Government Efficiency (via e-mail)

For those who question the efficiency of government entities...

Does anybody out there have any memory of the reason given for the establishment of the DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY... during the Carter Administration?

Anybody?

Bottom line... we've spent several hundred billion dollars in support of an agency - the reason for which not one person; or very few, who reads this can remember.

It was very simple, and at the time everybody thought it very appropriate...

The 'Department of Energy' was instituted on 4 August 1977

TO LESSEN OUR DEPENDENCE ON FOREIGN OIL.

AND NOW IT'S 2009...

32 YEARS LATER ...

AND THE BUDGET FOR THIS DEPARTMENT IS AT $24.2 BILLION A YEAR

It has

· 16,000 FEDERAL EMPLOYEES and approximately

· 100,000 CONTRACT EMPLOYEES


Ah, yes, good ole bureaucracy...

And NOW we are going to turn the Banking System, health care, auto industry (tobacco industry… ad infinitum) over to them?

Government to be thrifty on health care.

“I think what other countries show us is that the amount of money you spend on health care is not related to the quality of outcomes.” Rep. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee that is reviewing health care legislation.

Liberals don't seem to have this belief in education. Spend more is the constant mantra despite questionable outcomes and high per capita expenditures in comparison with western nations. As a warning post of the scope of spending, the nearly bankrupt CA state governemnt spends 30% of it's budget on medicaid! It's hard to imagine how the government thinks it's going to create savings, control cost or improve anything. There track record is beyond dismal. But hey, it's what the people want. Who cares if it violates the Constitution.

Return to a failed Policy

Steve Hayes exposes a serious shift in the strategy of the war on terror: the Obama administration, has ordered that terrorists captured in Afghanistan be given Miranda warnings: " [T]he Obama Justice Department has quietly ordered FBI agents to read Miranda rights to high value detainees captured and held at U.S. detention facilities in Afghanistan, according a senior Republican on the House Intelligence Committee. "The administration has decided to change the focus to law enforcement. Here's the problem. You have foreign fighters who are targeting US troops today -- foreign fighters who go to another country to kill Americans. We capture them and they're reading them their rights -- Mirandizing these foreign fighters," says Representative Mike Rogers, who recently met with military, intelligence and law enforcement officials on a fact-finding trip to Afghanistan. Rogers, a former FBI special agent and U.S. Army officer, says the Obama administration has not briefed Congress on the new policy."
It is shocking to me to imagine combining war with law enforcement activities in this way. It has never been done. It presents huge obstacles and challenges on how to effectively fight terrorism. Specifically, "It would seem the last thing we want is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed or any other al-Qaeda terrorist to remain silent. Our focus should be on preventing the next attack, not giving radical jihadists a new tactic to resist interrogation--lawyering up." The ramifications and legality of extending US legal rights to Afghanistan combatants is a major departure from history and established law.
After 9/11 the Bush Administration abandoned the Clinton policy of treating international terrorism as a law enforcement problem. The policy shift recognized the failure of the law enforcement paradigm in preventing catastrophic damage to our nation. This is a signal of change. Whether it will be a whole scale return to pre 9/11 methods remains to be seen.

Holy Crap

Hardball June 6, 2009: “Well, we were the good guys in 1984, it felt that way. It hasn’t felt that way in recent years. So Obama’s had, really, a different task We’re seen too often as the bad guys. And he he has a very different job from Reagan was all about America, and you talked about it. Obama is ‘we are above that now.’ We’re not just parochial, we’re not just chauvinistic, we’re not just provincial. We stand for something I mean in a way Obama’s standing above the country, above above the world, he’s sort of God.” Newsweek Editor Evan Thomas "praising" President Obama’s Cairo speech .

There is little that commentary can add to this quote.

There is no media bias. It's a figment of the Right's imagination...

Socialism

I was having a beer with a good friend Saturday and we started talking politics. I was lamenting the Obama health care plans and the direction our country was going. He insisted that the pendulum just swings back and forth between liberal and conservative as it should. He does not see the steady march toward socialism since FDR and the New Deal. The pendulum hasn't been getting back to liberty. The Reagan Revolution didn't halt the growth of federal government and was only to make limited role backs in certain areas. My friend is very representative of opinions I encounter.

People seem very unaware of history and the major themes and movements that operate in it. Ignorance of these facts causes the cooking frog analogy. A frog won't sit in a pot of boiling water but if you slowly turn up the heat they initially enjoy the warm water. By the time the frogs realize what is happening, it is too late.
"The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism. But under the name of 'liberalism' they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program, until one day America will be a Socialist nation, without knowing how it happened." Norman Thomas. He was a leading American socialist, pacifist, and six-time presidential candidate for the Socialist Party of America. He went on to say, "I no longer need to run as a Presidential Candidate for the Socialist Party. The Democratic Party has adopted our platform."

"The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money." ~~Margaret Thatcher Modern history show us this time after time yet the liberals press on.