You don’t need to log on to President Barack Obama’s Facebook page to find out who his friends are, and you don’t need to read tea leaves, gaze into a crystal ball, or consult a psychic to learn where his priorities lie. No, you only have to take a look at his 2013 budget, just released on Monday, to see what kind of company the president keeps and to what extent he will go to lend his pals a helping hand.

The folks seated at the president’s head table haven’t changed much in the past few years — the only difference is how much is being served up in the taxpayer-funded buffet. As in the past, the president has plenty of handouts for his big labor buddies. His budget delivers a fourth consecutive annual deficit exceeding $1 trillion — and that spending goes to yet another round of not-so-shovel-ready construction projects and government “investments” totaling $178 billion. Heritage’s Patrick Knudsen writes that the spending includes the president’s favored road, bridge, and school construction projects, but “then they go alarmingly beyond the usual ‘infrastructure’ arguments to fund teachers’ pay.” In other words, unions representing the construction site and the classroom win big.

Other winners in the president’s budget are those who fit into the Administration’s vision of a green economy that is propelled not by the market’s demand, but by Obama’s whim. The 2013 budget proposes to spend $310 million to make solar energy cost-competitive without subsidies by 2020, $290 million to expand R&D on energy efficient manufacturing techniques, and $421 million in fossil energy research and development. Heritage energy expert Nicolas Loris writes that the budget “rejects the notion of a market-based energy industry and wastes taxpayer dollars at a time when we desperately need to curtail out-of-control spending.” In other words, he says, the president’s blueprint is all wrong.

There’s no clearer example of just how wrong the president’s blueprint is than his decision to increase subsidies for electric vehicles like the $41,000 Chevy Volt while ending funding for the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program (DCOSP), which gives low-income children in the nation’s capital a chance to escape underperforming schools. The White House intends to increase taxpayer-funded subsidies for those who purchase new-technology vehicles to $10,000 per buyer, up from $7,500. Keep in mind that the average income of a Volt buyer is $175,000 per year. That means that middle-class taxpayers are helping the rich buy pricy, politically correct cars.

With his other hand, President Obama is taking from the poor. The DCOSP provides $8,000 vouchers to 1,600 low-income children in the District of Columbia, empowering them to attend a school that they choose. The program has been a stunning success — though it has drawn criticism from the president’s teachers union allies. If the president gets his way, those children will pay the price.

Read More at The Foundry By Mike Brownfield, The Foundry

Reports are coming in that the voter rolls have been faked. We knew that the voter rolls were padded in places like Chicago, but now we’re learning that the fraud is more widespread than we ever could have imagined. The question is, can we do anything to stop it?

In the days of the Soviet Union, Communist leaders would generally get 95 percent of the vote, and nearly every eligible voter voted.

A new report by Pew Center on the States estimates that among 24 million voter registrations, about one out of every eight are either no longer valid or are inaccurate. Of the invalid or inaccurate registrations, 1.8 million belong to deceased individuals and 2.75 million belong to people who are registered to vote in more than one state.

You can see how these fraudulent voter numbers can be used to tip an election. Most of elections these days are close to even. We are a 51 to 49 percent nation. It doesn’t take much fraud to throw enough votes to a favorite-son candidate. The Kennedy-Nixon presidential election in 1960 was always thought to have been won by Kennedy due to voter fraud:

Many Republicans (including Nixon and Eisenhower) believed that Kennedy had benefited from vote fraud, especially in Texas, where Kennedy’s running mate Lyndon B. Johnson was Senator, and Illinois, home of Mayor Richard Daley’s powerful Chicago political machine. These two states are important because if Nixon had carried both, he would have won the election in the Electoral College.

Read More at godfatherpolitics.com

Seldom have so many bragged so much about so little.

The TSA and its flaks in the corporate media are currently shilling for the agency’s “Pre√ (yes, Jargon plumbs new depths here: that cuneiform translates as ‘PreCheck’) Program.” The outrage with the Orwellian name isn’t anything new: it’s haunted nationalized aviation for almost as long as the TSA has. Sometimes, companies who “partner” with the Feds but nonetheless insist that they’re “private” have offered it. Other times, as now, the Thieves and Sexual Assailants are its sole sponsors.

The scam pretends that serfs who divulge even more information to the Feds than their dossiers already contain will suffer less persecution from the TSA than the rest of us. The agency doesn’t go so far as to claim they’ll completely escape its sexual molestation, nor even that they’ll breeze through checkpoints; rather, these self-snitches will merely “undergo expedited screening [sic for ‘unconstitutional, warrantless searches’].” Our Masters will “no longer” force them to “remov[e] the following items: Shoes; 3-1-1 compliant bag from carry-on; Laptop from bag; Light outerwear/jacket; Belt.” However, “TSA will always incorporate random and unpredictable security measures [sic for ‘sexual assault and humiliation’] throughout the airport and no individual will be guaranteed expedited screening.”

Indeed, one of the TSA’s spokesliars insists that “random” groping is “an important element of the program.” Wanna bet the groping is no more random than the porno-scanning is? (And by the way, where are the feminists on this? Why have we heard diddly from NOW during the TSA’s decade of degrading women?)

Permission to sometimes perhaps avoid Big Brother’s fondling comes with a price: $100. Since we’re dealing with Leviathan here, assume this is a yearly fee and that it will rise steeply as more passengers seek relief, even if partial, from the agency’s abuse.

Read More at lewrockwell.com By Becky Akers, lewrockwell.com

President Barack Obama feels he has struck just the right budget balance between providing more short-term support for the economy while putting forth a long-term plan to get control of the government’s soaring budget deficits.

Republicans vehemently disagree, attacking his 2013 budget as a replay of the failed economic policies they say have resulted in an economy growing at subpar rates and government debt soaring to record highs.

Both parties would agree that Obama’s latest budget, released Monday, will feature heavily as a debating point in the November elections to determine who will win the White House and whether Democrats or Republicans win control of the House and Senate.

Republican Mitt Romney, who is campaigning for the GOP nomination to challenge Obama in the fall, called the budget Obama released Monday “an insult to the American taxpayer.” GOP candidates Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul are all advocating bigger spending cuts to control the deficits, and all the GOP candidates oppose Obama’s tax increases.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, the administration’s chief economic spokesman, was scheduled to testify before the Senate Finance Committee on Tuesday in what will be the first of four congressional appearances this week by Geithner to explain and defend Obama’s budget plan.

Read More at OfficialWire By Martin Crutsinger, OfficialWire