The really depressing aspect of these reviews is that each month they get longer and longer in order to document all of the recent insanity. When we first started writing this freedom and liberty blog in 2009, we almost always could get the latest monthly political class shenanigans into a single post. Last month, it took eight days to accomplish the same task. This month, there is an excellent chance we will break that record of eight straight days of insanity, things are getting that bad.
We seem to be living a political nightmare where things get worse and worse at a quickening pace. Unemployment is still rampant, the war on drugs is still a losing proposition, our public schools still under educate our kids, our borders still leak, and our foreign policy is in tatters. All of these crises come together in this blog every month with no solution to anything in sight.
So buckle up, it is going to be a rough couple of weeks.
1) As we just said, lost war on drugs, skyrocketing national debt, chronic unemployment, stagnant economic growth, a disgraceful foreign policy, the Washington political class has screwed up a lot of things. However, have no fear, what is a prominent member of the U.S. Congress interested in working on?
Congressman Ed Markey has the answer. He has recommended that the Federal Government step in and issue Federal Regulations on one of America’s most pressing issues: Roller coasters. Apparently, a woman recently was not properly secured in a roller coaster and fell to her death.
How big a problem is this? Data is sketchy but I did find a government report from the Consumer Product Safety Commission that found there were 52 deaths tied to amusement rides logged between 1990 and 2004. This comes out to about three and a half deaths a year. But these deaths are from all rides, only some of them are from roller coasters. Thus, we may be looking at only one or two deaths a year from roller coasters.
Additionally, according to the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions or IAAPA, about 297 million people, both adults and children, safely rode 1.7 billion rides in the U.S. in 2011. The chance of being seriously injured on a ride at a fixed-site park in the U.S. is about 1 in 24 million.
I feel sorry for anyone who dies while on a roller coaster. But I also feel sorry for the hundreds of kids that die every year in Chicago from gang violence. I feel sorry for the thousands of kids that are physically and sexually abused every year. I see none of Markey’s enthusiasm in fixing these problems rather than a one in 24 million problem.
Do we really need Federal government Congressional resources being wasted on such trivial things like roller coasters when there is so many more issues affecting millions of Americans? There are fifty state governments and thousands of local government that can worry about roller coaster safety. Just another insanely bad example of priority setting by a Washington politician.
2) But by no means does Congressman Markey have the market cornered on bad Washington priorities. The Independent Journal Review had an interesting article of political class insanity on July 10, 2013. Two House of Representatives Democrats have proposed legislation that would establish a national historical park on the surface of the moon to commemorate where the Apollo missions landed between 1969 and 1972.
The proposed legislation from Congresswoman Donna Edwards and Congressman Eddie Bernice Johnson would create the Apollo Lunar Landing Sites National Historical Park. The park would be comprised of all artifacts left on the surface of the moon from the Apollo 11 through 17 missions. The bill says these sites need to be protected because of the anticipated increase in commercial moon landings in the future.
A national park on the moon. Really? We have solved all of the nation’s problems and there is nothing left to do but use Federal government resources and taxpayer money to establish a park on the surface of the moon, a park that every American living today and in the future is highly unlikely to ever visit. Beyond insanity, pure stupidity.
The Independent Journal Review article went onto do a nice comparison of priorities between putting a park on the moon and other, more pressing issues facing Americans:
1. ObamaCare: A national park on the Moon won’t protect Americans from ObamaCare or address any of the law’s failures.
2. Improve the Economy: A park on the Moon does not create jobs and improve education performance for Americans.
3. Student Loans: How will a national Moon park prevent students loan rates from doubling?
4. IRS: Establishing a national Moon park won’t provide any oversight of the out-of-control and criminal IRS.
5. Energy: A Moon park won’t lower energy costs for Americans or help develop energy independence.
So many issues and these clowns are worried about and planning for a lunar park. Words fail me in these instance of lunacy.
3) The Federal government recently announced a half a million dollar program to help create jobs for young people. The grant announcement of the program included the following justification for the spending: “Marginalized youth are empowered when given a voice and opportunities. Equipping marginalized youth and their communities with economic opportunities and/or business training can help them reach their true potential as entrepreneurs and improve citizen security.”
Great idea. Unemployment rates for younger Americans, particularly African Americans, is much higher than the overall U.S. unemployment rate. Thus, this could be a good program for the youth in our country.
Oh, wait a minute. This $500,000 of American taxpayer is not intended for America’s unemployed youth. It is a State Department grant that is going to help the underemployed and unemployed youth in…. wait for it… in Belize. Why we would ship half a million dollars to a foreign country to help the employment opportunities of their youth when our youth are suffering so when it comes to jobs is way beyond me.
Can anyone tell me where Belize is actually located? Can someone tell me if there are strategic, economic, or homeland security reasons for these expenses? I doubt it and I bet no one in the Federal government can either besides keeping their jobs doing dumb stuff and dumber spending like this.
4) The Weekly Standard on July 22, 2013 had another article on government waste. This article was for only $31,000 of wasteful spending but $31,000 might have been used to hire a teacher or teacher’s aide somewhere in America to start the job of fixing what is broken in our education system.
Plus, as you will see, while this example is for “only“ $31,000, it is repeated very often, every time a high ranking government official retires or leaves office. Thus, $31,000 expenses are repeated over and over with no benefit to any American taxpayer.
The latest to waste $31,000 is former Secretary Of Defense, Leon Panetta. According to the article, $31,000 is being spent to paint an original oil portrait of Panetta that will hang in the Pentagon next to other former heads of the Defense Department. In my view, a totally unnecessary expense in times of trillion dollar annual deficits. The vast majority of Americans will never see Panetta’s portrait, much like they will never see the over priced portraits of many other unnotable or unworthy Washington bureaucrats.
Let’s change this process from a blank check where the taxpayer pays to the following:
- Given the Statue Of Liberty used no taxpayer dollars when it was fully refurbished several decades ago, let’s use that same logic and say no taxpayer dollar swill be used for any Washington bureaucrat portrait, all of whom had less impact on America than the statue of liberty.
- If a former bureaucrat wants his oil portrait done and hung, he could pay for it himself or do a fund raising campaign to get his or her “fans” to donate, much like fans of the Statue Of Liberty did for her refurbishment.
- I would bet that you cold get a quality job done for a lot less than $31,000 if the bureaucrat had to fund the portrait themselves,, saving the taxpayer a lot of money over time.
Okay, that will do it for today. We are just getting warmed up with the latest insanity from the political class. But as you can see from today’s wackiness, national parks on the moon, job development programs for Belize’s youth, roller coaster regulation and more, it will be a long haul to cut through the insanity that the politicians have wrought in just the past 30 days or so.
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