The federal government paid at least $439 million in employee bonuses last year, down $43 million since new austerity restrictions were announced.

The largest merit awards went to senior executives in Washington and air traffic controllers, an Asbury Park Press investigation found. The highest award, $62,895, went to 16 employees from agriculture to NASA.

The $439 million in bonuses may be a staggering amount — enough to buy the former New Jersey Nets, valued at about $357 million by Forbes magazine — but it represents just 0.4 percent of the $105 billion in salaries for most of the government’s civilian employees. In 2010, at least $482 million was paid in bonuses, according to federal data.

CONTINUED at the Asbury Park Press.

There is nothing wrong with being optimistic, but there is something wrong with having blind faith that things are going to get better when all of the evidence is screaming at you that things are going to get worse.  According to a brand new USA TODAY/Gallup Poll, 71 percent of all Americans consider economic conditions  in the United States to be poor right now, but an astounding 58 percent of them believe that economic conditions in the United States will be good a year from now.  So what can account for this?  Are they insane?  Are they hopelessly optimistic?  Do they not want to believe the facts that are staring them right in the face?  Well, a lot of it probably has to do with the upcoming election.  Most Republicans are convinced that things will be “better” somehow if Romney wins in November.  Most Democrats are convinced that things will “continue to improve” if Obama wins in November.  But the truth is that the economy has been declining steadily in recent years no matter which party has been in power.  Today, the American Dream is out of reach for huge numbers of formerly middle class families.  Millions of jobs continue to leave the United States, poverty is absolutely exploding and our nation is absolutely drowning in debt.  Sadly, nothing is being done to reverse the long-term economic trends that are destroying us.  So, a year from now things are not going to be any better.  In fact, many analysts are absolutely convinced that things are going to be a whole lot worse by then.

For example, just check out the following excerpt from a report that was just released by LEAP/E2020….

Thus, according to LEAP/E2020, the 2012 election year, which opens against the backdrop of economic and social depression, complete paralysis of the federal system (3), strong rejection of the traditional two-party system and a growing questioning of the relevance of the Constitution, inaugurates a crucial period in the history of the United States. Over the next four years, the country will be subjected to political, economic, financial and social upheaval such as it has not known since the end of the Civil War which, by an accident of history, started exactly 150 years ago in 1861. During this period, the US will be simultaneously insolvent and ungovernable, turning that which was the “flagship” of the world in recent decades into a “drunken boat”.

Wow, that paints a far different picture of the future than most Americans are imagining, eh?

The U.S. “will be simultaneously insolvent and ungovernable”?

That doesn’t sound very optimistic.

Gerald Celente, the head of the Trends Research Institute, is also very pessimistic about the rest of 2012.  Just consider the following quotes from a recent USA Today article….

“2012 is when many of the long-simmering socioeconomic and political trends that we have been forecasting and tracking will climax,” Celente noted in his Top 12 Trends 2012 newsletter. In an interview he added: “When money stops flowing to the man on the street, blood starts flowing in the street.”

So who is right and who is wrong?

CONTINUED at the American Dream.

He could have breezed through security at any airport.

A terrorist wearing the latest underwear bomb would not have been caught by the TSA’s most conscientious human screeners or its highest-tech fullbody scanners, experts told The Post yesterday. But the country ducked a disaster by employing an age-old weapon: a double agent.

With the help of American allies in Saudi Arabia and Yemen, the secret agent inserted himself into the terrorists’ secret inner circle, and became so trusted, the thugs accepted his offer to board a US-bound plane wearing the bomb.

CONTINUED at NY Post.

Voters in North Carolina on Tuesday approved Amendment One, a fiercely debated and highly restrictive amendment to the state constitution that defines marriage as the legal union of a man and a woman.

The amendment not only outlaws same-sex marriage — already illegal in the state — but bans civil unions and domestic partnerships for gay or straight couples. Family law experts say it will threaten domestic partnership health benefits for local government workers and strip unmarried couples, both gay and straight, of their rights to make financial or emergency medical decisions for an incapacitated partner.

With all counties reporting, the amendment was approved, 61% to 39%.

Passage of the measure, called the Defense of Marriage Act by Republican sponsors, makes North Carolina the final state in the South to pass an amendment banning gay marriage, and the 29th state overall, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Ten states have statutes defining marriage as between a man and a woman. Proponents said the amendment was needed to keep “activist judges or politicians” from overturning the state’s 1996 law.

