Another waste of our taxpayer money

A comment from our website forum, reposted here:

For those who don't know, the state has contracted with an American-Israeli private intelligence company to provide weekly threat assessments to PEMA(Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency) and state and local law enforcement.

The entire 2009-2010 archive is located at publicintelligence.net.

I searched the all the reports and no LVTP activities were listed, although there were many PA "tea party" events listed. 

A typical comment in the report for tea party events:

****** ANALYSIS ****** T/I/W Rating: LOW-to-MODERATE

ITRR Analysts’ Note: Expect the above events to conform to conditions of a legal protest, although ITRR has no current information regarding needed police permits. No illegality, violence, vandalism or other rioting is expected. Law enforcement personnel will primarily be called upon to provide crowd control and manage possible counter-protests.

Nonetheless, a small chance exists that more radical anti-government elements will be inspired to "direct action" targeting government offices. In addition, confrontations between Tea Party protesters and their opponents on the sidelines of the events may escalate into physical conflict.

All in all, after reading these briefings, my conclusion is we as taxpayers are being ripped off by this so called intelligence company. It probably takes one person 2 hours on Google to put these together. They all talk about events 2-3 months in the future and repeat them every week until after the event, just to make the reports longer and make it seem like they are earning their money. The analysts "notes" are copy-pasted verbatim everywhere. Disturbing to me is the comment about "needed police permits". Another waste of our taxpayer money that could be better saved.

I wonder how may law enforcement hours are wasted across the state each and every week reading this nonsense. I hope it just hits one desk and then gets tossed in the shredder.

You're invited to our January General Meeting

Guest Speaker: 

Paul Saunders

speaking on:
"The Rise and Fall of Altruism, Collectivism, and Statism" 


Date and Time

Friday, Jan 7th

7:00PM

Location

Charles Chrin Community Center of Palmer Township

4100 Green Pond Rd Easton, PA 18045 610-252-2098 

How to find us "Enter through building on Rte. 22 side and turn left at first corridor. Our room is about half way down on the left hand side."

Price

$1.00 per person to pay for the room

View Larger Map

Have we reached convergence?

Definition of CONVERGENCE
1: the act of converging and especially moving toward union or uniformity

If there's one thing I've always heard conservative, libertarian, and tea party types agree on it's that they would rather see their money go to the charity of their choice and not where the government wants to put it. Now there's a trio of Ivy League professors that have sort of stumbled onto the same concept and are doing something about it.

Meet GiveItBackForJobs.Org

There you can read about how unfair the extension of the Bush tax cuts are and learn how to "... set the country moving toward a just prosperity." This is done by estimating you income for 2011 and using their calculator to figure how much more tax you should have paid if the tax cuts expired. Then you promise to send that amount to the charity of your choice! And with that they then, bursting with pride say:

We can, in this way, begin to redeem candidate Obama’s promise that

“we are the ones we’ve been waiting for.”

The amazing thing about this whole episode is that instead of asking us to send the money to the US Treasury, common sense had kicked in and the money is going to be sent where it can do some real good.

James Taranto put it this way when commenting on this stunning achievement by the professors from Cornell and Yale:

"Given the intellectual handicaps under which Hacker, Hockett and Markovits operate, they can be very proud to have figured this out."

A "tip of the hat" to Taranto's Best of the Web for uncovering this advance in academia!

PS - there's really no convergence here, I was just foolin'

Have a Blessed and Merry Christmas everyone!

$2 Trillion debt crisis threatens to bring down 100 US cities

Overdrawn American cities could face financial collapse in 2011, defaulting on hundreds of billions of dollars of borrowings and derailing the US economic recovery.

According to an article in The Guardian.

From the article:

New Jersey governor Chris Christie summarised the problem succinctly:

"We spent too much on everything. We spent money we didn't have. We borrowed money just crazily. The credit card's maxed out, and it's over. We now have to get to the business of climbing out of the hole. We've been digging it for a decade or more. We've got to climb now, and a climb is harder."

Valley Watchdogs keeping tabs on wasteful spending

A letter to the editor in yesterday's Express Times.

Bravo for your Dec. 9 editorial rebuking the latest in a perennial string of what it called “atrocities against taxpayers” perpetrated by local governing boards.

We in the Lehigh Valley Project 9-12/Tea Party Group couldn’t agree more. Our Founding Fathers left it to citizens to hold government at every level accountable for its actions and this year our Tea Party made great strides in demanding common sense, responsible policies from our elected representatives.

Growing numbers of our “Valley Watchdogs” have been attending local meetings, speaking out on a wide range of community issues and keeping our neighbors informed of government actions in our communities. These patriots have stood up for taxpayers on issues such as the privatization of Gracedale, the budget process of the Lehigh County, the need to control spending in the Saucon Valley School District, and most recently, shining light on the Northampton Area School Board’s quiet plan to let an energy company install solar panels on school property.

The Valley Watchdogs are active throughout the Lehigh Valley, but we need more of them. You can lend your voice to the growing national chorus for sensible government by joining our Valley Watchdogs Program to make positive contributions to America's future.

MAT BENOL
Chairman
Lehigh Valley Project 9-12/ Tea Party Group
Palmer Township

Neighbors of Easton: Meet Your Local Tea Party

A local blogger has taken the the time to attend last night's General Meeting and write down her impressions:

Neighbors of Easton: Meet Your Local Tea Party