Your tax dollars at work:  Our U.S. government has no problem spending a trillion dollars on an optional war in Iraq.  Or spending many trillions bailing out rich Wall Street bankers to reward their greed and avarice.  But when it comes to deploying a FREE, open-source Web browser on government computers?  Now you’ve really gone too far, man!

The U.S. State Department currently uses Microsoft Internet Explorer as its one and only Web browser.  At a town hall meeting led by Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, a new State Department employee asked Clinton to “please let the staff use” the Mozilla Firefox browser.  The employee pointed out that Firefox had been “approved for the entire intelligence community,” and that it’s a “much safer program.”  The rookie’s question was met with a chorus of applause from the audience.

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In case you had any question about whether Congress is driving our country over the deficit cliff:

See where our money is going and who’s to blame for this bloated spending. 

It’s really a shame that George Bush and the Congress had to run up such huge deficits and double our national debt to $10 trillion during a time of relative prosperity.  So now when economic times are tough, we’re already in such a deep hole that it’s even more difficult to climb out.

Thanks to The Ranter for the graph.

The Congress has just passed the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.  This is the largest single spending bill in our nation’s history.  The goal of the bill is to invest in key areas that will save or create jobs immediately, while also laying the groundwork for long-term economic growth.

The government has launched a website Recovery.gov that lets you — the taxpayer – see where your money is going.  The site provides this chart that summarizes the financial distribution:

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CNN’s Jack Cafferty published an excellent column on how Nancy Pelosi and the Congressional Democrats are using the same ol’ partisanship to ruin Obama’s mojo.  Here’s a brief excerpt:

“Well, that didn’t take long.  Three weeks into the new administration and the Democrats are squandering their advantage and threatening to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.  Credit House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for getting the ball rolling.  Under her leadership, House Democrats excluded Republicans from having any voice in crafting the stimulus package.

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In today’s article we include a picture of mirror, because the stupid person here is us — you and me and all the American citizens.

In December our government passed a $700 billion package to use taxpayer funds to bail out the banking industry.  So far over $350 billion has been spent with pretty much nothing to show for it.  The credit markets remain frozen, the stock market had its worst January in history, and new jobless claims reached an all-time high.

But while we lose our jobs, say goodbye to our retirement funds, and struggle to make ends meet, the top officers in the banks that received our bailout money continued to haul in obscene salaries and bonuses.  That’s right, the people who helped collapse our economy because of their greed and irresponsibility were rewarded with riches beyond belief for their poor performance.

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According to new Congressional Budget Office figures, the U.S. federal budget deficit will hit an unprecedented $1.2 trillion for the 2009 budget year.  The CBO also projects a $703 billion deficit for 2010.  The dismal figures come a day after President-elect Barack Obama warned of “trillion-dollar deficits for years to come.”

To make matters worse, the CBO figures don’t account for the massive economic stimulus bill that Obama is proposing, nor does it include the cost of the trillion-dollar Wall Street bailout.

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UniformVelocity has written an excellent article about how Congress’ billion-dollar bailouts amount to a tax on the average citizen.  Just like in America’s pre-independence colonial days, the poor masses are being forced to support the rich few.

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