One of Reason's best columns is in the beginning of each issue where they document local, national, and international acts of stupidity and insanity from politicians all over the world. The most recent issue includes:
- The Transportation Security Administration instituted "enhanced"security procedures last year which included the installation of new x-ray equipment capable of seeing passengers nude and more invasive pat-downs for secondary screening. These procedures set off a lot of angst and protests, climaxed when air passenger John Tyner spoke his now famous words prior to an aggressive pat down, "If you touch my junk, I'm going to have you arrested."
The first bit of insanity is that Mr. Tyner was investigated by the Feds and faced a fine $11,000 just because he did not want his body groped. Seems like a reasonable reaction and certainly did not merit Federal authorities going after him.
The second bit of insanity is the fact that the same Federal government responsible for the enhanced security also issued a report, through the Federal Government Accounting Office, that found that the enhanced scanners and pat downs probably would not have prevented the underwear bomber from getting as far as he did on Christmas day in 2009, i.e. over Detroit in an airplane with a bomb that had a faulty ignition device. This averted act of terrorism was the driver behind the scanners and the aggressive pat downs. Thus, even when the government and political class correctly identify a problem, they cannot get the solution right.
- The Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently issued a report indicating that although the U.S.Congress had appropriated an extra $190 million to the District of Columbia public schools between 2004 and 2009, no one in the D.C. school system could provide an accurate accounting of where the money went after the school system had it. The GAO found that financial records of the $190 million were either incomplete or non-existent, education plans for how the money was to be spent were incomplete, and files that the GAO requested were missing.
A spokesperson for the GAO stated that the D.C. public schools "have long standing problems." You think? It is not easy to lsoe $190 million. Makes you wonder how much other government money gets "lost" from when Congress approves an expense but somebody spends it.
- The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transit Authority recently approved a $5.2 billion subway extension. Sounds like a good idea until you look at the numbers and history. As the city historically poured more and more resources into light rail, it raised rates on buses as it cut bus service. Thus, bus ridership went down but the enhanced light rail and subway extensions never picked up ridership. It is likely the same will happen here, at a wasteful spending of $5.2 billion.
Since 1985, when the construction of the L.A. rail system began, the population of the county has grown 35% while overall mass transit usage, buses and rail, has actually gone down to the tune of 3 million boardings in the past 25 years. The Reason article quotes a member of the Bus Riders Union: "If you go back to 1985, L.A. had more people using public transit than use it today. They spent more than $8 billion over that time, and we have seen a drop in transit use."
Talk about unintended consequences: as the political class builds more and more rail systems to increase mass transit options, mass transit usage goes down. Wonder how far down it can go if Obama builds out his costly and unnecessary national high speed rail lines?
- A new Pentagon report on Afghanistan is not good:
- Violent incidents were up 65% in the third quarter of 2010 vs. 2009.
- While the NATO forces have made some progress in battling the Taliban in the southern part of the country, the Taliban has just moved north to other, more northern districts in the country.
- The percentage of Afghan civilians who think their security situation is bad is up to 20%, higher than it has ever been since tracking was implemented.
- The confidence that Afghan citizens have that their government can deliver reliable and formal justice declined 7% in the latest report.
- The Pentagon report indicates that both the Taliban and widespread government corruption are both causes for serious concern.
- The report concludes that as long as the Taliban can hide safely in Iran and Pakistan and that both the Taliban and Afghan citizens believe that NATO will be leaving soon, the chance for success will be slim.
- Last August, September, and October heavily armed sheriff deputies in Orange County, Florida raided nine barber shops in the Orlando area. Some employees and customers of the barber shops were handcuffed and some were thrown to the the ground. In total, 37 people were arrested. The grounds for the raids were to look for illegal drugs and weapons.
Two serious problems here. First, of the 37 arrests, 34 were for barbering without a license. Hardly a reason for an armed sheriff raid. Two arrests resulted in misdemeanor marijuana possession charges and one arrest was for a felony drug and weapons charges. hardly a reason for such a show of police force.
Second, and more troubling, the raids were done without warrants. The sheriffs got around the standard practice of doing research and then convincing an impartial judge to grant a search warrant by coming in the side door of legality and using the Florida regulatory system, i.e. they were not looking for drugs, they were inspecting barbershop for compliance with barbering laws. They were just using a SWAT team to do so.
Very scary to think that armed government agents can intrude into your life or business without a warrant for a fishing expedition of illegal activity. One would have thought the Constitution, specifically the fourth Amendment, would prohibit that. Fortunately, the U.S. Court of appeals has ruled that it is excessive to bring a SWAT team along on one of these regulatory inspections. Freedom is protected, at least temporarily by this court.
- A group of students at Ithaca College in the college's Environmental Studies and Sciences Department wanted to build a replica of Henry David Thoreau's cabin at Walden Pond, based on the book of the same name. Unfortunately, the local political class and government insisted that the 150 square foot cabin meet all modern code requirements including a sprinkler system. Talk about a waste of taxpayer resources if money, time, and resources are spent on these types of regulation enforcement.
