Communism/socialism: the home of the revered despot

The Best Revolution Money Can Buy

By Joel Hirst

"This time they're being more careful," said an old friend of mine as we sat in the White House Pizzeria on a lazy, sunny Sunday afternoon in northern Nicaragua. "The times have changed, they can't be so radical." The large billboard hanging just outside, emblazoned with a portrait of a smiling President Daniel Ortega, seemed to emphasize this. "Socialism, Solidarity, Christianity" is the theme of Ortega's second Sandinista revolution. Gone are the days of feared military checkpoints brandishing the harsh red and black flag of the atheistic FSLN - the color of the new revolution is a pretty pink.

Nevertheless, since Ortega took office in 2007, dark clouds have appeared ominously on the horizon. He orchestrated a fraudulent municipal election in 2008. He has closed more than twenty radio stations and taken over several television stations. A new trinity of "national security laws" passed in December of 2010 threaten to extend partisan control over what had become a professional, credible and trustworthy army and police. Most importantly, he has manipulated the judiciary to allow him to seek re-election this year despite constitutional term limits. The FSLN party is increasingly active at the base, playing the usual electoral games to stilt this year's results in their favor. "We will do whatever it takes to not hand over power," said Tomas Borge, a Sandinista activist who directed the feared security forces in the 1980s.

Yet despite these very obvious concerns, I was struck more by a different aspect of Ortega's revolution. I expected this revolution to smell of blood. Ortega's new socialist revolution instead smells of something else - money. "This is the hotel that Ortega bought," said my taxi driver as we drove by the Seminole in the center of Managua. "Along with this came several cattle ranches ... He paid $12 million for them. He also bought TV Channel 8, for eight million ..." and the list went on.

It seems that, far from the fiery revolutionary of the 1980s, a reincarnated Ortega is instead following the path of another Nicaraguan dictator - Anastasio Somoza. Daniel Ortega the "Caudillo" has become, arguably, the wealthiest man in the country.

The funding for Ortega's capitalist ventures has come from an unlikely source - President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. Immediately upon assuming office in 2007, Ortega announced his intention to join the Bolivarian Alliance of the Americas (ALBA) - a Venezuela-sponsored ideological group of eight countries. As part of ALBA, Venezuelan oil conglomerate PDVSA sells gas to PETRONIC, Nicaragua's state owned petroleum company. The gas is sold at market rate in the PETRONIC gas stations, however Nicaragua only reimburses Venezuela for 50 percent of value of the gas.

The remaining 50 percent is funneled into a private business named ALBANISA (ALBA of Nicaragua, S.A.), which is controlled by Daniel Ortega. ALBANISA has come to include many companies, including electricity, transport, tourism and others. While visiting Somoto, in the north, I stumbled across an office for ALBALINISA, the ALBANISA agriculture company. This office sells Venezuelan fertilizer for 25 percent less than market value. Payment is made to the Venezuelan government in black beans and cattle - much of which comes from Ortega's own increasing landholdings. The ALBALINISA office itself was guarded by ALBA Security, a newly formed guard company employing former Nicaraguan soldiers.

Due to the lack of fiscal transparency, it is difficult to ascertain the extent of President Ortega's private wealth. However, according to official statistics Venezuela accounts for 40 percent of Foreign Direct Investment and will provide Ortega directly with an estimated $400,000,000 in 2011 (on top of a similar amount in 2010). Funding from Venezuela has totaled over one billion dollars in the last several years.

"The benefit of this funding," a university professor told me, "is that it does not go through the National Assembly where the parliamentarians can block it (...) from this money we get our monthly teacher bonuses, $25 a month which could disappear if President Ortega loses power." This stipend is part of the off-budget support that Ortega gives to almost 150,000 civil servants across the country.

"I received my cow and chickens," I was later told by the president of a local Citizen's Power Committee, a parallel governance structure of dubious legality run by Rosario Murillo, President Ortega's wife. "And they're bringing electricity right to my house. Other governments didn't do this, they let the local mayor manage things and we never saw any benefits. Through these committees we can hold the government accountable."

Across the board, the sentiment is that public services and outreach to the poorest has improved under the Ortega regime. It is unclear how much of ALBANISA's profits remain in Ortega's private bank accounts to fund his ongoing reach into Nicaragua's economy and how much are pumped into social programs - however the latter is enough to make an impact in the minds of the poor.

