How hard is this to understand? Barack Obama and the Democrats don't care about your health. They don't care about your access to health insurance. All they care about is expanding the size of government making sure that you are dependent on it.

Take this short, seemingly innocuous article from the Associate Press.

The White House is asking Congress to give the executive branch more power to limit Medicare's rising costs.

A White House letter to top lawmakers on Friday said the move would be "a critical step forward" in controlling health care costs and providing better care.

This type of language should scare you, folks ... "give the executive branch more power" or the government "controlling healthcare costs." I want to know where in the Constitution these powers and duties are written.

Slobbering Barney Frank has been busy lately. Last week he proposed the idea of relaxing regulations on the sale of condos. This week he wants to use TARP money to put poor people into housing. See, banks participating in TARP have to pay dividends to the Treasury. So far those banks have paid $5 billion. So now Barney Frank comes along and says, "Hey, I know how we can spend all of this money!" Certainly not to stimulate the economy, Barney, and not to pay off some of the debt you're running up either.

So here's Barney's plan. He has introduced legislation that would use $1 billion of those dividends in order to give rental housing to the poor, poor pitiful poor and to urban outdoorsmen. Here's the plan ... the $1 billion would be put into something called a national housing trust fund. This fund has apparently already been created ... it was done when the government decided to takeover Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. So Barney has the fund .. but no funds. Now Barack Obama's 2010 budget calls for this fund to receive $1 billion, so Barney's plan is just a way to make that happen. That's just the beginning, folks. That's just "seed money." The goal would be to put $150 billion over the next decade into this housing trust for poor people. That's a "15" with a pant-load of zeroes behind it.

Stay tuned! That's not all ... another $1.5 billion of these TARP dividends will be allocated to state and local governments to help them redevelop abandoned and foreclosed properties.

It keeps going. Barney Frank also wants to use some of the TARP money itself, not just the dividends. He wants $2 billion in TARP dollars to go toward an emergency mortgage relief program. Then another $2 billion in TARP dollars would create a program to help people cope with foreclosures on multifamily properties. All of this would be run by the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

We're never going to pay any of this money back my friends, not while the Washington Barneys see ways to use it to buy votes.

We'll have to jump across the pond for this one ... a father has been warned by his housing association (that would be the government) that his daughter's trampoline posed as a safety risk and must be kept inside. The 3ft wide trampoline sat in the shared garden of this housing tenant. The father says he was told to remove the trampoline "in case burglars used it to jump though his neighbor's windows."

Now a spokesman for the housing association denies that the risk of burglary was a factor. After receiving a complaint from a neighbor, the association claims it was concerned that other children would use the trampoline unattended and hurt themselves.

Both excuses are lame. Nanny state government at its best.

You are not going to believe this. Only government would come up with something like this ....

FEMA has caught a lot of flack for creating a coloring book for children. The coloring book was supposed to inform children about disaster-preparedness. So there are pictures to color of various disasters - hurricanes, floods, etc. Then you come to a page where there is a picture of the World Trade Center twin towers. One of the towers has fire coming out of it while an airplane is shown heading toward the other tower. Download a pdf of the whole thing here.

Isn't this great! Give our children some crayons and a nice picture of the a plane running into the World Trade Center to color! Did they put any bodies falling to the streets below in the picture? Well ... probably too small to color. Maybe they could have put that in an insert.

Folks, this has to be a joke. I can't believe that someone would actually think that this is a good idea. Then again, we are dealing with FEMA employees, so maybe my expressions of surprise are absurd.

Then again, we are dealing with government here ... so maybe you will. I mentioned this during the Information Overload Hour yesterday.

In Washington DC you can get a ticket for parking your car in your own driveway. There is a law that states, "Any area between the property line and the building restriction line shall be considered as private property set aside and treated as public space under the care and maintenance of the property owner." So basically, property owners in DC do not own the land between their front door and the sidewalk. While property owners are responsible for taking care of this plot of land, they technically do not own it. It is considered "public space." So if you pull into your own driveway, but do not pull your car far enough up so that it is flush with your house or building, technically your car is on "public land" and you can get a ticket.

You can bet your buns that the city has been taking full advantage of this. In fact, Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton is one of the many people who have been ticketed for violating this law.

So what do you do if you want to be able to park your car so that its nose sticks out passed your home? You have to go to the government and lease the your property back from the city government. .

Unbelievable. Only government.

There has been record snowfall in Great Britain. I mean, things in London have pretty much come to a dead stop. But children in Camden (which is apparently in North London) have been banned from playing in snow-covered parks. Yep, the health and safety officers of Camden decided that this would be too dangerous. Well .. British kids always have been pasty-faced little candy asses with bad teeth anyway. No harm, no foul.

Apparently Belinda was asked to collect a bunch of information from Neal about his personal conversations with politicians, lobbyists, political groups, etc. for a Sarbanes-Oxley compliance report. Since Neal had a good, old-fashioned rant about it this morning, I thought I'd give you a place to put in your two cents. The comment section is all yours.

This is perhaps the scariest news of the day. I mean .. seriously scary stuff. Maybe not for you. But for your grandchildren.

The tremendous growth of the federal government is just disgusting. And all parties are to blame. When Republicans ran the Congress years ago, with the Democrats running things now, and President Bush is no exception.

