This is the fifth but not last installment, at least for this month, of political class insanity. Every month we track and discuss the latest insanity, lunacy, and wasteful spending habits of politicians in Washington, around the country, and around the world. Wealth gets wasted, issues never get resolved, and we are stuck listening to the worst set of politicians ever to hold office in the history of our nation.
This is not the last installment for this month because you can never tell, by the hour, how much insanity will pop up from Washington. Also, the most recent insanity has had to do with the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care, insanity which we now have to cover every month in a separate set of posts. Today, we will focus on just the regular run-of-the-mill insanity.
1) Just since this past January, the Social Security Administration (SSA) has mailed out disability insurance (SSDI) checks worth $1.29 billion to an estimated 36,000 people who were still on the job and thus ineligible for benefits. This was the conclusion of a recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) investigation: “Some work activity indicates beneficiaries are not disabled and therefore not entitled to [SS]DI benefits,” the report stated.
A doctor, who had been earning $22,000 a month, was also collecting $2,500 in monthly SSDI benefits during a three-year period, for a total overpayment of about $90,000, the GAO reported. Another man with “personality disorders” began working just one day after his disability benefits were approved in 2006.
After reviewing this case in 2011, SSA suspended his monthly cash benefits “and subsequently assessed an overpayment of more than $57,000 due to his work activity” during the five years he was receiving disability checks. Five years he was cheating the American taxpayer before the government actually did their enforcement job. Disgraceful.
Rather than throw this guy into jail for fraud, he is now required to pay back the fraud amount in increments of $75 a month. At this rate, it will take him 63 years to pay off the fraud, at which point he will be way past 100 years old. In other words, Americans can kiss a lot of that $57,000 good bye because the government did not do its job again.
This is the just fraud that the GAO found, you can be pretty sure there is a lot more than $1.29 billion going out the door that should not. Like the lady the other day who got only three years in jail for defrauding the American taxpayer of over $6 million, this type of behavior will go on until the government does its job and some people start getting some longer, real jail sentences as disincentives to others.
2) We have always lamented that one of the biggest issues that has not been resolved by the Washington political class for the past 40 years is their inability or unwillingness to develop and implement a coherent and effective national energy strategy and policy. We proposed a process to do such a thing in “Love My Country, Loathe My Government” but that approach appears to be beyond the ability to execute such an approach in Washington.
This lack of success in the energy field was driven home by a recent report from AAA. Last week saw the 1000th consecutive day of average gas prices in the U.S. over $3 a gallon. The national average for regular gas is now $3.52 a gallon, up from about $1.89 when Obama took office. According to an analyst from Cameron Hanover, for every penny the price of gasoline increases, it costs American consumers an additional $4 million per day. That equals $1.4 billion over an entire year.
That is $1.4 billion that cannot be spent in restaurants, expanding businesses, taking vacations, etc., expenditures that would help expand the economy and create jobs, something this economy sorely needs. Even worse, a lot of that $1.4 billion heads overseas since the political class, after 40 years, has not been able to make us energy independent so that our energy costs stay domestic. Just another gross failure of the people in Washington that we end up paying for every day of our lives.
3) Two weeks ago the White House was supposed to have been the scene of a Hispanic movie concert event but it was postponed because of the shootings at the Navy Yard in D.C. This was not going to be a low key event since major music stars, Gloria Estefan, Ricky Martin, Raul Malo, Prince Royce, Natalie Cole, Lila Downs, Arturo Sandoval, Romeo Santos, Alejandro Sanz and Marco Antonio Solis, were scheduled to perform.
Which raises an interesting question: the budget sequester in March required that the White House be closed to tours for ordinary Americans. But the White House and Federal government somehow found enough taxpayer money to hold a private concert for the President and his friends, family and associates?
This was to have been the third concert in a series of high profile concerts, the first two having been a Memphis soul music concert in April and a tribute to Carole King in May.
But there is not enough money because of the sequester for White House tours by ordinary Americans.
Also, the White House is currently going through a whopping $376 million renovation but there is not enough money because of the sequester for White House tours by ordinary Americans.
A judge recently ruled that the Obama administration did not have to tell the American people what visitors, lobbyists, corporate executives, friends, etc. are visiting the White House but ordinary Americans are not allowed into the White House for a simple tour.
Somebody has very, very screwed up priorities since it is the ordinary Americans in this country that finance concerts, finance renovations, and get stuck with the bill from corporate cronyism and lobbyists, the likes of which we no longer get to know, thanks to this ill conceived ruling by a judge. Insanity.
4) The Heritage Foundation reported on September 8, 2013 that the Department of Energy had award $45 million in research grants and contracts to different companies, universities, and other entities to do research in advanced transportation fields. On the surface this sounds like a good thing, findings ways to use energy more efficiently.
However, there are two things wrong with this kind of thinking. Since the Department of Energy was created four decades ago, I assume that this type of dispersion of taxpayer money has been going on since its inception with no discernible, societal benefits in return. Try to name just one major innovation or breakthrough in energy that the Department of Energy is responsible for, I bet you can’t. So what makes anyone think that throwing another $45 million up in the wind will be any different?
Second, some of the major recipients of this free taxpayer money included $1.5 million to Caterpillar, $1.75 million to General Electric, $3 million to 3M Company, and $350,000 to Ford Motor Company. So almost 14% of the total went to just four huge companies, companies that make billions and billions of dollars every year in sales and profits.
If these companies saw a fruitful research project that involved advanced transportation opportunities, don’t you think they would spend some of their own wealth to explore and develop that opportunity? Why does the American taxpayer have to fund what the American shareholders in Ford, 3M, etc. should be funding? Makes no sense, especially given the Department of Energy’s nonexistent track record of success.
5) One last piece of insanity for today, we will need to continue with more insanity tomorrow, but this last piece of lunacy definitely comes form the “you cannot make this stuff up” category. According to the wonderful website Spendopia, in the summer 2009, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) granted over $60,000 of taxpayer wealth to the Virginia Commonwealth University's Department of Psychology to study the effects of hookah smoking in Jordanian university students.
The study was titled "Waterpipe Tobacco Smoking: Trends, Toxicants, and Capacity Building in Jordan." The study was conducted in order to see the effects smoking waterpipes (hookah or shisha) had on the body and to see how and if that was associated with the 4.9 million smoking related deaths that are recorded each year.
A few major problems and observations here:
- Who Cares?
- Why are we studying health issues in Jordan, wouldn’t this money be better spent studying health issues in this country, given our ever escalating health care costs?
- You do not need a $60,000 study to figure out that smoking, in any form, causes death.
- Who cares?
Ridiculous waste of money on a very, very small segment of people that are not even in this country. How insane is that.
More insanity 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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