(Washington Examiner) “Let’s see it,” a frustrated Sen. Jeff Sessions said on the Senate floor Monday afternoon. “Let’s bring it forward.”

By “it,” Sessions meant a Democratic proposal for a 2012 federal budget. In recent days Sessions, the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, has been asking, pushing, pleading, cajoling and begging Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to put forward a Democratic plan. So far, Reid has steadfastly refused.

That’s nothing new. The last time the Senate passed a budget was April 29, 2009, which was, if you are counting — and Jeff Sessions is — 755 days ago.

Oh, wait, my mistake, that’s annoying, that was Byron York writing last year. Let’s move to this year

(The Hill) Senate Democratic leaders on Friday said they do not intend to bring a fiscal 2013 budget up for a floor vote.

“We do not need to bring a budget to the floor this year — it’s done, we don’t need to do it,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) told reporters on Friday.

Reid and Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) argued that the debt-limit agreement in August directs spending for the next year and said Senate Appropriations Chairman Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) has already asked the heads of the subcommittees to write their appropriations bills for fiscal 2013.

Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) has said he would probably mark up a budget resolution for 2013, but Reid recently told the Hill he didn’t expect any floor action on a measure produced by the panel.

And then we have

House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), who is working on his own budget plan, tweeted Friday that Senate Democrats “?confirm they’ve given up on budgeting. What a disgrace. Reid’s refusal to budget is a recipe for crisis.?”

Ryan has said that Democrats should be embarrassed to claim the debt deal as their blueprint because it “fell far, far short of solving this country’s fiscal problems.”

“It’s been more than 1,000 days since Senate Democrats have offered a budget plan to the American people,” Jeff Sessions (Ala.), the ranking Republican on the budget committee, said in a statement. “Now, once again, the Senate’s ineffectual Democrat majority balks at the task of leadership.”

Obviously, this has to be Bush’s fault in some manner or form. I’m not sure how or why, but, definitely Bush’s fault for this complete abdication of responsibility by Harry Reid and the Senate Democrats. It’s not like that pesky Constitution says

No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time.

Technically, I suppose we could generously consider the aforementioned debt ceiling agreement to be a “consequence of appropriations,” but that would be very charitable for FY2012 and certainly does not cover Fiscal 2013. The House GOP need to make sure they go on record with a true budget, brought to the floor and passed. They’ve done that for FY2012 already. Multiple times. The Democrat controlled Senate refuses to pass one, which is quite understandable, what with the next general election coming up. They’ve decided that there is less damage in abdicating their responsibilities than in showing the American public what they intend to do with the People’s money.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.

(Washington Post) President Obama ran — and won — in 2008 on the idea of uniting the country. But, each of his first three years in office have marked historic highs in political polarization, with Democrats largely approving of him and Republicans deeply disapproving.

For 2011, Obama’s third year in office, an average of 80 percent of Democrats approved of the job he was doing in Gallup tracking polls, as compared to 12 percent of Republicans who felt the same way. That’s a 68-point partisan gap, the highest for any president’s third year in office — ever. (The previous high was George W. Bush in 2007, when he had a 59 percent difference in job approval ratings.)

In 2010, the partisan gap between how Obama was viewed by Democrats versus Republicans stood at 68 percent; in 2009, it was 65 percent. Both were the highest marks ever for a president’s second and first years in office, respectively.

It’s surely because you wing nuts refuse to buy into fundamentally changing America, and don’t want to see Obama succeed because he’s half-black. Why can’t you just admit that Obama knows better than you what is good for you and the country? Jerks.

Our guess is that Jones’ latter hypothesis is the right one — that we are simply living in an era in which Democrats dislike a Republican president (and Republicans dislike a Democratic one) even before the commander in chief has taken a single official action.

There is something to that: the bases of both sides listen to what each candidate says and what they have done, creating that opposition. There is a battle for the soul of this country, and even some of the moderates on both sides are far apart from each other. Furthermore, each base is going to immediately state that the other party’s guy just plain sucks, and can almost never give credit where credit is due.

