As usual, we start with some of the insanity that is documented every month in Reason magazine:
- In the April, 2012 issue of Reason magazine why find out that folk singer Vance Gilbert was pulled off a flight in Boston by Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officials and Massachusetts State Police for suspicious behavior. What was he doing to warrant both the long arm of the state and the Federal authorities? They apparently found it suspicious that he was reading a book about vintage airplanes.
This is the same TSA that we previously reported on that had allowed seven real security breaches everyday, on average, for the past ten years. Now we know why, many of their resources are diverted into the investigation of reading habits of the traveling public. How far down the silly rabbit hole have we fallen?
- Political class insanity is not restricted to the United States. Australia's Advertising Standards Bureau recently ruled, making it official, that the red M&M is not a bully. Yes, Australia taxpayers pay for some crazy wastes of efforts just like taxpayers in this country.
The Australiain government agency was concerned that the red M&M's treatment of other colored M&Ms in TV commercials was encouraging children to bully each other. The study took two months work of time, resources and bureaucracy to reach this startling conclusion.
- Our lost, but wide ranging, war on drugs constantly takes innocent citizens as its victims. Janet Goodin is one such victim. She was recently traveling back to her home in Minnesota from Manitoba, Canada when she was stopped at the U.S. border by custom agents. They searched her minivan and found a jar of black liquid, of which field tests indicated it was heroin.
She was handcuffed and thrown in jail under suspicion of possessing, importing, and trafficking heroin. After twelve days she was released when further tests proved that the black liquid was not heroin, it was ordinary motor oil. This provides a little insight as to why we are losing the war on drugs - the government and the political class that operate it cannot easily tell the difference between heroin and motor oil, either by touch, smell, or more advanced tests.
Remember, taxpayer money paid for the border agents, the field test, the arresting officers, the operating of the jail, the housing and feeding of Ms. Goodin, and the final, more accurate tests.
- Up until recently, a bartender working in California could not legally serve a liquor that was "food infused," e.g. a cocktail featuring rosemary gin, a lemongrass-saffron vodka or other juicy or foody drink. The law against such mixology had been on the books for decades but only recently had the California Beverage Control organization of the state government threatened to enforce this idiotic law.
Fortunately, cooler heads are prevailing and a bill was passed recently that eliminated the ban. State Senator Mark Leno decided to sponsor the repeal since relative to this mixology problem, for "government to be interfering make no sense whatsoever." Good for him but think about how much time, resources, and taxpayer wealth was wasted by the effort to pass this silly law, to enforce this silly law, and to repeal this same silly law.
- The Federal telephone Universal Service tax has been around for a long, long time. It is a tax placed on all users of telephone lines in this country and the taxes it collects are used to subsidize the market for telephone service for rural markets that are underserved or overpriced by existing telephone providers.
In other words, the Feds decided that every American should have access to a phone line, even if it meant taxing those with phone lines to pay for phone lines for others living in the boondocks. This may have been a sound, social idea way back when the phone lines we were talking about were all hard, land line phones into people's homes and businesses.
However, over time, more and more people communicate only with cell phones, causing the Federal government to continually rise the tax rate on a dwindling number of land line phones across the nation. According to Reason, these funds are still needed since it can cost as much as $11,000 to add a single landline to a new rural customer. $11,000 is a lot of money, just for one household or one business.
Wouldn't it be a better deal to get just to get these rural people a cell phone capability? Put in a couple of towers, hand out some basic cellular phones and call it a day rather than investing $11,000 per customer in a rapidly dying, obsolete technology?
- An article form the January, 2012 of Reason magazine reviewed a major screw up and subsequent arrogant response by the FBI. Apparently, a citizen had had his Ferrari stolen but, fortunately, it was recovered by law enforcement.
Unfortunately, the Ferrari was wrecked in an auto accident when an FBI agent was moving it. The arrogance comes into play in that the FBI refuses to pay for the loss of the $750,000 car and is also refusing to release records related to the accident. Talk about abusing a citizen's property rights.
But Reason magazine is not the only source of political class insanity:
- A February 15, 2012 Associated Press article reported that an Arizona state legislator had introduced a bill that would punish public school teachers if they use profanity in the classroom. State Sen. Lori Klein introduced the measure because a parent in her district complained about a high school teacher using foul language.
Unemployment is high, schools, towns and cities across the country, probably including those in Arizona, are facing budget cuts and tax revenue shortfalls, and we know from the hubbub a few years ago that Arizona is wrestling with the front lines of illegal immigration. All important issues that touch the lives of most state citizens and this state politician is trying to regulate what a teacher might say in her classroom.
This is not to say that a teacher should be using profane language in the teaching of students. I doubt many do and if they do, it was probably an accident or the kid it was directed at had it coming for bad behavior. But do we really need a law to intrude into the teaching process? What would this law do, send in a SWAT team to arrest the offending teacher?
Teachers have enough to worry about. Trust that the school's principal can control the situation, don't waste government time because a single parent wigged out on a single teacher, focus on more important issues.
- According to The Hill in an article from late January, 2012, another Obama alternative energy "bet" had gone belly up. The Indiana-based energy-storage company, Ener1, whose subsidiary received a $118.5 million stimulus grant from the Energy Department, had filed for bankruptcy. Ener1 is asking a Federal bankruptcy court in New York to approve a plan to restructure the company’s debt and infuse $81 million in new equity funding.