Nevertheless, Nicaraguans remain wary of their leaders. While Ortega retains a hard-line minority, less than 30 percent of the electorate voted for him in 2006. Perhaps with this in mind, his "pink" revolution has succeeded in providing very real benefits to a large number of Nicaraguans - and in true "Caudillo" fashion, he has tied this aid directly to himself. Meanwhile, the opposition continues to be tone-deaf and bereft of any real ideas. Given these realities, it might be tempting for the United States to take a back seat on the issue of Nicaragua's leadership - after all, there doesn't seem to be any real crisis here, right?

I would warn against this. The United States must continue to support a free and democratic Nicaragua, while continuing to insist upon open elections. Instead of timidity, let us act with resolution and courage of conviction before Ortega's pretty, pink revolution inevitably turns to a darker shade of red.

This is why the left is trying to run obscuring polls on Obamacare

For 50 Straight Weeks, the Majority Has Supported Repeal

Use the link to see the videos

‘Waiting for Superman’ Exposes Human Cost of Collective Bargaining on America’s Schoolchildren

With what’s happening today in Wisconsin we’re hearing a lot about civil rights and workers rightsand all those buzz words the Left uses to make something wicked sound noble. The idea that collective bargaining is some kind of right is beyond absurd. I’ve been in the workforce for going on 30 years now and have never had the right to collective bargain and up until the aristocratic public worker class rose up in my home state to hold onto their government-enforced aristocracy, I had no idea what collective bargaining was. Essentially, “collective bargaining” allows a union to have a say, not only in wages and benefits, but also in company policy, everything from how many hours an employee will work each week to, incredibly, the procedures necessary for termination.

If you want to see first hand a heartbreaking and absolutely frightening look at the human toll of giving these corrupt teachers unions collective bargaining rights, I urge you again to see what is the most important film of last year, the unfairly Oscar-snubbed (for political reasons) ”Waiting for Superman.” Written and directed by Davis Guggenheim, the proud, union-loving liberal who won an Oscar for his Global Warming documentary “An Inconvenient Truth,” not only is this searing look at the devastation unions have brought down on our children an exceptionally well produced film, but it’s also a very personal work from a filmmaker who probably had a Road to Damascus moment. Guggenheim went in likely expecting to discover a public school system under assault by budget cuts and underpaid teachers. What he found was the complete opposite. That he told the truth, that he bucked the Leftist narrative and put what’s best for America’s children above his own preconceived notions and then picked a fight with one of the most ruthless unions in America, is to this Oscar winner’s eternal credit.

Examining the failed public school system through the eyes of a number of young children trapped in or headed for what Guggenheim calls “failure factories,” “Waiting for Superman” informs us that education funding is simply not the problem. In fact, when indexed for inflation, education funding has doubled over the last few decades and in return our schools have only gotten worse. The problem is, pure and simple, bad teachers who can’t be fired and the corrupt unions that use “collective bargaining” to make it nearly impossible to fire them. For example, from the New York Times:

“Waiting for ‘Superman” is filled with disturbing statistics. In Illinois, where one in 57 doctors loses his medical license and one in 97 lawyers loses his law license, only one in 2,500 teachers loses his credentials, because of union rules. The film briefly visits a “rubber room” in New York City where idle teachers accused of misconduct wait months and sometimes years for hearings while drawing full salaries at an annual cost of $65 million.

That is the price of collective bargaining. Awful teachers protected by tenure who can’t be terminated. Furthermore, one bad teacher can ruin a child, can set them back to a point where they can never catch up and are likely to drop out due to frustration. In other words, collective bargaining is ruining lives, millions of them all over the country. Here are more examples of this collective bargaining travesty:

In the end, Guggenheim identifies two problems. The first is the conflicting agendas of federal, state and local authorities and the torturous bureaucracy they combine to create. The second is teachers unions that manipulate collective bargaining and politics to stifle reforms and protect blatantly incompetent members.

The latter problem puts progressives and other supporters of traditional public schools in an awful bind. Public schools, as inculcators of common values and a means to help children develop their minds and advance in society, are near and dear to their hearts. But then again so are unions, who supposedly are needed to protect teachers from the twin evils of politicized school boards and the ravages of the marketplace.

