Privacy may mean different things to different people, but at a certain level everybody wants their privacy protected. The advent and growth of the Internet has greatly amplified privacy issues.
As with every other subject that comes to the forefront of the American psyche, Congress is gearing up to offer legislation to “protect privacy.” As usual, this means Congress could do more harm than good.
Over the past two years, taxpayers have watched the national debt climb to a frightening $13.7 trillion as Congress and President Obama massively enlarged the size and scope of the federal government against the will of the people. Americans have simply had enough of the bailouts, tax hikes, earmarks, onerous regulations, and seemingly endless number of “jobs” bills. The passage of President Obama’s landmark healthcare legislation, however,was perhaps most symbolic of Washington’s reckless and profligate behavior.
On September 22, Senator Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) introduced the Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny (REINS) Act as the companion bill to Rep. Geoff Davis’ (R-Ky.) legislation, H.R. 3765. The DeMint legislation aims to stop costly anti-free market and job-killing regulations that are often imposed by federal agencies without any congressional oversight.
Energy Savings Performance Contracting (ESPC) is an idea whose time has come. The federal government is beyond broke. The budget deficit reached a record $1.4 trillion at the end of last fiscal year. It is projected to remain over $1 trillion annually for as long as estimators can see. This level of deficit spending will […]
Replacing the aging fleet of aerial refueling tankers has been an Air Force priority since 2002. In that year, Congress approved funding for Boeing to lease up to 100 767s to replace the 50-year-old KC-135 tankers. However, the deal fell apart in a 2004 bribery scandal in which a top Pentagon procurement officer and a senior Boeing official were convicted and served prison sentences.
Government watchdogs are familiar with how the federal government squanders billions of dollars a year on duplicative, expensive, and non-essentialgovernment programs. Now taxpayers have a new reason to be disturbed; aSeptember 6, 2010Washington Postarticlereported that approximately half a billion dollars is being wasted by the Pentagon on military bands.
Fed up with excessive government spending, the Council for Citizens Against Government Waste (CCAGW), Americans for Prosperity, the 60 Plus Association, Concerned Women for America, and AmericaSpeakOn.org have joined forces to create a new website, www.spendingrevolt.com and go on a multi-state bus tour to educate and activate taxpayers. The wake-up tour is intended to arm Americans with facts and figures about government spending so they can change their spending habits in Washington.The busmeasures 70 feet long and has space for people to write “personal messages” to their elected officials.
President Obama needs to pass a bill, but a powerful chairwoman of a Senate committee, who is in danger of not being reelected, adds a controversial and expensive provision that puts passage in jeopardy. Conventional wisdom says that the White House cuts a deal. And, unfortunately, that is exactly what happened at the end of July, when the White House told the Senate Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark) that they would still help her obtain $1.5 billion in farm disaster aid if she promised to remove language funding the program from a small business bill.
To say that the Internet has grown over the past 15 years is an understatement. According to Internet World Stats, there were 16 million users in 1995 compared to 1.9 billion users in June, 2010, an increase of 11,775 percent. In addition, the Internet is much faster as a result of the deployment of broadband, and its uses have also expanded exponentially.
On July 1, 2010, Citizens Against Government Waste began issuing its annual flurry of Pork Alerts, which highlight earmarks in the annual appropriation bills. In a perfect world, the House and the Senate would each release a version of the 12 appropriations bills throughout the summer and early fall. However, the process rarely runs that smoothly.
