Archive for 2025

ANTIFA IS JUST AN IDEA…:

…and idea with leadership, organization, goals, planning, weapons, etc.

IT’S GOOD TO BE THE NOMENKLATURA: Congressional Perks: House account spending jumped 21% in 2022.

The Members’ Representational Allowance (MRA) provides each of the 435 U.S. representatives in Congress about $2 million a year to pay staff, travel, buy equipment and run their Washington, D.C., and district offices, giving members wide latitude on how to spend the money within House ethics and administration committee rules. Districts receive different amounts depending on cost of living and distance from Washington, D.C., but lawmakers aren’t required to spend all of it – and some do not.

Each member is required to disclose his or her spending, and The Center Square found significant spending on private jet travel, luxury car leasing, meals and catering, questionable mileage reimbursements and subscriptions to news outlets that were recommended for cuts in the executive branch under the Department of Government Efficiency. There was also at least $50 million spent on partisan and issue-specific caucuses.

On top of about $810 million in 2024 for individual lawmakers’ office accounts, the House appropriates billions more for other operations of the House, including perks like a childcare center and an office of attending physician so members didn’t have to deal with waiting for a primary care.

David Williams, president of the Taxpayers Protection Alliance, a non-partisan, nonprofit that looks out for the use of taxpayer money, said there needs to be a review of all the Congressional spending after The Center Square told him about some of the disbursements detailed in the House office accounts.

Yes, please.

SETTLER COLONIALISM:

I DON’T REMEMBER IF I SHARED THIS:  The Sound Track grows, it grows!

For those who are confused: what happened was this: I wrote a book. Okay, I’ve written a lot of books, but over the last two years I wrote this book that had to be published in three volumes because Amazon POD can’t bind a book 900 pages long. That book is No Man’s Land, and yes, it’s a fairly odd book, thank you for asking.  (It’s also, in a sideways way the book that made me an sf writer.)  But then my mom died, and for reasons known only to the psychiatrist I don’t have and don’t intend to get, I started writing lyrics (well, the first few were in the book, actually) and running them through a clanker (oh, for heaven’s sake, people, it’s a slur for a robot, aka AI) for music and singing.  These I shared with my fans, who then decided it was a good idea to say I should write a sound track. As if they didn’t know my compulsive nature. Anyway. So, there it is. Reading the blurb of the book might explain some of the songs. Or not. Actually, wait, one of the songs (About the book, not the sound track) is the best explanation of the book: Skip Hayden’s No Man’s Land.  I think the fact that the singer kind of looks like Charlie Martin caused Charlie to write this review. Maybe.
Anyway, that’s what it is. And I’ll probably take the first ten songs and give them free to my subscribers. meanwhile, I have another book that’s overdue to be done.

EARMARKERS GOTTA EARMARK: They renamed earmarks “Congressionally Directed Funding” (CDFs), but an earmark by any other name is still an earmark. The Washington Stand offers multiple examples from the current Congress.

I THOUGHT THEY ALREADY HAD – THAT’S WHY I ADVISE YOU HOMESCHOOL YOUR KIDS:  School districts adopting lefty prof’s curriculum teaching history through lens of oppression.

 

OPEN THREAD: Monday, Monday.