Thus, the following from Reason starts this month's listing of political class insanity:
- In a short article called "Lunar Lunacy", Reason discusses the Constellation program that is run by NASA. Constellation is, or was, the space program that was supposed to bring American astronauts back to the moon. However, the Obama administration shut down the program last year. But, in March 2011, Congress voted for a three week continuing budget resolution that compelled NASA to continue spending $1.4 million a day on Constellation, a program that was officially killed in 2010. This wasted about $29 million worth of taxpayer dollars during the three week budget window. What a disgrace.
However, it gets worse. Similar problems happened many times last year as Congress tried, unsuccessfully, to pass a budget last summer. Each time they failed, they had to pass a continuing budget resolution, resolutions that Alabama Senator Richard Shelby insisted continue to fund Constellation, a dead program. The reason: much of Constellation's funding went to businesses and employees in Shelby's state.
Even though the NASA administrator, Charlie Bolden, wrote a letter to Shelby last June warning of the waste, by the time the budget issues got resolved, the American taxpayer had paid out more than $250 million to fund a program that had already been axed by the President, $250 million paid for absolutely no benefit received. The classic example of a political zombie, a program that cannot be killed or starved.
- Recently, three Americans decided that they did not want to be enrolled into the government's Medicare program when they became eligible. They did not ask for a refund of the Medicare funds and taxes that they had paid into the system during their working years, they just did not want to enroll, probably happy to get their health care coverage elsewhere.
Sounds like a good deal for the government, especially in these times of Medicare's fast arriving bankruptcy: a customer has already paid for the service but then does not want to receive either the service or a refund. Any rational business would love to have these kinds of customers.
Apparently, the Federal government and the political class that operates it is not quite so rational. The government took these three ordinary Americans to court, saying that they HAD to enroll into the Medicare program and pay the monthly fees involved until they died. Unfortunately, the judge hearing the case agreed with the government, saying that no loophole or provision existed for someone to opt out of what now appears to be a mandatory government program.
The lead attorney for the three plans to appeal but did make an insightful comment after the verdict: "an entitlement is now an obligation." You cannot live in a free country when the government demands that you pay for a service you may not want, whether it is Medicare in this case or Obama Care in the larger sense.
- In Baltimore, a police officer is supposed to sign every ticket that is issued as a result of a traffic light camera, i.e. those tickets where a physical officer did not issue the ticket on the spot. The officer signing the camera tickets is supposed to swear that he or she had reviewed the video footage and a traffic violation had actually been captured on tape.
Unfortunately, although Officer James Fowler had passed away in September, 2010, his signature continued to appear on tickets issued as recently as January, 2011. Makes you wonder if you can believe anything the political class tells you, especially when it is sending out tickets from dead people. Or maybe this is just another example of a political zombie, akin to the NASA program above that would not die!
- 80 year old Delia Gluckin had recently left her Manhattan apartment building and was heading for the subway when she tossed a newspaper into a city trash can on her street. Unfortunately, this resulted in a $100 ticket for throwing "improper refuse" into the trash can.
Apparently, unknown to Ms. Gluckin, city trash cans are only for litter and her newspaper was legally deemed to be household trash, trash she should have disposed off prior to leaving her home. The only comment I can make here is that if NYC has someone on the payroll that is worried about how a newspaper is disposed of, then NYC has too many people on the payroll.
- Speaking of too many people on the payroll, a short Reason blurb this month talked about how Chicago employs more than 1,400 truck drivers at an average wage of $30 an hour. The city's inspector general recently reported that about 200 of these drivers are "severely" underemployed. All they have to do is transport people and equipment to work sites, at which point they they then sit around all day, collecting their pay, until they need to take everything and everyone back from the work site.
The inspector general estimated that if the drivers themselves were forced to actually work during the day, the city could save about $18 million a year in its budget. However, the city's contract with the union will not allow those work rules to be changed. Thus, the good taxpayers of Chicago pay an additional $18 million a year for no services received.
Think maybe the city's school system might make better use of the wasted $18 million? Think that city departments serving the unemployed or homeless might make better use of the wasted $18 million? Think that the Chicago taxpayers might like the wasted $18 million back in their wallets?