And finally, the real kicker:

But as Guggenheim himself observes, many of the obstacles that impede public education in the largest cities also affect schools in the suburbs. That includes interference by teachers unions, though things are not as far along; Superman recounts how school officials in Washington, D.C., have to follow 23 steps to fire a bad teacher. In Adrian, Mich., for example, the process is only 13 steps, but of those only five of those are mandated by the state’s teacher tenure law. At least another half-dozen are creations of the collective bargaining agreement.

For obvious reasons, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is focused on the effect collective bargaining has on his State’s budget — which is profound and laid out in detail in this excellent Wall Street Journal piece. But that’s just one reason these godawful public unions must be broken and discarded. ”Waiting for Superman” exposes a much harsher cost, the price this immoral “right” has on generations of America’s children all to the benefit of a selfish few afflicted with a disease we call entitlement. There are plenty of good teachers out there, but they are lying down with union dogs.

“Waiting for Superman” is a moral piece of righteous filmmaking more relevant today than when it was released last year. Davis Guggenheim deserves our respect for his apostasy and with any luck the next generation of America’s school children will owe him and a number of exceptional Republican governors their thanks.

Part of the rationale behind Big Hollywood’s is due to our belief that movies matter, that they can affect change. My fingers are crossed that that is exactly the case for this one, which is why I continue to spread its gospel.

Taxes and reality

NH saves Vermont: Tax relief for everyone!

No Charlie, it's the taxpayers who are the slaves of the Democrat-union money laundering

Rep. Rangel: Abolishing unions' collective bargaining 'close to slavery'

I'm all for licensing bikes

Bicycle license plates could be coming

An infuriating story

Illegal Immigrant and convicted killer, but set free

Ruling lets killer out while awaiting deportation

BOSTON (FOX 25 / MyFoxBoston.com) - After 16-year-old Ashton Cline-McMurray was brutally murdered, his mother took some comfort in hearing that at least some of her son's killers would never walk American streets again.

It's the reason why Sandra Hutchinson agreed with letting the purported gang members, several of them illegal immigrants, plead guilty to lesser charges. She says the prosecutor reassured her that, after their criminal sentences were finished, those in the country illegally would be deported.

"They said that they would never set foot, basically on American soil again. In other words, they'd be like in jail until they got sent back," Hutchinson said.

It's no wonder Hutchinson wanted her son's killers gone. Her son was disabled with cerebral palsy when he was attacked while walking home from a football game in Revere.

"They stabbed him. They beat him. They beat him with rungs out of stairs. They beat him with a golf club," Hutchinson said. "They stabbed him through his heart a couple of times. And through his lung. They stabbed him in his abdomen. He didn't have a chance, really."

The four purported gang members who killed her son pleaded guilty to lesser charges, from manslaughter to second degree murder, meaning they didn't serve the mandatory life sentence without parole that comes with a murder conviction.

That allowed one of the defendants, Loeun Heng, to be released by the Massachusetts Parole Board last March. The illegal immigrant was immediately taken into custody by the U.S. Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

But instead of being deported to his native Cambodia, Heng is back on American streets.

"It's crazy," Hutchinson said. "They're just letting them back out there to do it to somebody else."

Heng is free in America thanks to a little-known Supreme Court decision from 2001, Zadvydas v. Davis, which forbids federal immigration authorities from detaining illegal immigrants who have been ordered deported for more than six months.

The Supreme Court carved out a few exceptions for terrorism and other cases, but in the vast majority of cases, illegal immigrants must be released after 180 days if they aren't deported, often because their home countries aren't cooperating.

"The government is releasing him because it has no choice," said Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies for the Center for Immigration Studies, which generally supports tougher enforcement on immigration matters. "We can't deport people unless their home country will take them back," Vaughan said.

"Do you think this puts the public at risk?" asked FOX Undercover reporter Mike Beaudet.

"Oh absolutely it puts the public at risk because ICE is forced to release people that it would like to remove but it can't and it's no longer allowed to hold them in detention," Vaughan replied.

Vaughan estimates that thousands of illegal immigrants have been released nationwide, and probably dozens have been let go in New England.

But ICE wouldn't say just how many illegal immigrants had been released back onto American streets because of Zadvydas.

ICE also wouldn't comment on Heng's case, but said in a statement that the agency makes every effort to deport illegal immigrants within the 180-day limit imposed by the court.

