Writing in the Orange County Register, conservative-leaning political commentator Mark Steyn explains -- and exposes -- the utter frivolity of the latest “fiscal cliff” compromise. Here’s the most galling excerpt:

Washington keeps proving the point. The political class has just spent two months on a down-to-the-wire nail-biting white-knuckle thrill-ride negotiation the result of which is more business as usual. At the end, as always, Dr. Obama and Dr. Boehner emerge in white coats, surgical masks around their necks, bloody scalpels in hand, and announce that it was touch-and-go for awhile but the operation was a complete success – and all they've done is applied another temporary Band-Aid that's peeling off even as they speak. They're already prepping the OR for the next life-or-death surgery on the debt ceiling, tentatively scheduled for next Tuesday or a week on Thursday or the third Sunday after Epiphany. 
No epiphanies in Washington: The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the latest triumphant deal includes $2 billion of cuts for fiscal year 2013. Wow! That's what the Government of the United States borrows every 10 hours and 38 minutes. Spending two months negotiating 10 hours of savings is like driving to a supermarket three states away to save a nickel on your grocery bill.
It sounds foolish, doesn’t it? I mean, the Congress literally spends months debating the ins and outs of an impending “compromise” -- only to wind up with a deeply flawed bill that does virtually nothing to solve the greatest challenges of our time. (There’s also a zero percent chance that members of the upper chamber actually read every page of the legislation before they voted on it). Nice going, guys. Meanwhile, there’s also this important little nugget:

On Monday, 300 million Americans did not know what their tax rates would be on Tuesday. That's ridiculous. 
Then, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell spent the night alone in a room with Joe Biden (which admittedly few of us would have the stomach for). And when they emerged they informed those 300 million Americans what their tax rates now were. That's unseemly.
Then, in the small hours of the morning, the legislature rubber-stamped it. That's repulsive.
There's a term for societies where power-brokers stitch up the people's business in back rooms and their pseudo-parliaments sign off on it at 3 a.m., and it isn't a "republic of limited government by citizen-representatives."
No, no it isn’t. But at least now I fully understand why Congress’s disapproval rating has been hovering at -- or around -- historic lows since 2011. In any case, the point is how is it even possible that on Monday night pretty much no one -- except, of course, for those in high national office -- knew what their tax rates would be when they woke up the following morning? Is this really the way the founders expected the Congress to operate and conduct the public’s business? The answer is no, of course, but that doesn’t seem to bother them in the slightest. And why should it? 

They’re just doing what they do best: kicking the can down the road until the next crisis comes along, while taking all the credit for averting a man-made catastrophe they themselves created. Brilliant. 

http://townhall.com/tipsheet/danieldoherty/2013/01/05/steyn-congress-spent-two-months-negotiating-10-hours-of-savings-n1479692

PK's NOTE: I don't have a Chick Fil A in my town so I couldn't do anything then. I supported Hobby Lobby today,  did you? 


Cash for Clunkers actually hurt the environment

Tell me this isn't a government operation:

Though almost a million people poured into car dealerships eager to exchange their old jalopies for something shiny and new, recent reports indicate the entire program may have actually hurt the environment far more than it helped.
According to E Magazine, the "Clunkers" program, which is officially known as the Car Allowance Rebates System (CARS), produced tons of unnecessary waste while doing little to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
The program's first mistake seems to have been its focus on car shredding, instead of car recycling. With 690,000 vehicles traded in, that's a pretty big mistake.
According to the Automotive Recyclers Association (ARA), automobiles are almost completely recyclable, down to their engine oil and brake fluid. But many of the "Cash for Clunkers" cars were never sent to recycling facilities. The agency reports that the cars' engines were instead destroyed by federal mandate, in order to prevent dealers from illicitly reselling the vehicles later.
The remaining parts of each car could then be put up for auction, but program guidelines also required that after 180 days, no matter how much of the car was left, the parts woud be sent to a junkyard and shredded.
Shredding vehicles results in its own environmental nightmare. For each ton of metal produced by a shredding facility, roughly 500 pounds of "shredding residue" is also produced, which includes polyurethane foams, metal oxides, glass and dirt. All totaled, about 4.5 million tons of that residue is already produced on average every year. Where does it go? Right into a landfill.
E Magazine states recycling just the plastic and metal alone from the CARS scraps would have saved 24 million barrels of oil. While some of the "Clunkers" were truly old, many of the almost 700,000 cars were still in perfectly good condition. In fact, many that qualified for the program were relatively "young," with fuel efficiencies that rivaled newer cars.
And though the point was to get less fuel efficient cars off the roads, with only 690,000 traded in, and over 250 million registered in the U.S., the difference in pollutant levels seems pretty negligible.

In other news, a furniture company touted by the president during the election campaign as an example of the economic recovery has - you guessed it - closed its doors:

A start-up North Carolina furniture company once celebrated as a sign of America's manufacturing rebound has closed, a year after its head was hosted by President Barack Obama.
Lincolnton Furniture Company was silent Friday, a day after shutting down. President Bruce Cochrane and other company officers did not return messages to The Associated Press.
Company financial officer Ben Causey said manufacturing operations were stopped indefinitely because orders were insufficient. He told The Charlotte Observer that only a few people would remain employed and the next steps were uncertain.
Lincolnton Furniture opened in December 2011 with 60 employees and plans to grow.
Obama last year invited Cochrane to a White House event on bringing overseas job back to America and he was a guest at the State of the Union address.
What is it with Obama? So many programs from housing to this cash for clunkers as utter failures while he chooses companies to show how great the economy is that go under?

I wouldn't buy a used car from him, that's for sure.

 http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/01/cash_for_clunkers_actually_hurt_the_environment.html

Government criminality exposed

The evidence is in: state officials in California willfully defrauded the public in order to enhance their budgets. If nobody ends up in jail over this fraud, we can expect more of it - much more. In fact, we have no idea how serious the problem already is, but as face the possibility of a partial government shutdown over the federal debt limit, it is important to keep in mind the mendacity of bureaucrats who plead poverty when dunnin g the public for more taxpayer funds for their satrapies.

The Los Angeles Times reports Iin a blog, not in the paper itself, apparently) on an official investigation, whose results were released on Friday afternoon - the best time of the week in which to bury something embarrassing:
Fear of embarrassment and budget cuts led California parks officials to intentionally conceal millions of dollars in a department account, according to an investigation conducted by the state attorney general's office.
The report, released Friday, is the most detailed official narrative yet regarding the root of the accounting scandal at the parks department.
The scandal broke last summer when it was revealed that the parks department had a hidden surplus of nearly $54 million even though it was threatening to close dozens of facilities.
About $20 million was found in an account where entrance fees and other revenues are deposited. Accounting discrepancies appeared to begin innocently more than a decade ago, leading to fluctuating reports on how much money was in the fund, investigators said.
But in 2002, when the problems were identified, parks officials made a "conscious and deliberate" decision not to reveal the money to officials at the Department of Finance, which plans the state budget.
I still remember vividly when the Congress under Speaker Gingrich played hardball with Bill Clinton over the debt extension, and the first propaganda moves were to "close" national parks, and have the media run sob stories about the poor families unable to use the magnificent parks. If push comes to shove this year, expect the same propaganda tricks to be used. We must be prepared to fight back with then story of lying bureaucrats closing parks to dun us for more money, when they had sufficient funds all along.

If a private business defrauded its shareholders or customers in this way, executives would be facing jail. Why should government executives face lesser accountability? After all, they carry the force of law with them, and with that comes extra responsibility.