Now Illinois corruption has gone nationwide!

Corruption in Illinois Costs Each Family $109 as Reform Stalls

Researchers at the University of Illinois-Chicago tallied the price of corruption to state taxpayers: at least $500 million a year. Based on prosecution costs and estimates that 5 percent of state contracts go to the politically connected, that equals $109 per family. The total is enough to pay the average salary for 8,214 public school teachers.

The university’s May 13 report found that during the past four decades, graft convictions of elected officials or their cronies averaged three per month. Illinois ranked 18th per capita for the number of convictions on federal public- corruption charges from 1998 through 2007, according to an analysis by USA Today.

Now the Illinois political machine is running the entire country.

Waxman knows the talking points but not the actual content

Lets hope Obama doesn't decide to start printing money again

Fed’s Plosser Says Inflation to Increase, Warns of Complacency

Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia President Charles Plosser said prices may rise 2.5 percent in 2011, a rate well above central bankers’ preferred range, and cautioned against complacency on inflation.

“The economy may be at greater risk of inflation than the conventional wisdom indicates,” Plosser said in a speech yesterday in New York. “While inflation expectations appear to remain anchored, we should not become sanguine about our credibility. It can be easily lost.”

Paid Vacation Act?

Alan Grayson to introduce Paid Vacation Act

Rep. Alan Grayson was standing in the middle of Disney World when it hit him: What Americans really need is a week of paid vacation.

So on Thursday, the Florida Democrat will introduce the Paid Vacation Act — legislation that would be the first to make paid vacation time a requirement under federal law.

The bill would require companies with more than 100 employees to offer a week of paid vacation for both full-time and part-time employees after they’ve put in a year on the job. Three years after the effective date of the law, those same companies would be required to provide two weeks of paid vacation, and companies with 50 or more employees would have to provide one week.

The idea: More vacation will stimulate the economy through fewer sick days, better productivity and happier employees.

I don't know if I should laugh or cry. Welcome to France 2.0

I'm jealous he could find that much ammo

Police: Man said 30,000 bullets were for target practice

Keni Garcia told police he intended to use the 30,000 bullets they found in his car and home for target practice.

That is hard to believe, the prosecutor at Garcia's arraignment said, because if he were to fire a gun for eight hours a day, it would take weeks for him to use all of it.

Garcia, who allegedly bought thousands of rounds of ammunition and had 10,000 bullets in his car when he was stopped by police Thursday, was ordered held on $500,000 cash bail yesterday.

Garcia is charged with three counts of possession of a high-capacity firearm, illegal possession of ammunition and illegal storage of a firearm. His case was continued until June 12.

Thats what you get for living in a yankee nanny state.

Holland said at Garcia's arraignment that a "joint effort" by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and state police found that Garcia had previously bought 20,000 rounds of ammunition in New Hampshire.

Keeping track of ammo purchases are you?

Rand Paul forms exploratory committee for 2010 U.S. Senate in Kentucky

Official website also launched tonight at http://www.randpaul2010.com/

Not sure why he chose her show but glad to see he is raising money. Bunning is obviously holding back to give Grayson a chance to fundraise. If Senator McConnell wants Grayson in the Senate so bad maybe he could retire as well. If anything Bunning has a better voting record than McConnell. Senator McConnell certainly did not mind deficit spending during the Bush administration but seems to have suddenly tried to convert to being a fiscal conservative. I'm not buying that and I doubt anyone else is either.

Maybe Obama should check his credit score

U.S. credit rating at risk: former agency chief

The United States is at risk of losing its triple-A credit rating unless it starts putting its finances in order, a former head of the agency in charge of fiscal accountability said in the Financial Times on Wednesday.

David Walker, former director of the Government Accountability Office, cited a warning from Moody's Investors Service nearly two years ago about ballooning healthcare and social security costs.

"Signs are abound that we are in even worse shape now, and that confidence in America's ability to gain control of its finances is eroding," the former comptroller general and current chief executive of Peter G. Peterson Foundation, wrote to the FT.

