It’s the beginning of another month which means it is time again to review the latest political class insanity from America’s politicians. Whether it is wasteful spending, inane quotes, faulty government operations, or insulting the American public, there is always new material spewing forth from these people, usually enough to fill up half a dozen or so posts every month. Given what we know today, this month should be no different as the insanity seems to be expanding exponentially from those in office today.
1) We have often talked about the disaster that is the new set of school lunch Federal guidelines that failed in an attempt to establish healthier eating options in the nation’s schools. This legislative effort got a lot of publicity and hype because of Michelle Obama’s active pushing of healthy meals via legislative fiat, not public health behavior change.
And that is the point we kept making. Everyone is in favor of healthier, less obese kids. That is a fact for most Americans. But thinking that having Washington politicians and bureaucrats (and First Ladies) simply decree what others should eat is not going to work. This requires a public health solution, not a new law.
As a result, kids are eating less, food is being thrown out by the tonnage, and school budgets are being devastated since their revenue from school lunches is way down. A recent Johns Hopkins study found out the same thing that we have been yelling about.
The researchers tracked the eating habits of 274 New York students between kindergarten and second grade in an attempt to determine how much of their healthy lunches they actually eat.
The researchers took photos of specific lunches as they were being served to the kids and more pictures as the lunches were being discarded. They found that much of the so-called healthier food ended up in the trash can rather than in the mouths of growing children: “We have been thinking that if young children choose healthy food, they will eat it,” explained researcher Dr. Susan Gross. “But our research shows that is not necessarily so.” I could have told them that without all of the fuss, if the food does not look good or taste good, kids are not going to eat it regardless of what Michelle Obama says.
The study found that less than one in four students took even one bite of a vegetable on their tray. As a result of their findings, researchers noted that it will take more than a revamped menu to turn students into healthy eaters. Yes, it will. It will take a long term public health initiative that looks at all aspects of healthy eating, not just school lunches.
Again, the Washington political class has passed a law/dictate that ignores the root causes of a problem. And thus, their solution ends up half baked, no effective, expensive, ends up in the garbage can and causes more problems than it resolves.
2) Former Congressman Allen West recently wrote a long narrative on yet another Afghanistan scandal and massive wasting of taxpayer wealth. We have previously discussed the State Department facility that was built in that country at the cost of $60 million, to be abandoned after it was done since the State Department only then realized it could not withstand a terrorist attack.
We have previously discussed the Pentagon scandal where they had spent about half a billion dollars for planes to be used in Afghanistan only to scrap them for a value of only $10,000 shortly after they were minimally used.
We have previously discussed how the Pentagon had spent tens of millions of dollars on a military headquarters building in Afghanistan that was never used.
And now a it appears, according to Mr. West and the Washington Free Beacon, that $420 million worth of weaponry and other “sensitive equipment” has gone missing in Afghanistan. The loss was confirmed by an internal Inspector General’s report. Even worse, the final report noted that this loss of almost $420 million comes on the heals of another report that found an additional $586.8 million worth of military equipment had been “lost.”
Athough I do not know this for a fact, it is probably a good bet that a lot of this equipment has ended up in hotspots around the Middle East and probably a lot of it is in the hands of the barbaric ISIS terrorists, courtesy of a political class and clueless government that cannot keep track of its own military inventory.
3) A Washington Examiner article on November 13, 2014 by Sarah Westwood is a real doozy in that it covers a scandal that goes back for a decade, all the way back to Hurricane Katrina. According to her reporting:
- More than nine years after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, billions of tax dollars in recovery funds remain in limbo since most of Federal taxpayer funded projects in New Orleans have yet to be properly documented.
- An amazing 20,000 out of 24,000 FEMA funded projects and efforts have not yet been settled even though the issue has been analyzed and reported on over the years by the Department of Homeland Security auditors.
- “What is particularly disturbing about this relatively large percentage of small projects being open for eight years is that GOHSEP [the government oversight entity responsible for managing the funds] has already paid applicants for these projects. As the years pass, confirming whether applicants ever completed these small projects will grow difficult,” said a September, 2013 IG report.
- In one example, the University of New Orleans Research and Technology Foundation got $12 million to fund 12 projects in the wake of Katrina but somehow ended up spending $19 million without getting prior approval to spend the additional $7 million.
- Ÿ In another case, another audit found that work on 20 of 29 planned projects by the Audubon Commission, a City of New Orleans public body responsible for museums and park facilities, had not yet even begun about a decade after the disaster.
4) We often talked about the incredible waste and risking of taxpayer wealth when the Obama administration freely gave out grants and loan guarantees to alternative energy companies. At last count, if I remember correctly, the administration and squandered well over $30 billion on such failed alternative energy companies such as Solyndra, A123, Spectra, and dozens of others, getting no societal benefit in return.
To add insult to injury, not only did massive amounts of taxpayer wealth get squandered, almost every single company that got that wealth was in some way associated with the Democratic party, either as a former Democratic politician, a heavy Democratic fund raiser, or other such connection. Thus, the squandering of money was not based on a valid, overarching strategy but simple crony capitalism.
I bring up that history because history is about to strike again, according to reporting and research by the Heritage Foundation. A solar energy facility called Ivanpah, in California, originally received a $1.6 billion taxpayer back loan to support its operations.
But the facility is failing to meet its targets of energy creation because it is simply not getting enough sunlight relative to what it had planned on. So as a failing alternative energy company, what should it do? The same thing all of the other failed companies did, ask for a taxpayer bailout.
In a contorted piece of logic, the company is asking for a $539 million taxpayer grant to pay off the original $1.5 billion taxpayer-backed loan. So it took out a loan with Federal backing and wants more taxpayer money to pay off its original debt of taxpayer money. Again, you cannot make this stuff up, it is too wild.
But wait, there is more. Two major companies have financial interests in Ivanpah, energy giant NRG along with Google. Google, one of the richest companies in the world wants a government bailout for a business they have a financial interest in and should have had a financial risk in also when it failed. If this Ivanpah was such a good idea, then Google, NRG, and their shareholders should have taken the risk and made the investment, not use taxpayer money to make the investment and avoid the risk.
The alternative energy boondoggle and wasted taxpayer wealth continues under the Obama administration despite dozens of other such failures in the past. As Einstein once said, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” Sound familiar?
That will do it for today’s insanity. The wasting of more billions of dollars on failed alternative energy programs, losing almost a billion dollars worth of military equipment in Afghanistan that could end up killing our own soldiers somewhere in the Middle East in the future, Hurricane Katrina programs and spending that never ends, and kids that are still not eating the hideous food Michelle Obama demands they eat. And the insanity will continue to roll on tomorrow and then some.
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.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w
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