Friday night videos episode 18

Well, well, well…after a three-week hiatus for the holidays I’m back with a bunch of stuff. You thought I’d quit just because the calendar turned? Au contraire.

Let’s begin by pointing out the REAL problem in Washington, at least according to the Center for Individual Freedom.

If the government would stop spending so much they would need less of OUR money. That sounds pretty simple, doesn’t it?

Spending on a state level is the message this protest was scheduled to address. From AFP-Maryland:

It’s going to be cold, but then again most state capitals outside of Honolulu are shivering these days. The national AFP group took a look around the recent global warming summit and this is what they saw.

As I recall, Copenhagen endured cold and snow all during the conference; then again, it’s winter. The Washington News-Observer dragged Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas up to the Capitol roof so his ears could fall off. Actually, he just had his take on Pelosi and climate change.

Now if we need a cool spell this summer, we could have this debate in Washington during the heat of July. Al Gore always seems to bring a chill.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute is obviously raking in the big bucks now to up the ante.

Otherwise, it seems like only government has big bucks. But Rep.Thaddeus McCotter of Michigan tells the Washington News-Observer that we can’t spend our way out of a recession.

And he’s right. The only thing taking from the private sector to return it there does is create busy work on the pass-thru and allow government to pick winners and losers.

The folks at Our Country Deserves Better have one idea for a loser come November.

Since the Democrats have already had two of their members decide not to stand for re-election it’s going to be interesting to see if they have the same strategy in mind for Senator Reid if his poll numbers continue to tank as Dodd’s and Dorgan’s did.

The concept of “transparency” has been big in the news lately. The Sunlight Foundation chimes in with their belief that 2009 was a good year for the concept.

But when it comes to health care, the GOP begs to differ.

In truth, not all of the blame for this can be placed on the President because Congress sets their own rules – but he’s sure not showing any leadership on this.

Lastly, we have one of Maryland’s own who shows that she completely misunderstands the purpose of the census. Once again from WNO:

The census is to determine proportional representation for the House of Representatives, period, end of sentence. If I fill out the census form it’s going to say three people live at my domicile and that’s it.

On that contrarian note another edition of FNV comes to a close. I’ll surely have more fun stuff next week.

More jobs by the boards

In what’s become a familiar refrain, experts were “surprised” to find the economy lost 85,000 jobs in December instead of reversing the nearly two year trend of job losses.

Yet there’s one industry which has been crying out to help but gets the cold shoulder from the Obama Administration. While it may not be politically or environmentally correct, we still need oil and natural gas but the federal government doesn’t seem to want to play ball with their industry. Instead, they place more obstacles in the way.

When an industry directly or indirectly supports over 9 million jobs it seems to me they should have a better place at the economic table. But instead those in charge now are spending our stimulus money on “green” jobs that are little more than a political payoff to their union buddies (at the expense of some of their union brethren in the energy industry.) Needless to say, I would rather have an increase in jobs financed by the private sector than one where the funding is either confiscated from all of us or created out of thin air.

It’s pretty much beyond argument that the “stimulus” has failed to achieve its desired result of keeping unemployment below 8 percent. Since there is no logical manner of truly determining what constitutes a “saved” job the only yardstick we have to measure success is the government employment statistic which continues to show jobs being lost. The only reason the unemployment rate remained at 10% was the people dropping off at the other end who have become totally discouraged and stopped actively looking for work.

Yet here’s an industry which would love to spend its own money to create jobs, but needs government to get out of the way and open up land for exploration. Unfortunately, those who value endangered species over endangered livelihoods hold sway in the government right now and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar is having so much fun being an obstacle he won’t go back to Colorado and run for their suddenly vacating governor’s chair.

With this sort of attitude from Washington, don’t be surprised if double-digit unemployment isn’t here to stay.

And the blog poll winner is…

It really came down to two finalists, but after trailing nearly the whole time afterthegoldrush came from behind and won my “best local blog” poll. Over 300 votes were cast and ATGR garnered precisely 50% of the vote, beating Salisbury News by 6 votes 152-146. The other six votes went to Twirling, Twirling, Twirling Towards Freedom. It appears that camp placed itself squarely behind ATGR in order to win and the strategy paid off.

While there’s no prize for winning, I suppose Ridgely Griffith can link to this post and the poll itself as proof he has the best blog in Salisbury. I’m not arguing with that sentiment considering his competition, but it is somewhat humorous that the first time ATGR and Salisbury News faced off in the opening round, Salisbury News won. Yet Joe Albero lost when it really counted.

All right, back to more serious stuff for both the blog and the poll.