Wednesday, February 19, 2025

February, Part 3, Political Class Insanity: D.E.I. Possibly Involved In Airport Crash, More Word Salad From Kamala, Unused Federal Office Space and More

Although the past half dozen or so of posts have focused on the ridiculously wasteful spending of the USAID organization and how it has spent untold millions and millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars around the world on absolutely stupid programs, that doesn't mean that the American political class has not been hard at work doing stupid stuff in other areas. Let’s spend a day or so catching up on what our politicians have been up to and generally it has not been good.

1)In our last post we discussed the failure of the Federal government and its aviation agency, the FAA, to protect the lives of Americans when there was a midair collision recently at Reagan National Airport, a collision that killed 67 Americans. We also discussed the reality that over time pilots had been sounding off against the ineptness of the FAA to provide safe traveling at the airport.

Now it appears that the underlying reason for the fatal collision is in the hiring practices of the FAA:
  • FAA whistleblowers have come forward, both current and former air traffic controllers, who allege that it was the FAA’s practice of filling diversity quotas rather than hiring the best qualified people to be air traffic controllers which may have been a major factor in the crash..
  • This emphasis on inclusion and diversity resulted in the hiring of less qualified people to fulfill this vital airport function.
  • And the whistleblowers’ contention is these less qualified people led to the fatal air collision.
  • These FAA diversity first hiring practices started under the Obama administration, were suspended under Trump and reinstated by Biden’s administration.
  • These policies have led to staffing shortages and lowered hiring standards, both of which likely contributed to the collision.
As always, we contend that the top, top priority of any government entity is to protect the lives and property of the citizens it serves and not develop and then ensure that racial, sexual, and other diversity quotas are met. In the Reagan National midair crash the Federal government and FAA failed in this basic requirement to protect lives.

2)Kamala Harris was famous for doing a lot of talking and not communicating anything. She helped create the phrase, “word salad,” a combination of words that are meaningless and confusing.

And she was at it again during a visit to NYC and addressing the cast of a Broadway play. Specifically: “When we think about these moments where we see things that are being taken, but also let’s see it, you know, nature abhors a vacuum. Where there’s a vacancy, let’s fill it. Let us know that the reality is that the progress of our nation has been about the expansion of rights, not the restriction of rights. We’re seeing a U-turn right now. For those rights to be maintained which means we have to be vigilant. It’s just the nature of it. We have to be clear-eyed. And it doesn’t mean we don’t see the beauty in everything. These things all co-exist, but I believe we fight for something, not against something.”

I dare anyone to translate what she was trying to say. As Jerry Seinfeld once said, “And you want to be my latex salesman.” And she wanted to be President, thank goodness we did not have to listen to this word salad nonsense for four years while the country continued its downward spiral under her former boss, Biden. If you think reading her nonsense is bad, go to the following link and see how bad it actually sounds:

https://www.drewberquist.com/2025/02/kamalas-broadway-word-salad-goes-full-drunk-auntie-wonderful-world-cast-applauds/?utm_source=daily-email-drew-berquist&utm_medium=email

3)Trump has been running through just about every Federal government entity to find and root out corruption, wasteful spending, and stupid programs. And Senator Rand Paul recently suggested a fascinating and potentially outrageous suggestion on a Federal government agency:
  • He suggested that Trump and his DOGE team audit and inspect the gold reserves at the country’s gold storehouse, Fort Knox just in case.
  • Since there has not been an audit done of the gold reserves and volumes at Fort Knox since 1974, 51 years ago, the Senator thinks it might be a good idea to check in, just in case.
  • There should be about 4,580 tons of gold there per the last audit that was done 51 years ago.
  • Given that the Clinton and Biden crime families have been hanging around for decades and we now know how many government agencies have been corrupted and wasting untold billions of taxpayer dollars, this could be a very interesting audit.
4)We have often contended that our democracy and freedoms can survive bad politicians (e.g. Nixon, Carter, Obama, Biden) but that we will not survive a vibrant and independent free press. It should be the objective and aim of the free press to provide hard hitting, fair, unbiased and thoroughly researched news reporting to the public to keep those in charge honest. But:
  • It is tough to believe that the press in this country is capable of that when a CBS news anchor, Margaret Brennan, asserted that the Nazi’s weaponized free speech to commit genocide during an interview with Secretary of State, Marco Rubio.
  • Seriously, does she actually think that there was free speech in Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 1940s and that the genocide of Jewish folks and others happened because the Nazis took over free speech?
  • Rubio would have none of this nonsense: “Well, I have to disagree with you. Free speech was not used to conduct a genocide. The genocide was conducted by an authoritarian Nazi regime that happened to also be genocidal because they hated Jews, and they hated minorities and they hated those that they had a list of people they hated, but primarily the Jews. There was no free speech in Nazi Germany. There was none. There was also no opposition in Nazi Germany, they were a sole and only party that governed that country. So that’s not an accurate reflection of history.”
It is tough to believe anything Ms. Brennan now says going forward, or more generally anyone in the mainstream media says, when they can be so ignorant and misleading about established historical facts like Nazi Germany and genocide. If they cannot get that right, how can they get more contemporary issues and situations right and report with integrity?

