Late this afternoon the NAACP passed a resolution calling on all people – including tea party leaders – to condemn racism within the tea party movement.

Passed on the fourth day of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s annual convention in Kansas City, the resolution also urged people to oppose what it said was the tea party’s drive “to push our country back to the pre-civil rights era.”

From the NAACP convention, on Wednesday:

The Rev. Jesse Jackson told reporters in Kansas City that the focus on the tea party was a “diversion” from more important issues, while NAACP president Ben Jealous said the resolution was just a small part of a bigger agenda and blamed the media for focusing too much on the tea party.

…

An NAACP spokesman said the exact words of the tea party resolution were not available Wednesday evening, and may not be available until this October, when the NAACP board meets to consider ratifying the language.

But spokesman Chris Fleming said, “We’re not condemning the tea party at all…We’re condemning some racist elements within the movement.”

You’re condemning the tea party a little, if you mention the movement only to say it’s populated by racists. If I make a 40 minute speech and take 14 seconds to say, “And we should keep an eye on Columbus, Ohio, because there are some scary racists in Columbus,” it doesn’t take a Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton level of intellect to see that as critical of Columbus.

This is a simple story – the NAACP resorted to debunked nonsense for a particularly noxious bit of race-baiting, and they got called on it.

A defiant Israel enforced its 3-year-old blockade of Hamas-ruled Gaza on Saturday, with naval commandos swiftly commandeering a Gaza-bound aid vessel carrying an Irish Nobel laureate and other activists and forcing it to head to an Israeli port instead.

The bloodless takeover stood in marked contrast to a deadly raid of another Gaza aid ship this week. However, it was unlikely to halt snowballing international outrage and demands that Israel lift or at least loosen the devastating closure that confines 1.5 million Palestinians to a small sliver of land and only allows in basic humanitarian goods.

Israel’s blockade is the only defense of a nation beset on all sides by enemies who want to push them into the sea. Wouldn’t it be more intuitive to label the continued “aid vessel” traffic as “defiant,” instead of the Israeli government? Hamas - the elected governing party of Gaza – is dedicated to Israel’s destruction. The useful idiots crying about Israel’s blockade have no excuse save ignorance for siding with genocidal maniacs, but they do so proudly.

As for those truly suffering in Gaza – how is it that Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Hamas escape blame? Why is Israel the only nation demonized for the suffering of people used as pawns in an ongoing effort to destroy the Jewish state? To read the Associated Press take on the situation, you’d think enforcing a blockade was worse than regularly launching rockets at Israeli civilians. Don’t worry, the AP mentions that pesky “rockets and mortars” issue… in paragraph 28.

Charles Krauthammer’s weekend article at National Review provides invaluable context. A highlight that I found more than a little shocking:

Oh, but weren’t the Gaza-bound ships on a mission of humanitarian relief? No. Otherwise they would have accepted Israel’s offer to bring their supplies to an Israeli port, be inspected for military materiel, and have the rest trucked by Israel into Gaza – as every week 10,000 tons of food, medicine, and other humanitarian supplies are sent by Israel to Gaza.

The plight of Gaza’s people can be blamed on many parties. Israel may be on the list, but they’re definitely not at the top. Nonetheless, the Associated Press continues reporting as if Israel is the root cause of every problem in the Middle East. Who will clueless Westerners blame if Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran (but I repeat myself) have their way?

The great thing about Mark Steyn, if you’ve not read him before, is the way he can make a really good joke out of the most depressing social insight. Look no further than the title of this week’s article, “Beating swords into welfare cheques.” The quote, in full:

Absolved from having to pay for their own defence, Continentals, like Canadians, beat their swords into welfare cheques, and erected vast cradle-to-grave social entitlements. Even under the U.S. security umbrella, they proved unsustainable. Why? Because Europeans stopped breeding. And, even with unprecedented levels of immigration, they’ve been unable to halt population decline.

Steyn discusses growing evidence for his argument, such as birth rates in Germany – the supposed economic powerhouse that’s going to save Europe from its financial woes. He also relates how, with Greece burning (both literally and figuratively), some of the “respectable” publications here in the States are warming up to opinions previously dismissed as far-right xenophobia.

