Last month we set a record by needing almost two full weeks of posts to get all of the insanity documented and discussed. Given what I see today, we will be hard pressed not to get close to or exceed that record of insanity this month. It keeps getting worse and worse and the effectiveness of the political class gets less and less.
1) Before we start with this first piece of wasteful spending insanity, think back, if you are old enough to the late 1970s. At that time, the Statue of Liberty, the symbol of this country and its Constitutional freedoms and liberties, was in need of extensive and costly repair.
Despite its place of honor in our history and collective freedom, not a single taxpayer dollar was used to restore it and refurbish it. The entire renovation cost was covered with private donations from citizens and businesses.
Now, consider the reality that Federal taxpayer dollars have been allocated to fund a Gammy awards museum in Cleveland, Mississippi. Forty years ago the Federal government would not fund the fixing of the Statue of Liberty but today the political class and Federal government will use taxpayer money to build a music museum in that thriving metro area of Cleveland, Mississippi.
According to research done for the 2015 publication of Senator Tom Coburn’s Wastebook 2015, the Federal government gave Delta State University $1.25 million, via the U.S. Commerce Department’s Economic Development Administration, to help build an access road and upgrade infrastructure in preparation for the 2015 opening of the $18-million Grammy Museum Mississippi.
If the state of Mississippi and the town of Cleveland wanted to build a Grammy Museum to hype tourism, than the state of Mississippi and the town of Cleveland should be for everything connected to the museum, the rest of America should not have to pay for such nonsense.
As proposed in Step 44 of “Love my Country, Loathe My Government,” a step that says no Federal money should be spent on any project unless it materially effects and benefit’s the residents of at least five states, this money never, ever should have been appropriated for this project. It is the thousands and thousands of dumb, localized projects that end up wasting tens of billions of dollars every year, calumniating and contributing to our $18 TRILLION national debt.
If we did not have to pay to fix the Statue of Liberty we should not have to pay for a silly museum in the middle of nowhere in Mississippi. How many homeless and hungry Americans could have been given shelter and food instead of building roads for a local museum? How many ailing veterans could have gotten better medical care for that $l.25 million Federal tax dollars?
2) According to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, six out of ten people polled said they do not trust the government to do what's right. Additionally, a majority feel that government’s ability to deal with and resolve big problems has been on the decline for the past few years.
While this is probably bad news for Democrats heading into next week’s midterm elections since they have controlled most of the Federal government over the past eight years or so, does anyone really think that Republicans can reduce that level of pessimism? They are all members of the same political class, a class of people that are always more interested in their own careers and self enrichment than resolving the problems of the country.
The insanity here is that a majority of Americans, and I would bet that it is a growing majority of Americans, have lost faith in the Federal government to do anything right. And the losing of faith makes turning the country around that much more difficult.
3) After the 9-11 attacks, the Washington political class thought it would be a great idea to create a new, super large Federal bureaucracy called the Department of Homeland Security. These folks were going to protect us in the future from new terrorist attacks within this country.
With the rise of the super dangerous terrorists groups like ISIS, one would hope that this was a good idea. That the people employed by the Department of Homeland Security would be on the borders, focusing on threats in far away lands, and on the job of making sure that terrorists do not wreck havoc like they did on 9-11. One would hope that, but as always, with the political class and the federal government, one would again be wrong.
But first, a little background. The Kansas City Royals just missed winning the baseball World Series in the past week. To commemorate their march through their season, the playoffs and into the World Series, Peregrine Honig, owner of Honig’s Birdies Panties shop in Crossroads, Kansas, said she designed the Lucky Royals women’s panties that were set to go on sale shortly after the world series ended. The panties read, “Take the Crown,” with “KC” across the bottom. She had a few dozen made to sell in her shop.
However, apparently her designs on the panties violated Federal copyright laws. By connecting the “K” and the “C,” she infringed on major league baseball’s copyright. How did she find out she had violated copyright law? Two, not one, Department of Homeland Security agents showed up in her store, flashed their badges, told her that her panties violated Federal copyright laws, and confiscated the few dozen offending panties.
Really? ISIS is marching across the Middle East beheading innocent people, threatening to invade America, wiping religious minorities in their path, and the Department of Homeland Security is physically sending agents into a small lingerie store to confiscate panties? Really?
The Commerce Department couldn’t send a registered letter telling Ms. Honig to cease and desist? How did the Department of Homeland Security even get involved in such a trivial matter? Insane. Are illegal panties that much of a threat to the homeland? You cannot make this nonsense up.
4) According to the December, 2014 issue of Reason magazine, in 1997 the Federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) set out to regulate what was said on the labels of Tic Tacs, Certs, and other breath fresheners. A whopping seventeen years later, those draft regulations are finally done, resulting in a 145 page document to regulate Tic Tac et al labels. Seventeen years and they have juts gotten to the DRAFT of the regulations.
During the process, the FDA consulted with the Centers for Disease Control, the Federal trade Commission, the Department of Agriculture, and other Federal agencies. All this for a final effort that probably will be ignored by every American but at a cost of probably tens of millions of dollars.
Your tax dollars at work (over seventeen years): determining what to put on a label of a breath mint. How many of billions of breath mints does one thing were consumed over that time frame without any kind of catastrophic effects, despite not having a federal approved label? Insanity.
That will do it for today. But buckle up, we are in for a long ride of insanity in the days, and possibly weeks to come.
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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