Unfortunately, as time has gone by, a single post never seems to be adequate to capture all of the craziness. It has gotten so bad, that recently we had to use six days of posts to cover everything. There is a very good chance that this month six posts will not be enough to contain everything that the political class has been dumping on us, our country, and our economy.
So let’s get started. Today our focus will be mostly how our government now wastes our taxpayer wealth across the globe on stupid, inane international programs that have no benefit at all to Americans. This is what we are paying today’s politicians to do, to think, and to screw up outside of the country:
1) According to a report in the U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor, in 2012 the Obama administration sent $90 million in foreign aid to Indonesia. In a program called PRIORITAS (formally known as in the FedBizOpps database as Solicitation #SOL-497-12-000004), Prioritizing Reform, Innovation and Opportunities for Reaching Indonesia’s Teachers, Administrators, and Students, the U.S. taxpayer paid $20 million from that program for Indonesian students to get their the masters degrees.
American students are graduating our colleges with massive student debt burdens and finding it very difficult to find a job. And the Federal government under the Obama administration is sending tens of millions of dollars to help educate foreign students. Insanity.
2) The Washington Examiner reported on another taxpayer-funded, foreign aid disaster. The article from June 21, 2013 reported that a Pakistani organization was given $89.4 million in 2011 to create jobs for Pakistan farmers but the investment was a failure along every possible dimension:
- The program gave financial grants to 110 agriculture Pakistani farm projects but a Federal government Inspector General found that not a single incremental job was created or was the local farm economy expanded: "The audit team found that it has not had much success in achieving the two goals," the report said.
- Two groups of goat farmers were given only female goats, making it very difficult for them to expand their goat herds.
- A group of pickle producers didn't have access to the market and couldn't sell their pickles even with this program’s resources, with the farmers ending up selling their pickles to friends and families, something they likely could have done without U.S. taxpayer funding and support.
- More than 80% of the projects cost less than $5,000 and thus were not subject to oversight by the Federal government entity overseeing the funding, making fraud and corruption easy to commit and get away with.
3) The Independent Journal reported on another in a long line of wasteful spending programs from the President’s economic stimulus program. This failure spent $431,363 in Nancy Pelosi’s district to study psychological distress of homosexual fathers. The study resulted in zero jobs, but the study did conclude that homosexual men likely reduce their chances of contracting HIV after becoming fathers because they have less time for sex.
Hey, guess what: heterosexual men also reduce their chances of contracting HIV or any other sexual disease once they become fathers because they also have less time for sex. Whew! America has been dying to find that out!
4) That same article reported on another useless government program that also cost close to half a million dollars. The Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, a division in the, State Department, will spend $450,000 “to support programs that increase protection of transgender persons who face acute forms of violence and harassment.”
I find these types of programs to be a tremendous waste of U.S. taxpayer money. However, if you think that transgenders need to have more protection, I respect that position. However, this program calls for programs that “are strongly encouraged” for implementing programs in Eastern Europe, Central, and South America. Thus, we are not protecting American transgenders, we are sending taxpayer money around the world to protect foreign transgender people. Ridiculous.
5) Same article, different foreign country, more wasted taxpayer wealth on foreigners. A $228,000 study by the National Institutes of Health will study why Kenyans avoid AIDS treatment…in Kenya. Really? In Kenya?
6) Looks like this is the month for spending taxpayer wealth abroad, with the First Lady even getting into the act. Recently, President Obama was in Belfast, Northern Ireland for a G-8 summit meeting. However, rather than jetting over in Air Force One, the first lady, Michelle Obama and their two daughters flew over in Air Force Two, certainly a huge waste of taxpayer money to begin with.
However, the First lady and the kids stayed in Belfast for only a short time before flying off to Dublin. Once there, rather than spending the night in either the Irish ambassador’s home or in the American embassy, the First Lady treated herself to a $3,300 a night hotel room in Dublin, which of course was picked up by the taxpayer. Given the security detail and others that follow the First Lady around, it is a pretty good bet that other expensive rooms were used by her entourage at the same expensive hotel, a tab also being paid by the American taxpayer.
The administration tried to spin this Dublin visit as having diplomatic importance but given that the First Lady and the kids went to Trinity College library to explore President Obama’s Irish family roots, attended a performance by the world-famous Riverdance troupe, and visited the Wicklow Mountains national forest, this spin does not whirl from a believability perspective.
Extra planes, lavish accommodations, and exotic vacations on the taxpayer’s dime, good work if you can get it, with the White House PR machine making weak excuses for the whole deal.
7) The Associated Press reported June 14, 2013 on what we had previously called inevitable: Detroit’s emergency manager, Kevyn Orr announced that the city of Detroit would be defaulting on about $2.5 billion of city debt. Detroit will be asking its creditors to take about 10 cents on the dollar of what they’re owed. Underfunded city claims will get less than ten cents on the dollar.
In addition, Mr. Orr announced a moratorium on all of Detroit’s payments on unsecured debt, seeking forgiveness of millions of dollars owed by the city and that $1.25 billion will be set aside over 10 years for public safety, lighting and neighborhood blight elimination. You know a city has gone over the edge when public safety, lighting, and city blight is a top priority as opposed to fixing roads, improving education, etc.
Thus, in just a few short decades, the political class has taken the fourth most populated U.S. city with thriving industries and the fourth largest population of any U.S. city and driven it completely into the ground. Kudos to mismanagement, corruption, and greed.
Our original prediction on Detroit’s demise can be found at the following link:
http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2009/10/detroit-vs-helsinki-vs-150-other.html
8) Let’s wrap up today’s insanity with one more trip overseas. Our government is sending $2.5 million to Bangladesh, to improve fire and general building safety. Annually, we import billions of dollars worth of goods from there and as outlined in the government grant, most of these goods come from the “ready-made garment sector.” The grant also pointed out there are severely unsafe working conditions in the country‘s garment industry.
I could not agree more but that is not a good reason for the American taxpayer to fund the remedy to those unsafe conditions. It should be a cost of doing business, the retailers and importers of goods from Bangladesh should be the ones paying to fix unsafe working conditions. They are the ones that profit from shoddy safety conditions, let them pay for fixing the shoddy working conditions. For the American taxpayer to do so to the benefit of private companies is ludicrous.
Eight acts of political class insanity and we are just getting started. Hang on for more of the same over the next week or so, its going to be a rough night, to paraphrase a Betty Davis move line from long ago.
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.reason.com/
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w
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