My favorite quote from Steyn’s editorial, which you ought to read in its entirety:

How fair thou hast been – but only for the moment, and the moment is passing. Europe’s economic crisis is a mere symptom of its existential crisis: what is life for? What gives it meaning? Post-Christian, post-national, post-modern Europe has no answer to that question, and so it has 30-year-old students and 50-year-old retirees, and wonders why the small band of workers in between them can’t make the math add up.

I’ve been enjoying a five-part Uncommon Knowledge interview with Mark Steyn, hosted by Peter Robinson at the Hoover Institution. The clips are, like everything featuring Steyn, very relevant and very interesting. Last week the complete interview was released as a single YouTube video, which is 38 minutes long but all kinds of worth it:

Robinson and Steyn’s discussion centers on America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It, which is available in paperback now and which I could not recommend more emphatically. Steyn’s mastery of historic facts and current events is mixed with just enough funny anecdotes to keep his writing from being the most depressing stuff on earth… which is no small feat given much of his subject matter!

America Alone (like the interview linked here) is packed with facts that establish the effects of mass immigration on European nations, and warns of how different classically liberal democratic states will be after imbalanced birth rates take their toll. It’s a subject that gets more important each day, with Greece leading the European nanny-states off the fiscal waterfall and American media & politicians refusing to mention Islamic extremism as a possible motive for a Pakistani’s attempted New York City bombing.

Check out the interview, and buy the book! Because I said so, and that’s… what counts?

With employment and the economy in general down for the past year and a half, I wanted to see how the smallest of government big-shots were rewarding themselves relative to 2007 and 2008. Despite widespread populist railing against private industry salaries and bonuses, I expected to see pay increases for the insulated local bureaucrats our tax dollars keep employed. Given some of the things I’ve read recently, I was pleasantly surprised by the data.

A helpful CPA in the Franklin County Auditor’s office responded to my public records request promptly, with salary data on all Franklin County employees from 2007-2010. Download the Excel file if you’d like to check my numbers or do some analysis of your own. I’ll list hourly rates instead of annual salaries, as 2009 contained 27 pay periods instead of the usual 26. Let’s start with the highest branch on the Franklin County tree, shall we?

Commissioner’s Office

Commendably, the two highest-paid administrators in the Commissioner’s office received no pay raises this year. That makes 2008′s 6% increases in their six-figure salaries a little easier to swallow.

Department of Job and Family Services

Job and Family Services (which you’ll notice is under the Commissioner’s office on the county org chart) is more complicated because of new hires, departures, and title changes. I should also note that David Migliore, who was Chief Deputy in the Clerk of Courts office while I was employed there from 2005-2007, is hardly my favorite person. I spent my last 6 months – as a Programmer Analyst 1 doing Programmer Analyst 2 work – waiting to hear back about a pay raise request that Migliore ignored literally until the day I resigned.

⁽¹⁾ – Drop in Director’s pay from 2008-2009 reflects a change from Douglas E. Lumpkin to David E. Migliore. I don’t know who decided Migliore should be making around $130,000, but it’s nice that he started at a lower salary than the outgoing Director and didn’t get a raise in 2010.

⁽²⁾ – In 2008 the Department of Job & Family Services added a new Assistant Director, Anthony S. Trotman. The 2009 data list Trotman as a second Director, salaried at $62.37 – equivalent to a 27.86% raise. Trotman isn’t listed at all for 2010, but the additional Assistant Director position remains.

As I said, this is more complicated than the Commissioner’s Office, where the two highest-paid employees were the same guys with the same titles from 2007-2010. I won’t pretend to understand why a second Assistant Director was added to the Department of Job and Family Services in 2008, but I’ll assume Trotman served as some sort of Interim Director in 2009.

Clerk of Courts

⁽³⁾ – In 2008, Maryellen O’Shaughnessy was elected Clerk of Courts. When David Migliore departed for the Department of Job and Family Services, O’Shaughnessy brought in Mary Austin Palmer – and immediately gave her a huge raise in a poor economy. Either Mary Austin Palmer is some kind of management wiz, or Maryellen O’Shaughnessy doesn’t think much of the taxpayers’ money. See (4).

