January, 2014 Political Class Insanity, Part 1: Obama's Lies Of The Year, NASA's Wasteful Earthbound Spending, ESPN's Tax Breaks, and More

It is the start of another month which means another round of reviewing all forms of political class insanity from the American political class. We have spent the last week reviewing the myriad of ways that the politicians in this country waste our hard earned wealth on insanely stupid and unnecessary programs and projects. We have spent the middle of the past four months discussing the worst piece of legislation ever written by Washington, Obama Care, and its reign of terror. Over the next few days we will be reviewing general political class insanity in all of its forms.

1) The Bankrupting America website documented some of the latest stupid and wasteful spending from the NASA organization:

• $18,000 to study what happens when 20 individuals spend 70 consecutive days in bed.
• $3 million for a seminar hosted with Georgetown University on how Congress works.
• $390,000 to develop a comic superhero to teach children about the climate change.
• $125,955 to build a 3D pizza printer.

Not only are these stupid expenditures but one has to wonder why NASA of all organizations is trying to find out how Congress works or are worried about teaching kids about climate change. I could have answered their questions a lot more cheaply: 1) Congress does not work and 2) climate change is still open to scientific debate and question.

2) We have reported on many, many shameful instances of the American political class giving unneeded corporate welfare tax breaks and dollars to major corporations. Auto and bank bailouts. Insurance company perks via Obama Care. Marketing dollars for foreign and domestic marketing activities (e.g. the Ex-IM Bank which caters almost solely to Boeing’s aircraft customers).

To this list of corporate welfare recipients, the New York Times recently did an investigative piece on how well ESPN, the premier sports network has worked state level politicians for unneeded tax breaks and benefits:

• With nearly 100 million households paying about $5.54 a month for ESPN, regardless of whether they watch it, the network takes in more than $6 billion a year in subscriber fees alone every year before counting advertising revenue and other sources of revenue. 
• However, ESPN has received about $260 million in state government tax breaks and credits over the past 12 years.
• These figures were compiled by a New York Times analysis of public records. 
• Included in these tax breaks is $84.7 million in development tax credits for a film and digital media program and savings of about $15 million a year after the network successfully lobbied the state of Connecticut for a tax code change in 2000.

Seems everyone gets tax breaks in this country now except for the people that actually pay the bulk of the taxes. Pathetic waste of taxpayer wealth and an insult to those that pay for these tax breaks to unworthy and wealthy corporate welfare recipients.

3) We have been fighting in Afghanistan for over ten years. We have spent hundreds of billions of dollars and lost thousands of lives of our brave armed forces. However, the Associated Press reported on December 25, 2013 that the U.S. Embassy in the capital city of Kabul was hit by at least two Taliban rocket or mortar rounds before dawn on Christmas. So much spent and after more than ten years we have not even secured the capital of the country from attacks. 

Pathetic leadership, pathetic strategic thinking, wasteful use of valuable human and financial resources for nothing in return by the Washington political class, spread over two Presidential administrations.

4) The following insanity is both a good news and a bad news story. According to a Newsmax report from December 17, 2013, a $2.8 million fraud by Florida welfare recipients was busted in a two-year sting by law enforcement authorities that is expected to bring more than 60 arrests. The sting operation was operated by the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office. Sixty-one arrest warrants had been issued, with 21 people arrested so far and facing federal charges, Bradshaw said.

The sting operation was called "Operation Money Tree" and it was started after a grandmother called authorities when she learned that the father of her granddaughter traded his electronic food stamp card for money instead of buying groceries for her granddaughter, authorities said.

The cards were allegedly traded at a small grocery store in Palm Springs, authorities told WPTV. The clerks at that store would give the suspects cash and keep half the profits for themselves. For example, if a food assistance welfare recipient sought $100, the clerk would charge $150 to the card — handing the cash over the suspect, authorities said. 