Maybe this guy can help:

It was a bad idea when McCain suggested it

Senators weigh tax hikes to pay for health care

WASHINGTON – Senators are considering limiting — but not eliminating — the tax-free status of employer-provided health benefits to help pay for President Barack Obama's plan to provide coverage to 50 million uninsured Americans.

Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., said Tuesday that there are no easy options. Senators began grappling with how to finance guaranteed coverage, a cornerstone of Obama's plan to overhaul the health care system. Independent experts put the costs at about $1.5 trillion over 10 years.

Living the good life on Medicare fraud

Medicare Fraudster Said He Could Rip Off Government Millions in Just Months

"It's faster and easier than selling drugs."
Fake medical equipment vendors bill the government for taxpayer dollars.

Those are the words of a convict, once a Miami drug dealer, who left the street life to participate in a scheme to make even bigger money: Medicare fraud.

And it worked. In seven years, he estimates he made about $8 million.

Lets nationalize all healthcare and see how much these guys came rip off from this already incompetent billing system.

16 year old held for 2 months under Patriot Act

Mom says Patriot Act stripped son of due process

Oxford, N.C. —
But according to the United States government, the tenth-grade home-schooler is being held on a criminal complaint that he made a bomb threat from his home on the night of Feb. 15.

Around 10 p.m. on March 5, Lundeby said, armed FBI agents along with three local law enforcement officers stormed her home looking for her son. They handcuffed him and presented her with a search warrant.

Ashton now sits in a juvenile facility in South Bend, Ind. His mother has had little access to him since his arrest. She has gone to her state representatives as well as attorneys, seeking assistance, but, she said, there is nothing she can do.

Well I sure feel safer now.

Chrysler stiffs American tax payers for $7 Billion

Chrysler won't repay bailout money

An administration official confirms that a $4 billion bridge loan and $3.2 billion in bankruptcy financing won't be paid back by Chrysler following bankruptcy.

Well no surprise there really is there?

I have a better idea: Boycott Government Motors

I ran across this article: Liberals, Get Patriotic and Ditch the Volvo

It looks like we'll have domestic car companies to kick around for a while longer. So here's a modest proposal for liberal Democrats: At least think about buying American.

I have seen this Obama quote in several articles and it chaps my ass each time.

On Thursday, announcing the Chrysler bankruptcy, the president made an explicit request. "If you are considering buying a car," he said, "I hope it will be an American car. "

So I have a better idea. Real conservatives who detest this unconstitutional bailout of the automakers should boycott GM and Chrysler. That's right make them fail by refusing to buy the garbage they produce. If you want to buy an American car you can look through this list:

Non Big 3 automakers with manufacturing operations in United States

Just a stones throw from me you can find the locally built Toyota Tundra, Sienna, Sequoia, Camry, Solara, Venza, Avalon, and Highlander. Those are American made cars there Mr President. Maybe by American made what he meant to say was UAW made.

Thats about right

Obama to Secured Creditors: Drop Dead

The fate of Chrysler and its workers pale in comparison to the wrecking ball that would be taken to economic order if bankruptcy judge Arthur Gonzalez approves the administration’s plan to give Chrysler’s secured creditors the shaft. And what prize will we-the-people get in return? A doomed third-rate car company majority owned by its militant union run by Italian management building congressionally designed “green” cars no one wants to buy financed by taxpayers into perpetuity because no private investor in their right mind will touch the company with a ten foot pole. Is this supposed to be economic policy or comic opera?

The strategy will work better after Obama starts putting the squeeze on the oil companies to drive up gas prices again. Otherwise is anybody really going to buy a crappy green car from GM or Chrysler/Fiat?

Nail in the coffin of GM and Chrysler

UAW and Obama Motors will own GM and Chrysler. Its not rocket science to see that our govt cannot run anything and that the UAW has been sucking the life out of the Big 3 forever.

