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DC Continues Its Explosive Growth

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spending

Photo Credit: 401(K) 2013

Adjusted for inflation, federal spending has gone up from an average of $882 billion every year in the 1980s to $1.48 trillion a year in the ’90s to $2.44 trillion a year in the first decade of the 21st century. It’s estimated that the government will have spent as much in the first four years of the new decade as it did in all of the 1990s.

Two crises — the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the so-called “great recession” — further propelled the growth of government in certain areas but without the commensurate cuts in other areas that earlier generations imposed in times of crisis.

“In the past when there were various crisis like World War II or the Korean War, non-defense spending was dramatically cut by 20 to 30 percent,” Schatz said. “That didn’t happen after 9/11, and it certainly didn’t happen after the financial crisis.”

Nothing typifies the expansion of government like the growing wealth of the Washington, D.C., area. The region has few natural resources and little manufacturing base to produce wealth, yet seven of the nation’s 10 richest counties surround Washington. The average government worker’s compensation now stands at over $126,000 a year. And the fact that Washington’s traffic congestion now ranks as the nation’s worst stands as more evidence of the region’s growth.

As the rest of the country suffered through the recession with layoffs and foreclosures, Washington’s work force and its home prices remained mostly stable.

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Record-Breaking Numbers Continue: 47,791,996 on Food Stamps in December

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Photo Credit: Weekly Standard

On Friday, the United States Department of Agriculture quietly released new statistics related to the food stamps program, officially known as SNAP (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program). The numbers reveal, in 2012, the food stamps program was the biggest it’s ever been, with an average of 46,609,072 people on the program every month of last year. 47,791,996 people were on the program in the month of December 2012.

The federal government also says that in a given month in 2012, the number of households on food stamps was 22,329,713.

The state with the highest average number of participants per month in 2012 was Texas, with an astonishing 4,038,440 folks drawing from the program. The second highest is California, with 3,964,221, and then Florida, at 3,353,064.

Washington, D.C., with an estimated population of 617,996, had an average of 141,147 participants. Meaning, roughly 23 percent of folks living in D.C. are on food stamps, according to the numbers provided by the federal government. The participation rate in Texas, which has an estimated population of 26,059,203, 15.5 percent.

The state with the lowest number of participants in the program was Wyoming, with 34,347 out an estimated population of 576,412.

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Hill Hearing On Global Warming Cancelled By D.C. Snowstorm

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Photo Credit: APAn unusually chilly March day and the snowstorm it spawned have shut down much of official Washington on Wednesday — including a hearing House Republicans had called to examine global warming.

“Postponed due to weather,” read the notice from the House Science, Space and Technology Committee sent in the morning.

The hearing was scheduled to give House lawmakers a comprehensive briefing on how well scientists understand the climate and humans’ effects on it as a means “to inform decision-making on potential mitigation options.”

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Facebook Paid No Taxes Despite Record Profits

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Photo Credit: sherifer22Despite earning more than $1 billion in profits last year, social media juggernaut Facebook paid zilch when it came to federal and state taxes in 2012. In fact, the website will actually be getting a refund totaling $429 million thanks to a tax reduction for executive stock options.

In the coming years, Facebook will continue to get monster tax breaks, totaling about $3 billion.

“The employees cash in stock options, and at that point there is tax deduction for the company,” Robert McIntyre, of watchdog group Citizens for Tax Justice, said in an interview with Fox News Channel. “Because even though it doesn’t cost Facebook a nickel, the government treats it as wages and they get a deduction for it. And usually it doesn’t wipe out companies whole tax bill, although many companies get big breaks from it.”

The news comes after President Obama’s State of the Union speech in which he called for such tax breaks to end.

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Report: Corporations Received 22,000% Return on Investment from Lobbying

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In “Boomtown,” a blockbuster one-hour investigative special that aired Friday on Fox News’ “Hannity,” Peter Schweizer, president of the Government Accountability Institute (GAI), and Steve Bannon, Breitbart News’ Executive Chairman, revealed a study discovered that for every dollar corporations spent on lobbying in 2004, they received $220 in return. This is a 22,000% return on investment.

In essence, this influence peddling is what has turned Washington, D.C., a town that does not create valuable product like oil, beef, or computers like boomtowns of the past, into America’s wealthiest region.

Schweizer noted that for corporations, lobbying is now “a lot more profitable than buying or creating a new good.”

He said 50% of corporations now have an ex-politician on their boards. General Electric, he said, spends $100,000 every single day to influence and lobby Congress.

“They spent a lot of time carving out things in the tax code that benefit them,” Schweizer said of General Electric.

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DC Sex Workers Prepare for Huge Influx of Inauguration Partiers

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When Steve Baker talks about the inauguration, he gets a little giddy. For the company he works at, Hire Party Strippers, which does exactly what its name suggests for clients in the Washington DC area, inauguration weekend means a big boost in business.

