An astute reader made a very, thought provoking comment on the outstanding blog post, “What Tea parties are and are not”. This insightful comment needs to be met head on and addressed directly by the nationwide, grassroots movement.

The reader cites a comment from the original blog, then adds brief commentary:

“We felt this way when George Bush was President and we’d be holding Tea Parties today if he was still on the job.”

Um, really? Because he was president for pretty much eight years and there were (hang on while I add ‘em up) zero tea parties. The non-partisan tone here is manipulative and wildly disingenuous.

The reader makes some valid points.

(more…)

In a 250 page quarterly report to Congress, Inspector General, Neil Barofsky, reports that US taxpayers are increasingly exposed to potentially significant losses and the US government is more vulnerable to fraud. Barofsky also states that the public-private partnership designed to clean up the toxic assets is tilted in favor of private investors and against the taxpayers. Barofsky goes on to make a number of specific recommendations which establish tough, conflict of interest rules and request greater transparency.

(more…)

The Obama administration announced it will make another $500 million available to Chrysler through the end of the month and another $5 billion available to GM through May.  The price tag keeps rising.

Read the article here.

However, Obama states that the US funding,  “does not represent a budgetary expenditure or any increase in the deficit since it effectively represents an exchange of assets.”  Whatever that means.

The article also noted that the $100 billion was part of the commitment made by G20 nations at the April 2 summit in London.  So, the G20, an international group of nations, dictates US monetary policy?  What about the US Congress as stipulated in the Constitution?  Did Congress vote on this “loan”?  And how is it that $100 billion is being “loaned” or “exchanged”, or whatever terminology you want to use, when we’re running a nearly $2 trillion budget deficit?

Here are some alternative possibilities.  Instead of loaning $100 billion to foreign nations, how about saving this money to start paying down $11 trillion in national debt?  Or, how about dedicating part of this savings to repaying US taxpayers for all the government bailouts they’ve been forced to fund over the past several months?

Read the article here.