... leave us not forget the cushy pension deal they've crafted for themselves. For purposes of reference, please realize that if you pay the maximum Social Security tax for 30 years, the government says you will start with a maximum annual benefit of $25,440. If you happen to be under 65, and then earn more than $1,800 a month, you will lose $1 in benefits for every $2 you earn (a 50% marginal tax rate). This is from that notorious libertarian, neo-con source: CNNMoney : Members are eligible to start collecting at age 62 if they have at least five years of service. If they have 20 years of service under their belt, they can retire at 50. With 25 years of service, they can retire any time. What they get depends on a formula based on years of service and average pay(natch, right?). So a congressman with 22 years of service and whose average salary for the top three years was $153,900 gets $84,645. A current congressman ending up with six years of service (it's two-year terms, ...

Here is the key paragraph in President Obama's WaPo Op-Ed today: What Americans expect from Washington is action that matches the urgency they feel in their daily lives -- action that's swift , bold and wise enough for us to climb out of this crisis. [emphasis added] Here's the problem: Swift does not equate with rushing lemming-like over a cliff. Back in October the Congress passed the first TARP bailout that then-candidate Obama supported. Problem: they passed a bill so flawed that it handed money over to banks and other financial entities with virtually no requirement to ever lend the money, and contained such dramatic opacity rules that the Federal Reserve either will not or cannot tell American taxpayers (a) who got their money or (b) what was done with it. Here's the problem: Strong , even as the President conceives it, means strong relief and strong stimulus . Bluntly speaking, I suspect that getting out of this bill with 10-15% pork is the unavoidable o...

So we've got Deputy SecDef and Raytheon lobbyist William Lynn in charge of the Pentagon, right? It's probably just coincidence that the defense industry waited until the week after his confirmation as an exception to the Obama administration's no-lobbyists-but-the-ones-who-we-decide-are-OK-and-not-exceptions-to-our-no-lobbyist-rule policy, to launch--guess what?--a lobbying campaign for more defense spending as a jobs program : From AP : Faced with a national economic crisis and a new president, the defense industry is itself playing defense. Its latest lobbying message: Weapons systems aren't just instruments of national security, they're vital jobs programs. One big new ad features a boldly soaring bald eagle and declares, "Of course America's economy can take off again. It already has a strong pair of wings." The ad, recently run in Washington-area newspapers and journals, is sponsored by the Aerospace Industries Association, whose members include...

In 2002 I was working on contract for the Office for Domestic Preparedness, teaching grant administrators the political origins, tactics, and logistics of international terrorism. During that time I met the executive assistant for homeland security to the Governor of South Carolina (he was role-playing a cabinet-level officer in a simulation at the time). What he said then has echoed in my memory for years and years--it keeps coming back to me. And as politics move on, his comments keep takig on new meaning.... We had just finished a discussion on how real homeland security could be achieved for far less than the billions and billions of dollars being appropriated when he said: "Don't worry, it'll never happen that way. Homeland Security is the new revenue sharing. Because there is an emergency situation, the politicians in DC don't have to worry about paying for anything. They can just print the money. And nobody in the States is going to scream about it becau...

Kids Prefer Cheese sent me to TheDay.com , where I find the best assessment yet of the oxymoron of funding only shovel-ready projects in the pending Bail-out bill. What exactly constitutes shovel-ready ? Just ask Chris Dodd, who knows what's in, and what's out, and how to work the margins to get more dough for the home team: Norwich - A group of the region's leaders told U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd Friday afternoon that they are skeptical of and confused by key aspects of a potential economic stimulus package Congress hopes to pass by the middle of next month. The projected $800 billion-plus bill is being promoted as a means to stimulate the economy primarily by putting people to work on “shovel-ready” infrastructure projects. However, the definition of “shovel-ready” has proved elusive and, some say, counterintuitive. Dodd provided a local example: the $34 million middle school expansion and renovation in Griswold, which broke ground in December, would not qualify because it i...

Then consider the story of Latrobe Steel and Congressman Jack Murtha, as reported by the Coyote : And this certainly is a feel-good story for those rooting for the government to re-engineer the American auto industry: Latrobe Specialty Steel of Latrobe, 40 miles east of Pittsburgh, makes specialty steel for aircraft parts. In 2006, its parent company, Timken, spent $2.9 million lobbying Congress on various issues and persuaded lawmakers to ban the Defense Department from buying any products using foreign-made specialty steel. As the sole U.S. producer of certain kinds of specialty steel, Latrobe saw its orders climb. Timken then sold Latrobe to a group of investors in a $250 million deal. But the buy-American restrictions for specialty steel caused serious problems for the Air Force, creating a 17-month lag in getting spare parts for aircraft used in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In May 2007, Latrobe said it needed to expand but complained of high electric bills and publicly threat...