June, 2013 Political Class Insanity, Part 1: Not Enough Toilet Paper, Too Much California Scamming, Fort Hood Travesty, and Training Sucker Fish

It’s a new month which means another round of reviewing the latest political class insanity. Unfortunately, as each month goes by, we find it harder and harder to restrict the number of days we write about the many ways our politicians waste our wealth, kill off our freedoms and liberty, and embarrass themselves with their actions and inactions.

We will delay looking at the insanity from the latest Obama scandals for a few days. The Benghazi, IRS, and news outlets snooping scandals by the administration is just to overwhelming to include in these insanity updates. Each of these scandals will get dedicated posts in the near future.

So, Let’s get started and see what piles of insanity the political class has left for us in just the past month or so:

1) The first piece of insanity should really get you ticked off. A local Texas NBC TV affiliate reported recently that accused Fort Hood shooter, Maj. Nidal Hasan, has been getting full pay while he awaits trail. You may remember Mr. Hasan. He went on a shooting spree in 2009 that resulted in the death of 13 Army personnel and the wounding of 32 while he shouted out Islamic slogans. Since he assassinated those 13, he has received an unbelievable $278,000 in salary from American taxpayers as he awaits trial.

One of the verified inspirations of Mr. Hasan was Anwar Al-Awlaki. Al-Awlaki was a leader of Al Qaeda until Obama put a kill order out on him and he was killed in Yemen by a drone strike. Thus, Mr. Obama found Al-Awlaki dangerous enough to be considered a terrrorist and meriting being killed.

But his administration did not consider Hasan’s terror attack to be an act of terror even though:

1. He killed 13 Americans.
2. He wounded 32 Americans.
3. He shouted anti-American and pro-Islamic statements as he went about his shootings.
4. He was mentored by one of the leading terrorist in the entire world.

Rather calling the shooting a terrorist act or an act of war, Obama somehow put together some convoluted logic that called the shooting of 45 Americans an act of “workplace violence.” Unfortunately, this disgraceful designation resulted in the shooting victims not getting pay, retirement, and medical benefits given to soldiers wounded in war, in the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, or any other terrorists attacks.

Thus, a terrorist shoots 45 Americans in Texas and continues to get paid his salary over the past three plus years, accumulating over a quarter million dollars in salary. Many of those that get shot and their families struggle to pay their bills because the Army will not classify the attack as terrorism.

One of the victims of the attacks, Army Spc. Logan Burnett, who was wounded, summed up attack and the lack of logic the best: "You take three rounds and lose five good friends and watch seven other people get killed in front of you. Do you have another term that we can classify that as?" Yes, it is insanity and despicable.

2) Previously, we have discussed many, many stupid government expenses on stupid projects, including but not limited to:

• The building of a robotic squirrel to see how squirrels might interact with snakes.
• The development of a computer program that simulates “Prom Week.”
• The study of the sex lives of a certain species of snails in New Zealand.

But one of the latest wastes of nearly a half million dollars of taxpayer wealth is as inane as anything we have previously discussed. The Department of Interior will be spending $472,150 to teach survival skills to bonytails and sucker fish. Survivial skills of fish, are you kidding me? Consider some of the quotes that the government has put out relative to fish survival skills and this program:

• “The objective of the proposed project is to determine if training increases Bonytail and Razorback Sucker survival when exposed to predators.”
• “This proposal builds upon the 2012 Bureau of Reclamation assistance agreement with the Arizona Game and Fish Department (AZGFD) tasked with investigating the potential for training Bonytail and Razorback Suckers to recognize and avoid predators."
• “One of the early conclusions of the prior work is that the schooling behavior of Bonytail may allow untrained fish to show improved survival because they recognize predator avoidance behaviors exhibited by trained individuals.”

Why do these fish need to develop survival skills and more importantly, why do we have to pay for it? $472,150 would have been able to keep White House tours running for around six months, a much better use of this money as opposed to fish survival skills. Unbelievable.

3) Many current members of the American political class have tended towards socialist policies recently where the state is more important than individual freedom. One of the heroes of these politicians has been Hugo Chavez, the recently deceased dictator of Venezuela.

Unfortunately, his socialism policies disrupted the national economy so much that there is now a severe toilet paper shortage in the country. Yes, government economic policies have caused a crisis that reaches into the bathrooms of Venezuela.

Trade Minister Alexander Fleming, in a recent public statement, tried to calm the country: “The revolution will bring in to the country the equivalent of 50 million rolls of toilet paper. Our people need to calm down and realize that they should not be manipulated by the media campaign of a shortage.” Any “revolution” and the government/political class that operates it that has to focus on importing millions of toilet paper really cannot be trusted to handle much of anything else in any citizen’s life.

4) The Bankrupting America website identified a unique, wasteful spending episode on May 17, 2013. An Inspector General report found that top managers in the General Services Administration had a real sweetheart deal when it came to their annual job performance evaluations and monetary awards.

It seems that GSA executives had given cash bonuses to themselves based on broad coworkers’ reviews under the GSA‘s “Peer-2-Peer” review process. He latest annual awards were given to 71 executives and cost taxpayers $160,700, over $20,000 per executive.

Between fiscal years 2009 to 2011, the GSA executives had awarded themselves a total of 702 awards. GSA officials agreed with the inspector general’s findings and pledged to correct the agency’s actions going forward.

What a sweetheart deal, awarding yourself, your friends and peers taxpayer money based on self reporting successes.

5) Scamming government employees are not restricted to the Federal government. A recent news report from KTVU in San Francisco reported that a three year investigation has resulted in the arrest of several San Francisco public school employees who allegedly embezzled millions of dollars in grant money.

Details of the investigation allege the foolwing components of the conspiracy:

• Investigators allege six current and former school district employees committed felonies by diverting state and Federal grant money to several nonprofit organizations.
• These people allegedly got at least $750,000 for their personal expenses, unauthorized salaries and bonuses.
• The charges allege former Associate Superintendent Trish Bascom was in charge of the embezzlement and had control over money distributed to nonprofits.
• The nonprofits were hired to provide school district services, for which Ms. Bascom would write checks directly to individuals.
• She allegedly carried out the plan with the help of her senior executive.
• The embezzlement charge involves about $15 million in grant money funneled through three nonprofits over a 10-year period
• One of the nonprofits, the San Francisco School Alliance, received between $5.5 and $6.3 million, charged a half-million dollars in administrative fees and actually invested some of their illegal gain, $250,000, in the stock market, which it lost, rather than on educational programs.

Given the dire financial situation of the state of California, what a shame that public employees were able to scam millions of dollars over such a long period of time and the political class in California was unable to uncover the wasteful spending for so long.

That should do it for now, the beginning of another long journey into political class insanity, idiocy, and waste. More tomorrow … and the next day and the next day….

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