Rep. Betty McCollum, D-Minnesota, has come up with an easy way to say $100 million: end military sponsorships of NASCAR. Most people might be a bit surprised to learn that we are spending $100 million for NASCAR endorsements, but that cost is quite modest when you consider that the military is willing to spend almost $500,000 for a flyover of a closed football stadium.
McCollum wants to bar the endorsement in the 2011 House budget bill.
While most people would find it shocking that our schools are cutting teachers and resources while the military is willing to pay $100 million for race car endorsement. I am not one of those people. As previously noted, I have filled out the form requesting a flyover at this year’s Turley Turkey Bowl. I would now like to add a request for an endorsement of the Turley McLean Bears football team. I am only asking for $1 million a year over the next 10 years — one tenth of the expense of NASCAR.
The National Guard sponsors Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s team, the Army sponsors Ryan Newman, and the Air Force sponsors AJ Allmendinger. That leaves the Navy and the Marines open for the Turkey Bowl endorsement.
If my request is refused, I would hope that we could simply end all product or sports endorsements from the military. This appears to be an example of a budget that should be trimmed if it is being wasted in this way.
Source: CNN
Stamford Liberal:
“This makes absolutely no sense.”
You are right, the left doesn’t make much sense. You scream to high heaven about not regulating business enough and then you scream to high heaven when business lobbies Washington to try and ease those regulations or make special regulations.
So get rid of regulations and get rid of lobbying. As long as you have regulations you are going to have business trying to get around those regulations, many of which are a burden on business. Business is not some bottomless pit of unlimited wealth that government can appropriate with no consequences.
No wonder the economy is in such bad straights, no one in charge and no one in intellectual positions influencing those making decisions knows anything about business or economics.
SL, Hope they don’t bring their guns.
Swarthmore mom:
eniobob made a comment about that very thing on the Lara Logan thread.
Positively mind-boggling.
————————————————————-
rafflaw:
Spot on. Except the teabagging peons will be sleeping in tents while the teabagger leaders will be watching from the hotel penthouse.
Swarthmore Mom,
The tea party is bought and paid for by the Koch Brothers so they are probably going to Madison on a paid vacation.
The tea party is going to demonstrate in support of the governor in Madison tomorrow. Some of the people from the health care forums are going.
Blouise:
I went to the link and realized PP sent me an email and I signed it already but thanks!
sorry, wrong link … this is the one:
https://secure.ppaction.org/site/SPageServer?pagename=pp_ppol_ws_I_Stand_with_PP&s_src=standwithppfeb2011_taf&JServSessionIdr004=l0lyf313q2.app214a
Here’s a link if you would like to respond to the Congress action
https://secure.ppaction.org/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=OnScreenThanks&id=12586
Swarthmore MOm,
At least it is likely to go nowhere in the Senate.
Can’t load the “right declares war on women” thread but I see where the Pence bill easily passed. The vote was generally along party lines.
Blouise:
“Thank you Buckeye … signed up … and thanks to Stamford Liberal for the Buckeye call out for I had missed his original post”
Glad I could be of service
“You’re spending too much time on the blog … hit the books, kiddo”
Lmao – it’s a good thing my kid goes to school locally. Hell if I’d want to have to continue riding her like I had to when she was in HS!
Chan,
You’re spending too much time on the blog … hit the books, kiddo
Buckeye
1, February 18, 2011 at 1:36 pm
OT but important
http://progressivesunited.org/action/WorkersRally/
==============================================
Thank you Buckeye … signed up … and thanks to Stamford Liberal for the Buckeye call out for I had missed his original post
Chan:
Case in point –
House Blocks Funds for FCC Net Neutrality Rules
http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/house_blocks_funds_for_fcc_net_neutrality_rules_20110218/
Posted on Feb 18, 2011
Flickr / Dan Edelstein
House Republicans have succeeding in amending a spending bill to deny the FCC money to implement new (and heavily gutted) network neutrality regulations. That’s right: banning a government agency from using government money to do government work. —JCL
The Wall Street Journal:
House lawmakers voted Thursday night to prevent the Federal Communications Commission from implementing controversial new rules that would govern the flow of traffic over the Internet.
