http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/09/part-1-september-2013-political-class.html
We do this political class insanity at the beginning of every month. Since 2009, when we started this feature, we have seen the monthly insanity grow almost exponentially every month. What once could be summarized in one blog post now takes many days to cover. Thus, it will not be likely that today’s information will be the end of the insanity.
1) Government insanity is not restricted to Washington. A blurb in the July, 2013 issue of Reason magazine shows that the government insanity reaches down to the local government also. James Kelly, a homeless man in Houston, was actually given a summons for “disturbing the contents of a garbage can.” Kelly is quoted in the article that he was just looking for something to eat, given his homeless status, but apparently in Houston trying not to go hungry is against the law.
Three things wrong here. First, the man is homeless and hungry, do we really have to make him a criminal? It does not appear he was flinging the garbage into the street or attacking some one with it, he was just hungry. Second, do we really think that he is going to pay the summons/fine, he’s homeless! Third, Houston’s local government bureaucracy actually spent taxpayer resources and money to write and enforce a law about “disturbing the contents of a garbage can?” Is this really necessary? Insane.
2) But denying food to America’s hungry seems to be an ongoing theme of politicians in America. Not only is looking for food in a garbage can a criminal offense, we previously reported on a fight hunger program that was shut down by the Louisiana state government that allowed hunters to donate food that they had hunted to local food banks, denying hundreds of thousands of meals to hungry citizens of that state. The details of this insanity can be found at:
http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/08/part-3-august-political-class.html
Not to be outdone, New York City recently shut down a load of food banks. The reason? These food banks had been collecting healthy, uneaten, fresh surplus food from city restaurants and giving it to the hungry and homeless in New York without the city being able to check for SALT CONTENT.
The hungry and homeless were denied the same food that other city residents would have eaten in these restaurants who donate because no one could check the salt content which could be unhealthy. Thus, better to deny food to today’s hungry and homeless in the hopes of lowering their salt intake would help them live longer. Beyond bizarre reasoning, let them suffer from not having any food but their salt profile is improving. You cannot make this stuff up.
3) Fortunately, the same food insanity was thwarted in Dallas which was also trying to stop the hungry from eating perfectly good food. The courts stepped in when the Dallas political class passed an ordinance that required any program that fed the homeless and hungry had to fulfill a long list of mostly useless requirements including having restroom and washing facilities, city approval of food bank locations, and supervision by someone who had taken a food safety course.
In most of these food banks disasters, the operators of the food banks have been doing the same thing for years and decades without seriously injuring the health of the needy. These are compassionate and loving people trying to take care of Americans who are down on their luck. It is a shame that the politicians in this country try to prevent their kind actions via stupid regulations and ordinances.
4) According to a recent analysis and report from the Special Inspector General For Afghanistan Reconstruction, hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars are being misspent or wasted. The article, printed in the August 9, 2013 issue of The Week magazine, pointed out that the Pentagon is insisting that $772 million worth of aircraft be purchased for the Afghan military even though… wait for it… “the Afghans lack the capacity to operate and maintain them.”
The Inspector General found little or no oversight of contractors and the overall conclusion “is one of weak monitoring, duplicitous contractors, and hundreds of millions spent on facilities the U.S. military won’t use or the Afghans don’t want or can’t feasibly use.” And there are still no White House tours and apparently, no one losing their jobs in the Pentagon or this administration for wasting hundreds of millions of dollars.
5) The fabulous Bankrupting America website had a fascinating, if depressing, article on its website on August, 22, 2013. It cited a New York Times article that stated that in June 2013, American households’ real median income was $2,400 below the level it was at in June 2009, the month the Great Recession officially ended and five months after President Obama took office.
This is what the administration’s and Washington’s economic policies and lack of expertise have wrought on every American, a substantial drop in household income AFTER the recession ended. According to the website, theoretically, the following is what American households could have purchased with that missing $2,400 if the Washington political class had even the faintest idea of how to keep household income stagnant in the past four years:
- 5 Car Payments. Americans’ average monthly car payment is $460. $2,400 could pay for more than five months of payments.
- Back To School Gear For About Four Children. The Associated Press recently reported: “The National Retail Federation trade group predicts that families with school-age children will spend an average of $634.78 on shoes, clothes, supplies and electronics, with total back-to-school spending expected to reach $72.5 billion.” $2,400 could fund back-to-school shopping for nearly four children.
- 3 Months Of Food. The average four-person household spends $777 on food a month. $2,400 could pay for more than three months of food.
- 2 Years Of College Textbooks. According to The Huffington Post, “the College Board puts the annual cost of books and materials at $1,168.” $2,400 is more than two years worth of books.
- Wipe Out Half Of All Credit Card Debt. According to CBS News, in the first quarter of 2013, “Average credit card debt per borrower fell 1.7 percent to $4,878 …” $2,400, of course, would erase about half of that debt.
The math is simple, the economic policies of the past four years out of Washington have been a disaster, hampering American families’ ability to afford transportation, by clothes and school supplies for their kids, feed their families, help their college age kids afford school, and ease their credit debt burden.
6) The Federal government obviously has a lot of secrets. It obviously sits on a whole lot of sensitive information. It obviously wants to protect those secrets and sensitive information. That is why it goes through what was thought to be a thorough employment screening process before hiring anyone who has access to that information and secrets.
Or so we thought. According to an article in the July 15, 2013 issue of Business Week, those secrets and sensitive information might not be as protected as we think and as the nation deserves:
- Former investigator and employment screener, Kayla Smith, submitted 1,600 phony credit reports over an 18 month period, according to the Inspector General for the U.S. Office Of Personnel Management (OPM).
- She pleaded guilty to these potential breeches in security and received three years probation and paid a criminal fine of almost $100,000.
- Ramon Davila was another screener. He filed numerous reports claiming he interviewed people for background checks that he never actually talked to and claimed to have obtained records that he never obtained.
- He pleaded guilty to Federal charges and is awaiting sentencing.
- Another screener, Anthony Domico, claimed to have interviewed someone that had been dead for over ten years. He got five months prison time and paid almost $70,000 in criminal fines.
- In total, 20 investigators/screeners have been found guilty or convicted of “fraudulently manipulating documents.”
According to the article, the government is pretty sure that these are not the only culprits, that screenings and backgrounds checks are being falsified and forged by many others.
The obvious issue here is that there are quite possibly many people that were hired as government workers under false pretenses and who have access to some of the most secret secrets and most sensitive sensitive information that the Federal government possesses. Who knows what damage they will wrought on our national security, our personal identities, and who knows what else. All because the Federal government and the political class that operate it cannot even manage to run a competent hiring process.
Starving America’s hungry, wasting money for no reason in Afghanistan, cutting our household income, and bypassing security protocols and processes when hiring Federal workers. Horrific performances from your political class, a performance that we still have not covered in full. More horrors to come tomorrow.
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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