The measure is more restrictive than all but three of the marriage amendments passed in other states, according to a study published by 11 family law professors at seven North Carolina universities. The measure could even deprive unmarried women of protections against domestic abuse, while restricting child custody and visitation rights for unmarried gay or straight couples, they said.

Only Idaho, Michigan and South Carolina have so strictly defined marriage, and courts in those three states are still struggling to interpret amendments passed in recent years. The North Carolina amendment is likely to face similar court battles.

CONTINUED at LA Times.

*Written by Rob Rimes.

I had a long weekend but it is now over. My time in Gainesville with my cousin and friends was a blast, as I haven’t actually been partying too hard over the last month. This trip was a good way for me to drown in bourbon, Irish whiskey, tequila, Long Islands, Guinness, ginger beer and Pabst. I’ve been trying to be healthier in an attempt to lose weight and potentially live a somewhat longer life but even with my more health conscious attitude, my inner party monster still needs to be entertained and unleashed every now and again. What better time than with other party monsters that I genuinely cherish in a wild college town during graduation weekend? There was no point in taking any prisoners, as we ran roughshod over downtown Gainesville leaving no bottle unturned. A few days later, my stomach still hurts and my head is still swimming in a sea of 86 proof delirium – a special shout out goes to 1.75 liters of Old Crow Reserve.

To those who might find my more health conscious behavior a bit unsettling, there is no need to worry. It’s not called selling out when you do it because your liver hurts and you’ve been pissing blood. The blood part was not related to the booze but it was still a wake up call to straighten my shit out some what. Have no fear though, I will not go soft and become a shell of my former self like so many writers and artists who went clean only for their work to suffer and lose its appeal. Trent Reznor immediately comes to mind, although his Academy Award for a very boring and minimalist film score probably proves me wrong but only if you take the Academy seriously and turn a blind eye to their petty politics.

Anyway, my first night in Gainesville on this latest trip was intense. It started almost immediately with two Guinness Draughts and four Long Island iced teas while I watched my friends play pool. I didn’t participate in the contest because I was enjoying my own game of drown the writer in the dark and dingy corner of smoke and neon light. It is a one-player game but the odds are always steep and the challenge is never dull. Needless to say, I won the bout and went on to fight in other bouts in other venues for the remainder of the 48 hour tournament.

The weekend wasn’t all about completely succumbing to vices however. I mean, I never came across any other substances to entertain myself with and that’s fine, the booze was enough. I did get to spend a lot of the time talking politics and economics with the college kids, some of them a part of the Occupy Gainesville movement. Now while we didn’t see eye-to-eye on solutions, we did agree on the vast majority of the problems. My job, from my standpoint, was to try and get them to understand that you can’t just blame the banks for the madness. The government is just as responsible as is the Federal Reserve. Truth is, they were really receptive to a lot of the things I was saying. Now I had half a dozen conversations with a dozen or more people but for the most part, other than two or three close-minded joiners, they got what I was saying and left the conversations with the intent to look into their new perspective on these matters themselves. One of them even promised to pick up some of the books I wrote down for him on a napkin (titles by Ron Paul, Murray Rothbard, Ludwig von Mises, F.A. Hayek, Henry Hazlitt, Milton Friedman and more modern authors Jeffrey Tucker and Stefan Molyneux – who has a ton of free e-books).

One interesting thing I discovered among talking to multiple college kids, is that their only real beef with Ron Paul is his pro-life stance. I told them that it is an issue I also disagree with Dr. Paul on. However, I told them that if you look at the rest of his platform and like it, writing him off over one issue is a bit careless. Especially since Dr. Paul thinks that it should be an issue left up to states and not the federal government regardless of his personal opinion on it. Most of these kids understood that but had a hard time envisioning a country were states’ rights were protected, at least on this issue. I explained that you cannot pick and choose issues and that the rule had to apply with everything. If you make one exception, you will make plenty more. They got and respected it but still had a bug in their ass about it and I get that. I then spoke to them about Gary Johnson who is basically a clone of Ron Paul policy-wise but is pro-choice instead of pro-life. Most of the people I talked to had not heard of Johnson and were actually pretty excited upon finding out his stance on the abortion issue. They also liked that Gary Johnson was not a Democrat or a Republican. I didn’t bring up all the issues they said they had with Obama however, as there were a lot more than what they had with Paul. Regardless of this, they will probably vote for Obama again even though they claim they are opposed to war, Gitmo and a plethora of other issues he has failed them on.

