July, 2013 Political Class Insanity, Part 2: Obama Officials Do Teir Best Sgt. Schultz Impressions and More

This is the second in our monthly series which covers and reports on political class insanity. It is amazing how every month we can come across new and novel ways that the political class in this country can come up with to waste our tax dollars and screw up our economy and democracy. The first in this month’s series on their lunacy can be accessed at the following link:

http://www.loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/07/july-2013-political-class-insanity-part_2.html

Today’s insanity starts now:

1) Michael Snyder is a blogger who writes The Economic Collapse blog. He has researched and developed a list of “66 Crazy Ways That The U.S. Government Is Wasting Your Hard-Earned Money.” We highlight some of them below. We have already covered a few of these in previous posts but they are worth repeating here because they are such idiotic wastes of money:

• The IRS is about to pay out $70 million in bonuses to employees even though discretionary bonuses are supposed to be cancelled due to the sequester.
• According to the Washington Post, the U.S. government is going to leave $7 billion worth of military equipment behind in Afghanistan.
• It is being projected that the trip that the Obamas will be making to Africa will cost U.S. taxpayers $100,000,000, the equivalent of over 100 years of White House tours.
• U.S. taxpayers spend more than $1.4 billion a year on the Obamas. Meanwhile, British taxpayers only spend about $58 million on the entire royal family.
• During 2012, $25,000 of Federal money was spent on a promotional tour for the Alabama Watermelon Queen.
• The U.S. government spent $505,000 “to promote specialty hair and beauty products for cats and dogs” in 2012.
• According to InformationWeek, the Federal government is spending “millions of dollars” to train Asian call center workers.
• The Federal government has actually spent $750,000 on a new soccer field for detainees held at Guantanamo Bay.
• The U.S. Agency for International Development spent $10 million to create a version of “Sesame Street” for Pakistani television.

The Federal government could have kept White House tours going for hundreds of years if this money had not been wasted on these stupid programs, programs, and trips.

2) The IRS has been in the news lately, mostly because of their shredding of First Amendment rights of Tea Party and other conservative political groups because they dared to have a difference of opinion with the Obama administration. Their harassment and tyranny had not been seen since the Nixon years, if even then.

But the bad news continues relative to this dysfunctional government entity, at least according to a recent Inspector General audit. The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration revealed in a recently released audit that in 2010 and 2011 more than 1,000 Internal Revenue Service employees misused government charge cards issued by Citibank.

The audit found that during the two years in question, IRS employees sent Citibank a total of 325 bad checks written on personal accounts that had insufficient funds to cover them, that agency officials with top-secret security clearances had their charge accounts suspended for failure to pay the balances, and that the IRS had a tendency of being “overly lenient” in disciplining those who abused the card privileges.

Whoopsie, the check bounced. I do not think the typical American taxpayer gets away with that excuse if they are late paying their taxes or that the IRS will be “overly lenient“ with common Americans. Pretty sad the nation’s accounting department, the IRS, cannot keep many of its employees and executives in line and fiscally responsible.

3) According to the center For Investigative Reporting, back in 2009, the number of veteran soldiers who had been waiting more than a year for their Veterans’ Administration care totaled 11,000. In three short years, By December 2012, this list had ballooned to 245,000 veterans:

After reviewing internal Veterans’ Administration documents, their analysis also determined that many veterans are waiting much longer than a year to receive their benefits:

• In New York City, the delay can be 642 days.
• In Los Angeles the delay can be 619 days.
• The largest number of year-long waits are in Oakland (19,077), Waco (18,442), Houston (14,480) and Los Angeles (13,901).

Disgraceful abuse of our brave servicemen and service women who made great sacrifices for this country. The Obamas are still going to take their $100 million African vacation, the Alabama watermelon queen got her touring money, Pakistan has a $10 million version of Sesame Street, dogs and cats got their Federal money for pet beauty products, etc. but our veterans wait years for what is rightly due to them for their service. Disgraceful beyond belief.

4) I am not an expert by any stretch of the Federal Reserve System but it seems to me that it has literally been out of control for a while now. Every month for a long time it has been buying tens of billions of dollars worth of different kinds of bonds in its various “quantitative easing” disasters. The problem is that the Fed does not have any “wealth” so to speak. It basically creates money out of thin air (“printing of money”) and introduces it into our economic system with no underlying wealth to support it.

If that does not scare you into believing that our economy and financial system is about to implode, take a look at the following video of a recent Congressional hearing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIM8x5wLtR4

The lady being grilled by Congressman Alan Grayson says at the beginning of the video that she is Federal Inspector General responsible for auditing the Federal Reserve. And that apparently is the extent of her knowledge on just about any topic under discussion.

In the span of about five minutes, Grayson asks her a series of straight forward questions regarding the trillions of dollars that the Fed is tossing around. Her lack of knowledge regarding the Fed’s operations, DESPITE being the head Inspector General, is horrifying, scary, and unbelievable. To quote Sergeant Schultz from the old TV show, “Hogan’s Heroes,”, “I know nothing” is basically her mantra through the entire line of questioning.

If the Inspector General knows nothing and cannot account for the Fed‘s trillion dollar financial activities, who can? Very, very distressing and depressing.

5) For Americans who love freedom and the First Amendment, the IRS harassing and hindering of Tea Party and conservative political groups in exercising their freedom of speech is a direct affront to the concept of liberty in this country. Finding why and who did these actions, who ordered the harassment, etc. should be a top priority of every American.

Which makes this piece of political class insanity all the more depressing. FBI Director Robert Mueller was recently questioned by Congressman Jim Jordan under oath at a Congressional hearing regarding the IRS targeting of conservative groups. Unfortunately, but typically, for a high ranking Obama administration official, Mueller appeared as uninformed as possible regarding of the details of the case , doing an even better impression of Sgt. Schultz’s “I know nothing” line than the above mentioned Fed Inspector General:

Congressman Jordon: “Can you tell me who is the lead investigator is?’

Director Mueller: “Not off the top of my head.”

Congressman Jordon: ”This is the most important case in the country for the past six weeks and you don’t know who the most important person is, leading the case?”

Director Mueller, same song different verse: “Not off the top of my head.”

Disgusting and disgraceful. The Director knew he was going to be asked questions like this, this was the primary purpose of the hearing and he did not care enough or was not smart enough to do at least some basic preparation. Since Congress represents people like oourselves and acts like our surrogates in these matters, Mueller’s lack of preparation is a direct insult to the voters and taxpayers of this country.

Furthermore, the exchange above was just a small example of Mueller’s ignorance and lack of preparation. The entire exchange cab be viewed at:

http://theblacksphere.net/2013/06/fbi-director-mueller-knows-nothing/

At this video you can see his apathy and arrogance goes on for minutes at a time, totally unprepared and unprofessional, a disgrace to the American taxpayer.

Having fun yet? Trust me, the bad news will keep on coming for a few more days along with the insults and contempt that the politicians in this country have for us, our wealth, and our freedom.

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