1) It is not easy to get a nation $17 TRILLION in debt but the Washington political class has managed to do just that. It took a combination of efforts including ineffective and inefficient programs and projects, criminal fraud, crony capitalism, lax oversight, etc.
But according to a recent General Accountability Office (GAO) report, massive redundancy and duplication of effort within the sprawling Federal bureaucracy is also a major and annually recurring problem. In their latest report, the GAO found that (in their own words):
- In their 2014 report, GAO presents 64 actions that the executive branch or Congress could take to improve efficiency and effectiveness across 26 areas that span a broad range of government missions and functions.
- GAO suggests 19 actions to address evidence of fragmentation, overlap, or duplication in 11 NEW [my emphasis, I.e. things are getting worse] areas across the government missions of defense, health, income security, information technology, and international affairs.
- GAO also presents 45 opportunities for executive branch agencies or Congress to take actions to reduce the cost of government operations or enhance revenue collections for the Treasury across 15 areas of government.
But this wasteful redundancy and duplication has been going on for years and the Washington political class has done little or nothing to stop it. Consider previous findings from past GAO analyses:
- The Federal government spent $18 billion on 47 different employment and training programs in 2009.
- The Federal government spent $13.3 billion on 45 different early learning and child care programs in 2010.
- The Federal government spent $4.5 billion in 2012 on 76 different drug abuse prevention and treatment programs.
2) There is little doubt that the country is in the middle of an obesity problem. The majority of American adults are either overweight or obese. Our kids are not much better, so any intelligent effort to make our kids and adults healthier and less overweight is a good idea.
The key words are “intelligent effort.” Intelligent is not usually an adjective that applies to Federal policies and programs and in this area that is also true. First Lady Michelle Obama and other politicians in Washington pushed through the Healthy Hunger Free Kids Act of 2010. This legislation was supposed to make kids happily eat healthier food by establishing one nationwide standard of menus and eating requirements in every school across the nation.
A number of problems quickly arose with this one size fits all dictatorial approach:
- First, different kids have different needs. For example, athletes immediately found out that they were not getting enough calories under the new Federal guidelines to be effective on the athletic fields after school.
- Second, since underlying eating habits were not addressed and changed, forcing kids to eat healthy without changing those habits and perceptions was surely going to fail.
- Third, by not changing the underlying approach to eating, kids ended up not eating much of anything under what the Federal government prescribed. As just one example, the Federal regulations from the legislation that forced specific, standardized diet requirements on all school districts have resulted in at least $100,000 dollars worth of food usually landing in school dumpsters every day in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Why? Simply because the kids simply do not eat it. This daily waste comes out to a whopping $18 million dollars of food thrown away each year, just in LA.
A link containing kids’ reactions to the new food guidelines can be accessed at:
If the kids do not eat anything because of the new one size fits all Federal guidelines, we end up with undernourished kids and wasted food and taxpayer dollars. And frankly, given what the kids are saying and the pictures they are sharing, I am not sure that I would eat the Federal diet either.
Another government program that maybe had good intentions but as usual, was botched in the implementation, wasting taxpayer wealth and making the original problem worse.
3) In an earlier post in this month’s insanity series we pointed out the results of a recent Rand Corp. study that estimated Americans spend about $109 billion a year on illegal drugs of all kinds. This booming, $2 billion a week business still thrives even though the Washington political class and the Federal government have been waging a losing “war on drugs” for over four decades.
Rather than step back and take a look at this losing effort and developing a better, more effective, more compassionate, and less expensive approach to drug addiction, as outlined by Step 26 in “Love My Country, Loathe My Government,” the politicians in Washington continue down the same expensive and destructive war on drugs path.
As if the $109 billion market size for illegal drugs was not enough to convince them to do something different, consider what was recently found out west relative to the war on drugs. According to an April 5, 2014 Associated Press report:
- Two drug-smuggling tunnels with actual rail systems stretching hundreds of yards across the U.S.-Mexico border were recently discovered by U.S. law enforcement officials.
- A 73-year-old woman, Glennys Rodriguez from the San Diego suburb of Chula Vista, was charged with helping run one of the tunnel operations, according Federal authorities.
- No illegal drugs were found in connection with the tunnels, which linked warehouses in Tijuana, Mexico, and the Otay Mesa area of San Diego, according to a statement from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Homeland Security Investigations.
- One tunnel stretched about 600 yards and was equipped with lighting, a crude rail system and wooden trusses.
- The tunnel entrance on the U.S. side ended inside a warehouse where a cement cap covered a 70-foot shaft.
- The shaft had a pulley system to hoist goods into the building.
- The second tunnel stretches more than 700 yards and was built with more sophisticated features including a multi-tiered electric rail system and ventilation equipment.
- Federal authorities also recently shut down a third, incomplete drug-smuggling tunnel in the same area.
- That tunnel is approximately 449 feet long with about 60 feet in Mexico and 389 feet in the U.S.
However, given how out of touch they are with the real world and their inability to do anything effective, four more decades from now we will likely still be living an old Einstein quote that applies to the war on drugs: The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
We have been doing the same thing for forty plus years in the lost war on drugs and expecting different results, which makes us all insane, especially those politicians leading the lost cause.
4) Comcast is the largest U.S. cable company in the country. It is currently asking the Federal government’s permission to buy the second largest cable company in the country, Time Warner. This will create an incredibly large and dominate player in the cable television and Internet markets, a player who could reduce competition and raise prices for customers, given its large size.
In an article in Business Week from its March 10, 2014 issue, Michael Copps, a former Democratic member of the FCC and the only member to oppose the merger stated the obvious risks of such a marriage: “There’s a strong case to be made why this merger shouldn’t be approved. it’s just so much power for one company to amass, and its not just cable. They’re a broadband company, they’re a broadcast company, they’re new media, they’re old media, they’re telecom, they’re everything.”
He makes a strong case. When AT&T recently tried to merge with a major competitor, T-Mobile, the Federal government correctly shut it down for anti-trust reasons. This Comcast and Time Warner merger should also be shut down and permission denied for the same market monopoly reasons.
But, not so fast, logic and the good of Americans is likely to take a back seat in this situation. According to a recent article on the Against Crony Capitalism website, quoting a piece from the National Review:
Comcast, which employs more than 100 lobbyists, spent almost $19 million last year on lobbying activities. Its president and CEO, Brian L. Roberts, is a golf buddy of President Obama’s, and a Democratic donor who has contributed thousands of dollars not only to the president’s campaigns, but also to the Democratic party of Pennsylvania, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the DNC Services Corporation, and to Steny Hoyer, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Bob Casey. Roberts’s executive vice president, David Cohen, is a former aide to Democratic bigwig Ed Rendell. Cohen skirts lobbying regulations through loopholes, has raised more than $2 million for Obama since 2007, and in 2011 hosted a DNC fundraiser at which the president called him “friend.” Cohen has visited the White House 14 times since 2010, including two visits to the Oval Office. He attended the recent dinner for President Hollande of France.
Ever wonder why NBC and MSNBC are so pro-Obama and biased in their reporting? Do not think for a minute that this type of crony capitalism does not creep into their news reporting.
Given Comcast’s massive lobbying efforts, their schmoozing with Obama and his political allies, their fund raising for certain types of politicians within our corrupted campaign financing processes, and the skewing of the news to favor this administration, there is no doubt that Comcast will get what it wants. And the rest of America will end up paying higher prices for all forms of electronic communications while the political class goes about their merry and enriching ways, courtesy of Comcast dollars and influence.
Eight posts and we are still not done with the latest insanity. Hopefully, we can end the insanity tomorrow before we all go insane.
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