A Billion Dollar Immigration Form

Do you still believe in the competency of big government?

Well, after ten years and spending one billion dollars the government was able to get one, yes one, immigration form online.

The good news is there are only 94 forms to go! Supposedly it will only take about two billion dollars and four more years to get those done.

Who does the math on this?

• Washington Post

Department of Education and Stupidity, Again

BAM! Paragraph one out of the box!

No matter who you are, where you grew up or what you want to do, we all know digital skills and connectivity are crucial for success in today’s job market.

Does a painter, a farmer, a plumber, a chef, or a boxer really need digital skills and connectivity? NO! Some of those jobs might be helped by marketing on the internet but you can hire people to do that!

This is how an article from the Department of Education starts off to brag about how more money was spent for the government to get tablets and high speed internet for American Indian schools. This is supposed to be good because it will give students access to educational apps in STEM. This is supposed to solve the problem of indian youths having the lowest graduation rate across schools.

Money and gadgets do not improve education or graduation rate. The educational system needs to be examined. Students are not going to say "Hey! The school has tablets and the internet. I'll stay and graduate!" That is a bit of insipid simple thinking.

In addition, as far as STEM : Math just needs textbooks, pencils, and paper. Science requires the same as mathematics plus equipment for experiments. Only the technology and engineering portions of STEM really benefits from this.

However, this still does not solve the problem of the graduation rate.

Verizon and Microsoft are donating data and equipment, but there is still an over-arching government program which costs money.

Also we get some multicultural buzzword BS in the post. This somehow makes the education "culturally relevant" and "culturally appropriate."

Really? A freaking gadget is somehow more culturally sensitive or helpful than a person?

Fix the system; more spending never helps.

• Department of Education
• White House

Government Propaganda at Comic Con?

I do not care about Comic Cons but I worry about government propaganda. The Department of Energy, which has an agenda and makes policies based on that agenda, is holding a panel at the Baltimore Comic Con to "discuss the interplay between science and cinema."

You do realize this means that tax dollars are being used to send government employees to Comic Con? If the government needs a presence anywhere it is Comic Con. If the IRS can make a Star Trek video why not the Department of Energy at Comic Con?

So who is going to be on this panel? A Minorities in Energy Champion, two employees from the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, and an employee from the Office of Environmental Management. The Office of Environmental Management is quite legit since it is for the cleanup up of the "nuclear legacy" from government nuclear research. The others try to force the world into the agency's world view.

There is another member on the panel not listed on the DoE's announcement and that is Marius Stan. You can find this at the Comic Con site. He is listed as a DoE Senior advisor and actor from Breaking Bad; he is also a scientist.

Maybe I'm making something out of nothing. It is not like they are handing out propaganda, unless you consider handing out a children's coloring book, Get Current, that promotes only renewable energy. You know. Teach kids it's a good idea to turn food into fuel when people are starving in other countries or even at home.

No chance of propaganda here.

• Department of Energy 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
• Baltimore Comic Con
• IMDB
• YouTube

Government Studies the Painfully Obvious

The National Institutes of Health reports that in a study there are adult Americans that have experienced pain withing 3 months of that study. Amazing. As you grow older you might experience pain.

The study also finds people experiencing pain are more likely to have poor health and use more health care. Wow. It's almost as if when you are sick your body tells you that you are sick through pain. And who would've thought someone sick and in pain is more likely to use health care than a healthy person that is not in pain. It seems to defy logic!

And get this. People that still experience pain after medication might turn to yoga, massage, and meditation to manage the pain. Wow. Doing something about pain instead of just looking at it.

I've learned a lot today. Thank you for this study.

Government Finally Cuts Spending

Yeah! The government has finally cut some spending!

What have they cut?

Disposable plates and cutler!

I'm fine with this, but it is a bit silly. Most businesses consider these items a regular business expense. People eat at their desks sometimes so they can continue working. This is good for the company because they get more work out of their employees.

But if this saves us enough money so we can study shrimp on a treadmill, go for it!

More Politics in Science

The "climate change" hysterics infection of science is abhorrent. It is not the only politicization in science.

The Minority Business Development Agency, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Federal Laboratory Consortium for Technology Transfer have partnered to fund minority businesses in the science field.

I don't think the government should be funding businesses period. A business should stand on its own success, not propped up by government.

What is more disturbing about this program is the government is going to fund high-tech companies not based on its merits but the color of the people in the company. That is a piss poor way to fund science.

The article laments that minority owned high-tech businesses are a minority in that field. So the government needs to step in to help them make up more of the market share because, I don't know, diversity makes for better science?

What are the chances that funding technology in this manner they will actually fund something important? This program admittedly ignores most tech companies because a majority of them are not minority businesses.

Can you hear it? Whoosh! Tax dollars being flushed down the toilet.

Money for Energy from the Department of ... Agriculture?

The redundancy in government is mind blowing. You would think loans and grants for energy come from the Department of Energy. Well, some do.

