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.
The first post in this month’s insanity can be accessed at:
1) It never ceases to amaze us at how much and in so many varied ways that politicians and governments at all levels can waste taxpayer wealth, especially when there are so many other more important priorities and needs facing Americans. Consider a recent article by Steve Wilson writing for the website, watchdog.org.
Consider the track record of a Mississippi law enforcement organization:
- The Mississippi Gaming Commission’s Charitable gaming Division employs eight dedicated law enforcement agents.
- This division is responsible for regulating the state’s…wait for it… bingo industry.
- Those eight agents have made four arrests since 2003 or one arrest about every three and a half years.
- The good news is that the agency used to have twenty full time law enforcement agents to make sure bingo games do not break the law.
- Now, the agency has issued 279 citations and collected fines of $176,672 since 2003, according to Rodney Smith, division director II with the Charitable Gaming Division. But that only averages out to about 25 citations and about $16,000 in fines per year.
- If we assume that each of those 20 law enforcement people earn $40,000 a year in salary, than the agency is paying out about $800,000 a year in salaries just to collect $16,000 in fines, a horrible pay back on taxpayer dollars. And that $800,000 does not include overhead expenses, benefits, etc. making the payback even worse.
- At $40,000 a head in annual salary, the cost benefit ratio is about 50, meaning that for every $50 that Mississippi taxpayers put out for this agency, they get back one dollar for their efforts.
2) Five years after the recession has ended, after five years of the Federal Reserve printing money to prop up the economy, over five years after the Obama administration spent over $800 billion to stimulate the economy, the political class has still not learned how to manage and support a growing economy. Food stamp enrollment is still sky high, long term unemployment is still high, the real unemployment rate is still over 10%, and household incomes have DROPPED during the post recession period, an unheard of historical event.
But things are probably worse than these top line numbers show. Consider a recent USAToday article by Erika Rawes that showed how the middle class could longer afford the following six luxuries and necessities of life:
- Vacations - A recent Statista survey found that this year 54% of people gave up purchasing big ticket items like TVs or electronics so they can go on a vacation. Others made financial sacrifices like reducing or eliminating trips to the movies (47%), reducing or eliminating restaurants meals (43%), or avoiding purchasing small ticket items like new clothing (43%) just to afford a vacation. Traditionally, middle class households did not have to make financial sacrifices just to take a vacation.
- New cars - Historically, middle class families could easily afford a new car every once in a while by choosing from a host of cars and brands that offered moderately prices cars for moderate income people. However, Interest.com recently analyzed the prices of new cars and trucks, as well as the median incomes across more than two dozen major cities.
Unfortunately, they found that new cars and trucks were now not affordable to most middle-earners: "Median-income families in only one major city [Washington DC - no surprise there] can afford the average price Americans are paying for new cars and trucks nowadays." As of 2013, new cars are priced at $32,086, according to the study which is about 60% of the median household income in this country.
To pay off debt - Once reason Americans cannot afford vacations and new cars as easily as in the past is because the heavy debt load they are carrying, meaning that a lot of household income is going to paying off debt and not other parts of the economy. Consider the findings from Debt.org: "More than 160 million Americans have credit cards. The average credit card holder has at least three cards. On average, each household with a credit card carries more than $15,000 in credit card debt."
This is just credit card debt. It does not include mortgage debt, car financing debt, student loans, health care debt, etc. We have so much debt that, just like vacations and new cars, we cannot even afford our debt any more if you believe the work and analyses done Money-Zine.
Money-Zine evaluated household debt growth and income growth over the past few decades and found that "back in 1980, the consumer credit per person was $1,540, which was 7.3% of the average household income of $21,100. In 2013, consumer debt was $9,800 per person, which was 13.4% of the average household income of $72,600. This means debt increased 70% faster than income from 1980 through 2013."
Emergency savings - it used to be that households had enough money left over every month to have a “rainy day” fund inc ase expenses popped up unexpectedly or there was job loss. The rule of thumb back in those days was to have enough cash saved up to survive a six month financial crisis.
However, today it seems like most households cannot even find enough left over funds to save for any kind of emergency. A Bankrate survey found that:
- Only around one out of four households have six months of emergency money saved.
- Another one-fourth have no emergency savings at all.
- The remaining household have a small to moderate amount of savings, but not enough to cover six months of expenses.
Even worse, around 20% of people near 65 have not saved anything for retirement at all, and the majority of people, 59%, think that they don't have enough money saved for retirement.
- Medical care - Needless to day, many middle class Americans can no longer afford medical care either:
- A Forbes article published data indicating that middle class workers in large companies "face nearly $5,000 in premiums, co-payments, deductibles and other forms of co-insurance."
- A study by Feeding America found that a 66% of households say they have had to choose between paying for food and paying for medical care and that a depressing 31% say they have to make that choice each and every month.
- The Federal Department of Health and Human Services report that about 108 million people in the U.S. have no dental coverage and even those who are covered may have trouble getting the dental care they need because dental health insurance is too expensive or does not fully cover more expensive needs.
- According to the Centers For Disease Control, nearly one in four American adults between the ages of 20 and 64 have untreated dental caries.
3) One last piece of insanity for today. There has been much debate and discussion on whether to build the so-called Keystone Pipeline that would bring crude oil out of western Canada down into U.S. Gulf refineries. Today is not a discussion on the merits and downsides of building such a pipeline but how screwed up the decision making process is in Washington today.
Six years have gone by as the Federal government has done study after study to determine whether or not to build the pipeline. This has not included any construction time or progress, this is just the time to examine and study the permitting process.
To show you how screwed up Washington is from a functionality perspective, the Heritage Foundation recently compared six major projects that were COMPLETED in less time than it has taken the Keystone Pipeline to be studied:
- It took four years and 600,000 rivets to build the Golden state bridge. Since its construction, over 2 billion cars have crossed the span.
- It took five years to build the Hoover Dam that at its base the dam is as thick as two footballs fields measured end-to-end.
- It took one year to build Boeing’s Everett factory which the Guinness Book of World records claims is largest building in the world by volume.
- It took two years to build the Pentagon which housed 30,000 people during World War II and which has 17 miles of corridors.
- It took two years to build Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta airport which covers 4,700 acres and is the largest air passenger terminal complex in the world.
- It took two years to build Beaver stadium in Oregon which is now the second largest stadium in college football.
Is it any surprise that nothing ever gets accomplished by the political class and the government bureaucracy it operates when a simple environmental study takes so long to complete? No wonder we are still losing the war on drugs, our public schools are still failing, our borders still leak, we still do not have a national energy policy and strategy and why yesterday we found out it took 17 years for the Federal government to develop a DRAFT set of regulations concerning Tic Tac mints. Insane and pathetic.
Bingo enforcement overkill, just the plain killing of the middle class American dream, and overkill analysis of a simple pipeline. Such insanity that does not end today.
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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