"Our ability to remove individuals is dependent upon the responsiveness of foreign countries," ICE spokesman Chuck Jackson said. "If we are unable to make a convincing argument that the removal will occur within the reasonable foreseeable future, ICE must release the alien."

Hutchinson is thinking about her son's other killers, and wondering if they'll all be back on the street soon, too.

"I just want everyone in the neighborhood to know that they're all going to be all back. And I don't think that's right," she said.

Two other men convicted of the crime remain in prison. Both are believed to be illegal immigrants, so the government will attempt to deport them when they're released.

The fourth man convicted is already free, but it appears he's in this country legally.

The Suffolk County District Attorney's Office mistakenly thought ICE had the ability to detain illegal immigrants waiting to be deported indefinitely when it cut the plea deal in 2003, but the Supreme Court's ruling came down two years before that.

A spokesman for the district attorney's office says prosecutors could never promise someone would be deported, because that's a decision that's out of their hands.

The spokesman adds that it's disappointing that Heng has not been removed from this country.

Cambodia's embassy in Washington, DC did not respond to requests for information about Heng's case.

In a sane world it would happen

PM says West should treat Iran, as it is treating Libya

illegal immigration

Oklahoma House Panel Passes Illegal Immigrant Bill

Associated Press

OKLAHOMA CITY -- An Oklahoma House committee has approved anti-illegal immigrant legislation that would give Oklahoma law enforcement officials new authority to assess the immigration status of motorists.

The House Judiciary Committee approved the bill Monday and sent it to the full House for action.

Its author, Rep. George Faught of Muskogee, says the measure incorporates language from anti-immigrant legislation in Arizona into Oklahoma's existing anti-immigrant measure that was approved in 2007. Both measures have been challenged legally.

Among other things, it gives state and local law enforcement officers the authority to inquire about the immigration status of occupants of vehicles that are pulled over for legal traffic stops.

It also prohibits employers from stopping their vehicles in public roadways to hire and transport pedestrians to a worksite elsewhere.

Free money is a civil right? Yet they support Castro and Chavez

African-American lawmakers blast budget plan as step back for civil rights

By Pete Kasperowicz -

Black lawmakers on Monday said GOP-proposed budget cuts would move the country in the opposite direction of the civil rights movement.

The lawmakers, all members of the Congressional Black Caucus, used the last day of Black History Month to argue the GOP-backed cuts would fall hardest on black Americans.

"It's really especially poignant that this year during Black History Month, the Republican leadership has proposed a budget for fiscal year 2011 that will fall most heavily, mind you, on the backs of the most vulnerable in our society: African Americans, Latinos, and poor, those who have been shut of the American dream," said Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), who described the cuts as ill-timed and destructive.

"At a time when we should be remembering and uplifting the accomplishments and contributions of African Americans, to the history, culture, civil rights and economy of America, we are literally during this month debating steps that will severely undercut and undermine that legacy," she said.

Lee also criticized Republicans for saying "so be it" when asked their reaction to the idea that cuts to government spending might hurt U.S. job growth. "So be it," she repeated. "That's not what the Civil Rights movement was about."

Assistant Minority Leader James Clyburn (D-S.C.) also connected the spending cuts to civil rights, and said improving the GOP spending bill is imperative. "I do believe that if we focus on these continuing resolutions that we've been debating, we can have a much better future than the history has been for African Americans in this country," Clyburn said.

"This is not befitting of the final day of African American History [Month]," added Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee of the spending cut plans.

H.R. 1 would cut more than $61 billion from current funding levels, but is not expected to move forward in the Democratic Senate. However, the House on Tuesday is expected to approve a two-week spending bill that cuts $4 billion from current spending levels. The $4 billion in spending reductions would include hundreds of millions of cuts in education, health, housing, energy and water programs.

Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) made a point of saying that spending cuts could hurt all Americans, including African Americans, and said he would fight to maintain funding for certain programs. "We will fight to protect the Department of Education," he said as an example, adding that it "means something" to have that department.

Del. Donna Christensen (D-Virgin Islands), who led the debate, said the GOP cuts threaten to bring the U.S. back to a time when "America was not in her finest hour, a time when the poor, the rural and people of color were denied equal opportunities to education, healthcare, jobs with decent wages and protections, and the possibility of homeownership. We cannot and must not go back there."

But, the intentions were good and that's all that counts, right?

