This is our seventh installment this month and we are getting near to the end of the latest insanity from our politicians. A lot of what you will see today comes from events that happened this past summer. It is only now that we have been able to get through the recent insanity that we can now review older, but still crazy, political class insanity. With any luck and no more political shenanigans, we might be able to wrap up this month’s political class insanity with this post (but don’t bet on it.)
1) According to an October, 2014 New York Times article, soon after U.S. military forces defeated the Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein, caravans of trucks started to bring pallets of $100 bills to Andrews Air Force base outside of D.C. The money came from accounts of the former Iraqi government and was being sent to Iraq to try and kick start the economy and new Iraqi government that was to replace Hussein.
In total, over an 18 month period, between $12 and $14 billion in cold cash was sent into Iraq and an additional $5 billion was returned to the country by electronic transfer. Where that money ended up and what it was used for then became a mystery.
So much of a mystery that a special inspector general had to be appointed to find out what happened to the cash. Stuart Bowen drew that assignment and while he found that a lot of the money probably was used as intended by the new Iraqi government, billions of it were unaccounted for. Finally, he had a breakthrough and proved that about $1.5 billion of physical U.S. cash had been stored in a bunker in rural Lebanon.
However, given his findings, no one seemed to want to do anything about it. According to the article, the Bush administration showed no interest in tracking it down and retrieving it, the Obama administration followed suit, and the Iraqi government also decided not to take steps to retrieve it. All of these administrations along with the FBI and the CIA refuse to discuss the missing billion dollars plus.
It is not easy to transport, lose, and store $1.5 billion or so. This is not pick pocket money. Yet, despite the large amount of money, nobody in the political class in Washington is interested in getting it back before it can be used for nefarious purposes. $1.5 billion in U.S. cash can buy a lot of terrorists a lot of weapons. But apparently no one in Washington cares. Insane.
2) Washington Democrats, including the President, have often tried to divide the country by claiming that Republicans have declared a “war on women” and Democrats are the only ones helping women in the country. We have previously pointed out how hypocritical this propaganda is since many famous Democratic politicians have been caught cheating on their wives, not something an advocate of women should be doing, lying and cheating on women:
- Former President Bill Clinton
- Former New York State District Attorney Eliot Spitzer
- Former New Jersey Governor James MacGreevey
- Former U.S. Senator John Edwards who not only cheated on and lied to his wife he did these dastardly acts while she was battling cancer and fighting for her life.
3) Throughout this week and previously months’ political class insanity posts, we have often pointed out how inept the Pentagon is when it comes to managing taxpayer money. And now thanks to a recent article from Businessweek, that was summarized in the August 8, 2014 issue of The Week magazine, we now know that the average major Pentagon acquisition program comes in at 40% over budget.
As just one example of how incompetent the Defense Department is at logistics and procurement, Businessweek points out that even when the Defense Department purchases prescription drugs for members of our armed forces, it ends up paying a whopping 60% more than what Medicaid pays for the same drugs.
You really must be incompetent when you are 60% more incompetent than the dysfunctional Medicaid process, a process we have previously reported loses anywhere form $30 to $40 billion a year to fraud and waste. Pathetic disregard for taxpayer wealth and as always, I doubt that anyone who is responsible for this irresponsible spending ever lost their jobs or were otherwise penalized for their ineptness.
4) Political class insanity and incompetence is not restricted to Washington. A Reason magazine article from the November, 2014 issue reported on what is happening in Colorado as a result of the gun control legislation that state passed last year. Part of that legislation required that all private transfers of weapons go through a background check similar to the kinds of checks that gun stores have to do.
So how is that working out? According to the article, the state expected that there would be about 420,000 background checks as a result of the law in the first two years after enactment. One year after enactment there have been only 13,600 background checks or only about 7% of what the state politicians expected. So either the politicians did a really lousy job of estimating the impacts of their law or citizens of Colorado are simply ignoring a law that many found repugnant to begin with.
In either case, a lot of legislative time and effort was spent on a law that is having little real world impact, not a surprising outcome when talking about American politicians today.
5) One last piece of insanity for today and it is also a doozy. Nick Gillespie, writing for the Against Cronyism website, cited an Associated Press report back August that stated that the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) had actually paid an Amtrak secretary $854,460 over a twenty year period for confidential information on Amtrak train passengers. A secretary, a secretary in a different federal agency, twenty years, over $854,000, unbelievable.
Amtrak’s inspector general FINALLY uncovered the shenanigans after twenty years. Also unbelievable was the fact that the secretary was allowed to retire without any other significant repercussions or punishment.
Even worse, according to the inspector general’s report and the Associated Press reporting, Amtrak could have lawfully and legally obtained the same information for free over those twenty years through a standing joint drug enforcement law enforcement organization that includes both DEA and Amtrak’s own police force.
Keystone Kops could not be any more screwed up. One agency of the Federal government paying a secretary big bucks in another Federal agency for confidential customer information that they could have obtained for free. Again, you cannot make this stuff up.
Although I promised that this might be the last insanity post for this month, I have to take back that promise. I could not it all into this post. Tomorrow will be the last insanity post for this month, not necessarily because we covered all of the idiocy but because it is too depressing to go beyond tomorrow.
Until then, please consider visiting our term limits website and join the cause to clean out Washington of the insane and the insanity:
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.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w
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