Where do we go from here? More of the same. But, then, that’s politics. The right doesn’t want increased Central Government spending obscene amounts of taxpayer and borrowed money, while the left wants the opposite. Of course, it doesn’t help when the Left attempts to destroy their political opponents in a personal manner, becomes extremely deranged against those political opponents, and thinks the right is about “hate”, rather than being engaged in a disagreement. Larry Elder said to Chris Matthews

“It’s called a disagreement,” Elder says. “You perceive it as hatred, just like you perceive that the Republicans want people to die on gurneys, and they don’t care about illegal aliens, and all the other silly things that you’ve said. That’s hatred. That’s hatred, Chris.”

And it doesn’t help that Obama acts more as leader of the DNC rather than president of the United States, even turning the official White House website into a partisan platform. He attacks and denigrates all who disagree with him. Interestingly, the only people Bush actually went after was his conservative base during the amnesty talks.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.

The left-wing idea that it’s good for government to always wildly increase spending is dying a quick death these days. But this good sense has not made it to every state in the union yet — two disastrous states in particular; California and Illinois.

These two states have not learned the lesson about the ruinous government spending that is causing the country to teeter on the brink of bankruptcy.

Apparently, Illinois and California are vying for worst-state status. Moody’s Investment service, for instance, has rated Illinois the worst, but Standard & Poor’s says it’s California. But California has one thing that makes its fragile economic situation worse than Illinois. California’s penchant for economically ruinous ballot measures that create boondoggle programs that the taxpayers are forced to pay for is not rivaled by the common corruption endured by the citizens of Illinois.

The worst boondoggle currently forced on the people of California is the high-speed rail project that is already running billions over initial cost estimates even before the first foot of track is laid.

A damning new report from an independent panel assigned to monitor progress of California’s high-speed rail system shows just how bad this project has become. Moving forward with the project, they said, “represents an immense financial risk to the state of California.”

This report follows on the heels of recent revelations that the program’s projected costs have doubled to nearly $100 billion in just three short years since taxpayers were duped into approving the project.

A congressional oversight hearing was even held upon concerns surrounding the high-speed rail project and the news wasn’t good.

The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee hearings revealed that some of the key funding plans expected to help the California High-Speed Rail Authority to complete the project aren’t likely to pass in Congress leaving the whole financial underpinnings of the project in doubt.

At least taxpayers can take solace in the fact that there is an independent panel to provide some external oversight of the spending on the massive high-speed rail project. This means that at least taxpayers have access to information that isn’t tainted by insider conflicts and the sort of self-interested, double-dealing that we’ve seen in so many other supposedly beneficial measures.

The same cannot be said for another ballot measure boondoggle — the so-called California Cancer Research Act — slated for the June ballot. This deeply flawed measure raises taxes on Californians by nearly $1 billion per year, creating huge new bureaucracies that are supposed to last in perpetuity without any real oversight. Californians are simply asked to place their trust in a panel of six political appointees that are supposed to administer the funds. Worse, this panel’s spending decisions are completely untouchable by the Legislature, the Governor and the State Auditor for 15 years, meaning California taxpayers have no recourse at all to prevent the exact kind of reckless spending that has crippled the state in other areas.

On top of all these flaws, this measure doesn’t even contain any guarantees that the money for the research will be spent in the state! That means Californians could be digging deeper into their pockets for spending that goes to firms and institutes outside their state.

Just like a family that’s gotten in over its head in a mortgage, California needs to stop spending and dramatically reduce expenditures. Saying no to boondoggles like high-speed rail and the California Cancer Research Act are good places to start.

There has been a lot of lament by the far left in America that the Tea Party has somehow driven the Republican Party to conservative extremes. This, however, is untrue. The truth is, the American public has been trending toward conservative views for more than a decade before the Tea Party even came about.

According to Gallup, for the last three years more Americans have self-proclaimed themselves as conservatives than have claimed the moniker of moderate.

Political ideology in the U.S. held steady in 2011, with 40% of Americans continuing to describe their views as conservative, 35% as moderate, and 21% as liberal. This marks the third straight year that conservatives have outnumbered moderates, after more than a decade in which moderates mainly tied or outnumbered conservatives.