“Oh my God, it’s bananas,” says Baker, describing the interest he’s had so far. Hire Party Strippers does about double the business on inauguration weekend, during which he can boost rates about 25 percent. This means $650 to $700 for “two girl fantasy shows”; $350 for one girl; and $300 for one male stripper, though demand is never as high for men as women. “It’s going to be really, really busy,” Baker says. “We have a lot of people coming [to DC] from out of town, and they want to have adult entertainment in their rooms. It’s crazy.”

Strippers, escorts, dominatrices, and even sugar babies looking for sugar daddies are planning for a jam-packed — and potentially quite lucrative — weekend across the greater DC area. Despite the inauguration party scene shaping up to be much quieter this year than Barack Obama’s first in 2009, it doesn’t sound like anyone is planning to cut back on erotic recreation — from the tourists looking to party in DC that weekend, to the locals craving sex-themed merriment while their city is overwhelmed by outsiders.

Baker doesn’t have a lot of clients on the books yet, but knows he will once the Friday before the inauguration rolls around. “People call me last minute saying, ‘hey hey hey, can you send some girls out?'” Hire Party Stripper will ensure entertainers are on-call in anticipation of this “high volume” weekend.

One escort I talked with via email lamented that she wouldn’t be in DC around the inauguration, but expected most of the business for escorts to come from areas surrounding the city. “My educated guess would be that it gets busy in the OTHER parts of town so clients don’t have to fight the crowds. Like for example, I always schedule work in NYC during the XMas tree lighting at the Rockefeller center, but I go to the SOUTH end of Manhattan because I know the locals or clients won’t want to be anywhere near the Rockefeller Center,” she explained. “If I were to be here inauguration weekend, I bet Arlington will be hopping — or Tysons.”

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Nuclear Security Helicopters Testing Radiation Levels Above DC Area

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WASHINGTON – Helicopters have been conducting radiation tests above portions of the Washington, D.C. area using remote gamma radiation sensing technology.

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has been flying the radiation missions since Dec. 27, 2012 and they will continue until next Friday, Jan. 11. The flights have been conducted during daylight only, and the pilots fly about 80 miles per hour at 150 feet above the approximately 70-square mile radiation assessment area.

Naturally-occurring radiation is measured so that baseline levels can be established and used in security and emergency preparedness, reads a statement from the NNSA.

In addition to monitoring radiation levels and responding to radiological emergencies on the home front, the agency provides the U.S. Navy with nuclear propulsion and works to reduce the global danger of weapons of mass destruction, according to a release issued by the agency.

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More Than 300 D.C. Public Employees Busted in Unemployment Fraud Scheme

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The District said Monday that hundreds of city workers took nearly $2 million in fraudulent unemployment benefits, a scandal that roiled the D.C. government earlier this year and prompted widespread firings and criminal charges.

Lisa Mallory, the director of the D.C. Department of Employment Services, told the D.C. Council that her agency had detected $1.9 million in overpayments to District workers who collected unemployment benefits while on the city’s payroll.

“This probe continues to be ongoing,” said Mallory, who has credited access to a specialized database for the initial detection of the fraud.
Mallory’s department has referred 318 cases to the District’s inspector general, some of which have resulted in civil lawsuits and criminal prosecutions. Other cases are pending.

“Many of these individuals did lose their employment,” Mallory said. “There are several cases in front of the U.S. attorney, and those will take their course.”

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Senator Jim DeMint Talks About the Debt Ceiling Deal and His New Book

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Jackson: On the show today our favorite Washington conservative warrior, Senator Jim DeMint is back. We’ll discuss the fallout from the debt ceiling deal, the danger of Congress’ new Super Committee, and his new book, The Great American Awakening: Two Years that Changed America, Washington, and Me. I’m your host Brad Jackson and you’re listening to the August 4, 2011 edition of Coffee and Markets.

Senator, thanks so much for joining us on the show today. It’s great to have you here.

DeMint: Well, it’s good to be back. Thanks for having me.

Jackson: Obviously the last couple of weeks in D.C. have been quite a rollercoaster with the debt negotiations. How do you think it ended up? I know this isn’t the plan that you preferred and not one that I think a lot of conservatives preferred, but how do you think this deal ended up going for folks?

DeMint: Well, I think everyone is glad just to have it over with. But I felt that this was a point where we really needed to begin to solve the problem. The problem is our debt not just our debt limit. And we’re on a course now to borrow another $10 to $15 trillion over the next 10 years, and no one is going to lend us that amount of money, and this deal unfortunately doesn’t really cut any spending, based on where we are today. Now when they say it cuts spending, what they mean is it reduces the levels of increases that are planned. It certainly doesn’t reduce any debt. We’ll continue to add about $1 trillion a year to our debt. So, I’m very concerned because I don’t think America can borrow $10 trillion or $5 trillion, and I think even the $2.4 trillion that we’re talking about borrowing before the next election could put us in trouble.

Read More at Red State Posted By Brad Jackson, Red State