Last year, Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn announced the city had won a coveted $20 million federal grant to invest in weatherization…McGinn had joined Vice President Joe Biden in the White House to make it. It came on the eve of Earth Day. It had heady goals: creating 2,000 living-wage jobs in Seattle and retrofitting 2,000 homes in poorer neighborhoods.  But more than a year later, Seattle's numbers are lackluster. As of last week, only three homes had been retrofitted and just 14 new jobs have emerged from the program.

The president recently toured Johnson Controls Inc., a Michigan company that received $300 million from “Obama’s stash” to create - drumroll, please - a whopping 150 jobs. Do the math: That’s $2 million per green job. And this is the company the White House chooses to showcase? Evergreen Solar, a Massachusetts company, also received stimulus money, but the White House that is “the most open and transparent in history” won’t say how much, only that Evergreen is “hoping to hire 90 to 100 people.” Instead, it declared bankruptcy and shipped 800 jobs overseas. Well, so much for green jobs.

In the 2009 stimulus, the feds gave nearly $3.2 million in green-energy grants to my county of Arlington, Va., with almost $300,000 used to install solar paneling on the roof of our local library. (Don't ask why the feds are giving one of the five wealthiest counties in America free money.)

Arlington officials boast the project will save $14,000 in annual electricity costs, but the solar panels have a life span of no more than 10 to 15 years. So the feds spent $300,000 to shave at most $150,000 off the net present value of Arlington's electric bills. Some 3,000 counties across the country received federal funds for the same kind of negative-return energy conservation "investments." This is the kind of "clean energy" program the administration wants to expand.

It took the New York Times a year to acknowledge I was right.  From an article in the 18 August 2011 issue:

...the green economy is not proving to be the job-creation engine that many politicians envisioned. President Obama once pledged to create five million green jobs over 10 years. Gov. Jerry Brown promised 500,000 clean-technology jobs (in California) by the end of the decade. But the results so far suggest such numbers are a pipe dream...Federal and state efforts to stimulate creation of green jobs have largely failed, government records show.

Not only has the green jobs push failed to create jobs, it has been a huge waste as well:

Two years after it was awarded $186 million in federal stimulus money to weatherize drafty homes, California has spent only a little over half that sum and has so far created the equivalent of just 538 full-time jobs in the last quarter, according to the State Department of Community Services and Development.

According to these numbers, this program spent well over 170,000 USD per full time job created.

Of course, the Times doesn't explicitly acknowledge the real problem--that being, that the market economy and individual consumers are not so easily manipulated.

The problem isn't economics, according to "advocates and entrepreneurs" the Times interviewed. The problem is with government.  Washington, they contend, didn't do enough to pass cap and trade and tighten environmental regulation.  More government intervention, they contend, is the answer. Isn't it always?

This ideological thinking is why in Obama's September jobs speech we aren't likely to hear the President admit his green jobs plan has failed.  He's more likely to double down on his mistake.

Thank you.

Thank you Pete Sessions, for your tireless leadership. 

And thank you to all our candidates, supporters, and volunteers who have worked so hard to make this moment possible.

Let me just say this: it’s clear who the winners are tonight, and that’s the American people.   Your voice was heard at the ballot box!  Your voice! 

Listen, I’ll be brief, because we have real work to do – and this is not a time for celebration … not when one in 10 of our fellow citizens are out of work … not when we have buried our children under a mountain of debt … not when our Congress is held in such low esteem. 

This is a time to roll up our sleeves.  To look forward with determination.  And to take the first steps toward building a better future for our kids and grandkids.  

Across the country right now, we are witnessing a repudiation of Washington … a repudiation of Big Government … and a repudiation of politicians who refuse to listen to the people. 

Of course, this campaign is not yet over.  To folks out in the West, where the polls are still open, seize this opportunity to be heard … to reject the spending sprees, the bailouts, the backroom deals, the takeovers and all the nonsense … and to join your fellow Americans in putting Washington on notice.

Because for far too long, Washington has been doing what’s best for Washington – not what’s best for America.

Tonight, that begins to change.  

With their voices and their votes, the American people are demanding a new way forward in Washington.  And I’m here tonight to tell you that our new majority will be prepared to do things differently… to take a new approach that hasn’t been tried before in Washington – by either party. 

·         It starts with cutting spending instead of increasing it. 

·         Reducing the size of government instead of expanding it.

·         Reforming the way Congress works and giving government back to the people. 

·         And for all those families asking ‘where are the jobs?,’ it means ending the uncertainty in our economy and helping small businesses get people back to work. 

The people’s priorities will be our priorities.  The people’s agenda will be our agenda.  This is our Pledge to America … this is our pledge to you!

While our new majority will serve as your voice in the people’s House, we must remember it is the president who sets the agenda for our government.  The American people have sent an unmistakable message to him tonight, and that message is:“change course.”  

We hope President Obama will now respect the will of the people, change course, and commit to making the changes they are demanding.  To the extent he is willing to do this, we are ready to work with him.  

But make no mistake, the president will find in our new majority the voice of the American people as they’ve expressed it tonight: standing on principle, checking Washington’s power, and leading the drive for a smaller, less costly, and more accountable government. 