The rules, known as network neutrality, would affect such companies as AT&T Inc. (T), Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ) and Comcast Corp. (CMCSA) because they own the networks over which the Internet often flows. They would be barred from discriminating as to what content flows over the Web.
The FCC agreed on the rules last year, but has not yet implemented them fully.”
Now, how is the government supposed to do its job if the GOP insist on being moronic tools?
Buckeye:
Thanks – all signed up 🙂
Chan,
This is just too yummy to pass up:
“Business is always at the mercy of government, even Blackwater.”
I think the Iraqi’s would beg to differ.
Sigh …
Our Warmer, Wetter, Wilder World
— By Kevin Drum
| Fri Feb. 18, 2011 3:00 AM PST.
My friend the geophysicist emailed the other day to tell me his house in Connecticut was still snowed in. “The main hypotheses for why we have so much snow,” he explained, “involve heat coming out of the now-open Arctic ocean in early winter. Once the ice cap freezes over temporarily, the wild weather calms down.”
In other words, it’s caused by global warming. Not global warming next year. Not global warming 50 years from now. Global warming today. And according to a new study published in Nature, the entire continent of North America is affected:
“Human influence on the climate system has the effect of intensifying precipitation extremes,” said Francis Zwiers, a climate researcher at Environment Canada in Toronto and lead researcher on the first study….The study found that observed increase in deluges “cannot be explained by natural internal fluctuations of the climate system alone,” said Zwiers. In other words, only the addition of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere explains why the United States and Canada have experienced a dramatic increase in heavy downpours.
….The explanation is simple physics: Warmer air holds more water vapor. That means when rainfall gets triggered, the air contributing to the storm is holding more water than it did in the cooler pre-industrial world.
And it’s not just North America. Another new study looked at the epic floods in England and Wales in 2000 and concluded that they were quite likely a result of a warmer world:
In nine out of ten cases our model results indicate that twentieth-century anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions increased the risk of floods occurring in England and Wales in autumn 2000 by more than 20%, and in two out of three cases by more than 90%.
And the even scarier part? These studies only go through the year 2000, so they miss the entire last decade, which was the warmest on record. And needless to say, England and North America are far from being the areas worst affected by climate change. What we’re seeing here is just a small taste of what’s to come in the future and in other parts of the globe. Buckle up.
http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2011/02/our-warmer-wetter-wilder-world
Chan:
“All those were/are heavily regulated by government currently.”
Are you serious? Christ, I know you’re a young un’ but, really? You truly believe this?
“Most companies are good actors run by decent people.”
I’ll concede this to a point, but not much. It is abundantly obvious that it is the largest that exploit the system, and spend millions to lobby against government regulations and oversight. Recent examples? The EPA, the ACA, and The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau each of which the GOP, with the help of its corporate overlords, are just ITCHING to rip apart.
“We need private sector oversight of government regulators to make sure they are doing their jobs.”
This makes absolutely no sense. You want government to oversee private industry, then have private indstry oversee government. If the private industry could be trusted to police itself, government oversight wouldn’t be needed. When Congress deregulates and refuses to fund these oversign agencies, the government is unable to do its job.
And Chan, when confronted with the facts and the knowledge that he’s getting a ridiculous and factually limited education, promptly melts down into an anti-government pile of . . . pile of . . . what is that word . . .
yeah well sounds like socialism to me, just substitute military poghs for government poghs.
So what, Bush was a Fascist and Obama is a Marxist/Socialist. they both stink like sh_t. Sh_t is sh_t, it really doesnt matter if it is gopher sh_t or pig sh_t, it still comes from an a$$hole.