July, 2013 Political Class Insanity, Part 3: Chinese Hackers, Gay Meth Texting, More Losses In The War On Drugs And More

This is the third in a our monthly series on political class insanity. Every month we devote a few days to the insanity, lunacy, corruption, and wasteful spending of the American political class. Unfortunately for us and the country, every month seems to bring a heavier and heavier load of the misdeeds from Washington and elsewhere, requiring more and more days of coverage just to keep up.

The first two posts on this month’s insanity can be accessed at:

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

http://www.loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/07/july-2013-political-class-insanity-part_3.html

We continue with the idiocy today:

1) Earlier this year, a Federally-funded study began to send “gay lingo” text messages to methamphetamine addicts to try to get them to use fewer drugs and more condoms. The cost to taxpayers for this program? $509,840!

Leading the project is Dr. Cathy Reback of the Friends Research Institute, Inc., in Baltimore. She and her team hope that, by sending these “gay lingo” text messages out for the next four years, methamphetamine users will clean up their act. The details of the study include the following parameters:

• The 285 study participants will be divided into three groups of gay meth users.
• All participants will report on their progress using self-evaluation forms.
• The first group will be able to communicate back and forth with the researchers.
• The second group will get text messages, but no two-way communication.
• The last group will be the control group and won’t get any messages at all.
• Thus, the program breaks down as follows: five text messages a day, for four years, to 285 study participants who will then report back every week, all for a cost to taxpayers of $509,840, or $1,789 per gay, methamphetamine-addicted man who engages in high risk sexual behaviors.

In a different reality, this might be a worthwhile project. But we are running annual trillion dollar deficits, we have a national debt load of almost $17 TRILLION, and there are far more other medical research needs that could better use another $500,000 of research money. Plus, there appears to be some serious flaws in this study:

• The sample size is very small, less than one hundred subjects per group, making extrapolation to a general population very dicey. Given the higher death rate of drug abusers, the sample saize will probably get even smaller over time.
• The study relies on self-evaluation forms. Drug abusers are probably not the most reliable people when it comes to non-drug related activities like filling out forms. I doubt the study leaders will get cogent, timely, and reliable data from a self evaluation form process.
• And even the sample size is extrapolatable and the forms are filled out correctly and in a timely manner, who cares? The population of gay men meth users who MAY benefit from a text program is miniscule compared to the number of Americans who die every year from breast cancer, lung cancer, colon cancers, dementia, and drunk driving.

Better to take limited resources and apply those resources to the bigger health issues of our time and actually solve some major issue challenges for the country than to spend money on every possible health issue and resolve nothing.

Side note: According to a blurb in the April 19, 2013 issue of The Week magazine, according to a study by the Rand group, in 2010 the nation spent a whopping $109 billion to treat dementia in the U.S. We also spent $102 billion to treat heart disease and $72 billion to fight cancer. It is my opinion that limited health care and research resources should be spent fighting these major national health issues and not on a questionable study on a very small segment of the population.

2) Interesting statistic from the June, 2013 issue of Reason magazine. When Nixon started the so-called war on drugs in 1971, nonviolent drug offenders constituted less than 10% of all prisoners in all U.S. jails. Today, nonviolent drug offenders constitute more than 25% of all prisoners in all jails. And this 25% is of a much larger prison population.

Thus, we are locking up more people on both an absolute and percentage basis for nonviolent drug usage and the drug problem in this country is nowhere close to being curtailed, the original hope of Nixon back over forty years ago. Isn’t it about time we stop the insanity and exit the war on drugs, let people do to their bodies what they want to do as long as they are no endangering others, break the monetary back of the drug cartels, and save the money of trials, imprisonment, and enforcement related to a program that has failed for forty years?

3) Speaking of wasting money on idiotic wars, consider a New York Times article that was summarized in the May 10, 2013 issue of The Week magazine. According to the reporting, on a monthly basis for years, the United States has been sending suitcases, backpacks, and even plastic shopping bags filled with U.S. cash directly to the President of Afghanistan, President Karzai, in a vain attmept to influence events in the country.

Unfortunately, much of that cash, according to the Times, has ended up fueling corruption and in the hands of drug warlords and the Taliban, our sworn enemy in this ill-fated conflict. The article quotes one involved U.S. official with the following insight: “The biggest source of corruption in Afghanistan is the United States.” Well said, sad but true.

Members of Congress belatedly became outraged when they learned of this mess, with Congressman Jason Chaffetz stating: “I thought we were trying to clean up the waste, fraud, and abuse in Afghanistan.” Two things Congressman: First, while I applaud your outrage, why weren’t you and your Congressional peers doing your job and identifying this waste, fraud, and abuse years ago before we probably wasted billions of dollars?

Second, you and your peers have not been able to clean up the waste, fraud, and abuse in Washington’s programs and government entities, what makes you think you are capable of doing the same thing half way around the world?

4) Politicians and others have been making a big deal of the fact that many recent college graduates are leaving school with a diploma, a good thing, and massive student loan debt, a bad thing. This is especially trying for the many recent graduates who cannot find a good starting job because the mismanagement of the economy by the political class. They end up with low paying jobs but still have to pay off student loans.

No one seems to have come up with a good solution other than improving the ability of the economy to generate new job growth that allow recent graduates to find a good pay job to more easily pay off their debt. However, that does not appear to be an ability of the Federal government to execute to any degree.

Plus, according to a recent story by the Huffington Post that was summarized in the May 31, 2013 issue of The Week magazine, the government may not be in a hurry to fix any aspect of the student loan program. Why? According to Huffington, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the Federal Department of Education will make about $51 billion in profit from the student loan program in 2013.

Disgraceful, that the Federal government would use the student loan industry and processes to generate profits for itself. Where in any part of the Constitution, Bill of Rights, or our history does it say that the Federal government should be a profit generating entity, especially on the back of our kids?

To put this into perspective, the article points out that the Federal government’s profits in this endeavor is greater than the profits of Apple and Exxon and is larger than the COMBINED annual profits of the country’s four largest banks. Profits all on the backs of our kids graduating from college.

5) Edward Snowden is being condemned by many in the political class and Federal government as a traitor for telling the country that Washington, the Obama administration specifically, was abusing and shredding the Fourth Amendment with its massive electronics spying. I prefer to see him as a heroic figure who gave up the good life, his freedom as an American, and his high salary to protect the Constitution.

Nevertheless, if many view him as a traitor for giving up government secretes, what would you call those in the Federal government who were responsible for the top, top secret defense plans that the Chinese government recently hacked? According to an article in the June 7, 2013 issue of The Week, Chinese hackers stole the designs of some of America’s most sensitive and advanced weapons systems:

• The advanced Patriot missile system.
• Two ballistic missile systems that are the backbone of all our defense systems.
• The design for the F-35 fighter jet that the American taxpayer has already paid $14 TRILLION for without much success.
• Two dozen other defense weapons systems designs.

If Snowden is a traitor for divulging non-military, non-top secret, non-defense information and material, what should happen to those in Washington whose incompetence allowed the Chinese to steal our major defense plans that the American taxpayer paid TRILLIONS of dollars to develop? Insanity and incompetence combined together is never pretty.

That wraps up our third day of review relative to political class and government insanity. Every day, every month, those in Washington, the government, Congress, and the White House find new ways to astound us, to disappoint us, and to outrage us. And that astonishment, disappointment, and outrage will continue at least through tomorrow’s post

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