In a March 2013 post on Swineline, CAGW took its first crack at a parody of the 1969 bubblegum classic, “Sugar, Sugar.” Today’s title riffs on the hit song’s first verse (Sugar, ah, honey, honey!), taking the jibe one step further. Readers can decide for themselves whether the not-so-veiled indictment (“funny money”) pertains to either the $49 million in federal campaign donations (more than any other crop sector except tobacco) that keep the sweet supports in place or the exorbitant amounts of taxpayer dollars that are lost on this boondoggle.
Inspectors General Under Threat
One of the most effective tools for identifying and preventing waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in the federal government are the offices of Inspectors General (OIGs) at 72 federal departments and agencies. Their stated goal is to “combat waste, fraud, and abuse in the programs and operations of that agency.”
State AGs Attack First Amendment
Last March, Citizens Against Government Waste wrote in its monthly newsletter, WasteWatcher, that scientists, engineers, and economists have and are continuing to push back against the anthropogenic (man-made) global warming hypothesis. In other words, the science is definitely not settled and much more research must be done before governments spend trillions of tax dollars on inefficient alternative energy sources such as wind and solar while limiting access to energy derived from fossil fuels.
Congress’s “Gift” to Obamacare
Yesterday was the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) sixth anniversary. Better known as Obamacare, the law’s popularity since inception has never been above 50 percent according to RealClear Politics’ (RCP) polling data.
Water Wars: The Man-Made Drought
In the summer of 2002, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and several other local environmental activist groups in California announced their radical agenda to combat the “drought” in California by removing 1.3 million acres of farmland from production in the San Joaquin Valley. The effort to remove such a vast amount of farmland from production was due to an effort to save a 3-inch long minnow called the Delta Smelt. The burden that water policies in California have had on taxpayers is often overlooked and widely misunderstood. It is worth understanding what these policies mean and how they affect not only California, but the rest of the country.
Pushing Back on the Global Warming Hypothesis
When it comes to global warming, President Obama has often said “the science is settled.” If that is so then it does not make sense that 300 scientists, engineers, economists, and others sent a letter on January 25, 2016, supporting the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology for their efforts to “ensure that federal agencies complied with federal guidelines that implemented the Data Quality Act” in their examination of a hotly debated National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) study. They wrote that the law, also called the Information Quality Act (IQA), “required government-wide guidelines to ‘ensure and maximize the quality, objectivity, utility, and integrity of information, including statistical information,’ that was disseminated to the public. Individual agencies, such as the EPA, NOAA and many others were required to issue corresponding guidelines and set up mechanisms to allow affected parties to seek to correct information considered erroneous.” The signatories believe that NOAA, an agency within the Department of Commerce, has failed to follow the IQA and that this “is an issue of international relevance because of the weight given to U.S. Government assessments during international negotiations” such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a body created by the United Nations.
How to Stop the Death Spiral in Puerto Rico
In late June, 2015, Puerto Rico Governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla said that the island could not meet its obligations to pay off $72 billion in the combined debt of the territorial government and municipalities. In November 2015, the U.S. Treasury Department agreed that the territory was insolvent. Garcia Padilla then called the situation a “death spiral” during a hearing on December 1, 2015.
Questionable Justification for Noncompetitive Huey Replacement
The Air Force currently operates 62 Bell UH-1N Twin Huey helicopters, which serve two purposes: they provide security for the country’s nuclear missile fields, and perform the continuity of government mission, whereby designated senior officials would be transported out of the nation’s capital in the event of an emergency.
Privacy in the Digital Age
On February 25, 2016, the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing to discuss the impact of international law on the privacy of information that crosses borders. However, the discussion at the hearing continually came back to a domestic issue: the need for Congress to update the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 (ECPA) in order to address the disparity between ECPA and the changes in technology since the law was enacted.
Obamacare’s Festering Fraud Wound
On June 25, 2015, President Obama made a bold proclamation regarding his signature healthcare law: “As the dust has settled, there can be no doubt that this law is working.” He doubled down by adding that it “is working exactly as it’s supposed to.” President Obama’s comments that day illustrate his continued unwillingness to accept the consequences of his healthcare takeover. Ever since the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) became law, he has ignored the panoply of problems that plague the law and the wasteful government agencies it empowered.