Amateur Hour In Washington D.C., Part 4 - Does Anyone Have A Plan For Anything?

This is the fourth and for the time being, last, in a series of posts where we look at the utter incompetence of the American political class. The first part of this series looked at four specific examples of amateur hour behavior and incompetence from our politicians. The second part looked only at the failed on War On Drugs, a government initiative from the Nixon era that has failed by just about any measure. The previous post looked at three forms of corruption that distract politicians from ever getting around to resolving any major issue or problem.

Today we will play a little game called "What Is The Plan?" Using just a representative sampling of news and magazine headlines from the past six months or so on a variety of topics, please read the information and then try to explain to yourself or anyone else what the plan is behind these government and political class actions. I am pretty sure that you will not be able to coherently explain what the resolution plan is to these issues since these plans probably do not exist.

And therein lies the problem: maybe many of these issues never get resolved because the political class never seems to put together a rationale and doable plan, usually because they never take the time, effort, and brain power to understanding the underlying root causes of our issues. Typical amateur hour stuff, never understanding a problem, like an amateur, greatly reduces the potential for resolving those issues.

So, here we go. Read the headlines and see if you can understand what the political class "plan" is:

Afghanistan/Iraq:

"The Real Cost Of Endless War" - The Week magazine, 8/20/10

"Iran Charts Future In Iraq" - Newsweek, 8/23/10

"The Fight Against Corruption In Afghanistan" - The Week, 9/24/10

"Karzai (Afghan President) Gets Large Cash Drops From Iran" -  LA Times, 10/10

"Spoils Of War For Sale In Pakistan" - Associated Press, 10/8/10

"Bringing The Taliban To The Table" - The Week, 10/2910

"Kabul - Bags Of Cash From Iran" - The Week, 11/5/10

"Afghanistan - Rampant Election Fraud" - The Week, 10/29/10

"NATO Needs 900 Afghan Trainers" - Associated Press, 11/8/10

"Rising Tensions With Karzai" - The Week, 11/2610

"Fooled By Taliban Imposter" - The Week, 12/3/10

From these headlines, one could conclude that the administration's Afghanistan/Iraq strategy involves: 

• Allowing corruption to flourish at all levels from the President to elections to the black market shops in Pakistan.
• Allowing Iran to have a larger and larger say in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
• Allowing military training needs to go unattended until more than nine years into the conflict.
• Spend a lot of "endless" money with no battle field success.
• What apparently is not part of the plan is actually winning the war since it seems we never see headlines that address that rather important objective. 

No plan, no success.

Obama Care Ramifications:

 "AT&T, Verizon, Caterpillar, John Deere May Cut Employee Health Insurance" - Fortune magazine, 5/6/10

"21 Million Americans Still Uninsured By 2016" -              
Congressional Budget Office" - Reason magazine, 8/10

"Health Overhaul Means Longer ER Waits" - Associated Press, 7/2/10

"Will Health Reform Affect My Plan?" - Kiplinger Personal Finance, 8/10

Fortune Interview of AT&T Chairman Randal Stephenson where he states that AT&T may drop its health insurance plans for its employees and retirees as a result of Obama Care - Fortune magazine, 8/10

"MacDonald's May Drop health Plans" - Wall Street Journal, 9/3/10

"Worst Health Care and More Expensive Under Obama Care" - Cato Policy Report, 9/10

"AARP Hikes Employee Healthcare Costs" - Yahoo News, 11/4/10

"Obama Care May Spur Merger Mania" - NY Times, 11/21/10

"Doctors Brace For Possible Big Medicare Cuts" - Associated Press, 1/12/10

"Health Care (Obama Care) Rules Are Waived More Often" - NY Times, 11/9/10

From these headlines, on could conclude that the plan for health care reform involves: 

• Endangering the current health care insurance coverage of millions of current and retired employees from America's largest corporations.
• Reduce health care insurance coverage for those Americans currently covered while leaving 21 million uninsured Americans still uninsured.
• Increase ER waiting times, make health care quality worse, reduce competition, and make health care costs more expensive. 