⁽⁴⁾ – Yes, I skipped down the list of Clerk’s office employees; this observation is too ridiculous to exclude. In 2007, before he departed for Columbus City Council, Hearcel Craig was paid $25.49 an hour as the Clerk’s Director of Customer Service. The position remained unfilled (to no ill effect, so far as I could tell) until David E. Black was hired. In 2009, Black’s salary as Director of Customer Service was $24.96. In 2010, Black’s title changed to Director of Business Operations and his salary increased by nearly 50%. Why, all of a sudden, is it necessary for the Franklin County Clerk of Courts to employ a Director of Business Operations? Isn’t that what the Chief Deputy is for? How does O’Shaughnessy justify creating a $77,625.60 business operations role while also paying her Chief Deputy $95,409.60?

Skimming through the other Franklin County salary information, it looks like our highly-paid bureaucrats are at least politically intelligent enough not to give themselves raises when unemployment in the Columbus metro area is somewhere between 9 and 10 percent. Except for the Clerk of Courts office, which seems to have suffered from John O’Grady’s move to the Commissioner’s office.

Happy Tax Freedom Day!

[Update: Additional follow-up on the Clerk of Courts available here and here.]

Kilroy said the health-care measures, such as extending coverage to the uninsured and eliminating insurance restrictions based on pre-existing conditions, will “improve the lives of all Americans.”

“It is paid for and will lower the deficit,” Kilroy said. “What is not to like about that?

“This is the beta version. We’re going to keep working.”

And let’s not forget Sherrod Brown’s contribution to this conversation:

Brown called the health-care reforms the most important cause since civil rights in the 1960s.

“The main reason people are living longer is because of activists and progressives getting the government to fight for things that matter to them,” the senator said.

Representative Kilroy describes as “paid for” a bill that uses 10 years of taxes, fines, and mythical cuts to pay for 6 years of outlays. Senator Brown literally thinks we owe our lives to the government and to the politicians dedicated to its limitless expansion. When our taxes go even higher, remember that Kilroy and Brown were shoveling more coal as the Democrats’ entitlement train went off a cliff. More handouts! More debt! More big-government rhetoric with no connection to reality!

Read those quotes again and let ‘em sink in. We elected these people. We probably should not have.

The six-member California Division of Occupational Safety and Health standards board voted unanimously on the advice of staff to create an advisory committee to report back on whether to change state law to require safe-sex protections for adult-film actors and actresses.

This is an article from the LA Times, not The Onion. I’m sure. I double-checked.

Should porn “actors” use protection when “performing” their “acts?” Probably, unless they’re in the mood for some sexually transmitted diseases. This is obvious even to a science-hatin’ Christian with a running total of zero “partners.” But, the sort of thing that’s clear to a loser in Ohio is cause for a new advisory committee in California, where unionized state workers have run the government into the ground even without a committee to study whether it’s wise to have copious amounts of unprotected sex.

“We believe the state of California has a responsibility to regulate these workplaces as they do every other workplace,” AIDS Healthcare Foundation President Michael Weinstein told the board.

The state of California has a responsibility to regulate everything, as far as the state of California is concerned. Small wonder the vote to form a committee was unanimous. Imagine being asked this question: Should we form a new committee that will help justify the existence of your cushy job? Not many people would answer “No,” which is why the size of government trends in only one direction.

A former porn star points out that they don’t go into this business due to an abundance of brains:

“You think you’re safe but you’re not; in between scenes, you don’t know what other actors are doing,” James told the board.

While filming a porno, it’s difficult to be sure whether the people you’re having promiscuous sex with for money might be making unhealthy decisions off camera. The nanny-staters want you to know your concerns will be tended to, and as they venture into uncharted regulatory waters it’s clear that even a stupid law like mandated STD testing for the porn industry means a convoluted, money-burning process.

The Senate health bill creates dozens of federal boards, councils, and committees. Think these will be staffed entirely by health care and insurance professionals who know what’s best? Certainly only rational, fiscally sound decisions will be made by these new government employees. Decisions like the rational, fiscally sound decisions Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid make on a daily basis.

Congressman Boehner shared a graph last November displaying the mess of bureaucracy created by the House version of the bill as it stood at the time. Add one, subtract one, change a name here and there – this is what the leftist elites running Washington want. Countless new boards with the power to form committees with the power to impose regulations. All of their salaries coming out of our paychecks. Few of them producing anything of value.

Call. Your. Representatives.

It is difficult to judge, amid one of the most intense political battles in recent memory, whether Obama is moving the needle toward greater acceptance of his health-care ambitions. But his reassurances about Medicare and other issues found support among skeptics in Strongsville.

