April, 2013 Wasteful Government Spending, Part 3: Biden Bills Taxpayers, Government Buys Rebounding Machines And More

Okay, I thought we were done with silly and stupid government spending, especially in these times of soaring budget deficits and the whole sequester adventure but I was wrong, as I continue to underestimate the Washington political class abilities to wastefully spend taxpayer wealth. We had tried to confine our discussion on wasteful spending this month to just two posts:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/04/april-2013-wasteful-government-spending.html

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/04/april-2013-wasteful-government-spending_15.html

But, unfortunately, that was impossible since these two posts were written, another avalanche of inane spending has come to light.

Consider these government expenditures in light of the fact that the Obama administration has closed down the White House to traditional tours by Americans, their families, and school classes, using the meager excuse of the meager 2% reduction in government spending as a result of the sequester.

Consider these government expenditures in light of the fact that the Obama administration has cut education resources to Native American education programs because of the sequester.

Consider these government expenditures in light of the fact that the Obama administration has curtailed or canceled the deployment of military assets around the world because of the sequester.

Consider these government expenditures in light of the fact that the Obama administration has rung up over $5 TRILLION in additional national debt in less than five years, a debt load that now totals almost $17 TRILLION or a debt load of over $50,000 for every single American, young and old.

Yes, we are truly a country which has allowed our spending priorities and focus to be distorted and wasted by the current set of politicians in Washington and elsewhere.

1) The United Liberty website reported on April 9, 2013 that the Departments of Interior and Transportation have dropped more than $20K of taxpayer wealth on several basketball rebounding machines. Not one rebounding machine, several rebounding machines.

And apparently these are not just any kind of low end but functional basketball rebounding machines. They purchased the Shoot-A-Way machine, a popular basketball rebounding model used by teams at all levels of basketball. Two out of the Final Four college men’s basketball teams use the Shoot-A-Way. Louisville, the winner of this year’s men’s March Madness owns eight of the machines.

Not a lot of money in light of a nearly $17 TRILLION deficit but just because you can do something (waste taxpayer money by buying high end basketball rebounding machines) does not mean you should.

2) The Bankrupting America website reported on the careless loss of $8 million on April 3, 2013, this time at the state government level in Nebraska. The Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services officials misspent some $8 million while operating a program intended to help keep needy citizens’ homes warm and cool using Federal funds.

However, instead of sending the payments directly to the utility companies providing the heating and cooling, as required by the Department’s own rules and regulations, the money was sent via checks directly to the citizens enrolled in the program, citizens that were supposed to be needy.

As a result of breaching the rules, three mishaps occurred with taxpayer money:

• Some 261 payments were made to deceased individuals.
• Since many of these checks ended up getting cashed at liquor stores, funeral homes, and at least one keno parlor, it’s a safe bet to assume that the millions in taxpayer-funded assistance did not serve their intended purposes of heating and cooling.
• And to add insult to injury, Nebraska officials also pocketed some $1 million in unspent funding that should have been handed back over to the Federal government.

$8 million could have provided over 8 years of White House tours. Instead, a lot of the money likely went to alcohol, funerals, betting, and deep into a state government bureaucracy.

3) The Associated Press reported on April 2, 2013 that President Obama is proposing spending $100 million next year to start a quest to map out the details of the human brain. The hope is that by understanding the inner workings of the human brain, greater understanding will lead to better cures of diseases that affect the brain such as Parkinson’s disease and dementia.

This is certainly a worthy goal…until you read further down in the article and realize that the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health will be involved in allocating the $100 million. These organizations have previously spent taxpayer money seeing how shrimp move while on an underwater treadmill, funded a half a million dollar project to educate people on how to use a condom, spent over half a million dollars to develop a video game the simulated prom week, among other totally useless projects.

What makes one think they will do any better managing this project and this amount of funding? Here’s a better idea:

• Rather than having the government operate this effort, turn the effort over to private researchers, companies, universities, etc.
• Put up a reward of $50 million to the persons/organizations that can complete the map within five years (or ten years or whatever number of years is realistic).
• This would follow the experience of the mapping of the human genome where competition between competing groups led to faster and better results.

Save tens of millions of dollars and get the same result, probably sooner and at a lower cost than if the Federal government ran the effort, a nobrainer. Also, it guarantees that we do not end up with prom video game development masquerading as science from the National Science Foundation.

4) On of the few government organizations I respect is the General Accountability Office (GAO). This entity is about 100 years old and was created to help keep government operations and spending efficient and effective. The second post listed above contained some of their fine work that identified annual savings of about $64 billion in the Federal bureaucracy if only those running the bureaucracy took their advice.

But apparently, the cost savings listed in that post were not the sum total of their work. I recently came across more of their analysis and more of their identified cost savings:

• The Federal government has 76 programs to treat drug abuse scattered and uncoordinated across 15 different Federal agencies.
• The Federal government has 47 different and uncoordinated job training programs.
• The Federal government has three different agencies that inspect catfish.
• The Department of Defense operates six different entities all responsible for camouflage uniforms.
• The Department of Energy and 13 other Federal agencies are currently running a whopping 679 different alternative energy programs.
• The Department of Homeland Security is using five different contractors to detect the same chemical.
• These are just six examples identified by the GAO among 162 areas where there are duplicative Federal programs going on and money being wasting because of the redundancy.
• The GAO and Senator Tom Coburn estimate these redundancies cost the American taxpayer about $250 billion a year, more than three times the amount of the sequester.

Disgraceful.

5) Vice President Joe Biden gets free room and board while in office. He gets free transportation. He gets a load of free personal perks. He gets free Secret Service protection. In 2012, his Federal income tax returns show that he and his wife reported $385,072 in adjusted gross income, putting them in the top 1-2% of all American taxpayers.

In spite of all this privilege and wealth, the Bidens actually had the audacity of billing the Secret Service, and American taxpayers, $26,400 for the privilege of protecting him by allowing the Secret Service to use a cottage on his private property. Talk about nerve. Talk about pomposity. Talk about ego and greed.

Again, $26,400 would not resolve our $16.7 TRILLION debt problem. But the chutzpah of such an act verifies again how the current set of politicians are so wrapped up in their own greed and self enrichment that the wasting of money on THEM is not a bad thing, even if it eventually contributes to a cross generational debt burden for the average American family.

That is all I have for today. Hopefully, this cleans out the folder of stupid, wasteful government spending for at least a little while. This is why these posts from the past week, along dozens of others we have written about over the past few years, proves unequivocally that no American, rich or poor, should pay another penny in taxes to any level of American government until these atrocious, idiotic spending misadventures are eliminated forever.

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

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Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.reason.com/
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w