But why is the Department of Agriculture "investing" $63 million to support 264 energy projects? To promote American energy independence. Sure sounds like something that the Department of Energy should be doing.

In addition small business in rural areas are eligible. It appears that the business might not have to have anything to do with agriculture. Suddenly it seems that this program is also venturing into the territory of the Department of Commerce.

I do have to say that I am also a bit amused that these grants and loans can be used for geothermal energy production. Give me some money so I can drill through the mantel and harvest the awesome power of liquid magma!

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$130,000 per foot

What is $130,000 per foot? A new stretch of road in California.

DOT has put up a blog post announcing the completion of a $1.1 billion project for 1.6 miles of road. The Presidio Parkway website says it is 1.5 miles. The $130,000 figure ($130,208.33 to be exact) uses the 1.6 mile figure for the best case scenario in dollars spent per foot.

What's even worse is the subtitle of DOT's post is the following:

Federally funded project exemplifies transportation investment nation needs, officials say

Exemplifies transportation investment? Let's do a little math.

What if we want to build one road that connects one side of the nation to the other? We will use google maps and plot from San Diego, California to Bangor, Maine. That is 3,229 miles.

How much would that cost at $130,000 per foot?

$2,216,385,600,000! Take a quick screen capture of usdebtclock.org and that road would be about one ninth of the national debt. That one road is more than four times as large as the federal deficit!

Exemplifies transportation investment? I think we need to find a way to privatize roads. We can not afford the federal method.

Centralized Waste from the Department of Education

I can always count on the Department of Education to waste money. A recent post touts $270 million awarded to 978 programs to support students.

Why is this waste? Centralized bureaucracy is costly. Let local municipalities take care of local concerns and cut their federal taxes. 282 of the schools (manual count of "Community College" in the name of the program list; could be miscounted) in the list of 978 are local. That is over 1/4 of the programs should be considered local programs. But first we had to send the money to D.C. and wait to get the money back.

What does the money go to?

• academic tutoring
• assistance in course selection
• information about financial aid and economic literacy
• support and resources to help students transfer from two-year to four-year colleges or from undergraduate to graduate or professional studies
• individualized counseling and career guidance
• exposure to cultural events
• mentoring
• housing assistance during school breaks for students who are homeless or in foster care

All of these items except for the last one sounds like it should be a basic service already available in any school. Maybe the first one could be considered an extra. Otherwise it is all services and information that should be available.

Except, maybe, "exposure to cultural events" which sounds like a party slush fund. Aren't you glad there is a centralized party fund?

The really weird thing about the last item is it is about housing for students when they are not in school instead of when they are in school. That seems like the focus on housing is counterproductive to when the student needs housing the most.

Only in centralized thinking do you get funding for services counter to the time of need.

Better Wasteful Than Sorry

Why is the economy so bad? Well, when the Economic Development Administration (EDA) doesn't understand responsible fiscal policy and technology it should not be a surprise that there are problems.

Due to malware infecting the EDA's network a security firm was paid over $800,000 for consultation and cleanup. Malware was found on six computers which were reimaged thus fixing the problem.

But that solution was not good enough for the EDA. The administration then decided to instead destroy their computers, printers, mice, and keyboards. Why even hire security experts if you ignore them?

End bill for this scorched earth policy? $2.7 million.

Department of Education spends more during the Sequester

Calling out more spending during the sequester. Have to do it because we heard how much the sequester would hurt education.

Where's the hurt?

Date	Project	Amount
February 25	Improve lowest-performing schools	$15,000,000
March 7	Baltimore School Shooting Recovery	$35,000
March 11	School Improvement Grants (SIG)	$69,600,000
March 27	2013 Investing in Innovation Competition	$150,000,000
April 16	Race to the Top-Early Learning Challenge	$370,000,000
April 19	TAACCCT	$474,500,000
April 19	Project SERV Grant	$48,000
May 20	Arizona SIG	$10,400,000
TOTAL		$1,089,583,000

It's the Sequester and spending is for the birds.

Since the sequester gets blamed for the closing of White House tours, cutting air traffic controllers, and delayed flights, I must point out stupid spending when government blogs go about advertising their spending as if it were a good thing. So what is it today?

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is spending $3.5 million on conservation projects across the Americas to boost the number of birds. That's not in the U.S. but the Americas.

Who does this include receiving money? Panama, Paraguay, Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua.

At some point we need to spend money on people instead of birds. Really, the government needs to stop spending money. But if we are in financial problems we really shouldn't be giving money to other countries to spend on birds. If they want to save the birds they can spend their own tax dollars, not ours!

How did we get here? The government is crying broke, cuts back on industries that makes money ( air travel ), and spends it on birds!? Even if the country didn't have economic problems the government shouldn't be spending money on this, much less sending money to other countries for it.

Face it. Obama and the administration does not care about you.

Solar Cells for a Dark Village

Just got to love how the government keeps throwing money around while they complain about the sequester.

Up to $250,000 is available to five different Alaskan Native villages each for "clean" energy improvements. Yeah. $1,250,000 more is planned to be dumped into "clean" energy because the government has such a good record on its energy policy as of late.

Here's one of the specifics laid out in the blog post.

Native Village of Minto will receive assistance to identify energy efficiency, biomass, and solar energy opportunities.

Did you catch that?

Alaska, which probably needs more energy in the winter to heat their homes than energy for air-conditioning in the summer. Do you need air-conditioning in the summer in Alaska? Just asking.

So money will be dumped into solar energy for a village when their most energy critical needs are in the winter when the sun doesn't even rise.

Yeah. I have no idea how our government keeps losing money on solar energy with their super smart choices.

Trifecta on the Sequester

Stephen Green has a brilliant solution.

The Sequester has not slowed down the Dept. of Education

It isn't even funny anymore. The Department of Education has been bemoaning the sequester but keeps announcing new spending. They did it again this week.

The Department of Education continually wants more money to improve low performing schools. Unfortunately, because of the union, firing low performing teachers will never be the solution. So good teachers will continue to accelerate their students under these initiatives while the DoEdu scratches its head why these new ideas don't work when bad teachers implement them in a half-donkey way.

The DoEdu's ADDITIONAL spending so far under the sequester.

Date	Project	Amount
February 25	Improve lowest-performing schools	$15,000,000
March 7	Baltimore School Shooting Recovery	$35,000
March 11	School Improvement Grants (SIG)	$69,600,000
March 27	2013 Investing in Innovation Competition	$150,000,000
TOTAL		$234,635,000

How To Not Pay Your Student Loan

Want to pay as little as possible back on your student loan? Well the first step is to make sure you got your loan from the government. Did you do that?

Check!

Well guess what. The government has practically done the rest for you! With the introduction of Income Based Repayment, or Pay As You Earn, up to 1.6 million borrowers could have their payments capped at 15% of their discretionary income.

So what is discretionary income?

Your adjusted gross income minus the poverty guidelines for your family size.

Here's a chart for the poverty guidelines [chart].

So, if a single person was lucky enough to get a $20,000 a year job in this economy, their discretionary income would be $8,830. This means they would not owe more than $1,324. That is a real slow start to paying off a large college loan. When interest gets figured in it could take decades to pay off a loan.

Or not.

Once again the government steps in and makes it possible that after 25 years the debt can be forgiven. Isn't that nice? But still, 25 years is a long time.

Guess what! There is an express lane to debt forgiveness!

Debt can be forgiven after 10 years if the borrower has been employed full time to a public service organization. What sort of job is that? You guessed it, a state job!

So the state takes our money and lends it to a student. The student then pays as much as they can for 25 years and then doesn't pay us, I mean the government, back the remaining balance.

Let us not forget. If the student instead works for the state and gets paid from our tax dollars, after 10 years they don't have to pay us, again I mean the government, back the remaining balance.

1.6 million students that don't need to pay back the full amount of what they borrowed? But the government thinks that the solution to the fiscal cliff is to tax some people more money!?

Really!?

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Government Money Handling Insanity

Here's a young man, 40 years old. He discovers he's got AIDS. He's got ten more years to live. Then the government comes along and say "we have to take fifteen percent of your income to provide for your old age after 65."

- Milton Friedman

That was Milton Friedman commenting about social security and how you are not paying for your retirement but other people's retirement. The following is a wonderful interview with this man.

Does Stimulus Spending Work? by LearnLiberty.org

Stimulus Money Used To Destroy Historic Site

I found this image and caption at energy.gov as the image of the week.

A worker suppresses dust during the final demolition stages of the historic DP West site, located at Los Alamos National Laboratory’s (LANL) Technical Area 21. The demolition was funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) and is part of $212 million in ARRA funds the Lab received for environmental remediation. | Photo courtesy of Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Wow. Where do you go with something like this? I mean this is just pure lunacy. This will stimulate the economy?

Also, before you get riled up thinking this is a conspiracy to erase our nuclear history, this practise of demolishing these building has been going on for a while. The history is being preserved. See the "Bradbury Science Museum" and this document on TA-21 from 2004 about the demolition of buildings.

The main page about the cleanup is [here]. What is puzzling is why a photo from this effort was chosen as a picture of the week. The last building from TA-21 was demolished in December 2010. On September 14, 2011 the last scoop of waste was excavated from Material Disposal Area B. The spending chart stops at a point over a year ago.

Is the Department of Energy behind the ball or is Los Alamos failing to update its web page?

That's all lunatic dressing. The point is that stimulus money was being spent on activities that Los Alamos was already doing. Not to mention these are historic sites and it just sounds bad that stimulus money was used to demolish historic sites. In addition, this is a government site. The government spent money on the government to stimulate the economy. The project claims to have created 450 jobs, but since it looks like the job is over hasn't the project now lost 450 jobs? Demolition is not a sustainable job market.

Anyways, doesn't it look like the worker is taking a monstrous wizz producing a piss rainbow over the remains of the site that developed weapons that helped us to win "the Cold War?" Is there a subliminal message here about America's nuclear programs?

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