“I was against it. I feel more positive for it now. Hopeful,” said Mary Jo O’Toole, another local retiree, after Obama spoke at a community center here.

Forgive me if I suggest the possibility that the sort of Ohioan who attends an Obama rally and believes his platitudes after more than a year of audaciously broken campaign promises was never much of a skeptic.

Still, not everyone has a firm opinion, and many admit they have a limited understanding of the details. Voters often say they are not sure whom to believe, offering a version of a comment by Patrick O’Toole, Mary Jo’s husband: “You hear this from one side and that from the other side, and you don’t know what’s right.”

We cannot afford the Democrats’ health care plan. We can’t. If you’re an optimist or have had few interactions with elected officials, I can understand leftist policies sounding good. Until you compare them to existing entitlements (bankrupt) or ask how we’re going to pay for them (taxes, taxes, and more taxes). President Obama saying we can get something for nothing doesn’t suddenly make it possible to get something for nothing.

…Obama’s task is tough. After Patrick O’Toole thought about it overnight, he had second thoughts. “He’s a great salesman, but I still would’ve walked out of the showroom without a car,” he said.

I think the car salesman analogy is appropriate – unfortunately, not all Americans are as reasonable as Mr. O’Toole. When Rep. Pelosi, Senator Reid, and President Obama sell a car, they go right to the flagship model; and don’t worry about the price! They’ll arrange for the fat cats in the corporate office to foot your bill.

Mary Jo O’Toole summarizes the problem for small-government proponents:

“He sounded convincing.”

Ricochet’s a great listen if you’re into that sort of thing. It’s the perfect accompaniment to a game of Filler 2 on Kongregate.com! Or to a commute, if you have one of those Empee-three Players and a car that knows how to talk to it…

Seeing no prospect of a bipartisan agreement on health care, Congressional Democrats said Friday that they would make another effort to pass sweeping health care legislation on their own.

The Grand Old “Party of No” came prepared to a production that Obama’s people thought would make the same idiotic scam look less idiotic (or at least new), but don’t expect the left to retreat from their weak rhetorical position! It’s interesting that the Republican ideas which burst from the ether yesterday have already been deemed incompatible with the Pelosi & Reid definition of bipartisanship. Almost… almost as if the outcome was predetermined.

Throughout 2009 voters grew increasingly disgusted by the dishonest accounting and shameless favoritism Republicans criticized in the House and Senate bills… and Democrats, naturally, blamed the Republicans. Since Boehner et al didn’t have union-boss level access to the legislative process, the only way to do this was by drawing attention away from the awful legislation and towards the angry old white guys fighting Progress^TM.

Then Scott Brown took their seat in Massachusetts, and the leftists in control of Congress were suddenly not so in control. It was time for Obama to dust off a few old saws about bipartisanship, repeat them each a thousand times, and schedule a TV appearance wherein his rapier wit would disarm Republican opposition. That sounded like a good idea to someone, I guess?

Since that didn’t buy them any credibility, it’s RAMMIN’ TIME!

Ms. Pelosi described the steps she had in mind, saying: “What is the substance? That’s what we will be putting together, and we didn’t want to do that before we could hear from our Republican colleagues yesterday. Secondly, what is the Senate able to do with a simple majority? And then we will act upon that.

“I believe that we have good prospects for passing legislation,” said Ms. Pelosi, of California.

I believe you have got to lay off the recreational drugs, Nancy. With all the sugar in the world, it’d take far smoother operators than yourself and Harry Reid to make this medicine go down.

It is certain that Tehran will get its nukes, and very soon. This is the biggest abdication of responsibility by the Western powers since the 1930s. It is far worse than Pakistan going nuclear, which, after all, was just another thing the CIA failed to see coming. In this case, the slow-motion nuclearization conducted in full view and through years of tortuous diplomatic charades and endlessly rescheduled looming deadlines is not just a victory for Iran but a decisive defeat for the United States. It confirms the Islamo-Sino-Russo-everybody-else diagnosis of Washington as a hollow superpower that no longer has the will or sense of purpose to enforce the global order.

Sure, there are people who insist the Iranian mullahs are saving their oil for later in order to focus a huge portion of their crappy economy on nuclear power. This is based, apparently, on little other than the cute way Iran follows every insane Ahmadinejad rant about nuclear enrichment with a speech by some diplomat about their peaceful intentions.

Oh, right, like the guy in a $4,00-dollar suit is gonna nuke anyone. COME ON!

So long as there are a few isolationist libertarians and pantywaist liberals insisting Iran’s just trying to keep up with the Joneses and not trying to incinerate the Joneses, Obama and the State Department seem content to mix the occasional harsh word in with their flowery diplomatic rhetoric. That would be totally fine, if dictatorships always meant the peaceful things they said and were only kidding about the violent stuff.

But when you’ve authorized successful mob hits on Salman Rushdie’s publishers and translators, when you’ve blown up Jewish community centers in Buenos Aires, when you’ve acted extraterritorially to the full extent of your abilities for 30 years, it seems prudent for the rest of us to assume that when your abilities go nuclear, you’ll be acting to an even fuller extent.

Read the full Steyn article, and remember that President Obama is busy trying to resurrect a leftist health insurance plan that a majority of Americans don’t want and zero Americans can afford. Foreign policy? He’s already not George W. Bush; what do you people want?!

President Obama is going to Florida on Thursday to reveal how his administration will divvy up $8 billion in high-speed rail funding, but the good news will whistle all the way up to the Buckeye State, say Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, and Rep Mary Jo Kilroy, D-Columbus.

Passenger rail is wonderful, because it gets citizens into government subsidized trains and out of those terrible, Gaia-killing automobiles. Amtrak has a proven, storied history and should be grown with taxpayer money at every opportunity… except that it doesn’t, and it shouldn’t:

According to a U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) report in December 2004, Amtrak is by far the most heavily subsidized mode of travel in the U.S. Between its huge federal subsidies and its minuscule share of the intercity passenger market (less than 1 percent), Amtrak costs $210.31 per passenger per 1,000 miles, compared to $4.66 for intercity buses and $6.18 for commercial airlines in FY 2002.

Ok, so Amtrak makes a business of suckling at the public teat. But it’s for a good cause! Think of how many citizens will benefit from the several hundred million in pocket change our elected betters want to throw at this project!

An Amtrak study last fall said about 478,000 passengers would ride medium-speed trains connecting Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton and Cincinnati. The line would require about $17 million a year in subsides.

Based on the Amtrak estimate, a number of people less than 5% of Ohio’s population would use the system. 478,000 / 11,485,910 = 4.16%. Senator Sherrod Brown could not be happier with his ability to bring home the bacon:

“This is some of the best news we have had in a long time,” Brown said. “If I put my ear down to the rail I think I hear a train coming.”

If I put my ear down to the rail I think I hear a senator giddy about blowing taxpayer funds on something 95% of Ohioans won’t use. I’m sure it will create enough jobs to be worth $17,000,000 a year in subsidies, because liberals always carefully justify every expenditure.

Brown contends the federal stimulus spending on rail is evidence that the Obama administration wants to spend more on the nation’s infrastructure needs and less on “tax cuts for the rich and the war in Iraq.”

This is extremely encouraging. Put photos of his posterior, a hole in the ground, and a viable business plan in front of the Senator, and he can’t identify a single thing. He can, however, puke up some liberal boilerplate about that horrible George W. Bush cutting taxes and killing terrorists.

You always double down on an eleven.

And:

“The same thing that swept Scott Brown into office swept me into office,” Obama said. “People are angry, and they’re frustrated. Not just because of what’s happened in the last year or two years, but what’s happened over the last eight years.“

Massachusetts elected a Republican senator for the first time in decades, after a year of backroom deals and hapless foreign policy from Democrats. Clearly it’s a sign that people still haven’t stopped fuming about that doggone George W. Bush! Of all the ways President Obama could have responded to Scott Brown’s victory, this is the dumbest.

But wait, there’s more! Obama, who has subjected all the galaxy to a nearly constant barrage of his face and voice, needs to communicate more so we understand the things he’s doing for us. To help with that effort, the White House is bringing on Obama ’08 campaign manager David Plouffe. It’ll be just like old times! It’s not at all ridiculous for a leftist empty suit to renew his focus on marketing rather than shifting towards the electorate.

My favorite commentary on President Obama’s reaction to the loss of Ted Kennedy’s seat comes courtesy of Mark Steyn, for the Orange County Register:

Got it. People are so angry and frustrated at George W. Bush that they’re voting for Republicans. In Massachusetts. Boy, I can’t wait for that 159th interview.

