Not Shovel Ready, Not Winter-Ready...

You don't need a weatherization report to know which way the government money blows in Chicago - it goes right out the door.

Byron York reads through the Inspector General's report on Obama's expanded weatherization program and discovers waste and fraud in Chicago.

This will no doubt add to the surprise Obama experienced upon discovering a dearth of shovel ready projects.

Comments

[Rob Crawford]

Anyone who paid attention to the Australian government's taxpayer-funded insulation debacle could have told you how the Chicago problem would go.

As soon as the program was announced, hundreds of new "insulation contractors" appeared over night. Most of them had no idea what they were doing except for latching onto "free money". The result was poorly-installed insulation and, in some cases, burnt-down houses.

[They are cooling, folks, and wow, are they getting hot.]

Britain's getting blasted with global warming, inches of it.
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[That polity is so used to the fag end.]

I can't believe there is gambling going on here.
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[Clarice]

Gosh, and I was so sure it was a good idea to give community organizers lots of money to hire ex-felons to weatherize our homes.
Live and learn.

[Rick Ballard]

Thank goodness they've moved on to firewall construction.

[sbw]

Help me, JOM brain trust. …

I'm pondering a brief guide for new Republican 'Red Dogs' after the election to remind them not to allow entrenched old dogs to lead them astray. There is, after all, a cadre of political elites in the Republican leadership that is as poisonous to good government as Pelosi's crooks have been.

Consider these:

-- Culture worth conserving is a classical liberal society that humbly accepts there always may be a better way to do things, that supports the liberty to suggest one, and that favors equality of opportunity for everyone.

-- Creating a single factory style of big government that enforces equality of result has never solved problems best left to the commercial marketplace, and private sector jobs created by choice are worth more than public sector jobs created by fiat.

-- Open government is best, public competition is more cleansing than government control, and meddlesome regulation requires not the absence of regulation, but minimal, effective legislation. Collusion between special interests can happen at any time between any group, be they business, labor, administration, official, bureaucracy, non-governmental agency, or other. Legislators are not a special class of people and should not be exempt from laws that apply to citizens. And Congressional leaders, by their seniority or office, should not hold special power over other legislators who by election are their equals.

-- Wealth is created when people innovate, freeing up time to create even more, and people deserve their rewards for innovation and deserve to be able to vote their own money, spending in the marketplace for the future they want.

-- Parents should be able to vote their share of public education dollars through competition at the local level because high-level standardized testing of facts has mistaken schooling for education.

-- Social policy should be educated, not legislated by either carrot or stick.

-- The return to prosperity requires net spending cuts, with no tax increase. Taxing businesses masks the real cost by hiding it from employees, shareholders and customers.

[MarkO]

OT. The girl Aaron Sorkin dumped has a column today where she calls all her political opponents stupid.

Wait, that could be every column.

[Neo]

Check out DrudgeReport.com this morning ...

BROKE UK SLASHES 500,000 GOV'T JOBS

Adjusting for population size, that would be 2,500,000 in the US.

[macphisto]

waste and fraud in a government program? in the city where, after having tied up one of the city's major expressways for the better part of a year with a major repaving project, it was discovered that the contracts had been let to politically-connected contractors whose work was so shoddy that the entire project had to be done over, at the cost of another years' traffic jams?

[Jane (sit on the couch or save your country)]

Pat Caddell just said the right has lost their advantage because of their inability to settle on a national narrative - and Obama has been able to foist his narrative on the country instead.

I think he is right and it breaks my heart.

[Rob Crawford]

Who's Pat Caddell? And why should I care what he thinks?

Buck up, Jane. One "expert" pontificating is not the death knell.

[Porchlight]

Jane, I think that's just more "framing" BS. Only the left cares about narratives.

[Ranger]

sbw,

I would add something about the fundimental illogic of public sector unions. Private sector unions can work because at some point they must ballance their desires with the financial wealth of the company they work for.* Public sector unions have no such constraint to the desires for better pay and benifits. Since government doesn't even need to break even, let alone make a profit, public sector unions can damand the world, and the government will give it to them.

*note that the UAW avoided this problem by engineering a government take over of their industry once they had driven the car companies into insolvency, thus transforming themselves from a private sector union to a public sector union rather than face the results of their actions.

[Melinda Romanoff]

sbw-

That all is about to change, and not electorally, but by accounting..

Death by FASB.

[Melinda Romanoff]

Ranger, that was for you.

sbw, sorry, move along.

