Friday, July 5, 2013

July, 2013 Political Class Insanity, Part 4: Nobody Knows Nothing, China Gets Our Iraqi Oil, and A Secret Court That Protects No One

This is a fourth in our political class insanity review for this month. As we have gone through time, the insanity and lunacy from the political class seems to have grown exponentially. What used to fill up one blog post a month now takes four, five, or six posts to get in all the stupidity from Washington and elsewhere.

The following links have already listed three days of insanity for the month of July, 2013:

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

http://www.loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/07/july-2013-political-class-insanity-part_4.html

This post starts the fourth post for this month:

1) We have already reviewed this month how ignorant and out of touch with reality the Inspector General for the Federal Reserve and the FBI Director have been shown to be. They both recently testified in front of Congressional committees and could not answer even the most basic questions from Congressional members despite their high level and high paying executive positions.

But ignorance is not contained to these two political appointees. Jay Carney is the President’s press secretary. He talks to the press just about every day. He should be able to handle most of the questions the press throws out to him, that is his job, also high paying.

But current news reports are carrying stories about how Mr. Carney has avoided thousands of questions from reporters over the past few years despite the Obama promise that he would operate the most transparent administration of all time. According to the news reports, since 2011, he has failed to answer 9,846 questions. His favorite excuses include: I don’t have the answer (1905 times), I would refer you to someone else (1383 times), and you already know the answer (1125 times).

Thus, in the course of the 28 months or so that he has been the White House press secretary, his inability to answer 9,846 questions comes out to about 18 non-answers EVERY DAY. So much for the promise of transparency.

2) A New York Times article that was summarized in the June 14, 2013 issue of The Week identified some real political class insanity. According to the article, over the past few years, Iraq has again become one of the world’s biggest oil producers, shipping 1.5 million barrels of oil out of the country every day.

And here is the insanity: half of those 1.5 million barrels are going directly to China. Our politicians led us into a very cost military experience, costing the American taxpayer untold hundreds of billions of dollars and the lives of thousands of U.S. military personnel. It divided our country for no apparent reason.

And we cannot even get the economic benefit of receiving a large amount of their oil drilling, it goes to China who did nothing to put the country back together, they just hung back until the U.S. and the resources of the American taxpayer did all of the heavy lifting of fixing the country’s economy and oil production industry. Despicable.

But it gets even worse. When you think about it, much of our military mistake in Iraq was financed with government debt funding, much of which came to China. Thus, not only do we not get the benefit of Iraqi oil, that benefit seems to be going to the Chinese, we are stuck with paying interest payments to the same Chinese bond holders who lent us the money to have the military experience in Iraq. Despicable and insulting.

3) One of the scary aspects of the NSA and Obama administration and the fact that they are collecting every American’s electronics communications is that this information could be abused in so many ways. Supporters of this anti-Fourth Amendment snooping are trying to assure us that the Federal government would NEVER abuse or harass Americans using this personal information.

This assurance rings hollow in light of the fact that the Obama administration was actively and viciously using a Federal government agency, the IRS, to harass Americans and political organizations that dared to have a contrary opinion to the Obama administration. It also rings hollow when the President himself claims he did not know this shredding of Americans’ First Amendment rights were being trampled by the IRS.

And now consider this information from a recent USA Today article that was summarized in the June 21, 2013 issue of The Week magazine. According to their research, an astounding 4.9 million people have access to access to classified government information. Also, 1.4 million people have access to top secret government information.

Given how easily Edward Snowden was able to access top secret government data and what he did with that access, do we really think that centrally storing every Americans' personal electronics communications is not going to be abused by someone within the 4.9 million population? No way.

4) Staying with the line of thought on government abuse of spying on Americans, consider some research from the Wall Street Journal that was also summarized in the June 21, 2013 issue of The Week magazine. Those that support the shredding of the Fourth Amendment with all-encompassing government snooping have assured us that a secret court issuing secret warrants by a secret judge will protect our rights and privacy.

That amount of secrecy should scare any American who values their freedom, liberty, and privacy. And the Wall Street Journal supports that fear since it reports that from 1979 to 2012, the secret court, approved 33,900 surveillance request through the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Of the almost 34,000 requests to the court, only 11 were declined, which translates into 99.97% of all secret government request were approved.

This is obviously a rubber stamp court, you cannot convince me that all but 11 cases out of 33,900 requests were good, prime targets for terrorism surveillance probes. Doing a little math, we see that over the 34 years that these requests were made, on average only one request was blocked every THREE years. Compare this to the almost 1,000 requests that were approved EVERY YEAR.

Thus, the argument from supporters that the information the Federal government is collecting will not be abused is absolute garbage when you consider that millions of techie types have clearance to access classified government information and the court that is supposed to be protecting our rights is nothing more than a rubber stamp step in the surveillance state.

5) The wonderful website, Bankrupting America, had a short article posted on their site on June 25, 2013 that discussed more government insanity from…you guessed, the IRS. The same organization that trampled on the First Amendment rights of Americans with a contrary political position than the President, the same organization that illegally stole millions of Americans’ medical records, the organization that wastefully spent tens of millions of dollars every year on lavish conferences for themselves, and the same organization that is paying out $70 million in employee bonuses despite it being forbidden under the budget sequester.

Their latest insanity is a doozy. It appears the IRS sent $46 million to one, SINGLE address in Atlanta, Ga. According to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA), the IRS paid out $46 million to “unauthorized workers” who apparently all live at the same Atlant address. The news of the mysterious money has spurred a variety of questions like:
  • Does IRS they have any idea what they are doing?
  • Is this the result of a lack leadership?
  • Is the brain power of this organization so tiny that they do not have a simple edit baked into their data processing procedures that says something like: once we send out more than a million dollars to one address maybe we should check it out?????
Incredible, indescribable stupidity and incompetence.

The head of the FBI, the Inspector General of the Federal Reserve, the head Presidential Press Secretary, and just about any IRS employee who know nothing or who are totally incompetent. A disastrous foreign policy that results in the American taxpayer funding the oil supplies for China, a court that is supposed to protect Americans’ rights that do nothing of the sort, and almost 5 million people that can potentially access and abuse just about everyone’s private electronic communications.

This is America today and this is the Federal government today, all courtesy of the American political class. And tomorrow will bring more of the same lunacy.

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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