Have you ever heard Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) complain about "pork barrel" spending? The senator has a trick he's especially fond of: find spending related to animals, which might sound silly.
In one classic example, McCain blasted "$650,000 for beaver management in North Carolina and Mississippi," asking, "How does one manage a beaver?" Hilarious. In reality, $650,000 hired workers to disrupt beaver dams, which in turn prevented significant flood damage to farms, timber lands, roadways, and other infrastructure in the area.
The money, in other words, was well spent, but when framed in a lazy and sarcastic way, the investment may appear wasteful. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) enjoys playing the same game (via Barbara Morrill).
Right off the bat, we already know Cantor is blatantly lying when he said President Obama "wants to raise your taxes." What Obama actually wants is to close tax loopholes -- nearly all of which only benefit the very wealthy -- and use the revenue to reduce the deficit. It's a policy that congressional Republicans used to support, too.
But putting that aside, we quickly find a beaver-management-style problem. That rascally Obama wants to spend our hard-earned money to pay people to play video games? Outrageous!
And while I suspect most reasonable people would balk at the government spending $1.2 million to pay people to play World of Warcraft, there are, of course, the details Cantor either doesn't know or doesn't want you to know.
In this case, the $1.2 million is a National Science Foundation grant, being used by scholars at North Carolina State University to research cognitive functions among the elderly, exposing them to video-game stimuli to examine how it affects their ability to think, examine, and react. Cantor may find this amusing, but medical research like this isn't wasteful.
Morrill added, "Because there's nothing funnier than medical research on cognitive functioning in seniors. Well, maybe it could be even funnier if it offered insight into the treatment of Alzheimer's and dementia. That would be a laugh riot. But hey, why let facts get in the way of juvenile tweets designed to mislead, eh, Eric?"
Incidentally, Cantor's tweet includes a link to his own site, where he lists a series of expenditures he considers wasteful. The point, obviously, is to influence the sequester debate -- Republicans don't need to strike a balanced compromise with Democrats, since there's so much waste that deserves to be cut.
Of course, at the outset, there's an arithmetic problem -- to replace the sequester, Republicans would need $1.2 trillion in spending cuts, and Cantor's list doesn't even come close to making up the difference.
But the more pressing problem is that Cantor's examples of waste aren't actually wasteful, and medical research into cognitive functions among senior citizens isn't amusing. Jon Chait had a good item on this:
[I]n point of fact, even the handful of wasteful programs that supposedly justify the no-taxes line aren't actually wasteful. Take the $47,000 smoking machine. Sound outrageous -- government bureaucrats buying themselves an expensive piece of machinery to smoke cigarettes while regular folks like John Boehner have to light up by hand, like a sucker! In fact, it turns out to be a piece of medical research equipment used by the Veteran Administration:
"VA Researchers are using the smoking machine to cause chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) in mice by the same mechanisms by which the disease occurs in Veterans and others who smoke cigarettes," a VA official told HuffPost in an email.
"The cessation of smoking does not curtail the progression of the disease and there is currently no effective therapy for the treatment of the condition," the official said. "Using this mouse model of COPD, VA researchers will test potential new treatments for the disease."
You see, Mr. Speaker, if you want to study the effects of smoking, you could kidnap some unsuspecting person and force-feed him Marlboros. But the scientific community finds this approach unethical, so machines to test the effects of smoking on mice are considered a standard work-around.
In some respects, Republicans are inadvertently bolstering the Democratic argument. If the right's favorite examples of wasteful spending aren't, in reality, wasteful, maybe the nation really does need more revenue.
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Cantor dare not call himself a representative of the people! He's a puerile man with a limited conception of his duties, his relations, and his own faculties!
What rubbish he believes passes as serious discourse! The voters in his district need to feel embarrassing shame for sending him to the House of the People! -Kevo
If they used Can'tor for landfill, they'd finally get some use out of him.
Eric Cantor lies constantly about everything that doesn't serve his own selfish interests. What he says does not matter to anyone but him and his crazy base in the T-Party.