5)It is not just wasteful spending on stupid USAID projects and programs around the world that waste taxpayer money as we have highlighted recently, beginning with the first in a series of post at the following link:

https://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2025/02/february-2025-by-numbers-part-2.html

Recent Congressional testimony uncovered massive amounts of wasted taxpayer money when it comes to renting office space for Federal employees:
  • The Congressional investigation found that untold billions of dollars are wasted every year because so many Federal workers are still working from home but their office space has not been downsized.
  • The Biden administration asserted last May that of the 2.28 million person Federal workforce, 228,000 are never required to show up in the office and there are 1.1 million workers that are “technically-eligible” to work from home.
  • 29% of Health and Human Services employees work from home, 40% OPM employees work from home, 50% of GSA employees work from home, and 55% of Department of Education employees work from.
  • This has led to estimates that on average, Federal agency headquarters buildings are utilizing less than 25% of the capacity, i.e. over 75% of the space being rented using taxpayer dollars is not be used by anyone.
  • The Congressional investigation found that, “Some agency headquarters reported occupancy rates as low as nine percent.”
  • The U.S. government spends about $7 billion a year to lease and maintain Federal agency office space.
  • The Federal government also spent $3.3 billion over that past few years on office furniture, the vast majority of which is never used.
  • Unfortunately, a lot of the teleworking and wasteful spending can not easily be reined in since Biden signed labor union agreements at the tail end of his term giving Federal workers, as represented by their unions, great freedom to telework any time they wanted.
I do not know if Federal workers are more productive and efficient in fulfilling their job duties working at home or in a real office. I doubt that they are more effective at home but I am not an expert. However, if they are going to continue to work at home there needs to be some kind of correlation with departments’ budget processes so that the American taxpayer does not see their tax dollars wasted on empty buildings, unused furniture, utilities that don’t matter, etc.

Enough political class stupidity and insanity for today: paying for buildings and furniture that never gets used, more blather from the mainstream media, time to check the gold, more word salad nonsense from Kamala, and D.E.I. may be fatal at Reagan national airport.

**********************

If you agree that we need to deseat every member of Congress for their lack of success and accomplishment, then please consider going to the following petition link to help the cause:


https://www.change.org/p/deseat-congress-reset-freedom



**********************


Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

Monday, February 17, 2025

February, 2025, Part 2, Political Class Insanity: Biden Becomes the "Vacation President," No Statue For Fauci, Paying For Terrorists' College Education and the FAA Screws Up Royally At Reagan National

 Although the past half dozen or so of posts have focused on the ridiculously wasteful  spending of the USAID organization and how it has spent untold millions and millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars around the world on absolutely stupid programs, that doesn't mean that the American political class has not been hard at work doing stupid stuff in other areas. Let’s spend a day or so catching up on what our politicians have been up to and generally it has not been good.


1)It has always been our opinion that the Biden Presidency was the worst Presidency in a long, long time:


  • Failed economic problems, resulting in roaring inflation.

  • Failed immigration policies, resulting in criminal and drug cartel people flooding over the southern border along with well over 10 million illegal immigrants, a flood of people that has resulted in billions upon billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars being used to provide free food, shelter, medical care, and cell phones to millions of illegal immigrants.

  • Failed diplomacy efforts, resulting in a world that is far more embroiled in war at the end of Biden’s Presidency than at the start of it.

  • Failed budget planning, resulting in the addition of over $6,000,000,000,000 to the national debt.

  • Major government programs, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, still hurtling towards financial insolvency.


