Internet Scofflaw

The Washington Post reports:

House Democrats on Wednesday called for Congress to expand its investigation into federal loan programs to include a Bush-era loan to the bankrupt broadband Internet firm Open Range.

Open Range went bankrupt earlier this month after receiving the federal government’s biggest broadband loan totaling $267 million. Its collapse has put in jeopardy $74 million in money doled out to the firm. . .

“Your reaction to the Open Range bankruptcy could not be more different than your reaction to the Solyndra bankruptcy,” the lawmakers said in their letter to Energy and Commerce Committee chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.).

It Democrats think this will counter the Solyndra scandal, just because the loan was made during the Bush administration, they clearly don’t understand the problem. To wit:

1. It is not alleged that Open Range exploited personal/political contacts within the Bush administration to get the loan, or that the loan was revived after being shelved under the previous administration, or that the loan was issued in violation of procedure, or that its renegotiation was contrary to law, which are just a few of the many aspects of the Solyndra affair that make it a scandal and not just a bad decision.
2. The conservative/libertarian argument that the government should not be trying to pick winners and losers (and is incapable of doing so) is not limited to Democratic administrations. We’re not happy that the Bush administration was in that business either. The Open Range bankruptcy simply underscores that point.

(Previous post.)

Earlier this month President Obama said he had no regrets about loaning half a billion dollars to Solyndra, but perhaps that was just an instance of Obama’s inability to admit a mistake. The White House now says it will review all of its green loans.

(Previous post.)

Thermal imaging shows that nearly all the tents in the Occupy London protest are left empty at night.

Perhaps Illinois should just dispense with the pretense of democratic government:

Escalating his war of words with the Legislature, Gov. Pat Quinn Thursday called for an investigation into who cast votes for as many as 18 House members who were off the House floor when utility rate-hike legislation that he opposed passed in the blink of an eye. . .

Shortly before the first part of the rate-hike package surfaced in the House, as many as 18 Democrats were called off the floor to attend a budget briefing. Some of those lawmakers told the Sun-Times they returned from the briefing to see their votes had been recorded, even though they personally hadn’t cast them and, in some cases, opposite of the way they wanted.

POSTSCRIPT: It’s not just Illinois either. We also saw the falsification of a floor vote in the US House of Representatives back when it was under Democratic management.

(Via Instapundit.)

A Gallup poll of small businesses finds that the biggest problem facing small business is complying with government regulations, not — as the pro-stimulus crowd would have us believe – lack of consumer demand. In fact, lack of consumer demand doesn’t even come in second; it barely edges lack of credit (thanks Dodd-Frank!) for third place.

The US Commission on International Religious Freedom is set to be dissolved because of one anonymous senator.

I don’t have a problem with the idea that one senator can place a hold on legislation, but they idea that he or she can do it anonymously is an affront to the entire idea of a republic.

I love Occupy Wall Street; a richer vein of irony is hard to find. These protesters, who say they want the wealth of the top 1% redistributed, turn out to have quite bourgeois sensibilities when it comes to their property. They don’t like it when people steal their stuff, squat in their tents, or freeload on their labor.

The law requires that Congress pass a budget, but Democrats haven’t done so in years. A few members of Congress are proposing a new rule whereby Congress would not be able to pass any other legislation while the budget is overdue.

I like the spirit of this, but I can see some practical problems. Fortunately I have a simpler idea: Congress should not get paid until it passes a budget.

ABC News reports:

At a million-dollar San Francisco fundraiser today, President Obama warned his recession-battered supporters that if he loses the 2012 election it could herald a new, painful era of self-reliance in America.

The Obama administration has been caught revising old press releases to replace embarrassing references to Sun Power with a different company. CNBC’s comment is rather understated:

Generally, it is not considered correct procedure to revise old press releases retroactively on the Web.

Indeed not. And an Instapundit reader notes that this isn’t even the first time. The Obama administration was also caught revising old State Department reports (from the previous administration even) to replace “Jerusalem, Israel” with “Jerusalem”.

I agree with him, it is very strange that this isn’t seen as a big deal.

Step 1: President Obama attacks companies that purchase private planes. Step 2: Aircraft demand falls. Step 3: Aircraft manufacturing employees are put out of work:

Piper Aircraft Inc. on Monday announced it will lay off 150 employees and release 55 contract personnel as a result of a decision to indefinitely suspend its Piper Altaire light business jet program.

(Via Instapundit.)

