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? During this week and next 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 pointed out how the political class in this country and the government programs they oversee are always infected and infested with inefficiencies, wasteful spending, and outright criminal fraud. Now, an audit of a welfare program in the state of Nebraska have quantified how poorly run just one state’s welfare program is operated:
- In a small audit sample of welfare cases, the auditors found questionable costs in 50% of the cases it tested in the Employment First program, which people must participate in before getting welfare.
- Auditors found a lack of monitoring of the program by contractors who ran the welfare program, lack of timely reviews and that even after the department in charge of the program was told of the fraud situation, the department failed to follow up.
- The auditors found that in the test cases, the welfare program operators failed to follow its own rules and regulations and properly monitor contractors, causing more than $61,000 in questionable expenses out of a total $79,251 in supportive service payments, an error rate approaching 80%.
- Auditors also examined another sample of 20 cases to ensure the welfare recipients were in need and they found that recipient income wasn’t properly calculated in 11 of 20 cases, an error rate of 55%.
- In that same sample they also found nearly $7,800 in overpayments.
- Auditors also found there was a lack of processes to correctly determine if a recipient was accurately reporting their financial resources since caseworkers are not required to verify resources worth less than $1,500, regardless of how many resources they had. Recipients cannot have more than $4,000 in resources for single person, $6,000 for two or more.
Sky high error rates, unnecessary and incorrect payments, and procedures that were either ignored or botched by those operating the program. And this was just in this single state program across a small sample of welfare cases. Imagine how much taxpayer wealth is being wasted across the entire country across all welfare programs of every type and imagine that no politician seems to have the ability or the will to protect this taxpayer wealth abuse.
2) The Small Business Administration (SBA) is supposed to take taxpayer money and loan it out to small businesses at reasonable finance rates to help get these small businesses up and thriving. It is a noble goal since a large amount of our economic growth is generated by small businesses.
It is a noble goal, but like every other government program, the noble goal is always lost in translation. A recent article by Brent Scher on December 18, 2014 showed that the concept of butchers, bakers and candle stickmakers getting financial SBA help to serve all Americans is anything but reality:
- Billions of taxpayer backed SBA loans went to country clubs, Lamborghini dealerships, and luxury pet resorts.
- In total, over the past seven years, $67 billion of SBA loans went to support so-called “wealthy lifestyle” businesses.
- 35,000 of these type loans ranged from $1 to $5 million each, hardly what one would call “small business,” as researched by the non-profit group American Transparency.
- Over $160 million in SBA loans has been made to private golf clubs and yacht clubs.
- Even more outrageous, the SBA also gave $760 million in loans to companies that provide “luxury indulgences,” such as $3.497 million to Lamborghini dealerships and $3.296 million to BMW Motorcycle dealerships.
- Getting more ridiculous, almost $76 million in loans were given to 49 high end, luxury pet resorts across the country.
- During the past three years of the Obama Presidency, the number of SBA loans valued at over $1 million has grown 100%.
As Mr. Scher points out, the SBA kind of operates like a Robin Hood in reverse: take from the poor (middle class) via taxes and give to those that make the lives of the rich and famous (Lamborghini owners, yacht owners, etc.) better.
3) President Obama has seen his approval rating drop steadily the longer he is in office, for reasons that are too numerous to go into in detail here. Failed economic programs, failed foreign policies, failed domestic policies, leaky borders, skyrocketing debt, etc. are just a few general reasons for his falling approval.
But nowhere has he suffered more relative to approval ratings then within the U.S. armed forces. According to a recent poll published in the Military Times and reported by CNN:
- Only 15% of active duty service members give Obama a positive approval rating.
- This is down from 35% approval rating at the end of his first year in office.
- Troop morale is also falling, currently only 56% of those polled are satisfied with their quality of life, down from 91% in 2009.
- Nearly half of the active duty service members surveyed feel that both the Republican and Democratic parties have become less supportive of military issues.
- And only about 1 in 10 said the two parties "have the armed forces' best interests at heart.”
Compare the attitudes of our military folks towards Bush and towards Obama. The 15% approval rating discussed above is an all time worse for any President. However, according to an April, 2014 poll done by the Washington Post, two thirds of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans said Bush was a good commander in chief but only 42% said the same of President Obama.
Compare how the troops expressed their feelings towards the two men via the following link and decide who you would rather have leading the military and who the military is more likely to go that extra step for:
That will do it for today. Our military personnel getting fed up with the President and the rest of the political class, a Small Business Administration that caters to the wealthy at the cost of taxes from the poor and middle class, and welfare abuse and incompetence out of control. More political class insanity to follow 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.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w
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