However, it seems the insanity and lunacy has been growing exponentially over the years. So much so that we will probably need another half dozen or so posts this month to get it all covered, that is how quickly and deeply the performance of the American political class has deteriorated just in the past few years.
Given so much has happened in the past thirty days, we will try to be quick and crisp in order to get everything discussed before it becomes to depressing to go on. As we go through the latest insanity, consider joining our term limits effort at:
Because really, after reading what the politicians are doing to our wealth, our freedoms and futures, how much worse could it get if we dumped every incumbent out of office and started again with a fresh set of people sitting in Washington?
1) Several years ago, the American taxpayer, courtesy of the Washington political class, gave tens of billions of dollars to General Motors to bail it out of the incompetence it had gotten itself into from a financial perspective. Rather than let the company go through a regular bankruptcy proceeding, which would have cost the American taxpayer nothing, the Obama administration intervened, likely as a favor to its union supporters, and substituted taxpayer money for a coherent and regular bankruptcy proceeding.
Well, according to the latest financial report relative to the bailout, the Inspector General in charge of all bailouts reported that the final tab for the American taxpayer was just over $11 billion. This is the equivalent of every American household writing a check for about $100 and sending it to General Motors to bail it out of its mess that it created. Again, this was an unnecessary, politically driven bailout that never needed to be done.
But what have we gotten for our bailout? According to a recent Washington Examiner article, the stock is down 16% so far this year, millions of GM vehicles have been recalled because they likely caused at least 13 deaths because of a systemic malfunction, and General Motors executives have told investors to “temper” their expectations for the rest of the year. In other words, things are likely to get worse before they get better.
Note: this $11 billion loss does not include the billions in special tax relief the Obama administration granted the car maker or the bailout money that was spent on other, former divisions of General Motors. Thus, at least $100 from each American household for basically not much in return.
2) An April 30, 2014 article by the Washington Examiner looked at the results published by Judicial Watch regarding Presidential vacations. According to the documents Judicial watch obtained via Freedom of Information Act requests:
- Just the travel costs for the Obama and Biden family vacations are now about $40 million with more than two years still left in this Presidency, assuming impeachment does not occur.
- Two 2014 golf outings by President Obama cost a whopping $2.9 million, according to Judicial Watch.
- Judicial Watch said in a press release that the Air Force provided documents and records that put the price of the first family's trip to Key Largo, Fla., in March at $885,683 just for flying Air Force One.
- The travel costs to golf in Palm Springs, California, in February was $2,066,594.
- While the travel costs for the Obama and Biden vacations are $40 million, much more taxpayer money was spent on accommodations, communications, rooms and cars for staff, security and U.S. Secret Service protection, Navy and Coast Guard ships offshore and the positioning of cars and helicopters.
- However, according to the article, those other costs have not been revealed publicly.
- Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton, in a press release, I think captured the disgrace of this type of wasteful and extravagant spending: “It is clear that the Obamas continually abuse the perks of the president’s office at taxpayer expense. And it is particularly interesting that Obama has chosen to take not one but two luxury vacations back-to-back while inveighing against ‘income equality.’ President Obama’s waste of the hard-earned tax dollars of working Americans on unnecessary luxury travel is an abuse of office.”
3) While the previous bit of travel insanity is a annoying and a waste of money, the following piece of insanity is disgusting and disgraceful. The Washington Examiner reported on May 1, 2014 on some severe abuse allegations being put forth by Veterans Administration whistleblowers and veterans families:
- According to the article, more than 1.5 million medical orders were canceled by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) without any guarantee the patients received the treatment or tests they needed or promised within those orders.
- Apparently, since May 2013, veterans' medical centers across the country were under pressure to clear out 2 million backlogged orders for patient care or services.
- By April 2014, the backlog of what the agency calls “unresolved consults” was down to about 450,000 from the original 2 million. That means that mans that more than 20,000 medical orders, on average, were cleared out every week over that timeframe, a highly unlikely legitimate rate.
- And that is the issue since not even top officials at the Veterans Administration can identify what happened to other 1.5 million.
- The Government Accountability Office reviewed the process VA used to close old consult orders and found that poor documentation in patient files and the lack of independent verification made it impossible to know whether patients got care they needed before their medical orders were canceled: “We found they closed consults but there was no evidence as to why it was closed,” Debra Draper, health care director for the GAO, told the Examiner.
- “By not having that independent verification or any other controls, there isn’t any way of knowing whether they were appropriately closed out. You don’t know whether people received the care or if they received it in a timely manner. There’s no audit trail. There’s no way to know whether they were appropriately closed,” she said.
- But this type of record destruction and purging is nothing new since the Examiner had reported earlier in the year that the VA mass purged backlogged medical orders that cleared 40,000 unresolved appointments in Los Angeles beginning in 2009 and 13,000 in Dallas during a one-week period in September 2012.
- This is vitally important to many veterans who are in dire need of medical attention, help, and procedures but may not be getting it because their requests and records have been destroyed to make it look like the waiting times have been reduced when they have only been destroyed.
- As an example, a Veterans Affairs report from April said 23 patients at various VA medical facilities afflicted with gastrointestinal cancers died after they could not get the colonoscopies or other tests that had been ordered within the deadlines in agency policy.
- Those tests could have detected the cancers in their early stages, when they are most treatable.
- Recent news reports have stated that at least 40 patients in the Phoenix VA health system may have died as a result of delayed care, according to an investigation by the House Committee on Veterans Affairs and reports by the Examiner and other news media outlets.
- The VA’s inspector general is investigating allegations that two sets of appointment logs were kept to hide long wait times for medical care and that almost 60,000 overdue medical orders were purged in Phoenix to also cover long wait times.
- A review by General Accountability Office (GAO) found that lax procedures and the lack of independent verification left the VA unable to prove that all patients got the care they needed before the appointment was closed. In a sample of cases, the GAO “found no indication that a clinical review was conducted prior to the consults being discontinued.”
- Both the GAO and the inspector found evidence that there were performance review and financial incentives within the VA to close out as many open cases and records as possible, leading to Sharon Helman, the director of the Phoenix VA health system, got a $9,345 bonus last year.
- Recall from above that possibly 40 Phoenix area veterans died as a result of not getting the care they were entitled to by the VA in a timely manner.
Second, it is not too much of a stretch to conclude that the rest of us have this kind of fate in our future as an inept and incompetent government bureaucracy and political class take over more and more of our medical care via Obama Care and other government health care initiatives. The government obviously cannot manage a health care program for veterans, an effort they have been trying to do for decades but still cannot get it right. There is no way to believe that monstrosities like Obama Care for the rest of us will be much different, particularly right out of the gate.
So right out of the gate we see evidence that the political class is needlessly taking our wealth via the General Motors bailout, are taking their vacations via our tax dollars, and might be taking our veterans to an early grave because of bureaucratic bungling. Insane and just three more reason for term limits now.
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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