[Captain Hate]

Caddell's shitting in his hat; he's had a steady string of bleak forecasts for the commiecrats for at least the last month and this is his way of getting them to STFU for the next 13 days.

[maryrose]

Pat Caddell is first and foremost a democratic pollster who has been critical of the dems but now appears to be trying to have it both ways. Obama can say all he wants but nobody is buying what he is selling anymore. Dems have nothing but blistering personal attacks and they are the ones with no narrative.

[Ranger]

MR,

Thanks for the link. I knew the unions were hell bent on a pension bail out, but I didn't realize what was driving it.

[Melinda Romanoff]

Yep, A Big, Friggin' Clock.

[Jane (sit on the couch or save your country)]

Obama can say all he wants but nobody is buying what he is selling anymore.

I dunno. The polls seem to be tightening. We should be running away with it.

[Ranger]

I dunno. The polls seem to be tightening. We should be running away with it.

Posted by: Jane (sit on the couch or save your country) | October 20, 2010 at 01:27 PM

A few things to remember...

There is a basic ecnomic logic behind the press pushing a tightening of the race in the last two weeks. They have a vested interest in keeping the campaign add revinue flowing, and the tighter the races look, the more the money flows.

Second, the left has controled education in this country for a full generation. It is hard, even with such an obvious argument against socialism as we are living through right now, to overcome that. It will take a long time to rectify that, and until that is done, elections will be much closer than they should be.

Finally, every campaign should be working like its 3 points behind, regardless of what the polls say.

[Captain Hate]

Jane, the same thing happened in 1980 when they called Reagan/Carter neck and neck. The MFM and the pollsters are whistling past the graveyard.

[Clarice]

Of course, it's tightening, Summer's over and it's time to vote.

[Pagar]

Death by 11 State Pension Funds that May Run Out of Money pensions.

Add these to the Union Pension bailouts.

[maryrose]

Isincerely believe there are going to be some real surprises on election night. For example, I just don't think Boxer is going to make it. If there was going to be a bigger turnout maybe but not this year. All the old AhNOLD voters will be turning out and the state is just plum tired of her. Same goes for Murray who claimed she actually wrote a lot of the health care bill. The problem in Washington state as always is that Kings county is corrupt. That being said, Rossi lost the governor race and had it stolen from him.

[Porchlight]

Isincerely believe there are going to be some real surprises on election night.

I think so too, maryrose.

And Cap'n, I'm going to go look at the historical databases and see what the coverage looked like in 1980. The polling was very different back then, of course - nowhere near as much of it going on - but a "tightening race" narrative would be fun to spot.

[Captain Hate]

Doubting me, Porch? LUN

[Clarice]

Jane, Maybe this will buck you up--Raz:

"Incumbents, beware: The major votes you’ve cast in Congress over the past couple years appear likely to come back to haunt you. A new national telephone survey finds that most Likely Voters think their rep in Congress does not deserve reelection if he or she voted for the national health care law, the auto bailouts or the $787-billion economic stimulus plan. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

Those votes also appear to be driving factors in the GOP’s consistent lead over Democrats on the Generic Congressional Ballot. Most strong supporters of President Obama believe those who voted for the measures should be reelected. Even more of those who Strongly Oppose the president disagree.

(43%) of all Likely Voters say someone who voted for the health care law deserves to be reelected. Fifty percent (50%) oppose their reelection. (36%) say if their local representative voted for the taxpayer bailouts of General Motors and Chrysler, he or she deserves to be returned to Congress. Fifty-three percent (53%) say that person does not deserve reelection.

Similarly, 41% say their representative in Congress should be reelected if he or she voted for the stimulus plan. But 50% don’t see it that way and say the individual should not be reelected.

The partisan divide is predictable since virtually no congressional Republicans voted for any of these measures. So Democratic voters overwhelmingly think those in Congress who voted for them should be reelected, while Republicans feel just as strongly that they should not be reelected.

voters not affiliated with either party also feel strongly that supporters of the health care law, the auto bailouts and the stimulus should not be returned to Congress. (62%) of voters think it would be better for the country if most congressional incumbents are defeated this November."

[Clarice]

More, Jane..from the washington Examiner:
There had been some signs that there was a recent shift in momentum toward Joe Manchin in the West Virginia Senate race, but latest Rasmussen poll suggests that the shift might have been ephemeral: A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely West Virginia Voters finds Raese with 50% support to Manchin’s 43%. Two percent (2%) like some other candidate in the race, and five percent (5%) are undecided. The West Virginia race now shifts back from a Toss-Up to Leans Republican in the Rasmussen Reports Election 2010 Senate Balance of Power rankings.

