- The Transportation Security Administration overspent $184 million worth of taxpayer funds on airport security equipment it will never use.
- The State Department built a consulate building in northern Afghanistan and THEN decided it was indefensible, wasting the $80 million that went into the construction.
- The State Department spent $500 million since last October to staff a large Iraqi police training program in Iraq, a program that will likely be terminated by the end of the year with little discernible successes or improvements relative to Iraqi police forces.
- The Navy almost completed the construction of two brand new Navy ships only to THEN decide they were no longer needed just before their construction was complete, expending another $10 billion to turn the unused and almost completed ships to scrap metal.
- The General Services Administration wasted $832,000 on a Las Vegas party that was thinly disguised as a "conference."
However, we made a distinction last week that these one time/random acts of disgraceful wasteful spending are different from the "systemic wasteful spending" acts that occur every day of every year in the same basic manner:
- Medicare and Medicaid lose about $110 to $150 billion annually to waste, inefficiencies, and criminal fraud.
- Social Security loses about $125 billion annually to waste, inefficiencies and criminal fraud.
- We have documented how just one of the Federal government's unemployment programs loses $19 billion annually to waste, inefficiencies, and criminal fraud.
- The IRS admits it does not collect about $385 billion every year that is legally due to the Federal government but is not collected from tax evaders.
- The National Science Foundation has an annual budget of about $6.9 billion but wastes most of that on idiotic projects (e.g. studying when dogs became man's best friend).
Thus, just these two types of wasteful spending examples over the past three and a half years comes out to about $2.332 TRILLION. Keep this $2.332 TRILLION in the back of your mind, we will come back to it shortly.
Last October 26, 2011, we did a post on solar energy and the disgrace that is Solyndra:
(http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2011/10/one-last-look-for-now-at-solyndra.html).
Within that post we discussed a NOVA television report on how a California family had taken a typical suburban home and had retrofitted it with solar technology to make it near energy independent (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/solar/house.html). The bottom line of the program's episode was that for about $60,000, at the time of the show, a house could almost be taken off the grid and be made nearly energy independent.
Last year in the midst of the Solyndra debacle, it was widely reported that the Chinese had reduced their solar panel expense by about 30%. If we assume that the NOVA house solar energy retrofit cost of $60,000 consisted of $40,000 in equipment costs and $20,000 in installation costs, that house retrofit today would cost about $48,000 ($20,000 plus a 30% reduction in the $40,000 equipment cost).
Now let's take this new cost estimate and combine it with the $2.332 TRILLION in waste we identified above. If we divide the $2.332 TRILLION by the $48,000 unit cost of retrofit, if the political class and Federal government had been totally efficient, effective, and forward thinking, we could have used the $2.332 TRILLION to retrofit almost 49,000,000 U.S. homes with enough solar technology to make them almost totally energy independent.
If you look at U.S.Census data from 2009 (http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s0988.pdf), you will see that there are about 73,000,000 million single family, detached home in the United States. This becomes the most damning piece of wasteful spending information we could ever provide: if the government had funneled is wasted spending from just the past three and a half years into solar retrofits, about two thirds of every single family detached home in the COUNTRY would now be almost totally energy dependent.
What would that have meant for every American and our nation:
- Household energy costs would be substantially reduced, freeing up household income to be used to grow the economy.
- Untold number of jobs would have been created to install and service the new solar energy infrastructure.
- If global warming actually exists, turning just about every single American family home into a solar energy generator would greatly have reduced our carbon footprint.
- From a foreign policy perspective, we could care less about what happened in the Middle East since the need for their petroleum would have vanished.
- There would no longer be a need for politicians like Obama to give away taxpayer wealth to non-viable alternative energy companies that also just happened to raise campaign cash for himself and other politicians.
But let's keep going. Last Thursday, we listed out dozens and dozens of wasteful Federal government expenditures over the past few decades on just ridiculous projects. Some of those expenditures included spending from The National Endowment for the Humanities for a $25,000 grant in 1977 to study why people cheat, lie and act rudely on local Virginia tennis courts, the Office of Education for spent $219,592 in 1978 to develop a curriculum to teach college students how to watch television, and the Environmental Protection Agency spent an extra $1.2 million in 1980 to preserve a Trenton, New Jersey sewer as a historical monument.
In that blog, our source data found $1,230,956,867,592 in wasted spending on similar types of stupidity. This money, if it had been diverted to retrofit U.S. homes for solar independence, would have been able to convert 90% of the single family detached homes in what the Census classifies as the South region of the United States.
Let's continue with more waste. Last week we showed how the Obama administration has spent at least $3.469 billion on crony owned alternative energy companies that have all either gone bankrupt or are in the process of going bankrupt. If that $3.469 billion had been used to retrofit U.S. homes for solar independence, rather than be totally wasted on failing and failed companies, the entire city of Tallahassee, Florida would now be mostly off the grid and would be mostly energy independent. This accomplishment would dwarf all of the non-accomplishments of the failed companies Obama gave Federal dollars to.
Rather than focusing on efforts like those covered above to make taxpayer wealth useful in making the U.S. a better country, in this case energy independent, the political class focuses only on their own careers, self interest, and personal enrichment. I never understood why they never address the issue of wasteful spending: is it because they do not know how to, they do not want to, and they do not care to, given the good that could come from cleaning up the waste and fraud.
Whatever their reason, we are living with their apathy, lack of leadership, and lack of positive results everyday. No problems solved, massive amounts of wealth wasted. Term limits and dumping out all incumbent politicians at every election cannot come soon enough. We need people in D.C. that can do the simple math above, formulate plans, and then clean up the horrific mess the current set of politicians have left us with with nothing to show in return for TRILLIONS of our tax dollars.
Please take note: the above exmaples of waste and how that could have been translated into energy independence efforts does not include the spending waste that is probably rampant in the bloated Defense Department budget, food stamp, and other large Federal departments. Thus, the lost opportunity is actually far worse than the examples outlined above.
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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