Presumably, the president isn’t stupid enough actually to believe what he said. But it’s dispiriting to discover he’s stupid enough to think we’re stupid enough to believe it.

Maybe this touchy whining is a knee-jerk reaction, to be smoothed over by a sleek, centrist State of the Union address on Wednesday. Or maybe I’m a bigger lightweight than I realized, and I’m completely soused after the single High Life I had with dinner.

Hot Air has some thoughts on a Politico story wherein the White House tacks a characteristically arrogant course. If there were any chance the national implications of Brown’s victory could have been overlooked, Obama went ahead and thrashed those over the weekend with a halfhearted last-minute speech. What now for the left’s health care, cap & tax, open borders, and more-rights-for-terrorists endeavors? Nancy Pelosi isn’t worried about the current project:

“Let’s remove all doubt,” Ms. Pelosi said. “We will have health care one way or another.”

“One way or another” is a reassuring promise (threat?), coming from the most transparent Congress in history. While the White House gets serious about digging themselves deeper and Nancy Pelosi talks like the Cheshire Cat on crystal meth, prominent lefty Arianna Huffington mopes about Obama’s failures:

On the eve of the first anniversary of President Obama’s inauguration, it’s become painfully obvious that elected officials are not going to save us. The 2008 election was all about “Hope.” But Hope is simply not cutting it.

No kidding. See, I have never bothered to read anything from the Huffington Post before, so at this point I was optimistic that Arianna might come to a sane conclusion, if not one I’d agree with. Hah!

One year later, wracked with conflict and discord, and battered by petty grievances, false promises, and worn out dogmas, we stand on the verge of passing a giant boon to health insurance companies and calling it “reform.”

The reason we are given? What else: the votes just aren’t there for a real reform bill.

That’s where Hope 2.0 comes in. If the votes aren’t there, the people need to create them. Just like King did. They need to build a movement. And to make that happen, we need to adopt another of the great lessons of Dr. King’s life: elevating the role empathy must play in our society.

Arianna Huffington is sad that the Progressives in Congress are ruining her government health care dreams by catering to special interests (e.g., groups lobbying furiously to secure their place in a rigged system). Somehow she thinks a majority of Americans agree that unaffordable state-run health care is a right we must force down Washington’s throat, which indicates she doesn’t talk to many people who live outside her head. Even among public option supporters, how many would be cheering for government intervention if Congress were remotely honest about the costs?

Here’s hoping the John McCains and Lindsey Grahams of the GOP don’t swoop in on gilded bipartisan unicorns to help the leftists salvage their shell game. Congratulations to Senator Brown (R-MA)! “R-MA” – now there’s something new.

“My determination to achieve this goal is only heightened when I see reports of massive profits and obscene bonuses at some of the very firms who owe their continued existence to the American people,” Obama said at the White House. “We want our money back, and we’re going to get it.”

Yeah! Stick it to those money-lending SOBs!

Even companies that didn’t receive TARP funds would face the fee. The administration is using the argument that that [Typo in original - Ed.] every major financial firm in the U.S. is a beneficiary of government steps to bolster the industry.

“The tax will penalize the firms who repaid TARP with interest and those who never even accepted it to begin with,” said Scott Talbott, senior vice president of government affairs for the Financial Services Roundtable, which represents large banks. “It will decrease the availability of loans and limit economic recovery.”

This fat cat clearly knows nothing about economic recovery – that’s what the stimulus bill is for! I’m as disgusted by huge banking exec bonuses as the next guy, and I’m sure some percentage of those executives are genuine scumbags. However, if our options are industry-leading scum or government scum, I’m much more comfortable with the former making the business decisions. Please keep in mind that the Democrats’ go-to guy for financial policy is Barney Frank, a terrible little man who redefines hypocrisy anew each day.

This photo has been altered, but only slightly.

While many banks repaid the money, “in almost every case, they engaged in practices that made this all necessary,” Frank said. “Every one of those institutions was engaged in the kind of activity that led to the problem.”

And how could I forget the favoritism, a vital ingredient of intelligent governance? This is actually another UAW bailout, masquerading as populism:

General Motors Co. and Chrysler Group LLC, which also got aid from the bailout fund, would be exempt, as would smaller banks. As such, the fee will leave the country’s largest financial firms to cover losses from the government’s bailout of the automakers.