Consumer Reports: GM's Volt 'doesn't really make a lot of sense'

The government can do with less, much less

They're playing games, literally, in the Justice Department

An open letter to Rep. Frank Wolf, chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce-Justice-Science:

You're looking for unnecessary spending to cut from the federal budget. Well, one piece of low-hanging fruit ripe for picking is the bloated budget of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division. It's something to discuss with Attorney General Eric Holder when he testifies before your Committee today.

Holder and President Obama are asking for $145.4 million for the division in FY 2012. That includes funding for 815 staff positions. Compared to FY2009 (the last Bush budget), they want a 14 percent increase in manpower and an 18 percent boost in spending.

If taxpayers were getting their money's worth, it might be worth considering. But the Civil Rights Division under the Obama administration has become a prime example of government waste.

You are aware of the division's extreme politicization under Holder, including the outrageous dismissal of the New Black Panther lawsuit after the case had already been won and the money wasted in stonewalling information and witness requests from Congress and the U.S. Civil Rights Commission.

Then there's the shameful objection to a proposal by Kinston, N.C., to introduce non-partisan city council elections, the pronouncement that the division will not enforce federal law to ensure the integrity of state voter rolls, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Julie Fernandes' out-spoken opposition to race-neutral enforcement of the Voting Rights Act (VRA), and politically motivated, selective responses to open record requests.

This is also the same Justice Department division where, during a Voting Section staff meeting called to address chronic tardiness, numerous attorneys demanded permission to arrive at work up to 30 minutes late without penalty. Others wanted to work from home.

At that 2009 meeting, then-Section Chief Christopher Coates refused to tolerate this brazen disregard of job rules. The new chief has reversed course and even allows litigation managers to work from home.

Working from home is supposed to improve productivity. But that certainly hasn't happened in the Voting Section. In the 26 months since Holder took over, it has filed only one lawsuit under Section 2 of the VRA, and that was a case developed during the Bush administration, filed by J. Christian Adams.

The section has also filed only four cases under the VRA's language minority provisions, all of which were also started during the Bush years. And the National Voter Registration Act? No action at all, other than to drop a lawsuit started under Bush.

To put this in context, the Bush administration - which Holder and his Civil Rights Division chief, Tom Perez, miss no opportunity to criticize - averaged two Section 2 cases every year, brought more cases under the language minority provisions than in all other years combined since 1965, and filed 10 cases under the National Voter Registration Act. All of this is easily verifiable at the division's own website.

Meanwhile, Holder and Perez preposterously claim that the division is "once again open for business."

That certainly doesn't jibe with reports from lawyers inside DOJ, who tell of Voting Section attorneys so bored that many spend the day playing computer Solitaire, watching videos, and venting at the lack of activity.

Attorneys beg for work and are told there is none. If Holder denies this, you should require that the DOJ Inspector General provide the evidence that I am told they have already collected on this point. Similar problems plague the division's Employment and Special Litigation Sections.

Perhaps we should be thankful that the ideologues inhabiting both the political leadership and career supervisor positions in the division aren't wreaking more havoc. But this is no way to run a government. American taxpayers should not have to fund such nonsense.

A former counsel to the assistant attorney general for civil rights, Hans von Spakovsky is a senior legal fellow in The Heritage Foundation's Center for Legal and Judicial Studies.

Inefficiency to the max

Billions in Bloat Uncovered in Beltway

By DAMIAN PALETTA

The U.S. government has 15 different agencies overseeing food-safety laws, more than 20 separate programs to help the homeless and 80 programs for economic development.

These are a few of the findings in a massive study of overlapping and duplicative programs that cost taxpayers billions of dollars each year, according to the Government Accountability Office.

GAO Report

View Document

See the report, 'Opportunities to Reduce Potential Duplication in Government Programs, Save Tax Dollars, and Enhance Revenue.'

The GAO examined numerous federal agencies, including the departments of defense, agriculture and housing and urban development, and pointed to instances where different arms of the government should be coordinating or consolidating efforts to save taxpayers' money.A report from the nonpartisan GAO, to be released Tuesday, compiles a list of redundant and potentially ineffective federal programs, and it could serve as a template for lawmakers in both parties as they move to cut federal spending and consolidate programs to reduce the deficit. Sen. Tom Coburn (R., Okla.), who pushed for the report, estimated it identifies between $100 billion and $200 billion in duplicative spending. The GAO didn't put a specific figure on the spending overlap.

