We currently leave the Obama Care insanity to a separate set of posts each month since the wreckage that piece of legislation is raining down on the country is too much to include in our regular insanity reviews. This week and last we have dealt with the normal set of ineptness of our politicians, in Washington and elsewhere throughout the land.
Today, will mostly be a quick hit type of post where we do a quick review of many pieces of insanity that speak for themselves, requiring no further explanation or discussion on our part.
1) According to an article from www.Qz.com, that was summarized in the September 17, 2013 issue of The Week magazine, the median income for U.S. households was $51,017 in 2012, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. This is down a whopping 8.3% from 2007. From previous posts that this is a downward trend, it was not happening only during the Great Recession.
Thus, despite the claims of the Obama administration that the economy is improving, you cannot tell it from how much money an average household is bringing in, the only true measure of how healthy an economy is.
2) According to a recent article from Forbes magazine that was summarized in the November 22, 2013 issue of The Week magazine, between 1995 and 2012, 50 billionaires collected an estimated $11.3 million in Federal government farm subsidies, according to the Enviornmental Working Group. However, very few of them even live on a farm, never mind working on a farm.
This free money comes out to about $226,000 per billionaire, more than the median annual household income of more than four average U.S. households. Now ask yourself: is this the best way to spend over $11 million of taxpayer wealth, giving it to billionaires, or would it have better spent on feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, helping the addicted, or just plain giving it back to the American taxpayer?
3) According to a recent Gallup poll that was reported on by the November 8, 2013 issue of The Week magazine, 52% of Americans believe there is “plenty of opportunity” to get ahead in America. 15 years ago in 1998, that same question found that 81% of Americans believed there was “plenty of opportunity” to get ahead. What a difference in fifteen short years, an almost 36% drop off.
When a country loses hope for the future, than there is no hope for the future. We are getting dangerously close to that tipping point in the history of our country, no thanks to the ineptness of the leadership in the political class.
4) According to the New York Times, as reported in the November 8, 2013 issue of The Week magazine, over the past 10 years, 94% of the large Federal government information technology projects that were undertaken failed miserably, the Standish Group research firm reported. Standish found that more than half of the projects were either delayed, ran over budget, or fell short of user expectations or needs. A whopping 41% failed completely.
The real question is why any American still thinks that the whole Obama Care information systems and website effort will ever work, given this horrid track record of the political class in Washington to accomplish hardly any other substantial Federal government information technology effort. A 6% success rate, a 94% failure rate cannot be viewed in any profession, any human endeavor as something to be proud of.
5) Although Obama may be claiming that the economy is getting better, we already know that is a bogus claim, given how we just discussed the fact that household incomes continue to plummet. We also know that there are over 23 million Americans that are either unemployed or underemployed. Almost 50 million Americans require government food assistance.
Add to those dire numbers the reality, as documented in a recent Business Week article, that in August the U.S. ran a still embarrassingly large monthly total trade deficit of just under $39 billion in August, 2013. One month, we as a country imported about $39 billion more goods and services than we exported. You cannot say the economy is getting healthy when the trade deficits remain so high month over month.
6) The Washington political class has led the country into three military conflicts in the past ten years or so. What has that gotten us besides trillions of dollars in debt, thousands of our military personnel killed or wounded, and hundreds of thousands civilians killed or wounded, according to Steve Chapman writing in the Chicago tribune:
- A reinvigorated Al Qaida in Iraq is resulting in 20 Iraqis being killed EVERY DAY.
- In Afghanistan, we are still fighting a fruitless battle against jihadists, the government we support is riddled with corruption, and the Taliban are more than likely to take over again once the western powers withdrawal their military forces in 2014.
- Libya has become a “lawless haven for terrorists," e.g. Benghazi murders.
7) Speaking of waste, consider the damage and wasting of innocent lives that our government’s drone warfare against terrorists has resulted in, according to a report in the May 20, 2013 article in The Week magazine:
- The London based Bureau of Investigative journalism claims its research estimates that U.S. drone attacks have killed more than 800 civilians and nearly 200 children in Pakistan since 2004.
- McClatchy News investigators found that the U.S. claim that it is attacking and killing only Al Qaida fighters and leaders is not true since it found that 482 people killed by U.S. drone attacks in a recent 12 month period were not Al Qaida fighters.
- People in many countries in the Middle East live in daily fear that some unknown, far off American military operator of a dangerous bomb laden drone will unexpectedly wipe out themselves or their friends and family, heightening the stress of just living a normal day and the hatred they have for America.
- They saddest part of this whole killing effort is that even if the Federal government takes out a high profile terror target, that dead target is quickly replaced with another terrorist nut case but the hatred of America has been increased.
8) One last bit of insanity for today, an item that proves American politicians are not the only inept rulers in the world. According to a short article in the November, 2013 issue of Reason magazine, government officials in Gothenburg, Sweden have ordered a local nightclub to reduce the volume of music played in the club since the volume was not healthy for the fish kept in the aquarium in the club.
Makes you wonder what the job description read like for the government bureaucrat who actually researched the volume of the nightclub music in order to write the order. If that is what those local taxpayers are spending their taxpayer money on, I would ask for a refund.
That’s it for today. Unfortunately, we are going to need one more day to get all of this month’s insanity covered, it is that bad, thanks to the American political class.
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:
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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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