Some more political class insanity that Reason missed:
- According to an article in the February 14, 2011 issue of the Washington Examiner, as reprinted in the Cato Institute's Policy Report in June, an employee of the D.C Metro System was found to have stolen more than 70 pieces of Metro System equipment including a 32 inch computer monitor, tools, camera equipment, and a portable generator. The employee took some of the equipment directly out of Metro facilities but also used his Metro employee credit card to purchase items directly for himself. The Metro's inspector general, investigators, and police found all of the stolen merchandise at the employee's home.
Good police work, got the criminal, you say. Well, not so fast. While the employee was forced to retire as a result of his larceny, he will not face any criminal charges. Why? The county's district attorney decided not to press charges since the Metro "may have served to create an atmosphere where such behavior, although not explicitly condoned or excused, was part of an implicitly tolerated practice." In other words, this guy is not guilty because everyone else stole from the Metro System. That is a place I would like to work at, I can steal anything I can get my hands on because my co-workers are doing the same thing. Unbelievable.
I wonder what Metro's ridership thinks of such waste relative to their fares. Maybe if there was not such a practice and so much stolen merchandise and credit card abuse, the fares go could go down.
- We have discussed the financial disaster that the state of California is today. Huge revenue shortfalls and serious expense problems. A prime example we talked about previously was the small California town that was close to bankruptcy, probably because the people running the town, both high ranking employees, and city council members, had voted themselves salaries in the hundreds of thousands of dollars range.
Now comes word from the June 3, 2011 issue of The Week magazine, that Newport Beach, California citizens are going nuts because it has come to light that many city lifeguards make over $100,000 a year, with two lifeguards making over $200,000 a year in salary. No wonder the state and the towns in California are going bankrupt, outrageous salaries for occupations that do not warrant such pay levels.
- By just about any standard, America pays more for education than any other country in the world. And what do we get for a our generous funding? Well, not much if you are a taxpayer in Detroit. According to an Associated Press report that was summarized in the May 20, 2011 issue of The Week magazine, 47% of the adults in Detroit are functionally illiterate. According to the AP report, only 10% of those who are unable to read have made attempts to learn how.
How sad and pathetic. We have almost half of the population, in what is now a semi-major city, existing as illiterate zombies. These types of educational failures are a direct threat to our democracy and freedoms since if a large part of the population is not able to read and think for themselves, than someone else will do it for them, to the detriment of society and the benefit of those that would take advantage of illiterate people.
- According to the May 27, 2011 issue of The Week magazine, the United States had spent $750 million on the military actions against Libya. Remember, Libya is a country that holds no strategic significance for the United States, that provides virtually no oil to this country, is not a terrorist haven, is half a world a way, and represents absolutely no reason why the United States needed to expend military resources. For no purpose and to no end with the exception of laying almost another $1 billion of wasteful spending onto our $14 TRILLION national debt.
- But politicians screw up around the world also, not just in this country. In Britain, they had passed a very generous paternity leave law several years ago for pregnant women. The law apparently grants a woman a full year of maternity leave with pay, at the expense of the company she works for, to care for the new infant. This was viewed as progressive and supportive of women's rights in the work place.
Unfortunately, the rule of unintended consequences kicked in, according to an article in the May 27, 2011 issue of The Week magazine. According to the article, companies now hesitate to hire women of child bearing age, lest they get pregnant and take a year off with pay. Thus, "the rights put in place to protect women at work are now functioning against them." Did not quite think this one through, did they?
- And finally, some international political insanity from Turkey. It seems, according to a June 3, 2011 article in The Week magazine, that at least 10 members of a Turkish religious political party, a party that bills itself and its principles as guardians of Islamic values, were caught in a sex sting. Apparently, the behavior caught on videotape is not totally consistent with the values the party is supposed to represent. Many of the party members caught on tape, meeting young women for sexual encounters, have already resigned.
However, you have to give one of the party members credit for originality. He blamed President Obama for the sting and the videotapes. Original, but stupid.
That's it for this month. The beauty of writing about the political class, in all countries, is that they continue to prove how insane, wasteful, and incompetent they are, providing a never ending stream of incidents to report about. Which is a shame. I would much rather write about politicians actually acting sane, being efficient with our tax dollars, and competently going about a process, any process, that actually addresses and accurately implements programs to eliminate the major issues facing the country.
But I guess zombies are hot in our culture today and the political class is more than happy to provide their versions of zombie programs, zombie government employees and other assorted zombie insanity.
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 http://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.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment.com
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