January, 2015, Part 1, Political Class Insanity: Congressional Office Egotism, Defense Department Scamming, And More

It is the beginning of both another year and another month which means it is time to review the latest political class insanity from the American political class. For regular readers of this blog, you know that as 2014 progressed, the insanity, stupid quotes, ineffective governing and legislating, and general incompetence of our politicians seemed to accelerate as the year grinded on. No major issues got addressed, never mind resolved. Obama Care’s implications across the entire country and entire economy continued to unfold in disaster after disaster. Our foreign policy, or what was passed off as a foreign policy, was in tatters. Terrorism was on the march across the world. Veterans were dying because the Federal government could not fulfill the medical and health care promises those brave veterans were promised. The national debt has hit a mind boggling $18 TRILLION.

And our President continued to play golf and go on political campaign swings like no other President ever did. Congress narrowly missed becoming the least productive Congress of all time. Billions were spent and wasted on the November elections to elect people that did not deserve the time of day never mind billions of dollars. Racial division spread across the country, a division that was fomented and spread by those in office with something to gain.

And guess what? Over the next week or so, you will see nothing has changed except the calendar. The political class is still out of control, the government entities that they rule over are bloated and ineffective, and the quality of life and freedom in this country continues to deteriorate. Hang on, it is going to be a bumpy next seven days or so.

1) We have often reported on how the Defense Department is not only one of the Federal government’s largest expense line but also the most bloated and out of control. Government auditors have actually given up trying to audit how the Pentagon spends taxpayer money, the accounting systems and spending controls are that much of a mess.

As an example of this wasteful and disgraceful abuse of taxpayer wealth, consider a recent example of a rare instance when an abuser of Pentagon funds actually got caught:

• A former CEO of a defense contracting company (Protection Strategies, Inc.), Keith Hedman, is being forced to pay back $4.5 million as a result of his creating fake companies to take advantage of a special category of small business contracts.
• Apparently, he named an African-American female president as CEO in order for to qualify for contracts through the Small Business Administration's Section 8(a) program.
• When that person left the company in 20013, cancelling the access to the Section 8(a) funding, he created a brand new company called Security Assistance Corporation (SAC) and picked a female employee with a Portuguese background to lead the company in order to get him access to Section 8(a) funding again.
• Over the next eight years, Hedman illegally ran SAC behind the scenes and the company collected $31 million from the section 8(a) program.
• It is alleged that Hedman also bribed a regional director of the Federal Protective Service to keep the scam alive.
• Hedman was eventually sentenced to six years in jail in criminal proceedings and under a civil suit he has agreed to return $6.1 million from the illegally received contracts, pay a $15,000 find, and will face probation for two years after his sentence ends.

This is obviously a success story. The problem here is twofold: 1) why did it take eight years to finally figure out that Hedman was scamming the American taxpayer, and 2) how many thousands of other Hedman’s are out there running similar Defense Department scams that are likely never to be uncovered or the taxpayer wealth returned.

2) People elected to Congress are supposed to be public servants. They should be in office to serve and protect citizens and their freedom and wealth. They should not be in the business in order to enrich themselves or their egos while in D.C.

They should be all of these things but …they are not. Taxpayers are about to get hit with a very large bill just to shuffle the new members of Congress into ego driven bigger and/or better Congressional offices. According to an article written by Kate Scanlon on December 26, 2014 for the Heritage Foundation:

• “Your member of Congress might get a nicer office for the next session, but you will foot the bill for his or her move,” according to Ms. Scanlon.
• At the onset of each new Congressional session, newly elected politicians participate in a lottery for offices suites for themselves and their staff.
• Incumbent members often try to leave the offices they got in a previous lottery to get larger, nicer offices or locations closer to the House or Senate floor.
• Additionally, this year, with control of the Senate changing hands, Republican committee staffers and their Democratic counterparts are needlessly trading quarters as well.
• NBC Washington reports that in the 2012 Congressional office shuffle and swaps, an obscene 254 members of Congress moved into new office suites, costing taxpayers $1.5 million.
• The 2014 move, according to NBC Washington, “will require Capitol work crews to shift furniture, furnishings, boxes and electronics between hundreds of rooms and cubicles.”

Such egotism is obscene and disgusting. Being in a better or bigger office is certainly not going to make a politician more productive and more useful, it only feeds a self gratifying need to be important. This multi-million dollar, unnecessary expense does not feed or shelter the homeless, treat the drug addicted, retrain the unemployed, or treat the lagging medical needs of our veterans.

There should be a rule: once you are settled into a Congressional office in Washington, that office is yours until you are no longer in office. Moving to another office for the sake of moving another office is not a valid government expense.

If you do not like the size of your office, quit your Congressional position and go get a job where the office is what you want, do not make the taxpayers pay for your office ego. But we should not be surprised. The current members of the American political class are in it for themselves, this is just an example of their “me first” mentality, its only taxpayer money that is being wasted.

3) A December 19, 2014 article on the www.cnsnews.com website by Melanie Hunter discussed the fact that the Federal government had funded a research study to study transgender mortality. Details of this wasteful spending include the following:

• The study cost $189,186 and was given by the National Institutes of Health to Emory University.
• The purpose of the study is to research the mortality of transgendered people, using electronic medical records for people who receive care from the Veterans Affairs Administration.
• “The purpose of this study is to determine whether transgender persons defined as those who medically change the gender assigned to them at birth (male to female or female to male) have higher or lower risk of death and certain diseases than men and women that do not consider themselves transgender.”
• Additionally, the goal of the project is to “develop a longitudinal cohort study of the short- and long-term health outcomes among individuals who underwent hormonal and/or surgical gender reassignment interventions.”

Look, I have nothing against transgendered people but with an $18 TRILLION national debt, we as a nation really do not have enough money to spend on such narrowly focused (e.g. only transgendered people who are served by the veterans Administration), practically useless research programs when:

• Tens of millions of Americans will suffer through dementia and Alzheimer’s nightmares in the coming years, dwarfing the number of transgender people, and only those who end up in VA records, that might be served by this study.
• Tens of millions of Americans will suffer through various types of cancer in the coming years, dwarfing the number of transgender people, and only those who end up in VA records, that might be served by this study.
• Millions of American veterans will suffer health issues in the coming years that are not currently being served adequately by the federal government, dwarfing the number of transgender people that might be served by this study.

Now $189,186 is not going to cure dementia, cancer, or heal a lot of veterans. But the Federal government and many of its agencies including the National Institutes of Health, waste tens of billions of dollars every year on these narrow, near useless, and relatively unimportant studies. This type of research that will serve an extremely small percentage of Americans, if any.

Taking these billions of dollars and focusing only on those major ailments of society would be a far better payback for all Americans, including transgender Americans who would also suffer less cancer and dementia type aliments.

So what did we learn from today’s insanity:

1. There are a lot of creative ways to rip off the Defense Department including setting up fake companies with fake minority leadership.
2. Our politicians’ first order of business when a new Congress takes its seats is to ensure that they get the nicest, biggest, and best office space for their egos, the major issue of our times taking a back seat until their office situation is expensively settled.
3. The Federal government continues to waste taxpayer wealth on narrow and near useless health studies (e.g. transgendered people who are also veterans) and under fund and under emphasize health issues (e.g. cancer, dementia, etc.) that will affect tens of millions of Americans going forward.

Incompetence and bad priorities, just another month with the American political class. More insanity to ensue over the next week or so.

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