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.
This is our fifth post in this month’s series so the insanity continues to flow out of the political class and into our lives, our wallets, and our freedoms. The first post in this month’s series can be seen at:
http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2014/11/november-2014-part-1-political-class.html
http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2014/11/november-2014-part-1-political-class.html
1) Our post popular post in this blog concerned the disgraceful and wasteful spending on two brand new Navy ships that were built almost to completion at a cost of $300 million. However, before they were used they were scrapped at an additional cost of $10 million because someone in the U.S. Navy decided those brand new, taxpayer funded ships were no longer needed. That post can be found at:
Well, it seems the Pentagon still cannot figure out a way to spend our money efficiently and effectively. According to the Afghanistan Inspector General, sixteen transport planes were purchased for use by the Afghan Air Force at a cost of almost $500 million. However, if barely being used they were than scrapped to return a scrap metal value of on $32,000.
The Inspector General, John Sopko, uncovered the disgrace involving these military transport planes which had been sitting at the Kabul airport for a number of years. Apparently there are another four such planes sitting in German that he also wants to know the status of. He asked the following, totally logical question of those in charge at the Pentagon relative to the planes: “I am concerned that the officials responsible for planning and executing the scrapping of the planes may not have considered other possible alternatives in order to salvage taxpayer dollars.”
Great question. Is the Pentagon telling us that nowhere in the world someone would not be willing to pay more than $32,000 for sixteen non-fighting, nonproprietary transport planes? Just like the Navy ships, there must have been someone, somewhere that would have paid more than $2,000 for each plane, the average value they created by being scrapped.
According to information provided by the website, www.threepercentnation.com, the following math shows how wasteful this program was:
$500,000,000 - Original value of the planes
– $512,000 - Total cost received from scrapping = $32,000 x 16
——————-
$499,488,000 - Total in lost taxpayer dollars
As we keep mentioning, how many Americans with drug addiction problems could have been treated with that wealth? How many homeless and hungry Americans could have been taken care of with that wealth? Bad, bad priorities.
More details of the waste can be found at:
2) By just about any measurement possible, this administration has added more debt to the country’s national debt load than any previous administrations. The Obama administration ran TRILLION dollar annual deficits for the first four years of its existence and subsequent deficits have not been much better.
At some point in time, investors are going to stop buying U.S. government bonds and financing these deficits because the Federal government has over extended itself with so much debt. At that point the Federal government will either have to dramatically raise taxes on U.S. citizens, dramatically cut government spending, or default on its current debt. Much like a household, at some point in time, credit dries up and default happens.
In fact, this has already symbolically happened to the one person most responsible for the massive build up of debt in the past six years, Barack Obama. According to news reports, Obama had his credit card denied in September when he took time out from U.N. General Assembly meetings to grab a bite to eat at a NYC restaurant.
The irony of the President most responsible for the possible bankruptcy of the country has already had his credit card denied, how long before the rest of the country follows?
3) We pay the Federal government a whopping $3 TRILLION a year in taxes. This comes out to about $25,000 for each U.S. household on average. Is it too much to make sure that the Secretary of State, John Kerry, has a working airplane to carry out U.S. diplomacy around the world?
According to a recent news report from Reuters, Kerry’s plane has now broken down four times just this year during his worldwide jaunts. Most recently Kerry ended up taking a commercial flight out of Vienna where he was in negotiations relative to the Iranian nuclear program.
Look, I do not want to pay any more in taxes than I do, the Federal government wastes so much of our tax money now. But how bad does it look when the most powerful country in the world cannot even get its top diplomat a decent plane to do his job? Maybe he should have hooked up with the Afghanistan Inspector General, maybe one of those junked transport planes could have done the job better than what he flies in now.
Just another symbolic view of how broken and dysfunctional the Federal government has become. They cannot even get a working plane together much like they cannot get a working government agency or entity to work efficiently or effectively.
4) The Associated Press recently ran article where it highlighted how the United States promised $212 million in immediate assistance to Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip. As most informed people know, the Gaza Strip was the focal point of the recent warfare between Israel and the ruling terrorist organization in Gaza, Hamas.
According to our Secretary of State, John Kerry, people in Gaza “need our help desperately — not tomorrow, not next week, but they need it now.” He claimed that more than 20,000 homes need to be rebuilt and 100,000 people remain displaced with winter fast approaching. He went on to say in the article that this new money would take American aid to the Palestinians to more than $400 million in 2014 and would go to security, economic development, food and medicine, shelter and water and sanitation projects.
I like to think that I am a caring and compassionate person but why is the American taxpayer always the one that has to take care of people in foreign lands? Hamas brought a lot of this destruction on themselves with their terror tunnels and other terrorist behavior. Who can promise this $400 million will not go to their terror programs and to their people? That certainly has been their behavior in the past.
Why hasn’t China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Kuwait, and other wealthy countries stepped up to help Hamas and the people of Gaza? Again, we have homeless and hungry in the U.S. Why not take care of them first and the terror organizations later?
That will do it for today. Wasting taxpayer wealth all over the world, from Afghanistan to the Gaza Strip to failing Presidential credit cards to failing Secretary of States planes. The political class insanity knows no bounds and will continue unabated 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:
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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