Want to bet the taxpayers never see a penny from their $118.5 million investment, much like they will never see a penny from the bad $530 million investment Obama made in Solyndra or the numerous other multi-million dollar bad investments Obama made in other alternative energy companies?
- An article written for the American Spectator by Kevin Glass in October, 29122 was titled: "Intended or Unintended Consequence? Obamacare Disincentivizes Marriage." We have written about many examples of how poorly written and thought out Obama Care was. However, Mr. Glass does it much better regarding how this disastrous legislation is anti-woman and anti-marriage:
"The major part of President Barack Obama's health care law that would expand coverage involves subsidizing households looking to obtain health insurance up to 400 percent of the federal poverty line.
And it turns out that there's a problem there. Whereas many welfare and government programs take into account the number of people involved in a household, Obamacare does not. Analysts testifying before Congress yesterday discussed the disincentives:
"The way this bill is structured, there are disincentives for women to marry and disincentives for women to work," said Diana Furchtgott-Roth, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research.
"Two singles would each be able to earn $43,000 and still receive help to purchase health insurance, but if they got married and combined their earnings to $86,000, they would be far above the limit," Furchtgott-Roth explained. So those with that much income as a couple would lose the government subsidies and be on their own for thousands of dollars in health coverage.
The subsidies disappear at 400 percent of the poverty line and it's the poor structure of the program that creates work disincentives. Economics 21 reports, "Once that threshold is crossed, the subsidy immediately drops to zero. So for a family of four in that income range, a raise in wages would actually result in a significant reduction in take-home pay."
Mr. Glass summarizes by correctly observing and concluding: "We know that Obamacare was questionably-designed and rushed through Congress. It might be true that we had to pass it to find out just how big of a mess it's put us in."
- Business Week reported in its February 13, 2012 issue that in 2011, only 80 of the 5,929 bills introduced in Congress actually became law. This is a meager success rate of 1.3%. I do not know any human organization that can legitimately claim it is a worthwhile endeavor when its success rate is 1.3%.
With all of the troubles facing this nation, a lost war on drugs, failing public schools, two wars, the lack of a national energy strategy, escalating health care costs, leaky borders, skyrocketing national debt, etc., I doubt a 1.3% success rate is going to cut it as far as alleviating these onerous issues.
My suspicion is that if you looked into what the 80 successful bills that were enacted actually covered, I would bet the majority of them did not seriously address any of the above major issues. Typically, many of the efforts that get approved by Congress are to rename post office buildings or to honor a local hero such as a fireman, policeman, or member of our armed forces, or to celebrate a local event or anniversary.
Looked at from a different perspective, in 2011, according to the article, the American taxpayer paid $94,280,500 for just the salaries of the 535 politicians in Congress. That means if you just look at the salaries paid to our sitting politicians and divide that number by just the 80 bills they actually enacted, it cost the American taxpayer almost $1.2 million, on average, to get something through Congress.
If you make an educated guess an assume that there is ten times as much spent in Congressional staffs; salaries and supplies, and other costs, you could easily make a case that sometime last year we spent over $11 million to rename a Post office somewhere in the country. It may have cost more to name the building than to build it.
I am not saying that Congress needs to pass more bills to bring down these per bill costs. However, we are never going to solve the major issues of our times with such feeble output from Congress and the politicians sitting in Congress.
- It has been over a thousand days, coming up on three years, that the U.S. Senate has failed to come up with a formal budget, they continue to keep the government operating with gross, high level budget extensions. Is it any surprise, then, that our national debt is rising far above $15 TRILLION?
As any household or business knows, you cannot control your costs and expenses if you do not develop, hone, and operate within detailed budget plans. To do without a budget invites abuse and inefficiencies. And you cannot be any more inefficient than $15 TRILLION.
All in all, another pretty pathetic month of performance out of the American political class, wasting taxpayer wealth in a variety of ways including bad alternative energy "bets," the continuing unfolding of the Obamacare horror show, nonperformance of political class duties, shoddy performance of government duties, bad priorities, major issues still unresolved.
However, there was one very small bright ray of sanity that showed up among the misery listed above. According to the Business Week article cited above, Congressman Thomas Latham has introduced a bill in Congress called the "Do Your Job Act." This legislation would put Congressional salaries into escrow if Congress does not pass a real budget every year by May 15. A lone piece of sanity in a sea of political class idiocy, insanity, incompetence, and lunacy.
We invite all readers of this blog to visit our new website, "The United States Of Purple," at:
http://www.unitedstatesofpurple.com/
The United States of Purple is a new grass roots approach to filling the office of President of The United States by focusing on the restoration of freedom in the United States, focusing on problem solving skills and results vs. personal political enrichment, and imposing term limits on all future Federal politicians. No more red states, no more blue states, just one United States Of America under the banner of Purple.
The United States Of Purple's website also provides you the formal opportunity to sign a petition to begin the process of implementing a Constitutional amendment to impose fixed term limits on all Federally elected politicians. Only by turning out the existing political class can we have a chance of addressing and finally resolving the major issues of or times.
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.
Please visit the following sites for freedom:
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment/
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