- Back to the TSA. During a pat down of a flight attendant at Charlotte-Douglas Airport, a screener felt something suspicious when she patted down the attendant's right breast. When asked for an explanation, the flight attendant explained that she had a breast removed due to breast cancer and wore a prosthesis. Unfortunately, the TSA agent demanded she remove the prosthesis and show it before proceeding to her flight. How embarrassing and humiliating, there has to be a better way, especially given the fact that according to the Federal government's own experts, the process does not work.
None of these examples of government and politicians that run that government make any sense.
But Reason magazine does not have a monopoly when it comes to political class insanity. Consider some other examples from different sources:
- Remember how the American taxpayer had to bail out big Wall Street banks based on the political class false premise that the banking system was about to collapse? One reason the banks may have been in trouble is because of some of their own wasteful spending. According to an article in the December 13, 2010 issue of Businessweek magazine, a high ranking Merrill Lynch executive spent the following on himself:
- Hired a famous interior decorator to redesign his office who developed a $1.2 million plan for the executive's office.
- The plan included a $35,000 commode.
- There was also a $87,000 rug and a $68,000 19th century credenza.
- Over the past six years alone, the discriminatory military Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy has cost the American taxpayer over $193 million, according to the Government Accounting Office. The GAO's estimate was mostly made up of additional training costs incurred to replace gay soldiers who were kicked out of the service. Think about that: we have willing and trained Americans eager to serve our country and we refuse their offer and incur millions of dollars in expense to do so. Makes no sense.
- The Week magazine reported in their January 28, 2011 issue that a dedicated Houston couple was told to stop feeding the homeless because they don't have a permit. The couple had been feeding 120 people nightly using donated food and volunteer cooks and servers. But Houston officials shut down the program because the kitchen was not inspected or certified. An official stated that "Poor people are the most vulnerable to food borne illnesses." I guess it is better that they starve to death in a healthy way. Wouldn't a better solution have been to leverage the kind and dedicated work of this couple and their volunteers to get them certified vs. shutting them down? Sounds like the same cold hearted people that insisted on a water sprinkler system in a cabin at Walden Pond. Makes no sense.
- An article in the January 23, 2011 issue of The Week magazine, had the title, "Bailouts: A Resurgent AIG Pays Back The Fed." The article was based on a report from the Wall Street Journal that reported that AIG had paid back the last of its bailout funds to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. As you may recall, AIG was one of the few companies that actually would have gone belly up as a result of the Great Recession if the American taxpayer had not bailed it out.
The article reported that $47 billion had been repaid which is good news. However, it want on to say that $27 billion of that $47 billion was paid with money received from the U.S. Treasury Department. Thus, how can AIG and the government claim that AIG had paid back all of its bailout money when it paid back one arm of the government with funds drawn from another arm of the government? Makes no sense.
One last piece of insanity as it relates to the situation in Egypt. One could obviously write a bunch of stuff about our government's and political class' breakdown in this situation:
- Why did no one in the State Department see the situations coming in Tunisia and Egypt before they exploded?
- Why did no one in the CIA see the situations coming in Tunisia and Egypt before the exploded?
- Why did no one in Congress on foreign affairs committees see the situations in Tunisia and Egypt coming before they exploded?
- Did someone, somewhere in the U.S. government or political class see the situations coming but due to inefficiencies and incompetence the right information never got to the right people in time, much like what happened with the 9-11 terrorists who were identified taking flying lessons but no action was ever taken?
- Was this administration so preoccupied with beating up Israel for building a few new buildings in Jerusalem that they missed the bigger picture of Tunisia and Egypt?
- Is there a plan for dealing with these two situations and the possibility of other disruptions in the Middle East? If there is, it is not apparent. This looks like the BP oil spill of incompetence all over again just in a different arena, no contingency plans whatsoever.
For example, in the January 28, 2011 issue of The Week magazine, an article reported that China has now lent more money to developing countries than the World Bank has. A conservative estimate is that Chinese banks and government have loaned out at least $110 billion, mostly to suppliers of raw materials around the world in countries including Venezuela, Brazil, India, Ghana, and Argentina.
Thus, as our political class runs around aimlessly without a plan regarding Egypt, China and others are going about executing an economic strategy of their own that will push us further and further down the economic ladder. They will establish economic and business relationships before our politicians ever get their act together. How many important people in the Federal government actually worked on vital economic issues in the past few weeks as Tunisia and Egypt exploded? Very few, I would guess. That is just one of the domestic tragedies of Egypt.
It's insanity and a mess on so many fronts. Focusing on the wrong issues (sprinkler systems in a cabin in the woods), wasting resources on issues that should not be issues (preventing kind hearted Americans from feeding the homeless), wasting money on bailouts and then expecting us to be so stupid not to understand when the government pays itself with our own tax money (AIG), so closed minded that they come up with only the crudest airline safety approaches that do not even work (TSA), distractions from fixing our ailing economy, and having no foresight or contingency plan for one of the biggest historical events of our times, the awakening of liberty in the Arab world (Tunisia and Egypt). Never has a case for term limits been so clear (Step 39 from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government"): how much worse could it get if we turned over Congress at every opportunity? Allowing them to stay on forever is proving to be insanity.
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