Category Archives: Government

Stuff you may or may not know about your local, state, and federal government

Another Financial Comparison

The White House Administration is putting together a plan to combine the Department of Labor and the Department of Education. The move is to remove wasteful spending of money between overlapping programs and goals in the separate departments.

Out of curiosity, I looked up the annual budget of the Department of Labor (DoL). A quick web search yields a plethora of ‘news’ headlines stating DoL requested $9.7 BILLION as their budget for 2018. Some of the articles report that the DoL has over 15,000 employees.

What the ‘news’ reports FAIL to mention is that the almost $10 BILLION in requested budget dollars is a “discretionary” budget number. After some digging the TOTAL BUDGET for 2017 was $46 BILLION of your tax dollars of which more than $12 BILLION was moved about in a “discretionary” manner.  If you want to revue the budget you can read it here,  FY2018BIB.

Let’s look at a comparison between a publicly traded corporation and the Department of Labor. Truth in lending, I hold stock in the company we are going to use to compare numbers. Raytheon Company is a publicly traded defense company listed as RTN on the New York Stock Exchange. From their 2017 financial report the company had $25.358 BILLION in REVENUE. The COST of revenue was $19 BILLION which means they had a gross profit of over $6 BILLION. During the year the company employed 64,000 people worldwide.

Hmmm, They have over FOUR TIMES THE NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES when compared to the DoL and they are run on a total expenditure of about 40%, well less than half, of the budget of the Department of Labor. On top of that, they MADE OVER $6 BILLION IN PROFIT!

If it wasn’t for the generosity of YOU the American Taxpayer, the Department of Labor would FAIL miserably as a company.

How much of your money do you think is wasted in “The Swamp”?

Going Green, No Good Deed Goes Unpunished – Part 1

I suspect that I live a “greener” lifestyle than most of the global warming alarmists. You know, the young Bernites who believe that the biggest threat to everyone on this Earth is “global warming”. Never mind that all the models have be shown to be wrong. Even with failed models, the Bernites claim that “scientist” have a 97% agreement that the Earth will meltdown in 100 years.

But that’s not what my “green” lifestyle is about. Just to give you some insight into my efforts to reduce my impact onto this planet, I’ll describe a few things that I do.

I drive an electric vehicle for short trips. I conserve water because I live in the drought prone PRK. My water consumption on a monthly basis is ONE water unit. The only lower value would be ZERO, which is impossible to achieve. I recycle. I try to buy items that don’t have excess packaging. I am having SOLAR PANELS installed on my property. How many Bernites do you think have gone to the extent (and spent a boatload of money) that I have, to become “green”? I would bet, not many.

Okay let’s look at what happens when you go to the extremes of CONSERVATION.

The PRK is going to impose more taxes on electric vehicles. They are going to increase the registration FEES for electric vehicles. Why? Because we don’t buy hydrocarbon based fuels and hence don’t pay the taxes and fees levied on fuels. The more electric vehicles on the road, the less revenue government gets. The sneaky thing that the PRK government did was RAISING FEES. You see a FEE is not a TAX in lawyerspeak. The PRK commies can raise a FEE with very little oversight. Implementing a new TAX requires a vote. Pretty cool, no? NO GOOD DEED GOES UNPUNISHED.

I did as much as possible to conserve water. I bought all new major appliances based on their water and energy usage. I put in dual flush toilets versus just low flow commodes to use the least amount of water for waste disposal. I put a ball valve in my shower head which allows me to turn off the water when I shower and only use water to rinse my body. All of this cost THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS but I only use 15% of the national average in water. What was the outcome in the PRK? The commies once again complained that because of people like me, the water districts were losing money because, what a shock, people weren’t using as much water. Since they were losing money the solution was to RAISE MY WATER RATE. I knew this would happen. It’s the way politicians work. NO GOOD DEED GOES UNPUNISHED.

My newest project is solar panels. My goal is to have NET ZERO electrical costs. The panel array should produce enough to offset my usage or it might produce a small excess of power. The FEDERAL government is subsidizing 30% of my installation costs. Thank you fellow taxpayers. You are footing the bill for my system. The electric company MUST buy back my excess capacity which is great for me but sucks for anyone not producing their own power. This post is getting a bit long, but I will make a prediction in my next post as to what is going to happen with all of this “green energy”. As you might be able to guess, NO GOOD DEED GOES UNPUNISHED.

Just How Narrow Is Narrow?

I’d say this is another example of FAKE NEWS.

This is the headline from the NPR (hard left) website.

In Narrow Decision, Supreme Court Decides In Favor Of Baker Over Same-Sex Couple   June 4, 201810:27 AM ET

This is the case where a Colorado baker declined the business to make a cake for a gay couple.

The Supreme Court’s decision was 7 to 2. Hmmm, last time I counted on my fingers that’s only 2 votes away from a unanimous decision. Since when did an overwhelming majority decision become only NARROW victory?  Would an 8 to 1 decision still be a NARROW victory?  Go ahead and take a guess as to which 2 justices voted against the baker.  Can you say Sotomayer and Ginsberg?  No surprise that the two hardest to the  left justices were the two voting against the baker.

The leftists want to frame everything in their favor. They need to feel warm and fuzzy even when they are wrong.  Against all common sense, they frame the decision as, “We almost won today.”  They can’t man up and say, “We lost big today.”

Okay, in an attempt to be fair to NPR, the headline is misleading as to what I believe they are attempting to describe.  What they should have written was, “In a narrowly DEFINED case, Supreme Court decides…”  The argument by the majority of the Supreme Court is that Colorado law must be applied neutrally regarding religious beliefs.  The state of Colorado said that in another case, another baker was allowed to decline business which he thought was offensive, when the patron wanted to put an anti-gay message on a cake.  The court ruled that if the state allowed the precedent that offensive anti-gay messaging is sufficient grounds to decline business, then they must act in a neutral manner and allow a business to decline a pro-gay sentiment on a cake when the business owner finds the messaging offensive based on religious beliefs.

The DECISION was overwhelming, the specifics of the Court’s opinion was NARROW in scope.