They live in an alternate reality of lies and he is their head spokesman.
Little Eric Can't - always busy busy busy, demonstrating the lie of the ancient anti-Semitic slur that all Jews are really smart.
Tempting as it might be to consider Cantor as potential landfill, the problem is any site so chosen would have to be declared a Hazardous / Toxic Waste Site requiring SuperFund money to mitigate it.
So even though the immediate problem might be resolved - the long term economic problem would be worse - and he'd STILL be costing us way more money than he's worth.
Sort of the GOP in a nutshell these days.
We already know that Republicans don't give a rat's patootie about the elderly or the sick or veterans, so why are we surprised they'd lie about research designed to help them?
Less money in the pockets of big business = BAD!
???? Which will raise taxes. Benen why are you blatantly lying? Or is more taxation somehow different than raising taxes? If you're going to hide behind semantics at least mention tax rates.
But Katherine, one has to acknowledge the reality that all of Obama's stimuli are designed to get more money to business. Infrastructure spending is profits for road paving companies, no?
Your party was all for this when Romney/Ryan were selling closing tax loop holes, although they would never commit to anything specific. So it is okay if a rich white man proposes it, but if a rich black man proposes it than it is bad?
Basketball baby: "Please remove head from ass before commenting."
It's really discouraging to read the stupid stuff posted here; Shooter242 must have, you know what, for brains. Convoluted T-party b.s. The hypocracy is so obvious.
Which part of "Democrats already got new tax revenues" are you all having trouble with?
What part of closing tax loop holes are you having difficulty with, that Republicans supported when proposed by Romney/Ryan.
That was one way to raise tax revenue. Republicans went with another way, and now we're done.
Perhaps or Perhaps not - based on your comments than the spending cuts are done since Republicans got what they wanted during the Fiscal Cliff Negotiations - Obama wanted 50/50 and compromised with less revenue and Republicans got cuts in spending - on your logic "now we're done". Your party got their cuts. When states have people loosing their jobs because Government Military Contracts are cut and their money train is screaming at them, perhaps everyone will come back to the table.
If you're not using any tax loopholes, your taxes won't go up.
Oh really? Would you care to point out where those cuts are?
The ideas that revenue increases or spending cuts can occur only once are nonsense. Each should be done whenever appropriate. Now is the time for neither. Austerity in an economy as week as ours is counterproductive.
Green, the deficit is larger than all the personal income tax collected. Think about that. There is no possible way taxes can be raised enough to erase 10% of the deficit. Ergo we have a spending problem, not a revenue problem.
The guy who really got this @!$%# rolling was unfortunately a Dem - Sen. William Proxmire of Wisconsin. He came up with the "Golden Fleece Award" for government-funded projects of modest value that sounded stupid, and sometimes were, but were often quite legit. I was glad to see him retire. Unfortunately, it's such an easy game to play that there are always lots of others ready to fill that role.
I like really like WoW, but I'd rather be paid to play StarCraft II competitively.
Elderly people can't play Starcraft II - way too much micro involved. WoW involves clicking buttons when the cooldowns are up. Super-boring game.
I got stuck on one of the levels of Brood War, and couldn't get past it. Does this mean I have Alzheimer's?
I play WoW, not well, but I play anyway. I would love for the government to pay for my games. I would play more than WoW. Even with my bad eyesight and my bad hands.
"slaps the dueling flag down to challenge Cantor"
Meanwhile at discretionary fund headquarters...
At least lobbyists get what they pay for!
This is a triumph of decades of messaging about government waste. Everybody believes that Washington is massively inefficient in all things, burning money for heat, spending thousands of dollars on individual toilet seats, or just throwing dollar bills away like tippers at a strip bar. Everyone thinks most of the money the government spends gets wasted. Certainly there is waste, but the reality is that it's in most cases small change compared to the big picture. It's just not possible to balance the budget by eliminating waste unless you redefine waste as "any form of spending on social services, welfare, insurance, economic stimulus, scientific research, culture, or the arts".