No coherent plan, unintended and bad consequences. Amateur hour.

Government waste and incompetence:

"94 Charged In Medicare Fraud Totaling $251 Million" - Associated Press, 7/16/10

"A Case Study In The Folly Of Stimulus" - The Week, 7/23/10

"Investigation Ties Military Workers To Child Porn" - Associated Press, 7/23/10

"Strangled by Pork In West Virginia" - the Week, 7/23/10

"50% of Government Flu Vaccine Unused and Destroyed At Cost Of $260 Million" - The Week, 7/23/10

"North Carolina Spends $1.1 Million To Slightly Adjust Restrooms For ADA" - The Week, 8/13/10

"Fannie and Freddie Keep Losing Money" - The Week, 8/20/10

"Mortgage relief Program A Bust" - Associated Press, 8/20/10

"Governments "Biggest Source Of Pollution" - Reason magazine, 10/10

"Feds Fail To Use Land For Solar Power" - Associated Press, 9/1/10

"Stimulus Assessments Overly Optimistic" - Associated Press, 8/26/10

"Just 2% Of Haiti Debris Cleared" - Associated Press, 9/12/10

"Rich People Collect Unemployment" - The Week, 10/15/10

"Stimulus Checks Sent To Dead And Jailed" - The Week, 10/22/10

"Freddie Mac Posts $4.1 Billion Loss" - Associated Press, 11/3/10

"Mismanagement Rampant In Pubic Housing" - Associated Press, 10/28/10

"Mystery Train - California Spends Billions But No Train After 14 Years" - Reason magazine, 11/10

"$700,000 Taxpayer funded Play On Climate Change" - Heritage Foundation, 10/4/10

"California Recipients Waste Welfare Money" - The Week, 11/12/10

"Six Million 2000 (Presidential) Paper Ballots Still Stored" - The Week, 12/19/10

"119,000 Planes A Mystery To FAA" - Associated Press, 12/10/10

"$140 Million Stimulus Wasted" - The Week, 12/17/10

If we did not know better, we could conclude that wasting taxpayer money and failing to fulfill the jobs government agencies and individuals are supposed to do was actually the plan, given how much waste and failure there is vs. the lack of efficiency and effectiveness. It is has to be amateur hour for this much chaos and waste to exist.

There never is a plan. There never is a plan to resolve the continuing illegal drug problem. There never is a plan for failing public schools. There never is a plan for developing a coherent, national energy policy. There never is a plan for containing government spending. There never is a plan for fixing the rapid approach to insolvency of Social Security and Medicare. There never is a plan to efficiently fix our crumbling infrastructure. There never is a plan for anything.

And just so we are clear, just spending more money is not a plan. That is how we managed to waste hundreds of billions of dollars for Obama's many failed economic programs from the stimulus program to Cash For Clunkers to First Time Home Buyers Rebate to the failed mortgage fix programs. A plan involves understanding reality, understanding the root causes of a problem, and developing tactics that efficiently address the reality and root causes. Under this definition of  a plan, I dare anyone to tell me what the plans are for solving our problems as developed by the political class.

A few steps from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" would help in this planning area:

1. Step 1 - reduce the size of the Federal government by 10% a year for five years so that the waste is wrung out of the government processes and the political class gets much more focused on far fewer projects. A tighter focus might eventually result in coherent and doable plans.
2. Step 34 - hold Congressional committee members accountable for their committees' responsibilities, removing them from their committee posts for allowing the rampant amount of waste and mismanagement to continue on their watch.
3. Steps 26 Through 29 - implement the processes introduced in these steps to finally come up with a rational problem solving process and plan to address the problems of rising health care costs, national energy policy, the war on drugs, failing public schools and illegal immigration in a professional and effective manner.

Maybe by implementing these steps we might finally hear a politician say: "I love it when a plan comes together," much like the A-Team used to say every week during its TV run. Unfortunately, with our politicians, we may never hear that statement until amateur hour ends.




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 www.loathemygovernment.com. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.


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http://www.cato.org/
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http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment