Go Free Yourself

I’ve got some bad news. (Well, it’s bad news for everyone except Warren Buffet.)

From Human Events last week:

Washington has no budget problems that higher taxes cannot solve. So seems the message from Congress.

The House- and Senate-passed budgets would raise taxes on every American taxpayer by an average of $3,000 per household. But don’t expect Congress to share in the sacrifice: The budget would hike discretionary spending by 8 percent, and not cut a single government program.

I know I shouldn’t be surprised, but it doesn’t make it any less infuriating.

Let’s play a game. Pretend you’re an employee who just received a new computer. How do you react?

Well, if you work for Montana’s Department of Public Health and Human Services, you complain that the computer didn’t come with solitaire, hearts, and minesweeper.

The department first responded by saying they would add the games to the computers in an effort to ensure that all employees were being treated the same. But, then in an “Oh-crap-taxpayers-are-paying-us-to-work-not-play-games” moment of genius, they instead removed the games from 3,000 other employee computers.

Awesome.

(H/T: Fark.com)

…with food stamp dependence.

In West Virginia, one in six receives food stamps, the highest level of participation in at least 30 years. And The New York Times reports that, nationwide “the number of Americans receiving food stamps is projected to reach 28 million in the coming year, the highest level since the aid program began in the 1960s.”

Remember when Cook County Board President Todd Stroger pushed through a 1 percent sales tax increase (giving Chicago the dishonor of being the Most Taxed City in the Nation), pleading with taxpayers and commissioners “to make sacrifices for the good of county government”?

It was BS then, of course, but wait ’til you hear this: evidently the “good of county government” was code for “giving his cousin a ginormous raise.”

Donna Dunnings, Stroger’s cousin and the county’s Chief Financial Officer, is set to receive a 12 percent raise—higher than any other county employee—which brings her salary to $160,000. This is $5k more than the last CFO, even though she claimed when she started last year that she’d save taxpayers money by taking a lower salary than her predecessor.

This is ridiculous.

I know this isn’t new, but for anyone who hasn’t yet read Stephen Colbert’s book—“I Am America. (And So Can You!)”—you really must. It. Is. Awesome.

Here’s an excerpt from the introduction:

I am no fan of books. And chances are, if you’re reading this, you and I share a healthy skepticism about the printed word. Well, I want you to know that this is the first book I’ve ever written, and I hope it’s the first book you’ve ever read. Don’t make a habit of it.

Now, you might ask yourself, if by yourself you mean me, “Stephen, if you don’t like books, why did you write one?” You just asked yourself a trick question. I didn’t write it. I dictated it. i shouted it into a tape recorder over the Columbus Day weekend, then handed it to my agent and said, “Sell this.” He’s the one who turned it into a book. It’s his funeral.

…

Just because I haven’t put a lot of thought into this book doesn’t mean you shouldn’t. I want you to read this book carefully. Savor my ideas. Memorize pertinent passages. Eat with it, sleep with it, let nature take its course.

Because what I have dictated is nothing less than a Constitution for the Colbert Nation. And, like our Founding Fathers, I hold my Truths to be self-evident, which is why I did absolutely no research.

Mr. Colbert might hunt me down for sharing this excerpt with you because, as he also says in his intro, he is not even offering this book to libraries. “No free rides.” So, keep me from getting hunted down and go get the book. You won’t regret it. I promise.

Have a good weekend!

This is pretty low, even for politicians: New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) promised a bundle of service improvements if they could raise fares. Now, days after the fare hike went into effect, the MTA has announced it can’t fulfill its promise of improving 11 subway lines and adding new bus routes because “there just isn’t enough money for improvements.”

Umm…then where exactly is the money from the fare hike going?!

Read more here.

According to a report from the AP, researchers at the New England Historic Genealogical Society have discovered some intriguing family ties among this year’s presidential candidates:

Barack Obama is a distant cousin of Brad Pitt, and Hillary Rodham Clinton is related to Pitt’s girlfriend, Angelina Jolie.

Also on Clinton’s family tree? Madonna, Alanis Morissette, and Celine Dion.

Obama has a much more politically-charged lineage, including distant cousins like George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, Gerald Ford, Lyndon Johnson, Harry Truman, James Madison, Dick Cheney, Winston Churchill, and Robert E. Lee.

Oh, and lest we forget McCain, he’s distantly related to Laura Bush.

Pass the potato salad; family reunions at the White House just got a lot more interesting.

(Hat Tip: Fark.com. You may have noticed I go there a lot. That’s because it’s awesome.)

I guess Chicago’s grand plan of raking in extra cash (to the tune of $875,000 per month) with a bottled water tax isn’t going quite according to plan.

According to a report by the Chicago Sun-Times, January brought in $554,000 in bottled water tax funds, almost 40 percent short of the city’s estimate. How sad; their plan to tax our pants off was foiled.

Wendy Abrams, a spokeswoman from the city’s Budget and Management office said “it’s too early to sound the alarm”:

“Since January is generally one of the coldest months of the winter, we don’t think January collections are a strong indicator of potential revenue for the remainder of the year,” she said.

Maybe. But personally, I hope Chicagoans continue to get their water elsewhere. Heck, take a straw down to the river if you have to. (But, actually, I wouldn’t recommend that.) But still, stick it to the tax man! If we’re ever going to make a change to this never-ending cycle of overtaxation, we’ve got to say “enough is enough.” Taking our business elsewhere to get water is a good start.

It turns out Democrats and Republicans CAN work together. That which unites them? Earmarks!

U.S. Representative Bill Delahunt (D-Mass.) has pushed through a $1.1 million federal earmark to keep his Republican buddy U.S. Representative Amory Houghton’s part-time (another word for “vacation”?) home from flooding.

Awww. How sweet. But if you think I want to pay for this across-the-aisle show of love, think again.

Read more about this taxpayer-funded “salt water restoration project” (a.k.a. Giant Waste of Money) here.

(Hat Tip: Fark.com)

Public schools must really be having a hard time turning out well-educated students. In fact, one Texas principal is so upset that he threatened to kill a group of middle-school science teachers and himself if their students didn’t improve their standardized test scores.

Yikes.

(Hat Tip: Fark.com)