Which is exactly how the Republicons define it.
And you have to include massive, ill managed weapons systems that are designed for WWII or Vietnam. Until the military starts looking at the future of warfare and designing weapons to meet the needs of the future instead of fighting the wars of the past, we will be wasting a lot of money.
After reading the article in the Feb. 25 issue of Time on the F-35 fighter (pp. 28-30), I am convinced that we need to stop that program. The F-22 still has not been used in combat and the F-35 is not combat ready. And before the trolls start attacking my comment, please read the Time article, especially the last five paragraphs.
I have a quibble with your comment #6, Nathan. While most of these discretionary spending projects have actual value, there's one area where the waste is disgraceful. That's on military concessionaires and contractors, who are raking in billions.
I know a retired army colonel, who said that it's one of the most lucrative career paths to go from active military to running a company that supplies military hardware and services. You're drinking from an essentially unattended firehose, and you've made the contacts during your service that allow it to happen.
It isn't the Pentagon that wants the funding, it's the politicians who want it to benefit the weapons' manufacturers in their states.
The modern military acquisition system is a horribly inefficient jobs program, and programs like the F-22 and F-35 are just the most visible examples of that. I am a former Army medic, and like JL I have seen quite a few former service members, mostly higher officers and some sergeants get some nice jobs after their service. While it does help make up for the sacrifices of a military career it does make for a helluva good ol' boy system.
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-february-7-2013/tanks--but-no-tanks
bflynch said: After reading the article in the Feb. 25 issue of Time on the F-35 fighter (pp. 28-30), I am convinced that we need to stop that program. The F-22 still has not been used in combat and the F-35 is not combat ready. And before the trolls start attacking my comment, please read the Time article, especially the last five paragraphs.
Try this, from Time's Battleland Blog the other day:
Sequestration is for Sissies: $6.9 Billion More for the F-22
By Mark Thompson
Pentagon officials took to PBS and the Pentagon press room to warn Wednesday about the impending sequester's impact on military spending.
"We're really trying to keep on protecting the country and delivering the defense under these circumstances," Deputy Defense Secretary Ash Carter said on the PBS NewsHour Wednesday evening. "In some cases, that's not going to be possible." On March 1, assuming no White-House-congressional deal on a $1.2 trillion deficit reduction package over the coming decade, more than $500 billion in Pentagon cuts will kick in automatically, including a $46 billion cut between March 1 and October 1.
"Two-thirds of the Army active combat brigade teams, other than those that are currently deployed, would be at below acceptable levels of readiness," Pentagon money chief Robert Hale said. "It could affect their ability to deploy to a new contingency, if one occurred, or if this goes on long enough, even to Afghanistan."
Yet slightly more than an hour before Carter appeared on television, the Air Force slipped Lockheed Martin a little something extra to keep their fleet of F-22s flying:
One doesn't know whether to laugh or cry. The F-22 program has become a parody of itself, and of all that is wrong and warped in the military-industrial complex.
Let's review the bidding:
This isn't management. It's malfeasance.
"We ought to constantly be asking ourselves, what kind of defense do we need? How much should we spend? Are we using our defense dollars wisely?" Carter said on PBS. "And the answer is, not in all cases…we, obviously, want to keep the costs of weapons systems down."
Obviously?
TCinLA: My points exactly.
The more I read of the F-22/F-35, the more disgusted I am. I'd rather the Air Force buy ten upgraded F-15s than one of the new jets. Why are we paying ten times as much for something we don't even use as designed?
I loathe abused IDIQ DOD contracts.
I wouldn't doubt those in lockstep with the war profiteers will prioritize obligating as much money as possible to contractors. It may not be about protecting our troops readiness and well being so much as feeding DOD contractors, which amounts to nearly half the defense budget. (It's just business, baby. BIIIIG business.)
The only way these planes would be used is to fight WWIII. And we'd have to start it.
Whatever you may think of the return on military spending in terms of peace and security, it's one hell of a jobs program.
