RedStateVT Names Green Energy Scandals

RedStateVT announces today the official naming of the Obama administration green energy scandals. The scandals - beginning with Solyndra and, no doubt, to grow in the weeks and months ahead as more waste and nepotism is uncovered - will now be known as Greengate.


Granted
A science program at the University of Vermont is going to use a $20 million grant, the largest in the school’s history, to help study the health of the Lake Champlain basin. (Burlington Free Press, 10/7/2011)



$20 million?  Are they kidding?  This could not have been accomplished with, say, $250,000?  Your tax dollars at work...or at waste.


Out of the Office
Governor Shumlin is off on another vacation this year, just one month after he promised Vermonters that he would be working full time on recovery efforts: (VTGOP.com, 10/7/2011)


What is it with Dems and their vacations?


Walking Dead
They're calling it the zombie in the budget. It's a long-term care plan the Obama administration has put on hold, fearing it could go bust if actually implemented. Yet while the program exists on paper, monthly premiums the government may never collect count as reducing federal deficits. 


Real or not, that's $80 billion over the next 10 years. 


The Community Living Assistance Services and Supports program, CLASS for short, may just keep lurching along indefinitely. It would join other peculiar creatures of the federal budget such as "trust funds" that are actually more like IOUs and Medicare cuts that can be counted twice. 


"It's a gimmick that produces phantom savings," said Robert Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, a nonpartisan group that advocates deficit control.. 


"That money should have never been counted as deficit reduction because it was supposed to be set aside to pay for benefits," Bixby added. "The fact that they're not actually doing anything with the program sort of compounds the gimmick." 


The program was created under President Barack Obama's health care overhaul, and arguably provided much of the 10-year, $143 billion in savings claimed under the law. But now some Capitol Hill aides have dubbed CLASS a "budget zombie."  (NYT, 10/8/2011)


Maybe Nancy Pelosi was right!  We did have to pass Obama's healthcare bill to find out what was in it.  Let's see where this revelation takes us.


Inferences
This week, when Palin finally announced her decision, she made her priorities clear. In a statement to supporters, she said that she and her husband, Todd, “devote ourselves to God, family and country.” Her decision, she said, maintains that order.


We can only infer from these tidings — glad or sad, you pick — that God did not open that door or reveal it. I’m not exactly sure how this works, but clearly Palin got the word that she should not run for president. (Kathleen Parker, Washington Post, 10/8/2011)


Kathleen Parker mocks Sarah Palin and her faith.  What a bold and courageous journalist!