If you read enough of our monthly posts on political class insanity, you cannot help but wonder if we are currently experiencing the most incompetent set of politicians in our country’s history. Given they have been unable to resolve a major issue or problem for the past fifty or so years, e.g. failing public schools, lost war on drugs, etc., it is hard to defend them from a competency perspective. Let the following bits of lunacy speak for themselves:
1) We have previously reported on how wasteful and stupid many of the projects funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) are:
http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2011/06/national-science-foundation-wasting.html
Stupidity funded by the taxpayer included in that review included the following “scientific” studies:
- How to ride a bike.
- When did dogs become man's best friend?
- Are political views genetically determined?
- How to improve the quality of wine.
- Do boys like to play with trucks and girls like to play with dolls?
- How rumors get started.
- Do parents choose trendy baby names?
- When is the best time to buy a ticket to a sporting event?
- How much housework does a husband create for his wife?
- A virtual recreation of the 1964/1965 World's Fair.
- Sponsorship of a YouTube rap video.
- A review of event ticket prices on Stub Hub.
- What motivates people to make political donations.
Given its history, it should not surprise anyone that one of the latest NSF taxpayer funded project is to spend $2.25 million to study the emergence, transmission and evolution of facial tumor disease in Tasmanian devils. These creatures are native to Australia which is half way around the world from our $17 TRILLION national debt, our chronically high unemployment, and the cancellation of White House tours. In other words, why is the American taxpayer sending over $2 million around the world to study a disease of a creature that is not native to our country?
Now, the NSF tried to justify the grant by claiming by understanding how the tumors manifest themselves in Tasmania devils we would get a better understanding of how to combat cancer in humans: "Across Tasmania, devil populations are being decimated by an infectious cancer called Tasmanian devil facial tumor disease. This study will investigate how transmission is related to heterogeneity in contacts and genomic variation in host and/and or tumor within populations. Genetic studies may reveal underlying causes of devil facial tumor longevity, perhaps providing information on cancer recurrence in humans."
It is a pretty weak link if you look at their wording: may reveal, perhaps providing information, etc. What they call justification for a terrible waste of taxpayer money I call insanity and a total waste of taxpayer money for a low potential view into cancer in humans. With $17 TRILLION in national debt and four years in a row of TRILLION annual deficits, we cannot afford “perhaps.”
2) This past week or so the President has been traveling around the country with some rehashed and invalid economic plans in an effort to bolster the middle class and his absurd claim that he is a friend of the middle class. But I sometimes wonder if even knows what the middle class is since from his actions, he certainly does not send a message that he does:
- The White House recently announced that he and the first family will be vacationing at Martha’s Vineyard this August.
- He will be staying at the $7.6 million home of a Chicago corporate finance manager because the $20 million home he and his family usually stay at is not available.
- This home features water access to Chilmark Pond, tennis courts and swimming pools and sits on nine and a half acres with ocean views and a basketball court.
- This is not to be confused with the vacation he and his extended family took earlier this month to three countries in Africa which cost the American taxpayer about $100 million.
- This is also not to be confused with the extended vacation he and his family took back at the Christmas holidays in the Hawaiian islands.
- This is not to be confused with other vacations that members of his family have taken to Mexico, Spain, western ski resorts, etc. over the past few years.
Tough to say you are in tune with the needs with the middle class when you are taking multiple luxury vacations in a single year, vacations that most middle class Americans could not afford in their lifetimes.
3) Most informed voters know that Detroit recently declared bankruptcy and is a true fiscal basket case. Which makes a recent CNN news report all that more ludicrous. According to the report, despite its crumbling financials, infrastructure, and city, Detroit is going ahead with plans to build the NHL Detroit Red Wings a new $444 million arena, apparently with the support of the Michigan governor. How does this make any sense:
- Detroit’s unemployment rate for June was 9.4%.
- The city has billions of dollars in debt obligations it cannot possibly pay back.
- The illiteracy rate in the city is approaching 50%.
- While the new arena might create a few temporary construction jobs, it will not create many long term jobs since 1) workers in the current hockey arena will just move over to the same jobs in the new arena and 2) any suburban hockey fans coming into the depths of Detroit are not going to hang around there before or after the games to build up the local economy for fear of their lives since, according to the CNN article and report, it takes the understaffed Detroit police an hour on average to respond to emergency calls.
Total insanity to be catering to a professional and wealthy hockey team when so many other societal needs are being unfilled in Detroit.
The one ray of sanity in this fiasco comes from State Senator Gretchen Whitmer who actually ”gets it” from a reality perspective and who actually argued something sensibly when she said: “If you want people to live in the city, and not just visit to go to games, you have to invest in schools, in having the police to respond to calls. There are so many investments that should trump a sports stadium.”
Too bad fiscal political insanity appears to be winning out over Senator Whitmer’s common sense.
4) Just about every Washington plan that tried to fix the fallout from the Great Recession has failed miserably. The latest example of failure comes from a Newsmax article from July 24, 2013. The Obama administration’s HAMP program tried to get mortgage relief via loan term modifications help to American homeowners who were suffering financially as a result of the recession.
The Special Inspector for the Troubled Asset Relief Program recently completed a study audit to see how HAMP was doing and the results were not good:
- According to CNN reporting, of the 1.2 million HAMP mortgage modifications over the past four years, more than 306,000 borrowers have defaulted again, this time on their modified loans.
- Thus, the program has at least a 25% failure rate since the article also points out that another 88,000 home owners are at risk as well. These 88,000 potential defaults could push the failure rate to almost 33%.
- The re-defaults to date, not including the pending 88,000 potential defaults, have cost the American taxpayer over $800 million so far.
- The article points out that the Federal government has already spent $4.4 billion on the program, a program with an unacceptably high failure rate.
- Thus, on average each non-defaulted HAMP home owner received less than $5,000 on average. I doubt that $5,000 made much of a difference for most people that were seeing their homes lose 40-50% of their value, far more than $5,000.
Two pieces of insanity here. First, most real people working real, non-government jobs would be fired if their failure rate on the job was 33%. Unfortunately, that kind of ineptness is tolerated in government programs.
Second, and this is the type of thinking that really ticks you off, is the fact that while $4.4 billion is a lot of money, it is miniscule compared to the overall U.S. mortgage market.
Let’s do some simple math. The Federal Reserve estimates the current value of all residential mortgages in this country is over $13 TRILLION. The Obama administration has spent $4.4 billion to aid that market. $4.4 billion is a paltry .03% of the overall mortgage market. You cannot expect to fix a problem by investing .03% against that problem. .03%, in any situation, provides you absolutely no leverage.
Thus, this problem was doomed to failure relative to its objectives before it even started, a 33% failure rate notwithstanding. All the HAMP program did was save a very, very small number of mortgages from default while wasting $4.4 billion in the process. It never had a chance of making any kind of dent in the mortgage issues in this country as a result of the Great Recession. Insanity.
Okay, I thought we could finish off this month’s insanity with this, the eighth post. However, the insanity is flowing in quicker than I can write it down so we will need at least one more day to get it all in, assuming that the flow of lunacy from the political class does not overwhelm my inbox again.
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:
Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w
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