[Jane (sit on the couch or save your country)]

Well someone reported that Sestak was now ahead of Toomey.

I'm still predicting Bye bye Barney.

[Clarice]

Some races, like Pa's are close. Depends how much vote fraud they can pull off in Philadelphia, Seattle, Milwaukee...Seeing barney tossed would be a joy.

[sbw]

The reason the polls are wrong is because I hang up whenever they identify themselves.

[MaryD]

Great YTC post, Jane! The last line cracked me up.

[We are abused and about to burn the bed.]

Since dissent is now racist, we dissent in silence. The polls are wrong, Jane.
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[Boatbuilder]

C'mon, Rob. That Australian report was written in Australian, for crissake.

[Porchlight]

Doubting me, Porch? LUN

Never in life, Cap'n! I just wanted to go see what I could find, for fun. Sorry, been in meetings all day so I haven't been able to catch up with the LUN...

[Porchlight]

Well well well, from Cap'n's LUN, Caddell shows up once more:

Carter's pollster, Patrick Caddell, on the other hand, still stands by his figures, which reflected a close race right up until the weekend before the election. On the Saturday before the election, four days after he had come off second best in the debate with Reagan, Carter was about even with Reagan, insists Caddell. But by Sunday night, he says, Carter's campaign had collapsed. Caddell's reason: the hostage issue was again in the news and again unsettled, thus reviving the public's frustration with Carter as a whole. Caddell's data shows Carter suddenly dropping five points behind by Sunday night, with another five-point collapse by Monday night.

Does anyone believe that Carter lost ten percent of the vote in 2 days? Sounds like some major CYA by Caddell.

[Captain Hate]

I was only kidding, Porch.

[Clarice]

HEH--Patterico catches the WaPo and AP Covering themselves. They rewrote the entire O Donnell debate "gaffe" story without issuing a correction.
http://patterico.com/2010/10/20/wapoap-caught-revising-the-o’donnell-story-without-issuing-a-correction/>Stupid and unethical media

[narciso]

And he was Biden's pollster back in the day, I would say 'unethical' but the coverup suggests deliberate action

[Army of Davids]

Media wispers that "the president is incompetent"?

coming out of denial is a process.

Let's be patient. Poor Joey Behar. This is hard for her.

[Army of Davids]

Media whispers that "the president is incompetent"?

[Pagar]

"They rewrote the entire O Donnell debate "gaffe" story without issuing a correction."

IMO, they never wrote a story, they just wrote leftist propaganda.

A real story would say Coon sued in 2007 for retaliating against public employees for their views.

Type in "chris Coons sued" to Google and notice how many leftist propaganda sources wrote about that?

[Melinda Romanoff]

[[ Yellow hankie flies past ]]

{Whistle blows loudly}

Ref yells "Off meme! Ten yard penalty on Pagar. Repeat posting."

Jest doing my part to scrub the baseball stuff off this post.

[Rick Ballard]

Porchlight,

Charlie Cook - ship 15 more body bags to the DNC boys and leave the order open. I'm not too concerned about a slight tightening - the Democrat Titanic has its bow underwater and it ain't coming back up.

[Jim Miller]

Rob Crawford is right about the Australian program. According to the NYT, four deaths have been attributed to bad insulation installation there.

And an off-topic but possibly amusing thought triggered by machphisto's comment. While Chicago was building its expressways, it was widely rumored that bodies from mob killings were being uried under them as they built.

The bad guys figured -- correctly -- that it would be hard to get an order to dig up the Eisenhower or the Dan Ryan, or any of the other city arteries, just to find some low life

[narciso]

You underplay those results,Rick, the Titanic is not only underwater, but it has cracked in
two if not more parts, Taylor the reddest bluedog is in danger

[JM Hanes]

Rick:

We've got yer Titanic right here:

From 'Peregrine John" in a caption contest at IMAO.

[Rick Ballard]

Narciso,

I actually think that Cap'n BOzo has her at periscope depth already. Cook has been fun to watch - a theoretical 'non-partisan' observer shading the truth while being forced to acknowledge that the vibrating rails indicate that the light up ahead probably isn't sunshine.

[Salt, yeah, lots of salt.]

That fluid coming down the periscope hasn't much oxygen in it.
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[Tres droll.]

Do not miss JM's link just above.
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