2009 Year End Review: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly - Today = The Ugly

Two days ago we reviewed some of "The Good" things the political class did in the second half of 2009 (there were not very many). Yesterday we reviewed many of the less than glorious antics, quotes, and actions that the political class has done to the country and its citizens in the second half of 2009, "The Bad." Today we will review the incredible waste of taxpayer dollars and government resources the political class has squandered, "The Ugly."

Before we start, please note three things. First, all of the instances of political activity I will and have reviewed have already been discussed and analyzed in previous posts to this blog. Thus, for more detail on anything listed and discussed in the year end review posts, you can review the specific past posts. Second, everything discussed in the three review posts come from credible news sources, these are not facts and stories I made up or are coming from highly partisan sources. Typical sources include CNN, the Associated Press, the New York Times, The Week Magazine, Reason magazine and other news sources. While I will not identify the sources again in these review posts, you can refer to the original posts to get the date and source referenced for the information. Finally, the vast majority of the wasteful spending examples below come from the several Federal budget bills recently passed by Congress and signed into law by the President. So, in no particular order, let's review some of the incredible wasteful programs and projects the political class spent and allocated our taxpayers dollars on in 2009:

• Exhibits at the Teddy Roosevelt Inaugural Site Foundation - $150,000
• Restoration of the Portsmouth, New Hampshire Music Hall - $1,000,000
• Restoration of the Uptown Theater in Philadelphia - $350,000
• Construction of the Monroe County (Kentucky) Farmers' Market - $250,000
• Restoration of the Murphy Theater in Ohio - $250,000
• Restoration of the Slater Mill in Rhode Island - $194,000
• Restoration of the Pregone Theater in the Bronx - $150,000
• Construction of the Santa Ana River Trail in California - $100,000
• Funding for the Myrtle Beach International Trade and Conference Center - $100,000
• Funding for the Washington (state) Opera - $200,000
• Funding for the Montana World Trade Center - $134,000
• Funding for the Arkansas Commercial Driver Training Institute - $200,000
• Funding to study and educate citizens about the role and importance of the U.S. Senate, located in Massachusetts - $18,900,000
• Funding for the Brown Tree Snake Program, funding that was embedded in the 2010 Defense Department budget - $500,000
• Renovation of the Ritz Theater in Newburgh, New York - $400,000
• Renovation of the Laredo Little Theater in Lardeo, Texas - $200,000
• Widening of Bristol Street in Santa Ana, California - $350,000
• Construction of a bike path in Port Sanilax, Michigan - $250,000
• Funding for the Museum Of Aviation - $350,000
• Funding for the World Food Prize in Iowa - $750,000
• Questionable Medicare claims including such, as an example, paying for blood glucose strips for sexual impotence - $47,000,000,000
• Government waste due to improper payments across all Federal government departments - $98,000,000,000
• Conversion of 21 cabooses into a caboose motel in Pennsylvania - $500,000
• Funding for a remote Pennsylvania airport that serves about twenty passengers a day - $200,000,000
• Funding for a state of the art radar system for that remote Pennsylvania airport that has never been used - $8,000,000
• Funding for a remote Montana border checkpoint at the Canadian border that handles about three travelers a day on average and less than $200 of freight a day on average - $15,000,000
• Funding for the Polynesian Voyaging Society in Hawaii - $238,000
• Funding for the Forage Animal Production Research Lab in Kentucky- $1,600,000
• Funding for Swine Odor and Manure Management Research in Iowa - $1,790,000
• Funding for oyster rehabilitation in Alabama - $800,000
• Support of health and economic development activities for the Arctic region - $19,600,000
• A loan to a California company to develop and build an expensive hybrid sports car.... in Finland - $529,000,000

These are just a couple dozen programs that waste hard earned taxpayer dollars. As reported in previous posts, the 2010 budget bills have over 11,000 other such programs, even though President Obama campaigned to keep the number of pork projects like these well under 2,000. The reasons we have state and local governments is to handle state and local needs. It should not be the role of the Federal government to fund local bike paths, widen local roads, renovate theaters, etc. It diverts time, money, and resources from the truly national problems like the two wars we are currently involved in, soaring Federal deficits, high unemployment levels, Social Security and Medicare heading for insolvency, failing public schools, high drug addiction rates and the associated crime problems, the lacking of a national strategic energy plan, etc.