I like how Obama blasts hedge funds as Chrysler files for bankruptcy for simply trying to collect as much money possible for their shareholders from the loans. Apparently it is wrong somehow to collect what you are owed. The investors are going to be soaked not once but twice as they get back very little of their investment and then see their tax dollars wasted to support the automakers.

Can't wait to see who GM and Chrysler borrow from next after this move. UAW better enjoy the govt tit while they can because I think the next President will no longer deem them too big to fail.

Census GPS mapping flap

Its making the blog rounds like it was a new idea but has actually been planned for some time a simple Google search reveals:

Census Bureau Adopts GPS to Find American Homes

July 31, 2006 · Two-and-a-half years from now, in early 2009, the Census Bureau plans to send an army of 100,000 temporary workers down every street and dusty, dirt road in America. They will be armed with handheld GPS devices.

Robert LaMacchia, head of the Census Bureau's geography division, says they'll capture the latitude and longitude of the front door of every house, apartment and improvised shelter they find.

"We will actually knock on doors and look for hidden housing units," he says. "We will find converted garages; from the outside, it may not look like anybody lives there."

But census workers will add each dwelling, legal or not, to the Census Bureau's Master Address File.

Recent proposed budget cuts have put part of this plan in jeopardy. But if Congress restores the money, the census will end up with the geographic coordinates — accurate to within 10 feet — for about 110 million residences.

But the Census Bureau can't, by law, share that list with anyone, even local governments. LaMacchia says the information has to be treated as confidential. Otherwise, people might lie, and the census wouldn't be accurate.

But of course after they collect that data the law can be changed.

Private Companies Push for Data

Pressure is growing to change the law and make this information available. Demand for geographic data is booming.

Private companies would love to get their hands on the Census Bureau's data. Web sites like Mapquest.com or maps.google.com, usually show addresses within the correct city block, but they will point to the correct house less than half the time.

Don Cooke, an executive from the mapping company TeleAtlas, says the Census Bureau's database would immediately solve that problem, and he'd like to use it.

"The laws basically say the intellectual property that's generated by the government belongs to us citizens, so I'd like to get it," he says. "Because I don't want to spend the money to go out and compile it!"

Of course the Census workers cars will be plainly marked with ACORN and Obama stickers.

Are the Democrats that attended the Tea Party offended by their Speaker?

House Democrat Leaders: Tea Partiers Are Racist, Nazi, Gun Nuts

But in an interview on Fox TV in San Francisco, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) chalked up the GOP grass-roots effort as “AstroTurf.”

“This initiative is funded by the high end; we call it AstroTurf, it's not really a grass-roots movement. It's AstroTurf by some of the wealthiest people in America to keep the focus on tax cuts for the rich instead of for the great middle class,” Pelosi said.

Other House Democratic leaders took a different tack: One senior aide has been circulating a document to the media that debunks the effort as one driven by corporate lobbyists and attended by neo-Nazis...

In addition, the tea parties are “not really all about average citizens,” the document continues, saying neo-Nazis, militias, secessionists and racists are attending them. The tea parties are also not peaceful, since reporters in Cincinnati had to seek “police protection” during one of the events, it states.

Is your Speaker out of touch with her voters?

Personally I think she is out of touch with reality.

Small town Kentucky Tea Party

Madisonville's T.E.A. Party

Sounds like there were as many fed up Democrats as there were Republicans. So much for the theory that this was orchestrated by the GOP and FOX news.

Only the Hopkins County Attorney showed up? Where was the Mayor and County Judge Executive during all this?

Dr. Rand Paul at Bowling Green KY Tea Party

Related media coverage: Bowling Green Tea Party Draws Hundreds

My sign from the Lima Ohio Tea Party

Yeah my art sucks but the best I could do on short notice. I have seen mentioned various places that this is a Right wing or Ron Paul driven event. That was not the case where I was. The people are fed up with wasteful spending, high taxes, and the increasing debt from both parties.

Lima Ohio Tea Party Protest

A few pictures I took at the Lima Ohio Tea Party today at the Town Square. Not sure on turn out but for 50 degrees in misting rain I think it was pretty good.