January, 2014 Political Class Insanity, Part 4: Blowing Up Animal Carcasses, Blowing Up The Budget, Door Knobs Criminalized, and More

This is the fourth, but not last, installment for this month’s review of political class insanity. The first post in this month’s series can be accessed at:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2014/01/january-2014-political-class-insanity_5.html

Unfortunately, a series that started as one post a month has grown into a series that needs 5-6 posts each month to capture the idiocy, wasteful spending, and ineffective government programs that our political class rules over. The ineptness of today’s politicians would be funny if their actions did not have such a detrimental effect on our wealth, our families, our health, and our freedom.

1) A December 23, 2013 article from the Washington Post had a very depressing view of what is likely to happen in Afghanistan after most of the international troops leave the country in 2014. The basis of the conclusions shared in the article come from the National Intelligence Estimate which included input from 16 different intelligence agencies within the Federal government.

Their main conclusion: after more than ten years of U.S. armed forces presence during which we probably spent billions of dollars and lost thousands of brave soldiers to fighting, our main enemy in the country, the Taliban, and other power brokers, will become increasingly influential and that the country will likely and quickly descend into chaos.

Another monumental waste of U.S. wealth and life for no discernible, long term benefit. Par for the course for our political class.

2) According to a New York Times article that was summarized in the December 20, 2013 issue of The Week magazine, about 440,000 Americans die as a result of preventable errors in U.S. hospitals every year. Viewed another way, one out of every six deaths in this country is caused by preventable hospital mistakes, making this form of death the third leading cause of death in the country every year. 

The third leading cause of death and the Obama Care legislation does virtually nothing to prevent this type of preventable health disaster, Instead, the legislation spends billions and billions of dollars on a Rube Goldberg like health insurance operation that has no chance of success. Insanity and certainly a bad case of priorities: the good news is that you now have health insurance via Obama care but have am excellent chance of dying when you go into a hospital to execute that health insurance option.

3) If it is any consolation, political class idiocy and uselessness is not confined to only American politicians. The Canadian city of Vancouver recently enacted new building codes that require that all new building construction have levers rather than door knobs on the doors within that new construction. Apparently, the politicians in the city had nothing better to do than debate, write and pass door knob vs. door lever legislation.

Rather than talk about fixing roads, improving schools, reducing the crime rate, and other important issues that are likely facing the good citizens of Vancouver, the city politicians are worried about door knobs. More bad priorities by a set of politicians that probably do not know how to solve the real problems facing their citizens and settle on making up and fixing fake crises and problems.

4) How out of control is government spending? We have often mentioned the fact that our Federal government national debt is a mind boggling $17 TRILLION. This is an individual debt burden of well over $50,000 for every man, woman, and child in the United States.

But consider another measure of how out of control government spending is, courtesy of a Washington Times article from late 2013. The writer went to the latest IRS tax return data publicly available, 2010, and added up the total income of those Americans who earned over $69,000 that year. This cutoff number obviously includes a lot of America’s middle class and all of the upper classes relative to income levels.

The total income of those earning more than $69,000 in 2010 was an impressive $5.1 TRILLION. Impressive until you realize that the annual Federal government budget is about $3.5 TRILLION. Thus, if you would have to tax the over $69,000 earning Americans at a whopping 68.6% just to fund one year of Federal government spending.

If you factor in state and local government spending, you would probably have to tax these citizens at an 80-90% rate just to cover one year’s worth of U.S. government spending. And even this high level of taxation would do nothing to start reducing the $17 TRILLION in national debt burden.

Despite these onerous facts and statistics, the Washington political class has no clue or inclination to reduce unneeded and wasteful spending. We are fast approaching a point of no return where there is no tax level high enough or wide enough that will be able to fund an ever growing government spending addiction and the resultant obesity of national debt. 68.6% tax levels and 80-90% tax levels are not taxation, they are repression and slavery.

5) The Hill’s website reported on October 4, 2013 that through unanimous consent agreements Friday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid passed resolutions, including Senate Resolution 266, which designates Oct. 7-13 National Chess Week. Yes, forget the $17 TRILLION deficit, the government shutdown, over 20 million Americans unemployed or underemployed, the crumbling infrastructure, our failing public schools. Let’s take up 100 Senators’ time and pass a resolution for the game of chess.

When asked about the resolution, Reid said that the Chess Resolution is important because, “The game is known to…enhance critical thinking and problem-solving skills.” Maybe the Senate should actually play a few games of chess because collectively it certainly lacks “critical thinking and problem solving skills."

6) The following piece of political class and government insanity comes to us from the 1990s but apparently is still part of a government publication  today. In case you never got around to disposing of dead animal carcasses last year, do not fret. The U.S. government has developed and published a step by step guide for doing just that. 

“The Government Guide For Exploding Animal Carcasses” was first published back in 1995 by the USDA and Forest Service. It is a how to guide for the obliteration of large, unwanted dead animals. Critical and important selections from the guide include: 

• “It is important to consider location, time of year, and size of the carcass when selecting the quantity and type of explosive to accomplish the obliteration task.”
• “Place 1 pound (1.36 kilograms) of explosives under the carcass in four locations. The carcass then can be rolled onto the explosives if necessary.”
• “Horseshoes should be removed to minimize dangerous flying debris.”
• “Carcasses that have been partially obliterated will generally not show any trace of existence the next day.” 
• “Consult a qualified blaster when explosives are to be used.”

Apparently, the booklet of instructions is illustrated to show you where to put the explosives beneath those pesky carcasses.

Of all the problems the country has faced over the past two decades, why do we think the need for government intervention was required to help citizens blow up dead, large animal carcasses? How many citizens could this instruction booklet possibly affect, ten, twelve, across the country? How many government employees were involved researching, writing, proofreading, approving, and publishing such nonsense? And worse of all, the last instruction is to hire a professional, “qualified blaster” to do this type of thing. Shouldn’t the professional know all of this without the government wasting taxpayer wealth spreading this type of information?

You cannot make this insanity up.

7) Back to the Federal budget before we close out the insanity for today. Consider the following graphic from the Heritage Foundation where they show how every dollar of Federal tax you pay is spent:

Observations:

• About 64% of every tax dollar we pay is shuffled around in the federal bureaucracy and then paid right back out again as checks for retirement, medical care, housing assistance, and food assistance to different types of Americans.
• 19% goes into a black hole called the Defense Department, an organization that government auditors have called so screwed up from an accounting perspective that the organization is incapable of being audited.
• 6% goes into repaying the $17 TRILLION national debt.
• Thus, if you are a younger, healthy, working American, about 89% of what you pay in taxes goes to other people and a near dysfunctional Defense Department accoutning disgrace. 
• That leaves only an 11% chance that you might see some immediate benefit from paying Federal taxes.
• The fact that only 3% of the Federal spending goes towards transportation programs and only 1% goes to education might explain why our transportation infrastructure is crumbling and our kids are severely under educated vs. the rest of the world.

How did we allow ourselves to get so screwed up or allow our politicians to get us so screwed up? The Federal government is now nothing much more than a massive, inefficient redistribution of wealth machine with no added benefit, wasting so much money that a mere pittance goes towards the greater good: sound transportation infrastructure and quality education for our kids.

That’s it for the insanity today but not for the month, more to follow 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