The New York office of ACORN (under its new name, New York Communities for Change) is paying people $10 an hour to participate in the Occupy Wall Street protests.

(Via Instapundit.)

Democrats on the “Super Committee” have come up with a radical new way to cut the deficit:

According to two congressional sources, the Democratic proposal would get to $1.3 trillion in federal budget savings by hiking revenues to raise half of the money. The plan would cut about $400 billion from Medicare — half through benefits cuts and half through provider savings — and proposes raising another $300 billion through stimulus spending.

(Emphasis mine.)

Raising money through stimulus spending! Brilliant! I’m a little short this month myself, so I’m going to go out and buy a flat-panel TV.

Washington DC is now the nation’s richest metropolitan area. I’m reminded of Imperial Rome, which, it is said, exported armies and imported grain.

From a poll of Occupy Wall Street protesters:

If only.

(Via Instapundit.)

Drug reimportation is back on the table, being pushed this time by David Vitter, a Louisiana Republican who ought to know better. Grace Marie-Turner attacks the scheme on the grounds of safety, which could be valid (I don’t know), but the knock-down argument against it is economic.

The short version of the argument is that we cannot realize real savings by shipping a product to Canada and back. The long version is here, the upshot of which is that reimportation would screw Canada over without accruing any discernible benefit to us.

Well said:

The social contract exists so that everyone doesn’t have to squat in the dust holding a spear to protect his woman and his meat all day every day. It does not exist so that the government can take your spear, your meat, and your woman because it knows better what to do with them.

In Chicago, a well-connected union lobbyist can earn an Illinois teachers’ pension of $108,000 per year for one day of work.

(Via Instapundit.)

Investor’s Business Daily has an important reminder of who was responsible for the subprime crash:

POSTSCRIPT: IBD also notes:

And the remaining 29% of private-label junk was mostly attributable to Countrywide Financial, which was under the heel of HUD and its “fair-lending” edicts.

Countrywide Financial should ring a bell.

(Via Instapundit.)

How not to solve the problem:

The European Commission is considering a ban on rating agencies publishing their assessments of EU countries in difficulty, the Financial Times Deutschland reports.

Sheesh.

(Via Instapundit.)

The Competitive Enterprise Institute charges that the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy has been moving discussions to UN servers in order to hide them from Freedom of Information Act requests.

This administration has withheld records on climate change from FOIA requests before.

(Via Power Line.)

A Wall Street Journal op-ed takes a look at how well stimulus plans have worked in the past. Answer: not well. But we never seem to learn.

In the United Kingdom — the exemplar of government-run health care that Democrats are working to bring to America — hospitals have been issuing do-not-resuscitate orders without consulting patients or their families.

But at least the government jumped all over them, right?

Although at least five hospitals were found by the CQC [Care Quality Commission] to be in breach of medical guidance regarding consultation with families, the watchdog declared four of the five to be “compliant” with its standards on dignity for patients, which cover broader aspects of care.

In a national report published about the checks last week, the CQC made no mention of its findings about the misuse of DNR notices.

Oh.

Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-IL) says that President Obama should ditch the Constitution:

Illinois Democratic Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. told The Daily Caller on Wednesday that congressional opposition to the American Jobs Act is akin to the Confederate “states in rebellion.” . . .

“We’ve got to go further. I support what [Obama] does. Clearly, Republicans are not going to be for it but if the administration can handle administratively what can be done, we should pursue it. And if there are extra-constitutional opportunities that allow the president administratively to put the people to work, he should pursue every single one of them,” Jackson suggested.

(Emphasis mine.)

And the grand purpose to which we should abandon our 224-year experiment with constitutional government? Jackson wants to send every unemployed person a check for $40 thousand.

(Via Instapundit.)

It’s been pretty obvious for a while that it was going to happen, but the Obama administration has officially pulled the plug on the CLASS program. For those who haven’t been following this closely, the CLASS program was a fraudulent long-term care program in Obamacare.

It could never possibly have worked, but was included in health care nationalization because, the way it was scored, it generated $70 billion in deficit reduction over 10 years. However, although a 10-year horizon can be spoofed, it’s much harder to spoof a 75-year horizon, which is what they had to do in order to bring the program into reality.

BONUS: For further amusement, look through a list of prominent Democrats singing the praise of CLASS. Every one of these people is either dishonest or incapable of basic math.

Joe Biden says crime will soar if Congress fails to pass President Obama’s stimulus jobs bill.