But think about this for a minute. This means that fully 75% of America is more conservative than the Democrat Party, a party that decades ago stopped being a party of centrism becoming instead a European-like, liberal party.

Gallup’s several decades of polling finds that “moderates” have been in slow decline since 1992 with Americans calling themselves “liberal” now only measuring at 21 percent. With this we see a nation that is not just center-right as many political pundits have for years claimed, but is actually trending conservative.

As to the Republican Party, it is dominated by conservatives by 71 percent, a number that has grown by nine percent since the year 2000. So it is no wonder that Republican politics has edged toward conservative ideas, its base is getting more conservative.

This all seems to bode ill for the sort of far left policies that President Obama and his comrades dearly love. In fact, one can see the progression of conservatism in America in many areas. Twenty years ago, for instance, liberals were full-throated in their criticism of the Second Amendment and aimed to ban not just handguns but all firearms. Today, with every state but one now offering some iteration of law authorizing concealed carry, anti-gun ideas are the last things Democrat politicians talk about openly. Abortion is also an issue that has trended toward the conservative point of view, though not nearly so quickly as gun issues.

Spending is also an issue that is trending toward conservative ideals. For the first time in well over 100 years the discussion in Congress is how to actually cut spending instead of merely how much to limit the growth of spending and voters are quite high on fiscal responsibility. Look at Wisconsin, for instance. 100 years ago, Wisconsin led the country in left-wing progressivism yet last year Wisconsin was among the first states in the union to vote in a Governor one of whose main promises was to scale back the undue power of government employee unions.

Certainly the country hasn’t gone far enough to the right to suit conservatives — just as the country was not far enough left in the 60s and 70s to suit liberals — but without question the United States has been drifting to the right for several decades.

So, conservatives, don’t feel self-conscious about being a conservative. After all, you are in the majority.

(CBS News) Solar panel maker Solyndra received a $528 million Energy Department loan in 2009 – and went bankrupt last year. The government’s risky investment strategy didn’t stop there, as a CBS News investigation has uncovered a pattern of cases of the government pouring your tax dollars into clean energy.

Take Beacon Power — a green energy storage company. We were surprised to learn exactly what the Energy Department knew before committing $43 million of your tax dollars.

Documents obtained by CBS News show Standard and Poor’s had confidentially given the project a dismal outlook of “CCC-plus.”

Asked whether he’d put his personal money into Beacon, economist Peter Morici replied, “Not on purpose.”

“It’s, it is a junk bond,” Morici said. “But it’s not even a good junk bond. It’s well below investment grade.”

Was the Energy Department investing tax dollars in something that’s not even a good junk bond? Morici says yes.

“This level of bond has about a 70 percent chance of failing in the long term,” he said.

Here’s where it gets even better

CBS News counted 12 clean energy companies that are having trouble after collectively being approved for more than $6.5 billion in federal assistance. Five have filed for bankruptcy: The junk bond-rated Beacon, Evergreen Solar, SpectraWatt, AES’ subsidiary Eastern Energy and Solyndra.

In terms of the Central Government budget, $6.5 billion is chump change. For the 53% who do pay federal taxes, this is an obscene use of our hard earned money to prop up companies that are bound to fail in the name of making Obama’s politically motivated “green” energy initiative look good, at least in the short term, as well as hook up Democrat campaign donors and backers.

The long term shame here is that this type of malfeasance damages the future of clean energy. I believe that most of us can agree that these “alternative” energy sources are part of the future. They aren’t ready for prime time. Not yet. Not even close. Wasting taxpayer money on doomed and mostly worthless ventures will certainly erode any near term future investments in these types of companies, even ones that are probably going to be winners.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.

(Fox News) Once again, going green has taxpayers seeing red. This time however, billions in federal subsidies for electric vehicles are going those who need them the least: the 1 percent.

According to the CEO of General Motors, the average annual income of buyers of the Chevy Volt is $170,000. Those who buy the luxury electric Fisker Karma or Tesla roadster earn more than $250,000 a year. Yet every wealthy buyer receives a hefty handout from Uncle Sam, adding more than $7,500 to the federal debt for every car sold.