Maybe, maybe just one of the reasons for Biden’s multiple failures is that he basically did not try that hard. According to the New York Post, it appears that in the four years of his Presidency, Biden spent an amazing 577 days away from the White House. That is a record for the Presidency. The 577 days set a new record for the number of vacation days taken by a U.S. President, with 577 days representing 39% of his Presidency.


These days off were spent mostly at his beach home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, his other home in Delaware, the Presidential retreat at Camp David, and homes of various billionaires. Obviously, everyone, regardless of their job in life, is entitled to vacation time. And being President is likely the most stressful job in the world, so leisure time is probably a must, just from a mental health perspective. But with 39% of his time being off from the job, and the results of his efforts while on the job, he abused the trust and responsibilities of the office and Americans are far worse off because of it.


2)Dr. Anthony Fauci was supposedly the subject matter expert during the country’s battle with Covid. He has been a controversial player in the Covid pandemic, with many blaming him for the failures of the government to function efficiently during the crisis.


Whatever you think of him, he was nothing more than a government employee. A very highly paid government employee but one that did not perform heroically or consistently correctly during his Covid management tasks. But someone in the Federal government thought it would be a good idea to build a museum exhibit to honor this government employee and spend a whopping $170,000 of taxpayer money to do the museum exhibit.


Fortunately, the Trump administration via the  Department of Health and Human Services properly decided that such an expenditure was a tremendous waste of taxpayer wealth. That decision resulted in ending this ridiculous vanity project. This is an idea that had no redeeming value for ANY American taxpayer and  deserved to be cancelled.


3)If you thought honoring Fauci with a $170,000 museum exhibit was bad , consider how much worse this wasteful spending of American taxpayer dollars was:


  • The latest insanity from past USAID spending was recently disclosed.

  • Recently discovered documents show that the American taxpayer paid for the college education of  Anwar al-Awlaki, a terrorist that went on to become the leader of al Qaeda, the worst terrorist organization in the world.

  • Not only did we pay for his education, he attended Colorado  State University to get his education.

  • And furthermore, he lied about his immigration status to get that taxpayer college money.


So while American kids and  families were  scraping together college tuition money and taking out onerous student debt, the Federal government via USAID was giving out free college tuition benefits to a lot of non-Americans, one of which evolved into one of the worst terrorists ever. 


4)One of the very very basic tenets of any government entity is to protect the lives and property of those that they serve. Anything short of fulfilling that tenet is a failure. That is the main reason why we pay taxes, for the protection that the government is supposed to provide.


As you all know, several  weeks ago, there was a collision of a jetliner and a military helicopter at Reagan National Airport in D.C.,  resulting in the deaths of 67 people, just a horrible, horrible accident. But we now  know that maybe we should not be  surprised that the FAA, a government entity responsible for protecting the flying public, knew it had problems at the airport and did nothing to fix those problem:


  • As a result of the Daily Caller’s review of public documents, the FAA knew that the airport had numerous near miss collisions  between  airplanes and helicopters at the airport for a long time.

  • But while the  documents identified the problem of near misses, apparently the FAA did very little to handle the situation which turned fatal a few weeks ago.

  • Subsequent to the crash, the FAA did implement some rules that prohibited certain types of aircraft from functioning near the airport but that is little comfort to the families who lost loved ones several weeks  ago.

  • Pilots who had narrowly avoided crashes at the airport in the past had denounced the flying conditions at the airport through an  anonymous public database but still nothing was done by the FAA to improve safety.

  • One example of a pilot venting about the dangerous situation: “THIS HELI CONFLICT … AT DCA IS AN ONGOING PROB. HERE IS AN ACCIDENT WAITING TO HAPPEN.” 


A failure of a basic government responsibility, protecting the lives and property of the citizens it serves.  In this case, the FAA, despite knowing about the situation at the airport, failed in its basic duty to protect. Your tax dollars at work.

Enough insanity for today: a President sets the record for most days away from the office, building statues while millions of Americans are homeless, hungry, and need medical attention, giving taxpayer college money to future terrorists while American families struggle to finance their kids’ educations, and they knew there was a problem at Reagan National Airport and did nothing to fix them, with fatal consequences.