These are the principles our new majority will stand for, and we hope you will stand with us in the hard work that lies ahead.  Because we are humbled by your trust in us.  And we recognize that with this trust comes the responsibility to listen, and listen we will.  

Let’s start right now by recognizing this is not a time for celebration.  This is a time to roll up our sleeves and go to work. 

We can celebrate when small businesses are creating jobs again.   

We can celebrate when the spending binge in Washington has stopped.  

And we can celebrate when we have a government that has earned back the trust of the people it serves … when we have a government that honors our Constitution and stands up for the values that have made America, America: economic freedom, individual liberty, and personal responsibility. 

I hold these values dear because I’ve lived them.  I’ve spent my whole life chasing the American Dream. 

I started out mopping floors, waiting tables, and tending bar at my dad’s tavern.  I put myself through school working odd jobs and night shifts.  I poured my heart and soul into a small business.  And when I saw how out-of-touch Washington had become with the core values of this great nation, I put my name forward and ran for office.

So I want to close by thanking my wife, Debbie … my girls, Lindsay and Tricia … my brothers and sisters … and all my friends and neighbors in Ohio for giving me the chance to serve and the opportunity to stand before you now ready to lead.

Thank you.  God bless you, your families, and the United States of America.

Read it here.

Lately, though, she has been embroiled in an ethics scandal. She allegedly funneled Congressional Black Caucus Foundation money, supposedly set aside for college scholarships for students in her district, to relatives and staff relatives. Worse, she said that she did so because no one in her district was "worthy" of the money.

Rep. Johnson is facing a serious challenge from Pastor Stephen Broden. He has all the tools needed to win a race like this-- a fresh voice, a serious demeanor, and an unimpeachable position in the community. There was a report that Broden's internal polling had him down only about 6 points recently. That is astounding considering Rep. Johnson routinely gets 70%+ of the vote.

Broden's effort may be hindered by his rhetoric, though. It came out late yesterday that he spoke way too approvingly of revolution:

"Our nation was founded on violence; the option is on the table. I don't think that we should ever remove anything from the table as it relates to our liberties and our freedoms."

"We have a right to get rid of that government and to get rid of it by any means necessary."

For Broden this could prove to be costly because he cannot afford any missteps in order to pull off an upset of this magnitude. 

Here is a typical, fiery Broden speech:

Here's a sampling of Barone's writing:

He thinks voters may be ready to support such changes because they've had a searing experience with debt and their lives are changing. Younger people may be ready to put up with lower Social Security benefits for high earners because they've seen that some companies' new hires aren't getting the pensions and benefits their elders got. "There's nothing radical about this. It's already happened all over the place."

Kristol's not buying.

And, I think he's on to something. First of all, Kristol points out there is really no record of Emmanuel expressing his fondness for the mayorship of Chicago before. On Fox News Sunday, he said, "I love how the whole media has decided to accept Rahm’s story that he’s always wanted to be Mayor of Chicago. He grew up in the suburbs, went to college in New York, worked in Washington D.C., went back to Chicago in 1999. I think you could Google Rahm Emanuel and never find him saying a word about being Mayor of Chicago until it conveniently became his lifelong ambition so that they could give him a nice excuse for leaving the White House."

Not so fast, the site Mediate counters that a Google search reveals this Jonathan Alter quote from early in September, before Mayor Daley announced he would not run again, "After his dream of being the first Jewish speaker of the House was thwarted by his taking the job of White House chief of staff, he switched his goal to City Hall."

See? Rahm wanted to be mayor before Daley announced he was leaving.

The problem is that as connected as Obama-Axelrod-Jarret-Emmanuel are to Chicago, one would think somebody had some knowledge that Mayor Daley was seriously considering not running again. Secondly, if the dream is to be Mayor of Chicago, wouldn't it be less time-sensitive now that Daley's stepping down? Such an iconic figure dominated the position for so long-- the next guy's not going to do that. So why not wait until the next guy's done? Or the next guy? Or run against one of the next guys?

White House Chief of Staff is an immeasurably more important job nationally than Mayor of Chicago. Chief of Staff is arguably the second most powerful job in the country next to the one that comes with an electoral college win and launch codes. 

Chicago is one of the country's Top 3 cities, and no one would argue the mayorship of it is unimportant. But to give up the second most powerful job in the country, voluntarily, to chase it down when there is no time-sensitiveness to it seems bizarre. It strikes me as analogous to being Nick Saban's top assistant or coordinator at Alabama (in real life it is Kirby Smart), and then leaving right before conference season to take the head coaching job at your old high school.

You can't blame people for suspecting Rahm may have been pushed out or left out of his own frustrations. 

NRO published an excerpt here.

Here's a sampling:

"The tea-party movement is the latest manifestation of this tradition: a popular fronde that is unaffiliated but conservative, political but skeptical toward political parties, angry but focused. You occasionally read that the tea parties were synthetic, that the crowds had somehow been artificially put together, that the rage was fabricated. In fact, the tea-party phenomenon is an example of that rare beast, a genuinely spontaneous popular movement." 

Read it here.

Colbert's testimony is symbolic of what this Congress and this administration have done in the past two years. It would all be funny if it weren't so sad.