WSJ's Damian Paletta discusses a GAO report that uncovers billions of dollars in wasteful spending by the U.S. government due to duplicate work done by dozens of agencies.

The agency found 82 federal programs to improve teacher quality; 80 to help disadvantaged people with transportation; 47 for job training and employment; and 56 to help people understand finances, according to a draft of the report reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

Instances of ineffective and unfocused federal programs can lead to a mishmash of occasionally arbitrary policies and rules, the report said. It recommends merging or consolidating a number of programs to both save money and make the government more efficient.

"Reducing or eliminating duplication, overlap, or fragmentation could potentially save billions of tax dollars annually and help agencies provide more efficient and effective services," the report said.

There have been multiple efforts to cull the number of federal programs in recent years, but they often run into opposition from lawmakers in both parties who rush to defend individual spending provisions. In fact, GAO's recommendations are often ignored or postponed by federal agencies and lawmakers, particularly when they could require difficult political votes.

Washington Wire

• House GOP Leaders Tout Report
• Sen. Shaheen: Report Should Be Guide for Budget Cuts
• Dept. of Overlap: GAO Finds Hundreds of Duplicative Programs

The report says policy makers should consider creating a single food-safety agency because of a number of redundancies. The Food and Drug Administration makes sure that chicken eggs are "safe, wholesome, and properly labeled" while a division of the Department of Agriculture "is responsible for the safety of eggs processed into egg products."

Spokespeople for the Department of Agriculture and FDA pointed to the Obama administration's creation of the Food Safety Working Group, which works to better coordinate the government's regulators.

The report says there are 18 federal programs that spent a combined $62.5 billion in 2008 on food and nutrition assistance, but little is known about the effectiveness of 11 of these programs because they haven't been well studied.

The report took particular aim at government funding for surface transportation, including the building of roads and other projects, which the administration has made a major part of its push to update the country's infrastructure.

The report said five divisions within the Department of Transportation account for 100 different programs that fund things like highways, rail projects and safety programs.

One program that funnels transportation funds to the states "functions as a cash-transfer general-purpose grant program, rather than as a tool for pursuing a cohesive national transportation policy," the report said. Similarly, it chided the government over encouraging federal agencies to purchase plug-in hybrid vehicles while having policies that agencies reduce electricity consumption. It said government agencies have purchased numerous vehicles that run on alternative fuels only to find many gas stations don't sell alternative fuels. This has led government agencies to turn around and request waivers so they didn't have to use alternative fuels.

A spokesperson for the Department of Transportation said the president's budget for fiscal year 2012 "proposes to cut waste, inefficiency and bureaucracy by consolidating over 55 separate highway programs into five core programs, and by merging six transit programs into two programs."

On teacher quality, the report identified 82 programs that often have similar descriptions and goals and are spread across 10 federal agencies, including the Department of Education, the Department of Energy and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Nine of these programs are linked to science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Fifty-three of the programs are relatively small, receiving $50 million or less, "and many have their own separate administrative processes."

Journal Community

• DISCUSS

Rather that cry about this as waste we should look at it as an opportunity to use the dollars spent today in a more efficient process, with a wider reach, instead of all of the overlap. It would not require firing anyone necessarily, just having them more focused. It is the administration of all of these separate groups that is "overhead" waste.

—Sandra Schirmang

The GAO highlighted 80 different economic development programs at the Department of Commerce, HUD, Department of Agriculture and Small Business Administration, that spent a combined $6.5 billion last year and often overlapped. For example, the four agencies combined to have 52 different programs that fund "entrepreneurial efforts," 35 programs for infrastructure, and 26 programs for telecommunications. It said 60% of the programs fund only one or two activities, making them "the most likely to overlap because many of them can only fund the same limited types of activities."

The report took aim at several military programs, which could prove thorny because many lawmakers from both parties are wary to cut defense spending. It said there were 130,000 military and government medical professionals, 59 Defense Department hospitals and hundreds of clinics that could benefit from consolidating administrative, management and clinical functions.

For example, it said the government "may have developed duplicate" programs to counter improvised explosive devices, with the Marine Corps and the Army paying to develop similar "mine rollers." The Marine mine roller costs $85,000, and the Army mine roller costs $77,000 to $225,000. "Officials disagree about which system is most effective, and [the Pentagon] has not conducted comparative testing and evaluation of the two systems," the report said. The Pentagon didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

The GAO study was required by a provision inserted by Sen. Coburn into a law that raised the federal borrowing limit last year. This report is the first produced in response to the provision.