The levy also won’t be assessed on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-supported companies seized by regulators in 2008. The administration concluded charging Fannie and Freddie the fee wouldn’t be in taxpayers’ interest.

Emphasis mine. Lenders and the government made a long series of bad decisions. Some private companies screwed up so horribly that they had to come to Uncle Sam, hat in hand. Surprise! There were strings attached to the money they borrowed – and, mysteriously, strings attached for those who didn’t need a bailout. No strings, of course, for the UAW or leftist pet banks.

A parting word from White House press secretary Robert Gibbs. He always knows what to say to cheer us up!

“Americans have a choice in where they bank,” Gibbs said, suggesting that consumers who face higher fees move their money “to any number of small and community banks throughout this country that somehow got by all these years playing by the rules.”

The messages, while mixed, are shockingly clear. Private banks will be punished with a new fee, even though it wasn’t part of the TARP agreement; even if they’ve repaid their TARP loans; even if they weren’t involved in TARP at all. This fee’s costs will not be passed on to customers, because President Obama says so. But if the fees are passed on to customers, screw those banks, because they didn’t play by “the rules” according to Barney Frank and the White House. Companies run by the government will, of course, be exempt, because companies run by the government are good.

Together now: Private bad. Government good.

Lowe’s has some info on their website, but nothing very useful…

Each state will run its own rebate program and will be free to select which ENERGY STAR appliances qualify along with the rebate amounts. Plus, any state or local utility district rebates will be added to the federal Cash for Appliances rebate, which could add up to even greater savings for you!

States will submit their application for funding along with their appliance recycling plan to the Department of Energy (DOE) by October 15, 2009. The DOE plans to have funds available by November 30, 2009, so start planning and selecting your new energy-efficient appliance from Lowe’s today.

So at this point we know there’s federal money set aside from that oh-so-successful stimulus bill, but the rebate amounts, processes, and eligible products will vary by state. Or in other words, we know nothing. To the Dispatch! They provided a helpful update in a Consumer 10 report from 12/27:

This month, the agency approved Ohio’s proposal for using its share of the funds: about $11 million.

The state’s program won’t be finalized until the first quarter of 2010, but some details are available:

Ohio will give almost 90,000 rebates to residents who buy qualified refrigerators, dishwashers, washing machines and water heaters from Ohio retailers.

To be eligible for a rebate, an appliance must bear the federal government’s Energy Star label.

Sounds like a decent deal, if you’re in the market for new appliances – rebates for Ohioans will range from $100 to $250. I’m assuming my appliances have been around for as long as my kitchen, which would make them all 14 years old. Will I be “lucky” enough for something to break during this latest ingenious government plan, or will what I’ve got keep on tickin’ for a few more years?

I’d love if we could keep more of our money, instead of being invited into the shifting miasma of loopholes that high earners must constantly navigate. What will the government reward me for buying or selling this year? How can I take advantage of a maximum number of government programs that are paid for with my money, whether I use them or not? These are questions we should never need to ask, but here we are…

How do you feel, Senator, about the fact that Nelson’s support for the health care bill is being purchased at cost to Ohio taxpayers? Will you ask Senator Reid to also dedicate federal funds to the cost of Ohio’s increased Medicaid rolls?

I’m a conservative from rural Ohio, and I’m sure there are few policy positions you and I would agree on. But let’s be frank, there are a lot of Ohioans between us on the political spectrum who will wonder why you’ve supported a massive expansion of D.C.’s power that demolishes the state budget. Why commit political suicide for something voters oppose that also compromises your own wishes? Ask Senator Reid to give you all a Christmas break, and see what Ohioans have to say about this bill.

You won’t have Bob Taft and George Bush to whack around like pinatas in the next election, Senator. This is something you really ought to keep in mind unless you’d like to serve just one term.

I noticed the Senator’s office is in the Hart Senate Office Building… no relation. T-minus 10 days before an aide sends some boilerplate response thanking me for my stupid opinion.

The amendment also includes a special extension solely for Nebraska: increased federal contributions to the cost of an expansion of Medicaid, the state-federal insurance program for the poor.

You know Medicaid. Medicaid is that program whose cost to the state of Ohio went from $2.6 billion in 1997 to $4.8 billion in 2006. Medicaid is that program the Democrats in both the House and Senate have chosen to model their horrendous legislation after. Medicaid is one of the several ways President Obama, Senator Reid, and Representative Pelosi have tried to hide the real costs of Obamacare.

