Wasteful spending, stupid programs, criminal neglect, and the stripping away of freedom are just some of the ways that today’s politicians drive us all insane.
1) The EPA has recently come under Congressional review, hearings, and investigation for a wide ranging set of abuses and insults to taxpayers:
- A former high level EPA executive was apparently paid an salary for over 10 years by the EPA while he pretended to be an undercover CIA agent.
- Another EPA employee was getting paid for several years after moving to a retirement home, where the employee allegedly did not perform any EPA work. When an investigation began, the worker was simply placed on sick leave.
- In another case, an employee with multiple-sclerosis was allowed to work at home for the last 20 years. However, for the past five years, she allegedly produced no work though she was paid roughly $600,000. She retired after an investigation but apparently no effort was made to recover the ill gotten $600,000.
- Another EPA employee was accused of viewing pornography for two-to-six hours a day since 2010 when an inspector general investigation found that the EPA worker had 7,000 pornographic files on his EPA computer.
- At a Congressional hearing, an inspector general testified there was a “total and systematic refusal” to provide information that had stymied his investigations into EPA abuse
- EPA executives had made the ludicrous claim that they did not cooperate with the inspector general because of national security.
If a business paid employees for not doing any work, who allowed them to spend the majority of their work time viewing pornography, and tried to cover up the incompetence, that business would not exist for very long. Unfortunately, that tenet does not exist with the Federal government. The waste and shameful behavior continues to roll along unabated across the entire Federal bureaucracy.
2) Some times you wonder why and how the Federal government gets involved in even the tiniest of local matters. Consider some recent insanity from Tacoma, Washington. Some concerned local citizens were upset that the city had not painted cross walks around town at dangerous road crossings. Tired of waiting for the city to take action, a group of Tacoma residents, calling themselves “Citizens For A Safer Tacoma,” that apparently included some city employees, took the matter into their own hands and painted the needed cross walks onto the roads.
One would have thought their actions would be applauded. Concerned citizens concerned about the safety of their fellow locals taking action to better their town and the lives of their fellow citizens.
One could have thought that but you would be wrong. Tacoma’s city government is determined to crack down on its “rogue crosswalks” and prosecute anyone caught painting them. Additionally, the city government is going around and spending $1,000 per rogue crosswalk to remove all of the new cross walks that have been painted on the streets of Tacoma.
Think about this insanity for a minute: the city did not have the time and/or funds to paint city authorized cross walks but somehow found the time AND funds to remove citizen created cross walks. Makes no sense…until you find out that the Federal government is involved.
Why? Because the Tacoma Interim Public Works Director stated that city crosswalks must comply with Federal guidelines related to sight distance, traffic volume and street width. Yes, someone, somewhere in Washington took the time and taxpayer expense to develop guidelines on local town and city cross walks.
Our schools are failing, we have lost the war on drugs, energy prices are exploding, our foreign affairs are in tatters, over 20 million Americans are unemployed or under employed, etc. and somewhere in Washington a group of Federal employees are being paid to develop and manage street cross walking guidelines. Pathetically insane and wasteful.
“We’re not asking for major infrastructure changes,” says a spokesman for Citizens for a Safer Tacoma. “All we’re asking for is a little bit of paint.” And maybe asking that the Federal government do a few things right rather than doing a million things wrong, like worrying about cross walk guidelines.
3) The website Celebrity Wealth estimates that Nancy Pelosi's net worth is about $100 million. Her husband and herself have vast real estate holdings throughout California besides owning other assets. By any measure, Nancy Pelosi is rich.
Our nation’s national debt is well over $17 TRILLION dollars. Americans are homeless, unemployed, and hungry. Our veterans are being shunting away from good medical care in Phoenix and elsewhere. There is a lot that could be done with Federal revenues besides paying Nancy Pelosi and the other many rich Washington politicians, a salary of about $170,000 a year.
In fact, Step 41 from “Love My Country, Loathe My Government” would prohibit a Congressional salary going to any Federal politician if their net worth was over $3 million. The purpose of going to Washington is to serve the country and its citizens, not to get rich or richer. There are far better things do to than to give people like Nancy Pelosi more money.
Her $170,000 annual salary is less than .2% of her net wealth, she would not miss the paycheck and possibly that money would find its way to Americans who are truly suffering. However, that possibility of compassion and generosity will not be forthcoming from her.
Despite a Congressional approval rating that is historically low at around 10%, a dismal rating that as former Speaker of the House she had a lot to do with, Ms. Pelosi recently told an interviewer from The Hill that: “I don’t think we should do it [cut or reduce Congressional pay]; I think we should respect the work we do. I think it’s necessary for us to have the dignity of the job that we have rewarded.”
We have no respect for the work you and your peers do in Washington, Ms. Pelosi, and we should be the ones that judge what your dignity levels are. The nation is falling apart, Washington has not resolved a major issue in decades, the approval ratings are in the gutter, and there is no hope that you or any of your peers have the smarts, the will, and the ability to fix anything. You should not be rewarded for anything since you do nothing except get richer from the first day every politician takes office until they finally leave.
4) Consider this insanity, along the lines of the Tacoma cross walks/Federal government meddling, this time in New Jersey. Fisherman’s Energy company wants to install five giant windmills off the coast of Atlantic City to generate wind powered electricity. Apparently, Fisherman’s Energy has a large set of Chinese financial backers.
The New Jersey Public Utilities Commission rejected the plan, not once but twice. They thought the plan would put New Jersey electricity ratepayers at risk and they also found that these Chinese backers did not demonstrate “financial integrity.” In other words, local citizens and local government looked at the situation and made the best possible decision given local conditions and analysis.
Before you know it, the Federal government’s Department of Energy jumps into the middle of the fray and awards Fisherman’s Energy, a company with substantial CHINESE backing, $47 million of AMERICAN taxpayer money to help push the deal along to completion despite New Jersey saying that it was a bad deal.
Another example of an out of touch and overreaching Federal government sticking its hand into something that was appropriately handled locally. Want to bet that Chinese lobbyists in Washington had something to do with American taxpayers supporting a shaky Chinese energy venture in new Jersey? Another $47 million of taxpayer wealth possibly down the drain, following billions of other dollars that went down the same drain because of Solyndra, A123, and dozens of other failed Federal government clean energy disasters.
So let’s review: rampant pornography and financial waste at the EPA, cross walk insanity in Tacoma, rich politicians thinking their abysmal performance has any kind of dignity, and the U.S. taxpayer supporting Chinese companies against the will of U.S. citizens. Sounds about right, more insanity 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:
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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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