Michelle Obama: U.S. should spend $330 million to eliminate "food deserts”

Is she serious?

(CNN) — Michelle Obama unveiled the latest push in her healthy-eating campaign Wednesday, announcing several national and regional food retailers have pledged to expand into a string of low-income markets where finding nutritious food options is nearly impossible.
“If a parent wants to pack a piece of fruit in a child’s lunch, if a parent wants to add some lettuce to a salad at dinner, they shouldn’t have to take three city busses . . . to go to another community to make that possible,” the first lady said at during a White House event marking the new effort.

National chains participating in the partnership include Wal-Mart, Walgreens and SuperValu, eliminate which have agreed to open or expand more than 1,000 locations as part of the effort to eliminate what the Department of Agriculture calls “food deserts” throughout the country.

A handful of regional retailers are also involved, including Calhoun foods, an Alabama-based chain that currently serves low-income communities with six stores. The minority-owned company, which in the depths of the recession two years ago was forced to cut back workers’ hours to avoid layoffs, said they plan to open 10 additional stores in the coming years in currently under-served communities. CEO Greg Calhoun as well as Jimmie Coleman, a manger at the chain, were on hand for the event.

The Obama administration is committing $35 million to the effort this year and is proposing $330 million from the budget next year.

Liberal Democrats Attack Obama For Supporting Payroll Tax Break

President Obama supports the payroll tax break because it reduces the social Security tax American workers pay. Only half of workers owe any Federal Income tax, but they all pay social Security tax. You would think liberals would support this plan because it gives money to their constituents who aren't Federal Income taxpayers. You would be wrong. Liberals don't really want to cut anyone's taxes. They want more spending.

(The Hill) — Liberal Democrats are stepping up their attacks on President Obama for his plan to extend a payroll tax break by a year.

Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) blasted Obama last week for his “stupid Social Security tax holiday,” arguing that money would be better used on more stimulative spending.

He and other liberal lawmakers fear the extended tax holiday might make a permanent cut more likely, thus slashing Social Security’s primary funding stream and threatening future benefits.

“It’s a unique tax break. You don’t just give away money, you have to borrow money to give away money, to restore the Social Security trust fund,” DeFazio said Friday. “If you’re going to borrow $110 billion, spend it on infrastructure [and] put 4 million people to work instead of pissing away 25 bucks a week, which is what we’re doing now.”

The fight over the payroll cut replays a debate from December, when Obama and Senate Republicans cut a deal to slash workers’ payroll taxes from 6.2 percent to 4.2 percent this year as part of a larger package to extend the George W. Bush-era tax rates.

I support the payroll tax cut, but cutting taxes on small businesses and entrepreneurs wold create more jobs. 

Federal Employees More Likely to Die Than Lose Their Job

Now that is job security. This must have been a very difficult study to conduct. Sometimes it is difficult to tell a live government bureaucrat from a dead one.

(USA Today) — Federal employees’ job security is so great that workers in many agencies are more likely to die of natural causes than get laid off or fired, a USA TODAY analysis finds.

Death — rather than poor performance, misconduct or layoffs — is the primary threat to job security at the Environmental Protection Agency, the Small Business Administration, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Office of Management and Budget and a dozen other federal operations.

The federal government fired 0.55% of its workers in the budget year that ended Sept. 30 — 11,668 employees in its 2.1 million workforce. Research shows that the private sector fires about 3% of workers annually for poor performance, says John Palguta, former research chief at the federal Merit Systems Protection Board, which handles federal firing disputes.

The 1,800-employee Federal Communications Commission and the 1,200-employee Federal Trade Commission didn’t lay off or fire a single employee last year. The SBA had no layoffs, six firings and 17 deaths in its 4,000-employee workforce.

BBC to Censor Anthropogenic Climate Change Skeptics

The global warming true believer crowd is losing the climate change argument. Their back up plan is to silence the other half of the argument and censor anthropogenic climate change skeptics.

(MailOnline)- Opponents of global warming should be given less coverage by the BBC than the climate change lobby, the corporation will rule.

The BBC is set to publish a report tomorrow on its science output announcing changes to rules on impartiality.

Following the overhaul, programme makers and broadcasters will be compelled to give less prominence to those who oppose the scientific community's majority view.