Then why does the political class spend/waste time and money on these clearly local issues and needs? It helps guarantee them re-election by attempting to prove to their own voters that they are adept at stealing money from other U.S. taxpayers and funneling into their home districts and states. Remember, the government pays for nothing, it funds programs with taxpayer money taken from all American taxpayers. Thus, the bike trail in Michigan is being financed in part by taxpayers in Arizona who will never ride that trail. The Polynesian Voyaging Society is being funded in part by taxpayers in Vermont who will never get any benefits from the Society.

This pilfering of national tax dollars possibly hides a more dangerous reality. It could be that this generation of politicians, and the ones that have come immediately before them, do not know how to solve the real national problems facing America today. In the 1960s, Nixon declared war on drugs but we still have a major drug problem in this country. In the 1970s, Carter was President when we lived through the energy crises but we still no do not have a national strategic energy program in place. In the early 1980s, the Reagan administration identified the danger of our failing public school systems but today many of our public schools are still failing. In the 1990s, despite numerous wake-up calls (first World Trade Center attacks, U.S. embassy terrorist bombings in Africa, USS Cole attack, etc.) we still do not have the terrorist threat under control, as witnessed by the almost catastrophic security breakdown on the Christmas day KLM flight into Detroit.

Thus, it could be that our current politicians work on useless and wasteful local spending programs and worry about the sound volume on television commercials because they are incapable of doing anything else. If they were, than many of our national problems would have been addressed and solved already. That is why many of the steps in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" need to be implemented as soon as possible. Specifically:

• Step 1 - start reducing Federal spending by 10% a year, for five years, in order to begin weeding out the wasteful but politically convenient local wastes of money.
• Step - 6 allow only individual citizens to contribute to political election campaigns since many of the wasteful programs above and the ones we discussed yesterday are really bribes , using taxpayer dollars, to companies, unions, and lobbyists in order to get reciprocal campaign donations for their re-election.
• Step 34 - hold Congressional committee and subcommittee members accountable for their performance, removing them from committee posts when their efforts are unsatisfactory.
• Step 39 - establish term limits for all Senators and Congressmen since allowing them to serve forever is not working. If the President, the most important elected official in the world, has term limits, lesser important Senate and House of Representative seats should also be limited in term length.
• Step 44 - no Federal money could be spent on any program or project unless it materially affected a substantial number of residents in at least five states, i.e. spend Federal tax dollars on national needs, let state and local governments and private citizens handle the local needs.

The winner is for the ugliest waste of taxpayer dollars in 2009 .... has to go to the $18.9 million being spent on the Massachusetts center for the study and education of people about the role and importance of the U.S. Senate. Nothing says waste more than building monuments to one's ego, as the Senate has done with this effort. In the midst of the worst recession in memory and soaring Federal deficits, the political class decided to build a tribute to is own self importance. Would this money have been better spent on extending unemployment benefits for the nation's high number of unemployed people? Would it have been better spent to save a few homes from foreclosure and keep those families together under the roof of their home? Would it have been better spent on retraining programs for those unemployed workers who have lost their jobs? Would it have been better spent as part of a rebate back to the taxpayers who made the money in the first place? Just a thought.

Have happy 2010 and here's hoping that some of the Steps listed above take hold this year and that next year's list of wasteful spending programs is far smaller than in 2009.

Visit our website at www.loathemygovernment.com to order an autographed copy of the book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government -Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom and Destroying The American Political Class" and to sign up for the cause. The book is also available online at Amazon and Barnes And Noble.