Plus, the F-22 is just plain cool, and it's effectively been cancelled already. Criticizing it is like Raytheon proposing to arm our soldiers with lightsabers and people asking if they really need them. The correct answer would be: who cares? Lightsabers are freaking awesome!
' the details Cantor either doesn't know or doesn't want you to know.' I'll go with doesn't want you to know. He is not a stupid man. He IS however a venal, manipulative lying ahole.
McCain should've told Mark Sanford about beaver management.
Sanford went to Argentina to study it.
with a cc. to Menendes.
Hmm, beaver inspector?
One step below bikini inspector.
Public trust nurtured through the hands of government inspectors. I like it.
Chris, locknpost -- I enjoyed those, thanks.
The republicans really should hope that the Democrats don't want to start draging up wastfull spending...we could begin with all the Bush era no bid contracts go on to all the corporate fines that haven't been paid (Halliburton et al) and finish up with the outrageously expensive fighter plane we don't need...
And on the subject of WoW (world of warcraft) I would also mention that the CDC used part of it's game mechanics to study how to track disease progression during a pandemic outbreak...
As research costs go this is pretty cheep compared to return on investment...which is something else the GOP doesn't like to talk about
Wouldn't the Iraq war count as wasteful spending? Why the hell did we go there? What did we accomplish?
Ask the GOP and the answer you get is: "Because...Freedom!!! Now STFU and stop asking questions!"
Dragoon: Outrageously expensive fighter plane: are you referring to the F-35? See my post above and by all means read the article in the Feb. 25 issue of Time, pp. 20-30, especially the last five paragraphs.
I know only too well, having worked fot the defense industry, that cutting a major weapons system cuts jobs, but it does not do the industry any good in the long run to keep putting out weapons designed for the last war and which will not be used. These systems create jobs and the defense industry has been very cleaver: they have sub-contractors in many different Congressional distrists and they have a very good, well funded lobby.
Government Waste: Eric Cantor is paid $193, 400 per year to tweet.
Can'tor won't.
Of course free grazing rights to cattle ranchers with money to contribute to your campaign is a good investment or protection to hog farmers that destroy watersheds with waste products well that is the price of doing business.
Being cute, of course, covers up ignorance.
You better hope the farmers and ranchers are kept in business so that our food supply won't be controlled by other countries like OPEC controls our fuel. We have one of the safest, cheapest food supply of any country. I would like to keep it that way. There are not enough rural voters or rich farmers and ranchers to affect any election outcomes. Obama has been the best President ever to keep oil prices high. He wants them high in order to further his green agenda. If fuel is high he can continue investing the taxpayer's money in failing green companies. The green energy is too expensive at this time and it can't compete with fossil fuels. People don't want to purchase it. If it was a great deal, private investors would be all over it. So as long as Obama is in office practicing his same old energy policies, expect high fuel prices. I'm sure the oil companies love him. If we don't watch out, the same will happen to food prices.
I know of no free federal land grazing permits, though the fee per head is negligible: $1.35/head/mo http://www.panhandlepost.com/2013/02/06/federal-grazing-permit-fee-unchanged-for-2013/
jes, be careful what vaults you open.
By all means, let's keep the industrialized agriculture conglomerates (AKA as Monsanto, Cargill and Bayer et al) happy so they can continue to grow cheap, nutritionally bereft and poisonous food to the masses while destroying our soil, crippling our bees and fouling our watershed. While we're at it, let's keep the masses entertained with the Kardashian's, Real Housewives of Anywhere and Toddler's with Tiaras so they won't notice what they're up to. It's a tried and true method of control called Bread and Circus, introduced by the Roman Empire and nearly perfected by us. As far as green energy goes, once somebody figures out how to charge us for the wind that spins our turbines or the sun that shines on our roofs, fossil fuels will finally be allowed to lay buried where they belong.
Considering there has been a discussion about men being good fathers thought this would warrant some more discussion about being a good father and spouse. Now when men and their buddies get together in their mutual discussion to cheer each other on. One thing you do not tell your buddies is that you have to go home and beat your wife today because she likes it as an encouragement to your other buddies to abuse their wives and family. Or tell your buddies that in order to control or get a long with your wife to go home and beat up your wife or family. And in real reality, some men exactly do that thinking they are making their lives so much better as they have abused their wife and family. But the one reason that is found to be the most striking of it all and what men give as an excuse for abusing their girlfriend or wife is because the women or girl likes it, because she keeps coming back for more. Now how much does a woman like to be abused or beaten up? Well Ms. Bobbit’s answer was to cut off Mr. Bobbit’s penis and throw it in the yard. Another case was where a young man lied, deceived, and abused several young women at one time and in the process got several of those young women pregnant. Eventually all of these women found out what he was doing. Three of those women got together and went to do what they thought was to take care of that dear sweet young man. One of those women lured him under a bridge while the other two waited there for them to arrive. Once that dear sweet young man arrived all three women jumped him, tied him up and than proceeded to remove his private parts. And in the end result, that young man fed his family jewels to the catfish in the river that night. Now with anything all people have their limit even with women and if you choose to do such stupid things as being an abuser in this world just remember a person will only put up with so much before they will strike back. And you will be lucky if you just loose your penis and balls.
?
The historians, Straus and Howe, have predicted that in the next few/several years there will be a mayor uphevial in the US. One as large as the change in public attitude between 1928 (I'm getting mine, you get yours, or if you can't, to hell with you) and 1946 (If we all work together, we can do ANYTHING).
Maybe that is what Deb means.
See their book, "The Fourth Turning".
The Fourth Turning now on my read list. As a person who loves picture books, I do hope it's not illustrated.
Cantor Style Tweet: Military funding is all fun and video games.
Full Story: "America's Army (also known as AA or America's Army Game Project) is a series of video games and other media developed by the United States Army and released as a global public relations initiative to help with recruitment." It is also used for training soldiers. (Wikepedia)
Okay even you guys have to admit this is over the top in absurdity.
Are people trying to say the only way to find treatment for mental dementia is to use video games? The NRA will accuse them of showing violent video games and then just wait for grandpa to do do a mass shooting...
Seriously, Jonas Salk didn't need to use video games or anything like that to find a vaccine for polio. He just did old fashioned research and study. What's wrong with that?
That's what they're doing.
FutrePrez, dementia, unlke polio, is not a primary disease for which a vaccine could be found. Dementia is a chronic deterioration of cognitive functioning due to some other primary disease or condition. Treatment of dementia is meant to slow the progressive deterioration through a form of "brain exercises", which playing video games would be. This is much like slowing the progression of arthritis symptoms through physical exercise. The question researches try to answer is "what type of brain exercises are most effective in slowing the progression of the deterioration". This is NOT trivial research.
Chris, don't even bother trying to argue with someone so challenged that they can't see what is in front of their faces.
It called 'focus'...got it? Jonas Salk used the best and most recent technology to find a polio vaccine. In 2013 they are doing the same thing. C'mon.
Years and years ago the esteemed Everett Dirksen pioneered this tactic with his Golden Fleece awards in which among many other stupidities he came out against research in detecting early human pregnancies. The tactic hasn't changed much if at all.
What these people are actually showing is that they themselves are so ignorant that they really don't belong in positions of power. Think Peter Principle.
Sorry, that is William Proxmire.
People continue to miss the point. When the above article says that "Obama doesn't want to raise taxes, he wants to close loopholes", wasn't that the idea of the Republicans? He didn't like it when it was their idea. Obama has already gotten taxes raised through several methods. He increased the taxes on those above a certain threshold, (that's popular because there are so few of them and politically that is safe. There aren't enough of those votes to matter.), there are built in taxes in Obamacare, the SS et al taxes have returned to previous levels and there are others too numerous to mention. He doesn't want to raise taxes? And NOW he wants to close the loopholes that the Republicans had wanted? He already got his tax increases. He wants it all and does not know how, nor does he want to compromise. It is his way or the highway. Sequestration was his idea. He signed it into law. And NOW it is a bad idea? Really??? Talk about a flip flopper, liar, whatever label you choose to call it. He has absolutely NO intention of reducing spending. Tax more and spend more is his motto. He will take us to the poor house. For those who want to insure low income people are taken care of, you have a strange way of showing it. There will be no money to help the poor if we don't get our fiscal house in order. If you are not for cutting programs that don't work, cutting spending that is unnecessary, and cutting waste and fraud, you are not serious about continuing programs for the poor. There will be no money. There are not enough rich people to carry the burden. Choices are hard, but they are going to be made for us in the very near future. If you are old, you might not be affected, but your children and grandchildren will be.