Now don’t get me wrong, not everyone was cordial. There were those few dumb bastards in the mix and fucking with them and sending them off in a self-conlficted rage was quite amusing. One kid was calling for anarchy and at the same time was calling for government to step in and regulate the banks more. Point is, this kid’s whole world-view was completely hypocritical. On one hand, this kid (and those like him) want to scream “Fuck the man!” and “Fuck the police!” while on the other hand want the government (the man and the police) to step in and regulate everything even more than they do now. I don’t understand how so many young people can’t seem to make a correlation between these two things? You want the government who is bought and paid for by the banks to regulate the banks? You can’t see how this is completely asinine, let alone how this is what has caused all these problems to begin with? Your solution to the problem is more of the problem itself? Does the meth addict break the cycle by taking more meth? No, the meth addict dies! Common sense is like a disease in the hipster socialist-anarchist psyche.

The ones who are so passionate in their ignorance don’t even care about the real crux of the problem. They want to continue to buy into their conflicted and hypocritical indoctrination and smash anyone who doesn’t swim in their sea of shit. On top of that, they don’t want to better themselves, they want to stay at the bottom so they can continue to bitch as they wallow in dirt and filth because if they were to try and actually get out of it, they’d be outed as a “sell out” or even worse a “hard-working capitalist pig consumer”. Yep, keep pointing your Djarum-clutching fingers as you slur your PBR-soaked words kiddies.

Not all is lost on the generation after mine however. Amongst the sea of those I dealt with, only a few were bad apples and completely hopeless. I remember myself at that age, as I had a similar view of the world. It was someone challenging me on my preconceived notions that got me to pay attention and learn how this whole game really works. If at least one of those kids breaks free from the mold and is affected by our encounter, my debt is repaid. I enjoyed the friendly and civil debates and even had fun with the assholes. In the end, it is about standing your ground and living by your own code not the code of some undefined group whose ideology is lesser than the sum of its parts.

I got home, feeling pretty good about how most of the weekend went down. I also felt great for ignoring my responsibilities for a few days while not even paying attention to what was going on in the news. I didn’t really miss anything, other than Rick Santorum finally wiping away his bitch tears to endorse Mitt Romney, which just gave me flashbacks to 2008 when he was riding that Romney train hard. Something tells me that if I had the same debates with Santorum supporters that I had with the college youth of Gainesville, it wouldn’t have been as civil. I hope that all of those sweater-vests the Santorumites bought up like quaaludes at a disco are constructed of Iranian dog hair and Chinese asbestos. It would be the perfect ending to such a vile group of people.

In the past four decades, cars have grown significantly cleaner and more fuel efficient, but it’s been a bumpy road getting there. These are Jalopnik readers’ picks for the ten most expensive, inefficient measures to make cars “green.”

Welcome back to Answers of the Day — our daily Jalopnik feature where we take the best ten responses from the previous day’s Question of the Day and shine it up to show off. It’s by you and for you, the Jalopnik readers. Enjoy!

Photo Credit: GM

10.) Solar Power

Suggested By: 3pedalsgood

Why it failed: The Solar Car Challenge is a yearly competition for high schools to build and race a solar-powered car. It’s a fine idea for getting people involved with engineering. But solar-powered cars? Other than a limited use of solar for powering accessories in vehicles like the Fisker Karma, it’s not happening anytime soon.

Photo Credit: Pspatry.

9.) Cadillac V8-6-4

Suggested By: zacarious

Why it failed: Today, more and more engines employ cylinder deactivation. What the systems do is shut down a number of cylinders when the driver is just cruising on the highway, using very little throttle.

Back in 1981, when the technology was new, GM decided that Cadillac should try it out to make their big V8s more fuel efficient. The engines were completely crude, the shut-off was the opposite of smooth, and the cars broke down regularly. Oh, and it produced 140 horsepower out of six liters of displacement.

Photo Credit: Cadillac/Old Car Brochures.

