We can spend our way out of a recession, right? And the deeper it gets, the more we need to spend, right?¹ Check out this video from Citizens Against Government Waste²

© 2011, Pontificus. All rights reserved.

Bailout, Budget Deficit, Campaign Promises, Economy, Government Incompetency, Government inefficiency, Government takeover, Healthcare, Integrity, National debt, Obama, pelosi, reid, Social Security, Taxes, Unemployment Hide

The Obama GrabTM

Everyone surely knows the whole body naked-scanning machines that TSA rushed into service at airports around the country immediately after the mid-term elections. These days they are impossible to miss while traveling.

If one were to wonder if safety was forgotten in the rush to field the machines as quickly as possible, here’s some food for thought:

• Boston TSA employees seem to be experiencing a higher than average rate of skin cancer¹
• FDA has not tested the full body scanners for safety²
• NIST has not tested the full body scanners for safety³
• additional action was recommended by the Johns Hopkins University to avoid exceeding the general public dose recommendation of 100 mrem per year⁴
• the units have areas where beam overshoot will expose bystanders to repeated doses; protective shields were recommended, but seem to not have been implemented⁵
• the systems were never studied for their cancer inducing properties using standard methods such as mutant mice⁶
• the often quoted comparison between cosmic background radiation received during flight and the scanning machines is inaccurate, because the energy levels of the radiation are orders of magnitude different⁷
• the dose estimations are likely to be inaccurate (too low), because the energy levels used concentrate more of the radiation in and near the skin, causing localized doses much higher than the “full body average”⁸

To be fair, the FDA responded to some of these issues⁹. Strangely, in the lengthy response nowhere does the FDA state that it studied the systems itself, or that the FDA has determined the systems to be safe. The response made reference to third party safety studies, but not only were these studies not performed on behalf of the FDA on the systems themselves, some of them pointed out issues that had not been addressed by the TSA¹⁰.

Further, a key study made by JHU was heavily redacted, making independent verification impossible. Not to mention that the characterization of the third party evaluations was at best questionable, as the FDA claimed NIST had provided “safety data”, when NIST states that it didn’t test the units for safety¹¹.

And last but not least, in a response to the FDA, it seems that the JHU report was inconsistent and in fact implies that the primary radiation was measured in a manner that provided a lower than actual reading¹².

Perhaps we should all just drive a car or resign ourselves to the Obama Grab^TM until we can all vote out the Dear Leader and his gang that brought us this multi-billion dollar skin cancer experiment.

© 2011, Pontificus. All rights reserved.

Cancer, Cover-Up, DHS, Full Body Scanners, Government Incompetency, Government inefficiency, Obama, Obama Grab, Radiation Dose, TSA Hide

A musical break…¹

© 2010, Pontificus. All rights reserved.

2010 Elections, Budget Deficit, Campaign Promises, Congress, Constitution, Economy, Ethics, Government Incompetency, Government inefficiency, Government takeover, Gun Control, Healthcare, Integrity, Kick The Bumbs Out, National debt, pelosi, reid, See You In November, Taxes, Unemployment Hide

Oops

The European Foundation¹ has released a list of 100 reasons why climate change (formerly known as global warming) is natural and not man-made²:
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© 2009, Pontificus. All rights reserved.

Climate Change, Economy, Ethics, Global Warming, Government inefficiency, Green Economy, Hoax, Integrity Hide

Speaks for itself…

© 2009 – 2010, Pontificus. All rights reserved.

Climate Change, Economy, Global Warming, Government inefficiency, Government takeover, Green Economy, Hoax Hide

Michael F. Cannon of the CATO Institute¹ has provided some interesting metrics for estimating the real cost of ObamaCare.

The issue is that while the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) evaluates the cost of ObamaCare at some $1 trillion, give or take, it is restricting itself to the impact to the Federal budget, and excluding several factors that massively increase the real cost of the proposed legislation.

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© 2009, Pontificus. All rights reserved.

Budget Deficit, Economy, Government inefficiency, Government takeover, Healthcare Hide

What Obamacare Means For You

Obamacare

• The Efficiency of the Postal Service
• The Sustainability of Social Security
• and all the Compassion of the IRS

(No further comment)

© 2009, Pontificus. All rights reserved.

Budget Deficit, Economy, Government inefficiency, Government takeover, Healthcare, Medicaid, Medicare, Obama, Social Security, Unemployment Hide

Nevada Development Authority

The Golden State hasn’t been that golden in a long while. Year after year the state seems to move from one budget crisis to the next. From one massive budget shortfall to another just as big or bigger. If political speeches promising a better future had any worth, the state would be platinum by now.

The experience that California is going through can be very helpful to the rest of the nation.

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© 2009, Pontificus. All rights reserved.

Budget Deficit, California, Entitlement Programs, Government inefficiency, Unemployment Hide

Edmunds.com — known for evaluating new and used cars and their markets — collated its seasonal car sales numbers with the results of the cash for clunkers program (aka Car Allowance Rebate System). Their findings were that factoring in new car sales that would have taken place anyway, the government subsidized each true “clunker” replacement to the tune of $24,000.¹

© 2009, Pontificus. All rights reserved.

Budget Deficit, Cash for Clunkers, Edmunds.com, Government inefficiency, Government takeover, Green Economy Hide

Government can run healthcare best, right? Afterall, with Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid they’ve had plenty of time to learn from past successes and failures, and not repeat them again, right?

Regardless of your personal opinion, the following video should provide plenty of additional facts to go with the discussion.

Source for the video is a blatantly opinionated, but factual¹, Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation.

© 2009 – 2010, Pontificus. All rights reserved.

Budget Deficit, Government inefficiency, Government takeover, Healthcare, Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security Hide