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Electric car sales hummed along in May amid a solid month for the auto industry. But the surprise story this year was May's strong full-size pickup truck sales – not exactly a sign an endorsement of efficiency and alternative fuels. Nissan sold 2,138 Leafs in May, up 319 percent over last year. In March, the company sold a record 2,236 units of its all-electric vehicle. General Motors sold 1,607 Volts in May, down 4.3 percent from a year ago. In the first five months of 2013, the company sold only 100 more Volts than during the same period last year.

It turns out that Paul Scott will not be meeting President Obama after all. The passionate electric car advocate (and co-founder of Plug In America) puts his money where his mouth is by selling Nissan Leafs in Los Angeles. He had sent in $32,400 — a good chunk of his relatively modest savings — for a chance to briefly meet President Obama at a forthcoming fundraiser and talk about climate change and his personal story — 10 years driving an electric car fueled by solar power. But on Monday in an email, Scott was disinvited by the Democratic National Committee...

Bidding wars are breaking out. Foreign buyers are moving in. A new wave of contemporary architecture is taking hold. And a growing class of tech executives is helping to fuel the boom. All this is happening in Washington, D.C., a town known for its relative affordability compared with cities such as New York and San Francisco, and for architecture about as exciting as its fashion sense. Today, home prices in Washington and its surrounding suburbs are rapidly rising to new levels. As other American cities have been buffeted by an uneven economy, Washington's property market has been buoyed two forces...

While the White House claims its stimulus package “supported as many as 3.5 million jobs,” none were yielded from a $152,000 project to ready lesbians for “adoptive parenthood.” The $833 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), commonly known as the stimulus, awarded the tustees of Clark University, in Worcester, Mass., $152,000 to interview roughly 50 lesbian couples about their adoption experiences. “The goal of this project is to investigate the unique strengths and potential challenges of lesbian couples across the transition to adoptive parenthood,” the grant states. “Given that parental mental health has implications for child development, and the...

The Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) was established to assist the nation’s underwater borrowers get out from under their massive mortgage debt. In a Congressional Budget Office report, both Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae have been found to be responsible for nearly 13 percent of underwater borrowers. The report, “Modifying Mortgages Involving Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: Options for Principal Forgiveness,” finds that, in order for the government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) to use principal forgiveness for borrowers in an effort to provide assistance for those to benefit from HAMP: + Result in small savings to the government, + Slightly reduce mortgage...

Unemployment rates fell in nearly 90 percent of large U.S. cities in March, though most of the declines likely occurred because more Americans stopped looking for work, rather than found jobs.

A grant of $10 million in Wyoming produced zero jobs, no results, and plush salaries.Two Elks Energy Park in Wyoming What kind of project pays a couple of politically connected people hundreds of thousands of dollars for producing next to nothing? An Obama stimulus project, of course. More than four years after President Barack Obama signed the $787 billion stimulus package into law, troubling details continue to emerge. Earlier this month, for example, the nonprofit news site WyoFile reported that a $10 million stimulus project in Wyoming has been suspended and referred to the U.S. Attorney’s office for an investigation...

Kim Jong Un building 'mini world' with replica Big Ben and Eiffel Tower Chubby tyrant Kim Jong Un is building a “miniature world” in North Korea – with a replica of London's Big Ben at its heart. The dictator is set to open the theme park in capital Pyongyang – and has included the iconic clock tower. The new attraction, which opens this year, will also boast a copy of Paris’ Eiffel Tower. The secretive state famously doesn’t allow its citizens to leave the country – so it appears Jong Un has decided to bring the world to his people....

The federal government is spending $152,000 to study “voice therapy” for transgenders, saying it is incumbent to being “accepted as one’s preferred gender.” “This study will illuminate the capabilities of the human larynx and inform the relationship between voice production and perception,” states a National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant, awarded to George Washington University. “The long term goal of this research is to inform and provide new directions for Transgender (TG) voice care, thereby improving the lives of TG people who feel their voice is a great obstacle to living as their preferred gender.” …

If you want to see where a little bit of your $833 billion stimulus went, head south from St. Louis on Interstate 44 until you reach the Mark Twain National Forest. On March 13, 2009, less than a month after President Barack Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) into law, the federal government awarded $462,912.30 to a Spokane, Washington, construction firm called CXT Incorporated to build and install 22 “precast concrete toilets” in the park. These bunker-style commodes did not add to the number of bathrooms in the forest; they replaced existing toilets that didn’t meet Forest Service...