That he was the Democratic Presidential candidate tells you a lot

Edwards Lies Low, but That Won’t Last

Interesting conspiracy theory or for real?

Financial terrorism suspected in 2008 economic crash

Pentagon study sees element

The waste called the UN

UN set to adopt report praising Libya's record

Bloodshed continues but world body hails human rights

BY STEVEN EDWARDS, POSTMEDIA NEWS

The UN Human Rights Council is set to adopt a major report hailing Libya's human rights record -- despite moving to suspend the Arab country's council membership amid an international outcry over attacks on civilians.

The report shows countries applauding and commending Libya as they note "with appreciation the country's commitment to upholding human rights on the ground."

Even Canada "welcomed improvements" Libya made "in its respect for human rights," according to the report, which is scheduled for a vote before the Geneva-based 47-member council March 18. But the Canadian government also made several critically framed recommendations to the Gadhafi regime, including one calling for reinforced measures aimed at fully investigating torture claims.

The 23-page report was compiled as part of the council's "Universal Periodic Review" -- a process the UN bills as a rigorous scrutiny of the human rights records of each UN member state every four years.

Highlighting what it called the council's "hypocrisy," UN Watch, a Geneva-based monitoring group, on Monday called on the body's president to withdraw the report.

"It's now clear that the session on Libya was largely a fraud," said Hillel Neuer of Montreal, UN Watch executive director.

"The council should schedule a new session in which members would tell the truth about the Gadhafi regime's heinous crimes, which were committed over the four decades he's been in power, yet ignored by the UN."

According to UN Watch, topping the list of recalled witnesses should be the Libyan diplomats who defected last week and "admitted that the Gadhafi regime is a gross violator of human rights."

The UN launched the council in 2006 to replace a discredited Human Rights Commission, which had come to be manipulated by countries with poor human rights records. Canadian-led Eye on the UN was among other monitoring groups that on Monday claimed the council has also lost its legitimacy.

"The Universal Periodic Review system was touted as the No. 1 innovation because everyone would be scrutinized equally," said Anne Bayefsky, Eye on the UN chief, and senior fellow with New York-based Hudson Institute.

"But human rights abuser states caught on early that the rules enable them to line up countries that support them to speak on their behalf. The result is that human rights abuser states come away from the process looking like they were open-minded and had subjected themselves to scrutiny."

Iran, Sudan and Cuba are among countries that heaped praise on Libya's human rights record -- despite themselves having poor human rights records, according to monitoring groups.

Why Liberals Love Trains

George Will on the administration's desire to throw tens of billions of taxpayer's dollars down the rathole that is high-speed rail. After all, Amtrak is such a stunning success.

Generations hence, when the river of time has worn this presidency’s importance to a small, smooth pebble in the stream of history, people will still marvel that its defining trait was a mania for high-speed rail projects. This disorder illuminates the progressive mind.

Remarkably widespread derision has greeted the Obama administration’s damn-the-arithmetic-full-speed-ahead proposal to spend $53 billion more (after the $8 billion in stimulus money and $2.4 billion in enticements to 23 states) in the next six years pursuant to the president’s loopy goal of giving “80 percent of Americans access to high-speed rail.” “Access” and “high-speed” to be defined later.

Criticism of this optional and irrational spending—meaning: borrowing —during a deficit crisis has been withering. Only an administration blinkered by ideology would persist.

Florida’s new Republican governor, Rick Scott, has joined Ohio’s (John Kasich) and Wisconsin’s (Scott Walker) in rejecting federal incentives—more than $2 billion in Florida’s case—to begin a high-speed rail project. Florida’s 84-mile line, which would have run parallel to Interstate 4, would have connected Tampa and Orlando. One preposterous projection was that it would attract 3 million passengers a year—almost as many as ride Amtrak’s Acela in the densely populated Boston–New York–Washington corridor.

The three governors want to spare their states from paying the much larger sums likely to be required for construction-cost overruns and operating subsidies when ridership projections prove to be delusional. Kasich and Walker, who were elected promising to stop the nonsense, asked Washington for permission to use the high-speed-rail money for more pressing transportation needs than a train running along Interstate 71 between Cleveland and Cincinnati, or a train parallel to Interstate 94 between Milwaukee and Madison. Washington, disdaining the decisions of Ohio and Wisconsin voters, replied that it will find states that will waste the money.

