This is our fifth installment this month and we are nowhere near the end of the latest insanity from our politicians:
1) Kelly Cohen, writing for the Washington Examiner this past summer posed the following question: What is two years behind schedule and more than $148 million overpriced?
The answer turned out to be the U.S. embassy in Kabul, the capital city of Afghanistan. That facility has that has been under construction for an amazing twelve years, since 2002. So far, an amazing $626 million has already been spent trying to complete the place. However, even worse, according to the Government Accountability Office, in the past four years, "construction requirements have changed, costs have increased, and schedules have been extended,"
This has resulted in a 24% increase in embassy construction costs, which brings the overall cost so far to $774 million or three quarters of a BILLION dollars. All this for a building that I predict will be in the Taliban hands within the next two to three years.
How can you spend so much money on construction at a single location, a construction job that that is not even finished and which will have a very, very short useful live for the U.S.? Amazingly insane.
2) I have always found that most of the taxpayer money spent by the National Institutes for Health is wasted on some of the most inane and stupid Federal government projects we come across. Rather than working on serious issues like cancer, aging diseases like dementia and Alzheimers, developing vaccines for real life threats such as Ebola, etc., they spend money an stuff that either has a very, very narrow focus or which has no focus or purpose at all.
Typical of their behavior was a recent expenditure of half a million taxpayer dollars to study whether mother-daughter dancing can cure obesity. Rather than trying to solve the underlying root causes of obesity, e.g. bad eating habits, bad or non-existent exercise habits, nutritional ignorance, a fat and salt infested food chain, etc., we the taxpayers allowed the Federal government to see if dancing alone would cure obesity and dancing that was narrowly restricted to only African-American daughters and moms.
As any decent problem solver knows, if you do not attack the root causes of a problem, any solution you come up with is unlikely to work since you never changed the underlying causes. Even if dancing had a beneficial effect, all of the root causes of obesity are still in place that cause the problem in the first place. Which makes this half a million dollar effort just another waste of taxpayer wealth.
But it is more than that since the Federal government had already proven that this type of program was a failure from past taxpayer funded studies.
This current study was conducted with the Federal grant to the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. However, back in 1999, Dr. Tom Robinson, a professor of pediatrics at Stanford University, has already spent an amazing $11 million of taxpayer money on two very similar dance studies that found that encouraging dancing has no impact on obesity levels of minority girls:
- His two multi-million dollar studies focused on African-American and Latina girls and tried to get them to lose weight by dancing.
- The initial study was conducted between 1999 and 2006, at a total cost of almost $7 million.
- That study followed over 200 low-income African-American 8- to 10-year-old girls and their families who participated in after-school hip-hop, African, and step dance classes and involved detailed in-home surveys of family members including height, weight, skin fold thickness, and waist and hip sizes.
- The results were not favorable to obesity reduction: “A culturally tailored after-school dance and screen time reduction intervention for low-income, preadolescent African American girls did not significantly reduce BMI gain [my emphasis] compared with health education but did produce potentially clinically important reductions in lipid levels, hyperinsulinemia, and depressive symptoms,” according to results posted in the National Library of Medicine. In other words, not a successful concept…besides not addressing the root causes back in 1999 of obesity.
3) We have already shown how the Obama administration “Cash for Clunkers” program back in 2009 was an unmitigated failure. The supposed purpose of the program was to jump start the domestic car industry by giving car purchasers upwards of $4,500 to buy a new car. This was supposed to get the economy moving by increasing consumer spending.
Many independent analyses have shown that there was virtually no increase in incremental car buying and thus, no economic stimulus to the economy. Those people that were thinking of buying a new car now delayed that decision until they could get that $4,500 incentive. Those people that were thinking about buying a new car in the future, moved up that decision to take advantage of the $4,500 incentive.
What was the net result? The timing of car sales was changed but the total number of incremental sales was zero. All the program did was change timing and cost the American taxpayer billions of dollars for no societal gain.
But newer, more detailed analyses shows that the Cash For Clunkers program was far worse than previously thought:
- Although the program was supposed to help the car industry, the program serious hurt the industry according to the findings of three Texas A&M University economics professors.
- Their analysis showed that the program caused the auto industry revenue stream to actually shrink by about $3 billion in less than a year despite giving out generous, taxpayer funded rebates.
- The professors concluded: “By lowering the relative price of smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles, the program induced households to purchase vehicles that cost between $4,000 and $6,000 less than the vehicles they otherwise would have purchased."
- They went on to reach the same conclusion we have already discussed, that overall, the Cash For Clunkers program produced exactly no net increase for the number of automobiles Americans purchased but did reduce the overall amount of money that Americans spent on cars purchased during the time of the promotion.
4) If spending taxpayer money on failed car sales programs in the U.S. is insane, what do you call a Federal government program that spends $193,989 for “a pilot study for a group that has been neglected in the Peruvian HIV epidemic, namely [Peruvian] male sex workers (fletes).” Not surprisingly, the National Institutes of Health funded this boondoggle program also…for a study of sex workers in Peru.
The grant for this insanity states: “Our research has demonstrated that fletes are an important component of the Peruvian HIV epidemic with specific social, cultural, and behavioral characteristics that place them at high risk for acquisition and transmission of HIV and STIs.” Did I mention that this money is being spent in Peru to study Peruvian sex workers?
The grant goes onto to read: “The Center will provide a space for fletes to engage with each other and develop a sense of shared community while accessing: (1) fundamental life needs, (2) safe socialization opportunities, (3) basic healthcare, (4) HIV/STI risk reduction activities, (5) personal development activities, and (6) vocational training.” Did I mention that this money is being spent in Peru to study Peruvian sex workers?
As we often have said when reviewing political class insanity, you cannot make this stuff up, it is that unbelievable. With tens of millions of Americans without adequate health care and health insurance, we are spending money in Peru on male sex workers' problems.
With millions of veterans not getting the medical care and attention they were promised by the Federal government, we are spending money in Peru on male sex workers' problems.
With millions of Americans in need of shelter, a meal or drug treatment, we are spending money in Peru on male sex workers' problems.
Disgracefully bad priorities and total disregard for taxpayer dollars and the needs of Americans. About par for the course when it comes to Washington politicians and an out-of-control Federal government. That is why term limits is so important. Current incumbent politicians have proven time and time again that they have neither the ability or will to stop the stupid spending and reprioritize budgets and needs.
They need to have their careers be put to rest, starting at the following website:
Because really, how much worse could it get when the current crop if politicians wastes money on Peruvian sex workers, implements programs that make conditions worse, studies issues they have already paid to answer, and takes over twelve years to build an embassy? And the sad thing is that we still have more insanity to cover this month over the next few days.
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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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