When all the federal and state subsidies to General Motors and its Volt suppliers are totaled, Hohman estimates each Volt sold costs taxpayers as much as $250,000.

“If you’re wealthy enough to afford one of these electric automobiles more power to you,” but Hohman says the handouts and tax breaks simply transfer wealth from the poor and middle class to corporations and the rich who can afford cars that cost as much as a small home.

Doesn’t that make you feel great? Obama can play the class warfare card all he wants, but his policies have tended to help the 1%, of which Obama is part of. And his policies especially help the 1%ers who are campaign donors. And, while I support newer technologies that will provide us (eventually) with cleaner, cheaper, and more abundant power and vehicles, using money earned by hard working taxpayers to provide silly vehicles like the Chevy Sloth to people who want a status car is idiotic and deplorable.

Fortunately, there are plenty of plans to continue to provide the 1%ers with more free taxpayer money. In Raleigh, the city has built 29 electric vehicle charging stations, provided at taxpayer expense. The electricity is also free for the EV owners, paid for by the taxpayers. Supposedly, they will eventually charge for the usage.

In California, they will charge $2-$3 per charge, at a taxpayer cost of $1.3 million from a grant to build the stations.

In Detroit, electric cars and hybrids are flooding the Detroit auto show, meaning taxpayers will further fund the lifestyles of the rich. Remember, the Prius was a status vehicle early on, and has morphed into a usable vehicle. There are many usable hybrids out there, including some SUVs, like the Escape and the Highlander. But, then, hybrids can travel more than 50 miles at a clip, and they can use the air conditioning and heat. Until EVs can be purchased by regular people and take people on long trips, regular people will continue to buy gas vehicles that get great mileage.

(Photo from Political Clown Parade)

(Fox News) School districts and their supporters around the US have launched a wave of lawsuits asking courts to order more spending on public education, contending they face new pressures as states cut billions of dollars of funding while adding more rigorous educational standards.

About half of the school districts in Texas have sued the state since the legislature cut more than $5 billion from school budgets last year, citing fiscal pressures.

School-funding suits also are pending in California, Florida and Kansas, among other states. The suits generally claim schools lack the resources to provide the level of education required by state constitutions.

Critics of such lawsuits — and states being sued — say it is the prerogative of legislatures to decide how much states should spend on education.

Perhaps The People should start suing the Government to stop spending so damned much of the money The People work hard to earn.

And perhaps the schools should learn to live within their means. Spending more of the appropriations on the classroom instead of the administrative offices would be a good start. Perhaps the power of the public sector unions should be pared back so that incompetent teachers can be terminated. Perhaps the pay system should be based on merit, rather than seniority. Perhaps tenure could be done away with. Perhaps they should start teaching subjects, instead of sociology, political leanings, and ways to increase feeling good.

There’s the old Benjamin Franklin quote “When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.” I wonder what he would say about one government entity suing another government entity for more money forcibly taken from private citizens.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.

(The Hill) House Budget Committee Ranking Member Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) last week criticized Republicans for pushing for further cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the 2012 spending bill, and said those cuts seriously undermine what he said is the government’s role in providing clean air and water.

“I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Americans across the political spectrum want clean air and clean water, and they are depending on their government to provide it to them,” Van Hollen said. “While some in other party might think this is good politics, it is terrible policy for the American people,” he said of the spending cuts.

Said cuts are minimal in reality

Under the 2012 spending bill, H.R. 2055, the total EPA budget is $8.4 billion, $233 million less than fiscal year 2011 levels. The GOP notes that EPA funding was cut $1.8 billion in calendar year 2011.

It’s not about clean air, water, and land, which are noble causes. The creation of the EPA was, in my mind, a good idea. Unfortunately, they have had massive mission creep, they invent regulations and issues, they are unresponsive when it comes to their economy destroying self created regulations, and, really, they need to learn to live within their means, just like the rest of us. Perhaps we could cut the pay of all the EPA employees to pay for the cuts.

But, really, Van Hollen has highlighted what the Lefty Statists really want: the American People dependent on The Government, they want the people to look towards the government for everything. This gives more power to the government and to the people who work for it. No longer would the government be responsible to the people, but, in charge of the people, rather like kindergarten teachers.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.