In 2008, government spending commitments increased by 25%. Yep, you read that correctly. That means that you, the taxpayers, were on the hook for more than $1 trillion even BEFORE this economic bailout, this UAW bailout, and any other "rescue" the government has attempted to provide. Don't just pass this statistic by. This country has been around for 225 years now ... and in just one year we increased the cost of government by 25%. This growth is simply not sustainable. There is no way our children and grandchildren can afford to pay this bill. If can figure out how to do it ... for goodness sake let the rest of us know before it is too late.

The joint report from the White House and Treasury Department says that much of the increase is because of an unexpected jump in veterans' benefits liabilities and the lack of revenues ... aka. your tax dollars. And here's another way to look at it: the report shows that US debts and liabilities have almost passed the value of the US population's net worth. That is according to a nonprofit organization that promotes fiscal responsibility.

And I've been telling you for years that we cannot keep up our current system and expect our grandchildren to be OK. The report says that current revenues (that's money collected from taxes) are only sufficient to pay HALF of what the government is going to owe in 30 years. We are headed for financial disaster. If you think this is bad, wait until your grandchildren inherit the fruits of our current spending. They will be paying for our love of government.

How many?  That would be 41.  That's right.  Forty-one states are now begging for taxpayer cash from Washington. 

Now I don't know just how they do their budgets in other states .. but I've been watching these clowns work in Georgia for many years.  Here's the Georgia routine.  Every year the legislature passes a budget.  At some point during that fiscal year they may find that tax revenues have exceeded the budget needs.  In other words .. there's some extra money.  So what do the Georgia legislators do when they're faced with this extra cash?  Do they save it?  Do they put it into a huge contingency fund?  Do they cut taxes?  Hardly ... they oink their way back to Atlanta to pass a supplemental budget to spend the extra cash.  The legislators line up like pigs at a trough to get some of that extra money for a playground, band uniforms, a new road or something in their district.  Year after year ... the same thing.

You ought to look at the pension plans these state employees get, not just here in Georgia but across the country.  Far and away better than most private sector plans.  And these pension plans are just the beginnings of wasteful and ridiculous spending.  How about arts programs?  Any government entity that is spending money supporting "artists" who don't have the skill to produce anything that can be sold in the free market should not be marching to Washington to beg for bailout money.

Why is it when times get rough only the people have to look for ways to cut back?  Why is this always just absolutely impossible for government? 

You'll get a kick out of this. Oklahoma is really taking to heart the idea of universal health insurance coverage. Oklahoma State Insurance Commissioner Kim Holland has proposed a plan to make sure that all Oklahomans have medical coverage - make it mandatory. And if you fail to comply, the government will take away your driver's licenses, take away your state income tax deductions, and (hold your breath) take away college football season tickets.

Naturally, people are immediately upset because it "unfairly targets" the poor people who can't afford medical coverage. Don't worry, I'm sure that a tax on the evil rich to pay for the poor people to have medical coverage is part 2 of this story.

The Governor of Pennsylvania, Ed Rendell, has decided that he is going to be a bailout fairy. He is going to make sure that private businesses in his state get their own piece of the taxpayer pie. In this case, Rendell says that the state has secured a $35 million federal loan to bailout a regional department store. Boscov's is some sort of Northeast chain that has filed for bankruptcy. But rather than going belly up, it went to the government to help. And guess what? The government came through ... thanks to your tax dollars. The $35 million loan will be financed through a program that allows the states to guarantee loans for economic development by using federal community development block grants.

Just some more of your tax dollars at work, ladies and gentlemen. Private businesses, you would be foolish not to line up at the government trough. Individual tax payers, your chance is coming.

The Canadian Supreme Court has ruled that airlines must offer a free extra seat to people who are disabled or obese. The policy called "one person, one fare" was upheld by the Supreme Court, despite the airlines' desire to charge more to people who take up more than one seat. What this means is that the government is telling private companies how to run their businesses. The government is making decisions as to how airlines should charge their customers.

The Swedish government must have a lot of time on its hands. I mean A LOT. First let's set the scene. An 8-year-old boy shows up to his government school with invitations for his birthday party. He starts passing them out to friends in his class. Everyone in the class is invited, except for two students. You know where this is going ... don't you? The government school teacher notices that the boy did not invite all of the students in the class to his birthday party, so the teacher forces the students to hand over their invitations. "That's not fair! You have to invite every student in the class or someone could get his feelings hurt!"

The incident is then reported to the Swedish parliament. The father of the boy says that the teacher should not have confiscated the invitations. The school says that it has an "unwritten policy that either all children, or all the boys, or all the girls in a class, had to be invited to parties when invitations were handed out at school." Well isn't that convenient?

Finally, the Swedish parliament ruled that the school was wrong to take the invitations but it will not be sanctioned for its actions.

... Coming to the United States government education system soon. In fact, I'll be you situations like this already happen in the United States in efforts to wussify our youth. The difference in the United States is that cases like this wouldn't be sent to the federal government to handle. Although that could change, too. Remember that the idea of a federalized education is a historically recent phenomenon. The days of states' rights and local control are over.

In Washington County, Oregon the sheriff wants to know whether 10,000 people with concealed handgun permits want their names made public if requested ... by the liberal media. Wouldn't that be great? A newspaper could publishing the names of you, your neighbors, your loved ones, your co-workers who register their handguns with the government. Sheriff Rob Gordon says that people who get a license for security purposes would be exempt from public record. So the taxpayers are going to spend gawd knows how much money mailing letters to these handgun owners and asking them whether or not they have their license for "security reasons" and whether or not they want their information kept confidential.

And why would the newspaper want to publish those names in the first place? Harassment, pure and simple. There can be no other reason.