**********************

If you agree that we need to deseat every member of Congress for their lack of success and accomplishment, then please consider going to the following petition link to help the cause:


https://www.change.org/p/deseat-congress-reset-freedom



**********************


Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:


Sunday, February 16, 2025

February, 2025, Part 6, By The Numbers - The Wasteful Spending and Corruption of USAID

 On a periodic basis we review the wasteful government spending via a continuing theme of “By The Numbers.” We review how poorly taxpayer wealth is being spent and wasted on stupid programs and projects and also how many government programs are being ripped off of billions and billions of dollars by fraud and criminal enterprises. Today is just another sad chapter on how politicians and government bureaucrats are pretty inept when it comes to safeguarding taxpayer dollars.

We have a really disgusting set of numbers today for you but before we get to them consider some of these very distressing numbers affecting many American citizens:


  • There  are currently about 770,000 homeless Americans in the country today.

  • Well over 100,000 Americans will die this year from a drug overdose because they could not get the drug addiction treatment they needed.

  • 13.5% of Americans or about 47 million people are living in so-called “food insecure households,” households where it is often a challenge to feed their families because of unemployment and inflation.

  • Of that 47 million, about 14 million of them are American  kids.

  • About 26 million Americans are not covered by any health  insurance policy.


Yes, there are a lot of Americans in dire need of help. And as we have  pointed out many times in this blog, the American political class would rather spend our taxpayer dollars on stupid projects, both here and around the world, than help these Americans in need.


Part of Trump’s assumed mandate in his election victory was to clean up the wasteful spending in Washington and the massive corruption that comes with it. In just two weeks he has identified billions and billions of dollars that have been wasted by a single government agency, USAID. This agency has spread billions of dollars around the world on stupid projects while millions and millions of Americans suffer from a variety of problems as listed above. Most of these projects have been useless and have been poorly or never audited for the integrity of the money being spent.


We have already spent the  three previous  posts to show the ridiculous expenditures USAID has spread around the world while millions and millions of Americans suffer hardships. Those posts and the disgusting reality that came with it can be accessed at:


https://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2025/02/february-2025-by-numbers-part-2.html


https://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2025/02/february-2025-part-3-by-numbers-more.html


https://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2025/02/february-2025-part-4-by-numbers-more.html


https://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2025/02/february-2025-part-5-by-numbers-more.html


But the list of USAID wasteful spending keeps getting longer and longer, beyond what we identified in the above posts:


$1.5 million for “art for inclusion of people with disabilities”


$6 million to “transform digital spaces to reflect feminist democratic principles”


$2.1 million to help the BBC “value the diversity of Libyan society”


$10 million worth of USAID-funded meals, which went to an al Qaeda-linked terror group


$20 million for a group related to a key player in the Russiagate impeachment hoax


$1.2 million to help the African Methodist Episcopal Church Service and Development Agency in Washington, D.C., build “a state-of-the-art 440 seat auditorium”


$500K to solve sectarian violence in Israel (just ten days before the Hamas October 7 attack)


$5.5 million for LGBT activism in Uganda


$6 million for advancing LGBT issues in “priority countries around the world”


$6.3 million for men who have sex with men in South Africa


So as we often ask: what is more important, helping Americans in need by providing food, shelter, and  medical care or spending taxpayer wealth on LGBT activism in  Uganda, diversity training in  Libya, etc.? If you think that USAID expenditures around the world are more important, then you and I have very different priorities.


But the insanity of USAID corruption seems to go on and on: Consider the following video where a gentleman spent a lot of time documenting even more stupid waste of money:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEaT08ysjT4


Of course, Washington politicians do not set out an objective to “see how much money we can waste today.” I would bet a lot of money that many of these stupid expenditures are tied back to politicians, either to their family members, their political supporters, or even themselves and the enrichment via tax dollars that come with these ties. Now, the projects may eventually spend some of the money allocated on the purposes that are described but before that happens a lot of hands are greased, a lot of pockets and bank accounts are stuffed, and a lot of politicians reelection campaigns get enriched.


 In other words, USAID, and probably many other government programs, is nothing more than a money laundering scheme to ensure that current politicians get themselves and their campaign coffers enriched. As time passes and hundreds of billions of misspent dollars continue to be identified, pay close attention to the Washington politicians that protest the loudest about Trump's efforts to root out corruption and wasteful spending. Those that protest the loudest are probably the ones most likely to have profited the most from these inane programs.


Meanwhile, Americans continue to go hungry, homeless and in need of medical  attention. What are your priorities?


**********************

If you agree that we need to deseat every member of Congress for their lack of success and accomplishment, then please consider going to the following petition link to help the cause:


https://www.change.org/p/deseat-congress-reset-freedom



**********************


Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at: