on Viagra was about how Democrats voted in favor of subsidizing Viagra for child molesters and rapists. Democrats think that abortions and drugs to provide recreational sex are “health care”. In Canada, the government provides taxpayer-funded sex changes and in vitro fertilization because they are “human rights”. Is that the direction that the Democrats want to take us in? Who is supposed to pay for all these unnecessary goodies?

News

The stimulus bill funded a study to get monkeys high on cocaine

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From ABC News. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

The Obama administration has credited its $862 billion stimulus program with pulling the economy out of the worst recession since the Great Depression. But a new report by two Republican senators argues the stimulus is riddled with wasteful projects that do not create jobs.

The report, released by Sens. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., and John McCain, R-Ariz., highlights 100 stimulus projects that they say have “questionable goals,” are “being mismanaged or were poorly planned” and are even “costing jobs and hurting small businesses.”

The Coburn-McCain report takes issue with stimulus spending on projects like one that entailed research on how cocaine affects monkeys. The Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center was awarded $71,623 to study what the report calls, “Monkeys Getting High for Science.”

Bonnie Davis, a spokeswoman for The Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center, said the “small grant has helped protect very important research that will have significant impact on public health in regards to cocaine addiction and the issue of relapse.”

Go a little further down the list and you’ll find even bigger spending. The California Academy of Sciences is receiving nearly $1 million in stimulus funds to send researchers to the Southwest Indian Ocean Islands and East Africa to capture, photograph and analyze thousands of exotic ants.

There’s also funding for yoga and hot flashes. Researchers at Wake Forest University have received nearly $300,000 to study whether integral yoga “can be an effective method to reduce the frequency and/or severity of hot flashes” in breast cancer survivors.

This is what happens when you take money away from investors and businesses and give it to government bureaucrats to spend. Unemployment doubles compared to what it was under George W. Bush. Because money was taken from the people who create jobs and spend by people who have no experience in the private sector and no knowledge of economics.

Here’s a complete run-down on the Obama Presidency from a financial viewpoint.