California will. Although prostrate from its own profligacy, it will sink tens of billions of its own taxpayers’ money in the 616-mile San Francisco–to–San Diego line. Supposedly 39 million people will eagerly pay much more than an airfare in order to travel slower. Between 2008 and 2009, the projected cost increased from $33 billion to $42.6 billion.
...
Forever seeking Archimedean levers for prying the world in directions they prefer, progressives say they embrace high-speed rail for many reasons—to improve the climate, increase competitiveness, enhance national security, reduce congestion, and rationalize land use. The length of the list of reasons, and the flimsiness of each, points to this conclusion: the real reason for progressives’ passion for trains is their goal of diminishing Americans’ individualism in order to make them more amenable to collectivism.

To progressives, the best thing about railroads is that people riding them are not in automobiles, which are subversive of the deference on which progressivism depends. Automobiles go hither and yon, wherever and whenever the driver desires, without timetables. Automobiles encourage people to think they—unsupervised, untutored, and unscripted—are masters of their fates. The automobile encourages people in delusions of adequacy, which make them resistant to government by experts who know what choices people should make.

The rest here.

The Rise of the Adolescent Mind

From Victor Davis Hanson:

We live in a therapeutic age, one in which the old tragic view of our ancestors has been replaced by prolonged adolescence. Adolescents hold adult notions of consumption: they understand the comfort of a pricey car; they appreciate the status conveyed by a particular sort of handbag or sunglasses; they sense how outward consumption and refined tastes can translate into popularity and envy; and they appreciate how a slogan or world view can win acceptance among peers without worry over its validity. But they have no adult sense of acquisition, themselves not paying taxes, balancing the family budget, or worrying about household insurance, maintenance, or debt. Theirs is a world view of today or tomorrow, not of next year — or even of next week.

So adolescents throw fits when denied a hip sweater or a trip to Disneyland, concluding that it is somehow “unfair” or “mean,” without concern about the funds available to grant their agendas. We see now just that adolescent mind in Wisconsin. “They” surely can come up with the money from someone (“the rich”) somehow to pay teachers and public servants what they deserve. And what they deserve is determined not by comparable rates in private enterprise, or by market value (if the DMV clerk loses a job, does another public bureau or private company inevitably seize the opportunity to hire such a valuable worker at comparable or improved wages?), or by results produced (improved test scores, more applicants processed in an office, overhead reduced, etc.), or by what the strapped state is able to provide, but by what is deemed to be necessary to ensure an upper-middle class lifestyle. That is altogether understandable and decent, but it is entirely adolescent in a globalized economy.

Why so? In a word, the United States is not producing enough real wealth to justify a particular standard of living among its public workforce far superior to counterparts in the private sector. We are borrowing massively abroad for redistributive entitlements. We fight wars with credit cards. We talk of cap-and-trade and “climate change” without prior worry about how to fuel the United States, as we sink in perpetual debt to import well over half our oil. We have open borders and pat ourselves on our backs for the ensuing “diversity,” without worry that illegality and lack of reverence for federal laws, absence of English, no diplomas, multiculturalism instead of the melting pot, the cynicism and chauvinism of Mexico, and recessionary times are a perfect storm for a dependent, and eventually resentful, underclass extending well into a second generation, one that fumes over why things outside are not equal rather than looking within to ensure that they could be.

Who would not wish pristine 19th-century rivers to run all year long? But that same utopian rarely thinks like an adult: “I want water releases into the San Joaquin River all year long and am willing to pay more money at Whole Earth for my produce to subsidize such diversion of irrigation water; I do not wish any more derricks off Santa Barbara, so I choose to drive a Smart car rather than my Lexus SUV. And I want teachers to be able to strike, and receive $100,000 in compensation and benefits, and therefore am willing to close down a rural hospital in Wisconsin or tax the wealthy with full knowledge that many will leave the state. I insist on amnesty and open borders, and will put my children in schools where 50% do not speak English, and live in the barrios to lend my talents where needed to ensure parity for new arrivals. I want cap-and-trade and so believe that the lower middle classes should pay “skyrocketing” energy bills to subsidize such legislation.” And so on.

The rest.