April, 2013 Political Class Insanity, Part 3: Tax Evading Politicians, Unwanted Army Tanks, and More

This is Act III in this month’s political class insanity review. The first two acts can be reviewed at the following links:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/04/april-2013-political-class-insanity_4.html

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/04/april-2013-political-class-insanity.html

Act III starts now.

1) The Democratic controlled Senate recently put together its first full budget since April, 2009, breaking standing law for the four years since then. Their budget calls for tax increases of over one trillion dollars on Americans over the next ten years. As regular readers of this blog know, this is a ridiculous position to hold given the wasteful spending, inefficiencies, and government redundancy that exist today in the Federal government, insanity that has been presided over by this Democratically controlled Senate since 2007.

One reason why Democrats are so fast to raise taxes is possibly because they do not pay all of the current taxes that they owe. The prime example of this comes from an article done by the Daily Caller on February 18, 2013. According to their research of D.C. tax records, Louisiana’s Democrat Senator Mary Landrieu is very big on raising taxes on the country, having openly advocated for higher taxes on Americans during Senate hearings last month. However, she seems a bit less excited and punctual to pay her own taxes:

According to public records available online in the District of Columbia’s “Real Property Assessment Database,” the D.C. government has penalized Landrieu $1,003.33, plus $202.62 in interest, for 2012 taxes on her mansion on East Capitol Street. It is unclear what the penalty is for.

Talk about hypocrisy, she wants to raise your taxes but is late paying her taxes, to late that penalties are now attached. But we should not be surprised when a politician calls for us to pay higher taxes but decides they do not have to pay even their current tax burden:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/02/washingtons-hunger-games-approach-to_11.html

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2011/01/politicians-creed-do-as-i-say-not-as-i.html

If you get into these posts you will find a whole cadre of politicians who have tried to avoid paying current taxes while they concurrently say that we should pay more in taxes.

2) A recent Federal government inspector general report and analysis found that in 2012, the Federal government spent about $337 million for shipping and postal costs. Of that $337 million, the U.S. Post Office’s share of that business was about $4.8 million or only about 1.42%. That’s right, one on the most incompetent and inefficient organizations in the history of mankind, the Federal government, finds that they cannot trust or use a sister entity within the Federal government to deliver its mail. I can think of no worst insult than to have the Federal government view you as less trustworthy and inefficient than itself.

3) CBS released a survey of its own on March 26, 2013 and the results should not surprise most Americans who are fed up with the insanity and idiocy of the American political class:

• CBS reports 80% of Americans are unhappy with Washington, and 30% are “angry” at the nation’s politicians.
• 30% are now “angry”, a result that is up 9 points since December, 2012.
• Those who say the U.S. is heading in the right direction is down 8 points to 32% in just one month.
• Those who say America is on the wrong track is up to 64% from 51% over that time frame.
• President Obama’s approval rating is down to 45% and his polling on most issues (including the economy) are down almost across the board from last month. Note: given that the sample for this survey significantly overweighted Democrats in the sample vs. Republicans, Obama’s decline in approval is probably worse than reported by this survey vs. if an honest, balanced sample size had been used.

Makes you wonder if those sitting in Congress and the White House really know how much we hold them in contempt for screwing up the country’s financials, liberties, and future.

4) A particularly galling aspect of the survey is in one of the subset of questions in the CBS survey. When asked what is the most important issue facing America today, 41% of the survey takers said it was the economy and jobs. The budget deficit/national debt, health care, and partisan politics were the next three most important problems.

Guns was the fifth most important problem facing the country but it is probably the problem getting the most attention from Washington politicians today. Another set of bad priorities with Washington out of touch with what Americans find important.

It could be that since he political class has not been able to fix the economy/jobs, national debt/deficit, health care, and partisan politics issues, they have just moved on to something that they will probably not be able to resolve either.

5) In the their never ending quest to take more and more of our money for their own selfish use, Gordon Wozniak, a Berkeley, California city councilman, proposed taxing citizens’ email usage during a recent council meeting. He believes that by taxing email usage, it would prevent professional marketers and spammers from sending out thousands and thousands of emails at one time. Taking the insanity one step further, Wozniak said an email tax could then be given to the U.S. Postal System to keep it in operation.

How stupid is this idea. First, how would this tax be collected and what would it cost to collect it. Since many people use free email services, the logistics to set this up would be expensive and offset much of the revenue it would collect.

Second, I am pretty sure that spammers and marketers are smarter and more clever than most politicians so I am confident they would find a way to get around the payment process.

Third, why would we flush good money after bad by giving it to the Post Office without fixing what ails the Post office from a financial perspective. Fix the root causes of the problem, do not just throw money at a continuing bad situation.

6) The October 5, 2012 issue of disgraceful wasteful spending by the Federal government. According to the article, in 2011 the U.S. Army made an unusual request to Congress: stop sending us new tanks.

Congress and the Washington political class ignored this plea, adding a Defense Department budget line that added $255 million to the overall budget for 42 new M1 Abrams tanks. Apparently, the Army already has 2,300 M1 tanks deployed around the world and 3,000 tanks sitting idle around the country. Thus, the Army’s plea not to send any more tanks to them.

But Ohio politicians, from both parties, pushed to get the tanks made using taxpayer money. Apparently, these tanks would be produced in an Ohio factory and the politicians did not want to see those factory jobs to go away or be reduced. Better to waste taxpayer money on useless military equipment than to give that money back to the rightful owners, the American taxpayers.

An Ohio Republican Congressman issued a most inane comment in defending the production of unneeded military tanks: "I think it’s in the best interests of the U.S. to defend our country." Could not agree more on the need to defend our country but with over 5,100 M1 tanks already in existence, and 60% of them not being used, I doubt another 42 tanks are vital to national security. Nice try Congressman but truly an idiotic statement and idiotic expense.

So, let’s review:

1. Politicians want higher taxes but do not pay their “fair share.”
2. The Federal government does not even trust its own postal system.
3. A recent poll proves what we all know, most Americans think Washington politicians are doing a lousy job.
4. The politicians are working on guns why Americans hold that as a very minor priority in their lives.
5. A silly politician wants to tax our email transmissions.
6. An even the Army wants to spend less on defense but our politicians do not.

Insanity, idiocy and bad priorities. And still more to come tomorrow.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w