Do you ever just stop, and think about how much you pay for government?
In 2009, an unprecedented budget deficit over $1.5 trillion produces a date of May 29. This is the latest date in the year this deficit-inclusive measure has ever fallen.
Okay, now May 29 is the 149th day of the year (150th in leap years). Divide that by 365 days in the year, and you're paying 40.8% of your income in taxes each year. So let's say you make, oh, say $60,000 per year ... 
That means the government costs you $24,493.15 per year.
Think about that. Because I don't care who you are ... that's a lot of money!
And what do you get for your $24,493.15 per year?
They turned Fannie and Freddie into financial disasters, and they're not done yet!
The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) is going bust too.
Seriously ... What are 'we' supposed to do? Send them a 'thank-you' card?
That sure is how they act. Isn't it? Not only is Democrat Charlie Rangel a crook, but Democrat Maxine Waters defends him by pointing out that everybody in Washington is corrupt.
See? That makes it all better.
$24,493.15 per year.
Corruption. ACORN Gets $ 1 Million Homeland Security Grant.
Weeks after federal lawmakers cut the public funding of a fraud-infested community group famous for advising prostitutes and pimps on how to skirt housing and tax laws, it received nearly $1 million in Homeland Security funds intended for fire departments.
The unbelievable infusion of tax dollars into the scandal-plagued Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) was revealed this week by a Washington D.C. newspaper that reports the money was allocated just three weeks after the House and Senate voted to cut the group’s funding amid a series of corruption scandals.
The money, part of $35 million in federal allocations for fire districts nationwide, went to ACORN’s Louisiana headquarters and made up almost 80% of the firefighting grants earmarked for the state. Several more worthy agencies with reputable track records had applied for the money but lost their bid to ACORN even though the radical leftwing organization has no background in fire prevention.
The problem with the Illinois search system is that groups like ACORN register hundreds of different shell corporations to hide behind. They register them to their workers and their directors and then they offer them to government as a vendor or organization for the state’s use. Naturally, state funds flow like water into ACORN’s coffers as a result.
What I found were dozens of different shell corporations registered to Wade and Dale Rathke all of which have the potential of reaping thousands of dollars from the state of Louisiana. The same thing is happening in every state of the union and it isn’t just Wade and Dale doing this. ACORN employees at all levels are doing this in order to hide the fact that they are registering ACORN agencies.
At least those poor, down-trodden bankers are making money.
As much as $37 billion from federal bailout loans to American International Group Inc. has gone to investment banks including Goldman Sachs Group Inc., the firm Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson used to run.
Without the government money, Goldman, Merrill Lynch & Co., Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank AG and other firms could have become some of the biggest creditors in a bankruptcy filing by AIG, the world's largest insurer, because of its billions in losses on subprime bonds and corporate debt.
At least our Wonderful Overlords are honest, and didn't make a secret deal with Goldman Sachs.
How Goldman Sachs Persuades the Senate
The real significance of the naked short-selling issue ... [is] the fact that the practice is absurdly widespread and takes place right under the noses of the regulators, and really nothing is ever done about it.
It’s the conspicuousness of the crime that is the issue here, and the degree to which the SEC and the other financial regulators have proven themselves completely incapable of addressing the issue seriously, constantly giving in to the demands of the major banks to pare back (or shelf altogether) planned regulatory actions.
[T]he SEC is holding a public “round table” on the naked short-selling issue. What’s interesting about this round table is that virtually none of the invited speakers represent shareholders or companies that might be targets of naked short-selling, or indeed any activists of any kind in favor of tougher rules against the practice. Instead, all of the invitees are either banks, financial firms, or companies that sell stuff to the first two groups.
In advance of this panel and in advance of proposed changes to the financial regulatory system, these players have been stepping up their lobbying efforts of late. Goldman Sachs in particular has been making its presence felt.
Last Friday I got a call from a Senate staffer who said that Goldman had just been in his boss’s office, lobbying against restrictions on naked short-selling. The aide said Goldman had passed out a fact sheet about the issue that was so ridiculous that one of the other staffers immediately thought to send it to me. When I went to actually get the document, though, the aide had had a change of heart.
Which was weird, and I thought the matter had ended there. But the exact same situation then repeated itself with another congressional staffer, who then actually passed me Goldman’s fact sheet.
Goldman is not only not doing that here, they’re taking two statistics with no relation to naked short-selling (short interest and stock prices), stats cherry-picked during two seemingly random time-periods, and then slapping them underneath a cover sheet full of platitudes like “The US equities market is increasingly efficient and broadly regarded as the best in the world.” It’s not so much that this is a bad argument, it’s just… not really an argument at all. It’s lazy, really. It makes you wonder what’s going on at that company.
Yeah ... it's good to be a bank.
$24,493.15 per year. 
Even the census is corrupt.
“…of the prints that could be processed, fingerprint results identified approximately 1,800 temporary workers (1.1 percent of total hires) with criminal records that name check alone failed to identify. Approximately 750 (42 percent) [of those] were terminated or were further reviewed because the Bureau determined their criminal records—which included crimes such as rape, manslaughter, and child abuse—disqualified them from census employment.”
This comes on the heels of the Census Bureau’s admission that it is uncertain of the final cost of the 2010 decennial census and that it faces ongoing problems with handheld computers used to collect data. The failure of the handheld devices will increase census costs by up to $3 billion, officials told a House subcommittee last month.
$24,493.15 per year.
And we've barely scratched the surface.