@jes33 - you're woefully misinformed on all fronts. One would have to write a book to correct all the misinformation you've digested. Rather than attempt to do that, I would just ask that you take a good, long look at the sources you're getting your news from. They're not doing you any favors.
Republicans rewrite history on the sequester
By Ruth Marcus, Published: February 21
The blame game is a dreary and generally unproductive exercise. But as Washington slouches toward the self-inflicted wound of the budget sequester, Republicans’ determined effort to rewrite the history of debt reduction requires correcting.
My short version of apportioning blame for the current mess is this: The Obama administration is guilty of bad negotiating in pursuit of sensible policy. Congressional Republicans are guilty of exploiting the president’s bad negotiating in pursuit of terrible policy.
Let’s quickly dispense with the sideshow of the sequester’s parentage. It makes no difference, no matter how many times Republicans decry “the president’s sequester.”
First, the Obama administration came up with the mechanism precisely because Republicans deemed unacceptable a sequester that included automatic increases in tax revenue.
The underlying concept, from Democrats’ view, was never to implement the $1.2 trillion through spending cuts alone. Rather, the threat of sequester was to be leverage for a blend of spending cuts and tax increases. Sequester is happening because Republicans in the supercommittee balked at raising adequate revenue.
Second, no matter whose brainchild it was, Republicans voted for a deal that included the sequester as the enforcement mechanism. They can’t now disown their vote by insisting it was the other guy’s idea.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ruth-marcus-republicans-rewrite-history-on-the-sequester/2013/02/21/3581d05c-7c61-11e2-9a75-dab0201670da_story.html
There's more to the article, if you want to read it.
We have to remember that Rep. Alan Grayson clearly outlined the GOP plan for health care:
Part one, don't get sick. Part two, if you do get sick... Part three, die quickly.
Then we would not need studies on dementia.
The entire Republican party is a study in dementia.
Benen, thanks so much for delving into that Tweet from Cantor. I'd seen it on my Twitter feed and knew it was a bunch of hooey. (My first clue: it came from Eric Cantor.)
A bit of a correction: the World of Warcraft study took place before and was a pilot for the NSF grant. The actual cost of the World of Warcraft study was $5,000, and it was paid for by North Carolina State University, not the NSF.
Incidentally, Cantor's office's response to a request for comment on this particular, obvious lie, was to not answer and say, "It's all Obama's fault! Obamaquester! Obamaquester!"
I suppose it's good for us to know what stupid things the GOPers say, but I really wish they weren't the only headline makers these days. They WANT their lies widely publicized; in fact, they were pretty sure that repeating that it is "Obama's sequester" would make the public believe it. They don't.
I'm not sure sites like this should keep on giving them free publicity. I know we have to counter the lies, but since their adherents and their audience is dwindling ... it would be a relief to hear about the non-stupid things progressives and democrats are doing. For example, I never heard that Obama set aside $90 billion for alternative energy research (ten times the highest previous amount) until that book, The New New Deal came out ...
Obama never publicizes what he does. It'a a real problem.
Perhaps the old saying "Actions speak louder than words" explains the increase in support for President Obama?
It certainly would the decrease in support for any and all things Republican!
1.2 million is also something like 1/33000 of one percent of the budget. It's so small that my calculator will only give the answer in scientific notation. The resulting "tax increase" would be less than one cent per household.
Damn that Obama. And now he wants to ban the penny.