Thus, let's get into the scary reality that is the American political class today:
- According to a Washington Post article that was summarized in the September 16, 2011 issue of The Week magazine, the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, which had 300 employees on the day of the 9-11 attacks, now has more than 2,000 people on the job. This organization now outnumbers al Qaida's worldwide membership.
Would it not be a better strategy for the CIA to just hire al Qaida's worldwide membership itself, thus eliminating the problem? Kind of gives you an idea of how much the political class may have over responded to the 9-11 attacks. These 2,000 people are just for the CIA, imagine how many other Federal employees are working to eradicate al Qaida and that also work for the FBI, Homeland Security, the NSA, and the Defense Department.
- According to an article from the Wall Street Journal that was summarized in that same issue of The Week magazine, the U.S. has already wasted $60 billion in taxpayer wealth when it paid it to crooked contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan. The $60 billion represents a waste factor of 25% of the total contractor budget. It also represents about 8% of what could have been used to pay out Social Security benefits in any one year.
- According to a recent Business Week article that was summarized in the September 23, 2011 issue of The Week magazine, in 2010 U.S. households paid more bills electronically than by mail for the first time ever, according to analyses done by the Postal Service. This trend is expected to accelerate the decline in first class mail volume delivered by the Postal Service, contributing to its eventual demise.
Ignoring this reality, 75 members of Congress recently signed a letter addressed to the Postmaster General, urging him not to take the necessary and logical steps to get the Postal Service expenses and costs in line with diminishing revenues including closing low volume post office locations and stopping Saturday mail delivery.
- According to a recent article from The Economist and summarized in the September 23, 2011 issue of The Week magazine, the U.S. Defense Department, with 3.2 million employees, is the biggest employer in the world in both the private sector and public sector of the world's economy. Do we think there might be a little excessive spending and excessive waste that could be trimmed from this organization without endangering our national defense?
- According to Wall Street investment banker Eric Singer's recent analysis, "Congress subtracts value." Mr. Singer looked at the past 46 years of investment results and found that, historically, the stock market rose less than 1% on an annual basis when Congress was in session but rose almost 17% on an annual basis when Congress was not in session. Thus, maybe stimulus spending, deficit reduction, job programs, etc. are not the ways to solve our economic woes. Maybe disbanding Congress would be a better approach.
- One reason Congress might be so ineffective at solving anything, except slowing down the stock market growth when Congress is in session. is the fact that in 2010, 68 members of Congress made a total of $27.5 million via side jobs they operated or held, in addition to the Congressional responsibilities. This comes out to an average of over $400,000 per person and almost two and half times their Congressional salary.
This information was gathered by the Wall Street Journal and summarized in the September 30, 1022 issue of The Week magazine. The article reported that the $27.5 million is more than four times higher than the amount just five years ago and included such side jobs as owning Subway restaurants and selling chestnuts.
- According to a recent report from the Federal government's Office of Personnel Management, over the past five years the Federal government has paid out over $600 million in benefits to Federal retirees who were...deceased. Yes, the Federal government cannot even keep track of its own retirees' basic health status, dead or alive.
The report included one especially embarrassing case in which a retiree's son received benefits for 37 years after his father had died in 1971. The Feds did not identify this $515,000 case of taxpayer fraud through diligent investigative work. The only reason the case got solved is that the son could not keep the fraud going any longer because...he died.
There were two other bad bits of news from the report. First, while the Feds are working on the problem, "there remains a high probability that egregious loss of monies from the program will continue and require strategic corrective actions." Second, the rate of fraud is growing.
- But dead retirees are not the only wasteful spending going on throughout the Federal government. In a recent Washington Post column by Ed O'Keefe, an October, 2010 investigation by Senator Tom Coburn found the Federal government had paid out about $1 billion to at least 25,000 dead people since 2000. Also, last October, another investigation found that Obama's economic stimulus program made 89,000 payments of $250 each to dead or incarcerated individuals.
- Staying with the same theme, the Wall Street Journal reported on September 14, 2011 that more than 10%, $19 billion, of a $180 billion Federal government's jobless program was fraudulently paid out over the past three years or so. And this amount of waste was from just one part of the Federal government's total jobless benefit effort.
- And just to get in the realm of real silliness, Bloomberg reported in an article on September 20, 2011 that the Justice Department Inspector General found that Justice Department employees had spent $16 for each muffin served at a recent conference and had spent $7.32 per appetizer at another conference. At another conference, the cost for Cracker jacks, popcorn, and candy bars at a single conference break came out to $32 per person attending the conference.
The sad part about this travesty is that the Justice Department was found to have a similar problem over five years ago, prompting the Department to issue new, stricter policies and procedures to control conference spending. However, the latest investigation found that Justice Department organizations were able to find ways to circumvent the last round of cost cutting policies and were again wasting taxpayer money to the tune of $16 per muffin.
- According to Reason magazine's November issue, New York's state legislature had time to pass a bill requiring warning labels on sippy cups and baby bottles. It warns that if kids drink too much fruit juice they could get tooth decay. I guess New York has fixed all of its other problems including crumbling infrastructure, failing public schools, high unemployment, etc. and had time left over to address the critical sippy cup warning problem.
- The California state government must have also solved all of the same problems. According to another article in the same issue of Reason magazine, California's Division of Occupational Safety and Health has fined Hustler Video $14,175 for not using condoms in pornographic videos it produced. You cannot make this stuff up.
However, it does raise an interesting question: does the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health have someone dedicated to watching pornographic material on its staff in order to attack this overarching condom health danger? If so, do they have any vacancies on their staff?
- But bad priorities are not solely the domain of state governments. This summer, the United Nations Security Council discussed how the U.N, should address the potential crises that arise out of climate changes. The fear is that climate change may result in challenges to world peace and nations' security and the concern was how the U.N. might help maintain the peace in the face of higher sea levels, food shortages, and climate refugees.
One major suggestion the diplomats came up with was to equip U.N. troops, who are used to respond to climate change crises, with green helmets rather than the traditional U.N. blue helmets. Yep, green helmets, that should solve everything.
- Under the category, "You know they are desperate when..." we found out that the Federal Reserve Board recently started a new program called "Operation Twist" in an attempt to jump start the economy. In a nutshell, according to an article in the September 30, 2011 issue of The Week magazine, the Fed is going to "change the balance of its portfolio of U.S. Treasuries, an effort it said would lower the overall cost of borrowing across the U.S. economy." Never mind the fact that the cost of borrowing is at an all time low, it is doubtful lowering the cost any more will change anything.
The bigger desperation fact is that this "twist" has not been attempted since 1961. Thus, this is how desperate we have become, the Federal government has now reached back 50 years in a desperate attempt to find something, anything, that might fix the economy that they screwed up to begin with. What could be next, exhume Herbert Hoover's body and see what he would have done?
If it wasn't so expensive and wasteful, some of these antics would be comical and farcical. But they are not. These situations illustrate how careless our politicians are with our tax dollars, seeing themselves entitled to our wealth rather than being entrusted with our wealth to efficiently and effectively carry out the duties they should be charged with.
As a result of their careless attitudes and careless spending, they should never be given the ability to tax any American even one penny more until they clean up their act and start spending, and acting like adults. Until then, insanity will prevail, our wealth will get wasted, and no major issue will get resolved.
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.
Please visit the following sites for freedom:
http://www.loathemygovernment.com/
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment.com/
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