(Politico) Watch out incumbents: Only 17 percent of Americans say they are satisfied with the way things are going in the United States in 2011, the second lowest annual average ever, a new Gallup poll Thursday shows.

Since Gallup began asking the question gauging satisfaction in the country in 1979, the annual average was lower only in 2008 at 15 percent.

And which Party controlled the purse strings in 2008? Democrats.

Twenty-six percent named the economy in general, 25 percent mentioned and issue of unemployment and jobs, 16 percent chose dissatisfaction with the government and politicians while 12 percent said the biggest problem was the federal budget deficit.

Now, why are people so darned negative? It couldn’t possibly be the record deficits, record (and rising) debt, high and stagnant unemployment, large amounts of citizens who have given up on the job market, rising real prices, high fuel costs, a government that wastes taxpayers money and mortgages the future of our descendents to China (which also pays for the expansion of China’s military), debt payments that will soon be larger than our military budget, low consumer confidence, a president that is unable to lead, and spends most of his time campaigning, vacationing, or playing golf, and a government that is incapable of addressing the serious problems facing this country. Those are the ones right off the top of my head.

And who is the President now? Hey, Bush would have been blamed for all of this. The buck stops at the Resolute Desk Presidential Golf Cart.

But, to be fair, it was 11% back in September. So, Obama’s US satisfaction rate has rebounded from “Holy Sh*t, that’s terrible!” to “What the hell is this chump doing?”

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.

(Fox News) Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn on Tuesday released his annual “Wastebook” highlighting what he’s labeled some of the government’s most wasteful spending items, including $113,000 for a video game preservation center and $765,000 to subsidize “pancakes for yuppies” in Washington.

Coburn, a Republican who is known around Washington as “Dr. No” for his opposition to excess spending, said in a press release Tuesday that his “Wastebook 2011″ details the “most egregious ways your taxpayer dollars were wasted” — items he claims total more than $6.5 billion in “unnecessary” spending.

Coburn’s statement includes

“Video games, robot dragons, Christmas trees, and magic museums. This is not a Christmas wish list, these are just some of the ways the federal government spent your tax dollars. Over the past 12 months, politicians argued, debated and lamented about how to reign in the federal government’s out of control spending. All the while, Washington was on a shopping binge, spending money we do not have on things we do not absolutely need. Instead of cutting wasteful spending, nearly $2.5 billion was added each day in 2011 to our national debt, which now exceeds $15 trillion,” Dr. Coburn said.

A few choice bits of waste Coburn highlights

• $75,000 to promote awareness about the role Michigan plays in producing Christmas trees & poinsettias.
• $15.3 million for one of the infamous Bridges to Nowhere in Alaska.
• $113,227 for video game preservation center in New York.
• $550,000 for a documentary about how rock music contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union.
• $48,700 for 2nd annual Hawaii Chocolate Festival, to promote Hawaii’s chocolate industry.
• $350,000 to support an International Art Exhibition in Venice, Italy.
• $10 million for a remake of “Sesame Street” for Pakistan.
• $35 million allocated for political party conventions in 2012.
• $765,828 to subsidize “pancakes for yuppies” in the nation’s capital.
• $764,825 to study how college students use mobile devices for social networking.

That’s what he highlighted. Digging into the report itself, we also find

• $120 million in benefits for dead federal employees
• $492,005 to study whether or not to trust Tweets
• $742,907 grant to Montana State University to research the use of targeted sheep grazing to control weeds
• $50,000 for cowboy poetry
• $5.2 million for the Steamboat Overlook Interpretive Center
• $592,527 to study feces throwing in Occupiers chimps
• $74,470 – The Treehouse Museum Spends Taxpayer Dollars to Teach the Art of Puppetry
• $6,279 for snow cone makers for emergency situations

Gotta stop there, I could keep going on and on with the list. And some might say “sheesh, come on, it was only $6k for the snow cone makers.” OK, let’s see you spend your own money on them. Not such a pleasant purchase now, is it? Your significant other, children, parents, friends, would excoriate you and call you a fool, right? Why should the federal government wasting your taxpayer money be treated any differently?

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.