8.) California’s Cool Cars Initiative

Suggested By: Buckus

Why it failed: California’s Air Resources Board has one of the least enviable jobs of a government agency: cleaning up the air in a smog-ridden state that loves cars. Some of their draconian rules about smog equipment and old car certification can be seen as necessary evils, but CARB’s “Cool Cars” plan of the late 2000s was a complete flop.

The idea was to reduce the amount of air conditioning people would use. Air conditioning uses engine power, which sucks gas. The regulation would require manufacturers to use reflective paints in their cars. First, people thought that CARB was banning black paint, and then they realized that most of the heat soak in cars was through the windows. Over fears that GPS systems, cellphones, and ankle monitors wouldn’t work, CARB gave up on the whole plan in early 2010.

Photo Credit: Hashem Akbari, Berkeley Lab.

7.) Arizona alternative fuel rebate

Suggested By: iowncalculus

Why it failed: Back in 2000, Arizona offered to pay half the cost of any alternative fuel vehicle, in an effort to promote clean cars and improve the state’s surprisingly bad air quality. People figured out that they could fit a one-gallon compressed natural gas tank to an SUV and get the state to pay half the price.

When Arizona realized they would be paying half the cost of $50,000 leather-lined Excursions at an estimated total cost of $600 million dollars (that was 10% of the state’s yearly budget) they quit the plan, leaving people to foot the bill on these CNG-equipped vehicles themselves.

Photo Credit: GMC.

6.) E85

Suggested By: Viperfan1

Why it failed: Corn ethanol seems to make sense – there’s too much corn in the Midwest, so why not make it into a fuel that’s got a higher octane rating than pump gas? Well, you can’t put it in a pipeline, so you have to truck it everywhere, and it cuts into your gas mileage. Biofuels are really fantastic, but E85 is not the way of the future.

Photo Credit: Getty Images.

5.) CAFE’s light truck loophole

Suggested By: KillerKoala

Why it failed: CAFE stands for Corporate Average Fuel Economy. It defines how fuel efficient a car manufacturer’s vehicles must be, and it is broken down into different categories based on size and weight. Each different kind of vehicle has a different standard.

CAFE started out in the 1970s with much lighter fuel economy standards for light trucks than full-size family cars. This seemed to make sense, as trucks were used for work, and businesses needed cheap, powerful engines. US carmakers, however, capitalized off the growing market for recreational trucks and started building SUVs intended for people to just drive around in. These SUVs were cheap to build ad they didn’t have to comply with the tough emissions and fuel economy standards of regular cars.

This loophole meant that Americans just switched from driving big, heavy sedans to big heavy SUVs, without effecting any real change in fuel economy.

Photo Credit: Ford.

4.) SUV hybrids

Suggested By: claiborne

Why it failed: The most egregious manifestation of the light trucks loophole are SUV hybrids. The worst offenders are the ones from GM and Chrysler that come with big “Hybrid” badges to show off their mileage numbers bested by just about any station wagon on the market. In cities where hybrids are allowed special privileges, like exemption from London’s inner-city congestion charge, they’re just insulting.

Photo Credit: Cadillac.

3.) Cash for clunkers

Suggested By: My X-type is too a real Jaguar

Why it failed: The idea behind cash for clunkers was to get people out of smog-producing old cars and into new fuel-efficient ones. New car sales spiked only for a few months, used car prices have gone up and stayed up, and we’ve seen the death of all kinds of strange, beautiful old machines. It wasn’t worth it.

Photo Credit: Detroit Free Press.

2.) GM’s EV1

Suggested By: Wolc

Why it failed: Everyone loved the EV1. Everyone but GM. The car was doomed to slow sales, so GM cut the program early and crushed the cars. Ask anyone who owned one and they loved it. While Toyota was content to lose money for years developing the Prius, GM couldn’t stand a little bit of an investment in clean tech.

Photo Credit: Associated Press.

1.) 55 MPH speed limit

Suggested By: Irving Washington

Why it failed: In the year following the 1973 Oil Crisis, the Congress enacted the Emergency Highway Energy Conservation Act setting a national speed limit at 55. The double nickel was supposed to greatly cut fuel consumption and the ensuing pollution, as cars create significantly more drag at highway speeds. studies found it was a mere 22-45% as effective as anyone hoped.

This hellish restriction on the nation’s transportation network was finally fully repealed in 1995, after getting bumped up to 65 in December 1987. It was a dark time for this country.

