Pat Dollard

Which is now his campaign theme: “It’s Democracy’s fault, in the form of congress.”

Fox News: A strong uptick in the sales of booze last year is painting one of the surest signs yet of a return to the pre-recession boom days, according to new data. US shipments of scotch, vodka, rum and other spirits in 2011 increased 2.7 percent over the previous year — the strongest increase in [...]

New York Daily News: The city’s welfare agency is on a hiring spree, adding more than 200 workers to handle a spike in the number of poor flocking to its centers for benefits. The Human Resources Administration hired more than 100 employees in July and plans to fill nearly 100 more positions to accommodate food-stamp [...]

(SacBee) — California will run out of cash by early March if the state does not take swift action to find $3.3 billion through payment delays and borrowing, according to a letter state Controller John Chiang sent to state lawmakers today. The announcement is surprising since lawmakers previously believed the state had enough cash to [...]

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — At Cappuccio’s Meats in the Italian Market, the cuts of beef are cutting into the profits. “Every week when I talk to my suppliers, I’m amazed by how much it’s going up,” said owner Domenick Crimi. Beef prices soared more than 10 percent last year according to the Department of Agriculture, and [...]

(The Hill) — The Congressional Budget Office on Tuesday predicted the budget deficit will rise to $1.08 trillion in 2012. CBO also projected the jobless rate would rise to 8.9 percent by the end of 2012, and to 9.2 percent in 2013. These are much dimmer forecasts than in CBO’s last report in August, when [...]

Pro Publica: Freddie Mac, the taxpayer-owned mortgage giant, has placed multibillion-dollar bets that pay off if homeowners stay trapped in expensive mortgages with interest rates well above current rates. Freddie began increasing these bets dramatically in late 2010, the same time that the company was making it harder for homeowners to get out of such [...]

The Hill: The Congressional Budget Office found Monday that federal workers are compensated 16 percent more than comparable private-sector workers on average. The finding is bound to inflame disputes between Republican and Democrats as to how much to reduce the deficit by cutting federal worker pay. “While millions of Americans continue to struggle with stagnant [...]

High-end Obama donor/bundler Steve Westley, who has been paid back by Obama to the tune of billions for his failed “green companies Solyndra, Tesla and Amonix Amonix Inc. owners include John Doerr’s venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Daniel Weiss’ Angeleno Group LLC and Steve Westly’s eponymous Westly Group, according to Amonix’s website. [...]

Politico: Immigration may be the marquee issue for Hispanic voters in Florida and elsewhere, but Social Security just might be the key for President Obama maximizing turnout among Spanish-speaking voters. Democrats close to the Obama campaign say that Social Security, that old party standby, could be a key weapon against Mitt Romney, who supported (grudgingly, [...]

Daily Caller: Faced with a shortage of hired hands, Kansas ranchers and farmers are appealing to their state’s secretary of agriculture for a solution. And he says he has one: hiring illegal immigrants. It’s an idea that’s unorthodox enough to turn heads but practical enough to justify a series of meetings with the U.S. Department [...]

New York Post: Executives at a New York biotech company controlled by billionaire Ron Perelman sold off large chunks of stock in the company last May, days after they learned a key $2.8 billion government contract could be in jeopardy, The Post has learned. The May sale of shares by Siga Technologies Chief Scientific Officer [...]

Daily Caller: General Motors is now notorious for reaching deep into the pockets of taxpayers to bail itself out of a bad situation. In 2008, under the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, President Bush doled out the first round of what eventually became a $50 billion bailout of the Detroit automaker. With that, the [...]

Center For Individual Freedom: As if American voters needed additional confirmation of the failure of Barack Obama’s economic agenda, consider the following. In 1947, the federal government began tracking quarterly gross domestic product (GDP), the broadest measure of overall economic vitality. Since that date, not one President has failed to enjoy a quarter of at [...]

(Fox News) — President Obama tells a college audience that people don’t get rich on their own. Obama’s point that without government and paying your fair share, ultimately the successful wouldn’t be able to get where they are. “We do not begrudge wealth in this country. I want everybody here to do well. We aspire [...]

From the just-released GDP report: Real GDP increased 1.7 percent in 2011 (that is, from the 2010 annual level to the 2011 annual level), compared with an increase of 3.0 percent in 2010. The increase in real GDP in 2011 primarily reflected positive contributions from personal consumption expenditures (PCE), exports, and nonresidential fixed investment that [...]

Investors Business Daily: If the Republican primaries are any indication, one big debate in the upcoming election will be whether President Obama is pushing the country toward a European-style welfare culture. Mitt Romney, for example, argues that “over the past three years, Barack Obama has been replacing our merit-based society with an entitlement society.” Newt [...]