July, 2013 Political Class Insanity, Part 6: Inspector General MIA, Even More IRS Shenanigans, and More

Day six and we are still not through the July, 2013 political class insanity from the past month. When will it all end? Probably not until we fix our broken political processes and find a way to hand pink slips to all of the Washington politicians who have inflicted their wasteful spending and inane policies and legislation on us all.

Not unexpectedly, we start off today’s insanity with more IRS insults and mischief:

1) According to an Associated Press article from June 25, 2013, IRS employees have been misusing and abusing their government issued credit cards, wasting taxpayer wealth in the process:

• According to a report from an IRS watchdog agency, the IRS’s poor oversight has resulted in employees to use IRS-issued credit cards to purchase wine for an expensive luncheon, useless giveaways for managers' meetings and, for one employee, romance novels and diet pills.
• Two IRS credit cards were used to buy online pornography, though the employees said the cards were stolen.
• One of the workers who reportedly used IRS credit cards to purchase pornography reported five agency credit cards lost or stolen.
• The report said the IRS has inadequate controls to prevent inappropriate purchases using taxpayer dollars by IRS credit card holders.
• Investigators found that one the diet pill purchasing employee spent $2,655 on diet pills, romance novels, steaks, a smartphone and baby-related items, including bottles, games and clothes.
• At a luncheon, the IRS bought 28 bottles of wine — for 41 guests, the report said.
• A dinner at an IRS conference cost the agency $140 a person, four times the allowable government rate at the time.
• In 2010 and 2011, IRS internal controls found 327 cases in which employees divided their purchases to skirt the $3,000 credit card spending limit.
• Other "improper" purchases identified by the inspector general included $3,152 to rent a popcorn machine and to buy prizes for an employee event, including bandanas, stuffed animals, sunglasses and stovepipe hats, $418 for novelty decorations at managers' meetings, including kazoos, bathtub toys and "Thomas the Tank Engine" wristbands, and $119 for Nerf footballs that were never used and were found stored in a filing cabinet.
• "Inadequate procedures to identify, report and address inappropriate use leaves the IRS purchase card program vulnerable to repeated violations of applicable laws and regulations," said J. Russell George, the Treasury inspector general for tax administration.
• This report comes on the heels of another inspector general released a report earlier this month that detailed lavish spending at employee conferences, which cost nearly $50 million from 2010 through 2012.

I had always thought that the TSA was the worst run, most wasteful Federal government agency. But reviewing IRS shenanigans from just the past month, from persecuting Tea Party and other Americans who had political views different from the Obama administration to excessive conference spending to employees' fifth amendment performance in front of Congress to credit card abuse of taxpayer wealth, I now think that the IRS has unseated the TSA as the most inept government agency in existence today.

2) An article from the Washington Examiner from June 27, 2013 provided another example of how our four decade war on drugs has been an utter failure. This faux war has not reduced drug abuse in this country, has created violent and widespread drug cartels, has cost the American taxpayer trillions of dollars, and has resulted in the unnecessary incarceration of millions of Americans for no reason at all.

The article reported on how in one California border town, at least four drug-laden, ultralight airplanes fly in from Mexico land each night onto U.S. soil to drop off hundreds of pounds of narcotics to waiting drug cartel accomplices. The ultalight planes then fly back to Mexico, despite a $100 million detection system funded by American taxpayers.

The U.S. Border Patrol’s inability to find and catch these planes, sometimes piloted by armed dealers, was among the emerging border security threats at a recent House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing. According to Congressman Jeff Chaffetz, “These planes take off in Mexico with the drugs, go across the border and drop them off and then the ultralight lands back in Mexico. And we are fairly inept at dealing with them,” Fairly inept, good description of most government programs.

Another government program, this one worth $100 million, a total failure at accomplishing its goals. The failed war on drugs continues despite another $100 million flushed down the drain.

3) In that same Examiner article, Chaffetz also reported on another problem due to our inept government ability to seal the border to prevent illegal immigration, human trafficking, and drug trafficking. Chaffetz said border agents are also grappling with an influx of illegal immigrants sneaking across the Mexican border who are not from Mexico. They are identified as “OTM” or “Other than Mexican.”

For example, the Eloy Detention Center in Arizona has detained 900 people from 60 countries other than Mexico. Most of them from Central and South America but there were 127 illegals from India , 22 people from China and one person from Afghanistan.

“We have a surge in OTM’s coming across the border,” Chaffetz said. Somewhat of an understatement, Congressman. But more importantly, these are the OTMs that have been apprehended. How many Iranians have gotten into the US through the leaky border? How many Hamas or Hezbollah would-be terrorist OTMs are already in the country? And what are Chinese doing sneaking into the country? Are they government spies?

It is probably a good bet that there are professional foreign agents in this country, they got here through an unsealed border, and any future terror activities will be far more violent and wide ranging than the Boston Marathon bombers who were untrained amateurs.

4) Ever wonder why government corruption, waste, and ineptness is out of control? Well one reason, according to Wall Street Journal reporting on June 17, 2013, a number of the government's largest organizations, including the Departments of Defense, State, Interior, and Homeland Security, have not had permanent inspectors general in place for one to five years. This failure is raising concerns from lawmakers and government-watchdog groups that the Obama administration isn't sufficiently policing itself.

We have already reported that government auditors have given up trying to audit the Department of Defense, that is how screwed up that department is. We have already reported that the State Department spent $80 million on a consulate in Afghanistan that was never used because the State Department officials ignored their own internal guidelines and built a consulate that was a sitting duck for a terrorist attack. We have suffered through at least four different terrorist attacks since Obama took office, the same time that the organization responsible for protecting us, Homeland Security, also did not have a permanent inspector general.

In total, government departments without permanent inspectors general account for $843 billion in annual spending, a whopping 25% of the Federal budget. Inspector generals are independent officials within an agency whose job is to root out waste and misconduct. They run staffs of auditors, criminal investigators, program analysts and others.

Is there any doubt why government spending is out of control when there are no professionals in charge and in place of keeping everything and everyone in line? Disgraceful and insulting to taxpayers.

Unfortunately, we are still not done, more days ahead for more government and political class insanity still to follow.

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