Photo Credit: Associated Press.

Source: Jalopnik.

The Obama administration is looking for states that will experiment withunemployment insurance programs by letting people test a job while still receiving benefits.

The plan is a key feature of a payroll tax cut package that President Barack Obama negotiated withcongressional Republicans in February.

The Labor Department will open the application process Thursday for 10 model projects across the country. Any state can apply for the “Bridge to Work” program.

The plan is modeled after a Georgia program called “Georgia Works.” Under the plan, workers who have lost jobs can be placed in other temporary jobs as trainees for short periods to retain their skills or gain new ones while receiving jobless assistance. About a third of the time, those workers wind up getting hired full-time.

A number of states are combining unemployment benefits with on-the-job training, including North Carolina, New Hampshire, Utah and Missouri.

A senior administration official said those states would be eligible to apply for the federal demonstration project. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the program before an administration announcement.

States that are chosen could get waivers from the federal government allowing them to tap their unemployment insurance accounts to pay for such costs as transportation for workers in temporary jobs.

The program has had mixed results in some states that have their own programs. Administration officials said they hope the waivers and assistance offered by the federal demonstration projects could help rectify any problems that have emerged.

Supporters of the programs say it helps workers retain or learn new skills and add new job references to their resumes. The plan passed with support from leading Republicans, including House Speaker John Boehner and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor.

It also is designed to answer critics of unemployment benefits who say the aid discourages some people from aggressively seeking work.

Source: Yahoo News.

California is broke. The national debt continues to spiral out of control. So, it’s perhaps a little bit of a surprise that the California Department of Transportation, along with some help from the federal government, spent $205,000 in 2010 to move a shrub that’s available at nurseries for about $15. Even the Knights who say Ni would find that too expensive.

There’s a good chance that the sole remaining in-the-wild Arctostaphylos franciscana would have escaped notice altogether, but for the keen eye of a botanist driving by a soon-to-be-removed median strip near the Golden Gate Bridge.

A low, leafy shrub which occasionally sprouts unexciting little flowers, the Franciscan manzanita is that kind of squat ground-cover found all over California. Like other types of chaparral, it’s not the sort of thing that draws close attention, but is part of the quilt of dark green sharing the light browns of the state’s many hillsides.

The Franciscan manzanita didn’t excite anyone until the last wild one was found. As it turned out, state and federal funds — some of it stimulus money — paid for the pricey shrub “translocation” project. Moving the plant and the weighty chunk of soil supporting its life cost $100,000, with $79,470 going to “fund the establishment, nurturing and monitoring of the Mother Plant” for a decade, as well as $25,605 to cover what federalese linguists call “reporting requirements.” All that added to a road widening project budgeted at more than $1 billion.

CONTINUED at Jalopnik.

Either someone just attempted the subtlest of jabs at our nation’s force of uncomfortably invasive rent-a-cops or the recruiters at the Transportation Security Administration need to invest in a better thesaurus. A job posting on the Ann Arbor, Michigan Craigslistinvites would-be screeners to “[b]e part of aimperious security team protecting airports and skies as you proudly establish your future.”

Imperious, indeed.

The Dictionary.com definition of imperious is “domineering in a haughty manner; dictatorial; overbearing.” The definition from Google is even better, describing it as “assuming authority without justification.”

If it was a joke I’d assume the posting would be made elsewhere, but it’s only been posted in Ann Arbor. But what word could they mean instead if it’s real? Imperative? Impetuous? The rest of the text is also a mess, which screams either that this is a fake… or a federal government employee.

Either way, I’ve emailed the poster curious if this might actually be a great jab or a bad job.

Here’s the full posting below, in case it’s pulled:

Transportation Security Officers (Ann Arbor)
See the individual you are in a vital position for our security firm where you implement security-screening procedures that counter deadly or dangerous objects from being smuggled onto an aircraft. Be part of a imperious security team protecting airports and skies as you proudly establish your future.

Minimum Qualifications:
1. You must be a U.S. Citizen
2. You are required to have a high school diploma or equivalent

PT, full training
• Location: Ann Arbor
• Compensation: $17 per hour
• Principals only. Recruiters, please don’t contact this job poster.
• Please, no phone calls about this job!
• Please do not contact job poster about other services, products or commercial interests.
PostingID: 2926913263

Source: Jalopnik.