President Barack Obama walked into the mouth of a giant tunnel in Miami on Friday to highlight proposals to boost investment in U.S. infrastructure, a move designed to show a leader still focused on the economy in the midst of broader policy battles in Washington. Obama’s tour of the Port of Miami tunnel project and a subsequent speech were aimed at convincing members of the U.S. Congress to back proposals that would leverage taxpayer dollars into funds to rebuild American roads, bridges and other infrastructure. “My main message is, let’s get this done,” he said. “Let’s rebuild this country that...

A government watchdog says U.S. taxpayers stand to lose $27 billion from the 2008 financial bailout, up from an estimate of $22 billion made in the fall. A report issued Wednesday by the special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program says the estimate is higher because of increased losses for the Treasury Department on sales of shares in bailed-out companies. Ally Financial, the former financial arm for General Motors, still owes $14.6 billion of the $17.2 billion in aid it received. The report says taxpayers can expect to lose $5.5 billion on that investment because of the company's...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Three months after Superstorm Sandy ravaged coastal areas in much of the Northeast, Congress on Monday sent a $50.5 billion emergency relief measure for storm victims to President Barack Obama for his signature. "I commend Congress for giving families and businesses the help they deserve, and I will sign this bill into law as soon as it hits my desk," Obama said in a statement late Monday. Despite opposition from conservatives concerned about adding billions of dollars more to the nation's debt, the Senate cleared the long-delayed bill, 62-36, after House Republicans had stripped it earlier this...

Have you heard much about President Obama’s $787,000,000,000 economic “stimulus” (now estimated to cost $831,000,000,000) lately?  In its last report, published in 2011, the president’s own Council of Economic Advisors released an estimate showing that, for every $317,000 in “stimulus” spending that had by then gone out the door, only one job had been created or saved.  Even in Washington, that’s not considered good bang for the buck. Moreover, that was the fifth consecutive “stimulus” report that showed this number getting progressively worse.Alas, that was the last report we’ve seen.  Never mind that Section 1513 of the “stimulus” legislation, which...

Paul Krugman, a liberal economist and New York Times columnist, said increased government spending is key to economic recovery. During an interview on Friday on “Moyers & Company,” on PBS, Bill Moyers asked, “And you argue that this could actually be solved in two years?” …

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama will name close aide Tom Donilon as his new national security adviser on Friday in a move that could have implications for the struggli

And the probe doesn’t involve some bit players in an obscure program, either.  The 1603 Program was one of the centerpieces of Barack Obama’s 2009 stimulus, designed to subsidize a transition from hydrocarbon-based energy to renewables in the residential market, and federal government sunk $13 billion into the effort.  Now the Inspector General of Treasury has opened a probe of the three largest providers of solar panel installations, who gained the most from the 1603 Program, and who may have fraudulently calculated their bills in order to claim more taxpayer cash: Three of the country’s most prolific installers of...

Amid all the political and media hoopla about the "fiscal cliff" crisis, there are a few facts that are worth noting. First of all, despite all the melodrama about raising taxes on "the rich," even if that is done it will scarcely make a dent in the government's financial problems. Raising the tax rates on everybody in the top two percent will not get enough additional tax revenue to run the government for ten days. And what will the government do to pay for the other 355 days in the year? All the political angst and moral melodrama about getting...

The California High-Speed Rail Authority said Thursday that it was adding 12 months to the construction schedule for 130 miles of track in the Central Valley, easing what some outside experts have contended was an overly aggressive and risky timeline. Construction industry experts have said that the job of building the $6 billion of track through the Central Valley would require spending $3.5 million per day, one of the fastest rates of transportation project spending in history.

New Jersey Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez had loud sex with different women nightly in his Washington, D.C., apartment, his former neighbor told the liberal gossip website Gawker. “We lived below him,” the former neighbor said, according to the website. “It was outrageous. When it started, we thought it was a one-time thing. But it went on for months — hours and hours of headbanging sex.” The report in the liberal Gawker comes on the heels of The Daily Caller’s early Thursday article about how Menendez allegedly paid two women in the Dominican Republic for sex.