But, I’m a conservative. I love war and hate poor people, so I can’t be trusted when I say a new or expanded entitlement program costs too much. How about The Columbus Dispatch?

As Ohio officials try to close an $850 million budget hole, the key U.S. Senate health-care overhaul package could cost Ohio $922 million in additional Medicaid spending in the plan’s first five years.

A shame for the states, but this is about centralizing control in Washington. A bill opposed by the public has to be jammed through before senators are exposed to the disgust of their subjects – and if it takes a little more of our money to get the 60th vote on board, that money is gone. The Washington Post has a quote from Senator Nelson that could easily be applied to the entire health “reform” debacle and attributed to Harry Reid…

“I know this is hard for some of my colleagues to accept and I appreciate their right to disagree,” Nelson told reporters at the Capitol, of the many changes made at his behest. “But I would not have voted for this bill without these provisions.”

My fellow Americans: you don’t want these things, but I do. You can disagree, but you might as well get used to footing the bill. If Harry Reid can’t even cobble together a bill 58 Democrats and 2 Independents will vote to the floor without blatant payoffs, what does that say about his ability to regulate the health insurance and care of 308 million people?

Hope. Change. Bull. Sorry, but if you believed a word of it in 2008 you were out of your gourd. If you believe any of it now, you’re… further out of your gourd, I guess? Wonder if he’ll sign the result of this:

WASHINGTON – The Democratic-controlled Senate on Saturday cleared away a Republican filibuster of a huge end-of-year spending bill that rewards most federal agencies with generous budget boosts.

The $1.1 trillion measure combines much of the year’s unfinished budget work – only a $626 billion Pentagon spending measure would remain – into a 1,000-plus-page spending bill that would give the Education Department, the State Department, the Department of Health and Human Services and others increases far exceeding inflation.

I will happily agree that congressmen of all shapes, sizes, and party affiliations funnel too much of our money to groups that support them. But when we’re talking about bureaucracy that stifles production and penalizes the most successful through both regulation and the higher taxes required to fund it, which party spends more? And where is President Obama in all this? He promoted himself as the voice of “smarter government” and bipartisanship; as someone who would “trim the fat” and halt runaway spending. With help from a Democrat-controlled Congress, that’s going great:

Maybe I’m too harsh on President Obama: he is changing some things. Victor Davis Hanson, at National Review, wrote a great article to that effect this week. A highlight -

Foreign policy? It is still “Bush did it,” not reflection on his own rookie errors.

The economy? Jobs saved by borrowing are better metrics than the old unemployment statistics. Blame Bush again, tinker with the stats, and print more money.

Small businesses? Employers are still “they,” who must and will pay higher income and payroll taxes, and higher premiums for medical insurance. They won’t be thanked for their greater contributions; rather, they owe a sort of penance for doing well and creating the nation’s wealth.

Energy? President Obama is on his way to Copenhagen — oblivious to Climategate. He ignores the paradoxes of a planet the last decade slighting cooling, when it is supposed to be radically heating. And he does not worry at all about the effects of new green taxes on the country — when the productive classes may soon be paying 65 percent of their incomes in state and federal taxes and increased insurance premiums.

It seems like the Progressives running our country are on a perpetual acid trip, reliving the hippie glory days of the ’60s and ’70s and oblivious to the world around them. Harry! We’re really sorry, but if you want to be sprayed by a fire hose or repressed by the government, you may have to move to Iran. You could burn your bra and chant “Hell no, we won’t go!” while smoking pot with some of the president’s Weather Underground crew… but gosh, that would be almost as crazy as what you’re actually doing on a regular basis.

Hope, change, and bipartisan fun times were promised by the Obama campaign, and anyone who saw through that b.s. probably supported slavery. Now the slavery-supporting, lady-hating freedom-ruiners lurking around the U.S. of A. are trying to stop Harry Reid from giving all Americans (legal or otherwise) the free health care and taxpayer subsidized abortions they’ve always wanted. We might as well be living in caves, treating women like property, and slaughtering anyone different from ourselves! But then, regions of Africa and the Middle East already have that stuff nailed down.

In other news, Israeli intelligence reports the Iranians are now capable of producing a nuclear bomb. But I’m sure they won’t! It’s not as if George W. Bush is in charge of the United States anymore.