The good news is that finally someone in the government at some level is doing something about the rampant fraud and taxpayer ripoffs in government welfare programs, ripoffs that waste tens of billions of dollars every year. The bad news: these types of operations should be going on every day in every state and at every level of government to protect taxpayer assets from criminal fraud.

The sting operation brought some high tech tools into play that the article estimates will save just the state of Florida over $60 million a year. It can be done, we just do not have the politicians in office that have the time, smarts, and desire to fix what robs taxpayers.

5) The Washington Post has always been a strong advocate, and many cases protector of President Obama and his administration. Thus, when they attribute three of the biggest lies of 2013 to the President, you have to assume they were whoppers and not open for being biased. 

In fact, as we have previously reported, the Post named one of the President’s lies as the biggest lie of the year in 2013, namely the falsehood that “if you like your health care plan, you can keep it” under Obama Care. The following were the three lies from the President in the Post’s annual “Biggest Lies of the Year Analysis” from their website along with their justification for their putting the lie in their top ten:

“If you like your health-care plan, you can keep it.” This memorable promise by President Obama backfired on him when the Affordable Care Act went into effect and millions of Americans started receiving cancellation notices. As we explained, part of the reason for so many cancellations is because of an unusually early (March 23, 2010) cut-off date for grandfathering plans — and because of tight regulations written by the administration. This was our most popular fact check of the year — and Obama’s pledge also was also named PolitiFact’s “Lie of the Year.”

“The Capitol Hill janitors just got a pay cut” President Obama offered an evocative image at a news conference when the sequester struck – janitors sweeping the empty halls of the Capitol, laboring for less pay. But it turned out that he was completely wrong. Janitorial staff did not face a pay cut — and Capitol Hill administrative officials even issued a statement saying the president’s remarks were “not true.” Then the White House tried to argue that janitors at least faced a loss of overtime. That was not correct either. The episode was emblematic of the administration’s sequester rhetoric.

“The day after Benghazi happened, I acknowledged that this was an act of terrorism.” President Obama did refer to an “act of terror” in the immediate aftermath of the Benghazi attack, but in vague terms, wrapped in a patriotic fervor. He never affirmatively stated that the American ambassador died because of an “act of terror.” Then, over a period of two weeks, given three opportunities in interviews to affirmatively agree that the Benghazi attack was a terrorist attack, the president obfuscated or ducked the question. So this is a case of taking revisionist history too far for political reasons.

Given the Post’s previous Obama positive bias and the fact that it had no problem putting three of the President’s statements in their top ten lie list, including giving him the top spot for lie of the year, it makes it difficult to believe anything this President says or his administration spokespeople say going forward. 

The bond of trust has been broken when the integrity of someone’s lies are proven time and time again to be false and self serving. Makes it difficult to believe that anything good will come out of this administration going forward when most people will not believe anything it says.

And these three in the top ten lies do not include a bevy of other lies and falsehoods from the Obama administration:

• The targeting and destruction of the First Amendment rights of Tea Party citizens and organizations was not the result of “rogue” IRS agents out of the Cincinnati IRS office as was claimed.
• The Benghazi terrorist attack was not the result of an obscure video as was claimed repeatedly by Obama administration spokespersons, a lie they knew was false from the get go.
• The lies and coverups about how the Obama administration, via the National Security Agency, was not secretly collect mega amounts of communications data from EVERY American are too numerous to mention here.
• The Obama Care lies that did not make the top ten list could have included the false promises that if you like your current doctor you can keep it, if you like your current hospital options you could keep them, that the average American family will see an annual $2,500 drop in their health care premium costs, that the legislation will not add a single dime to the national debt, that the ten year cost of the legislation will be less than $900 billion, etc.

Lies, falsehoods, and deceptions, Hardly the type of behavior Americans expect and should receive from the leader of the nation. Insanity.

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

We are just getting warmed up. The insanity from the American political class, along with the lies, continues in a never ending stream of insanity and insults.