According to the Daily Telegraph, the report draws heavily on an independent review of BBC coverage by Steve Jones, a professor of genetics at University College London.

Professor Jones is understood to have cleared the BBC of any suggestion of bias in its programming.

Insanity: WH Spokesman Claims Obama is Leading by Not Proposing a Plan

Only in the Obama White House is leadership defined as inaction.

From NRO:

White House press secretary Jay Carney argues, with a straight face, that leadership means waiting for House and Senate negotiators to come up with a plan:

TAPPER: OK. The House is passing something that many observers feel would never pass the Senate and the president has said he would veto. The Senate is passing — the McConnell-Reid plan, it’s not clear that that could pass the House. The Gang of Seven plan, it’s not clear that that could pass the House. Would this not be an opportune time for a president to lead and say, this —

CARNEY: Leadership is not proposing a plan for the sake of having it voted up or down, and likely voted down because it is — look, you know how this town works and how Congress works. If an individual, whether Democrat or Republican leader, steps forward and says, this is my plan and solely my plan, it makes it a lot harder for that plan to be the basis for a bipartisan compromise. The way to reach a bipartisan compromise is in bipartisan negotiations where a plan emerges that is the product of that negotiation and is supported by Republicans and Democrats and then presented. Otherwise, your chances of actually achieving something diminish greatly.

Your Tax Dollars at Work: Studying the Penis Size of Gay men

We don't need to raise more revenue for this kind of silly government spending. We need to cut the wasteful spending.

(FOX News)- The federal government helped fund a study that examined what effect a gay man's penis size has on his sex life and general well-being. 

The study was among several backed by the National Institutes of Health that have come under scrutiny from a group claiming the agency is wasting valuable tax dollars at a time when the country is trying to control its debt. This particular research resulted in a 2009 report titled, "The Association Between Penis Size and Sexual Health Among Men Who Have Sex with Men." 

The study reported, among its findings, that gay men with "below average penises" were more likely to assume a "bottom" sexual position, while those with "above average penises" were more likely to assume a "top" sexual position. Those with average penises identified themselves as "versatile" in the bedroom. 

Though it's difficult to trace exactly how much federal funding went to the project, the study was one of many linked to an $899,769 grant in 2006.

I wonder if this spending was part of the stimulus./snark

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-Clueless): Illegal Immigration Reform Will Create Jobs or Something

Let me sell Sen. Schumer a vowel. When unemployment is at 9.2% and food stamp recipients are at record levels, there aren't enough jobs to go around for citizens and legal immigrants. The illegal immigrants need to go home.

(Politico) — Sen. Chuck Schumer is attempting to revive moribund efforts to pass a comprehensive immigration bill, telling POLITICO Monday that he will hold a hearing next week focused on the economic argument for an immigration overhaul.

It’s a subtle shift in emphasis for immigration reform advocates, who met recently with Schumer (D-N.Y.) to plot a strategy.

“We decided we ought to start highlighting the fact that immigration creates jobs rather than takes them away,” Schumer, the No. 3 Senate leader, said in an interview. “Everyone agreed that is how we are going to start talking about immigration, as a job creator.”

The change in emphasis capitalizes on an all-consuming focus in Washington on the economy. President Barack Obama spent several weeks in the spring pushing for immigration reform, including a speech that highlighted the economic benefits, but the issue has been overshadowed by budget negotiations and stalled by a Republican-controlled House.

Liberals want spending cuts too, but only in military spending

If liberals have their way, our servicemen and women will face harsh budget cuts as part of the debt ceiling solution. Meanwhile, liberals will continue to defend spending billions on social programs for illegal immigrant and junk global warming science. Who has their priorities wrong? (accent is mine)

(Washington Times) — The political left is pressing the White House and Congress to inflict a wave of Pentagon budget cuts not seen since the post-Cold War 1990s.

Liberals are citing the debt crisis and troop drawdowns from Iraq and Afghanistan to argue that now is the time for the Defense Department to shed people, missions and weapons after a decade of doubling arms spending after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

The proposals, including one from the Center for America Progress, go well beyond President Obama’s call in April for $400 billion in defense cuts over 12 years. The center — run by John Podesta, who served as chief of staff to President Clinton — wants that much in reductions over the next three years and $1 trillion from what had been projected increases over the next decade.

Some House Democrats, led by Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts, also have called for $1 trillion in cuts.