While There is Still Hope for America, Part 3...Despite The Political Class: Cutting Unnecessary Defense Spending, Cutting Unnecessary Government Reports, and More

Unfortunately, when discussing the political class in America it usually gets pretty depressing. Runaway national debt, leaky borders, escalating healthcare costs, a lost war on drugs, failing public schools, selfish politicians whose only priority in life is their own personal enrichment and egos, a government bureaucracy that fails at everything it does, etc. It can get pretty depressing with all of the bad news that originates with a petty and inept political class. 

This situation led us to write the book, “Love My Country, Loathe My Government,” a fifty step plan to fix what ails the country. Sadly, since the book was published in 2009, the politicians in this country have followed absolutely none of the common sense steps that were proposed. Doing so would have put the country in a much better position today vs. what we are currently living through.

So rather than dwell on the continuing bad news that is spawned by today’s political class, lets take a couple of days to talk about some good things that are going on that should give us all some hope that eventually we can actually fix what the political class has broken and finally actually resolve some major issues of our times.

1) We have often discussed the reality that the American taxpayer wastes at least tens of billions of dollars every year by garrisoning military troops around the world. Step 30 from “Love my Country, Loathe My Government,” strongly suggested that such massive deployment of military personnel around the world was useless and wasteful. 

In fact, like most Washington efforts and strategies, a strong case can be made that these deployments made our international situation and homeland security worse. Every year or so it seems there is another rape case on Okinawa involving a local Japanese woman and U.S. military personnel.

Even though the Korean War ended six decades ago, we still have kept tens of thousands of American troops stationed in South Korea, possibly making North Korean leaders even more paranoid and dangerous if we did not have troops massed on their borders.

And though the Cold War ended about three decades ago, why we have continued to station tens of thousands of troops there to fight a non-existent enemy is beyond logic and certainly wasteful.

Thus, it was encouraging to find out recently that the Pentagon was going to close down 15 U.S.military bases in Europe. The closures are expected to save $500 million a year and be completed by the early 2020s. That’s the good news, a real good first step.

The bad news has several components. These positive steps will not be completed for a decade or so, requiring billions of dollars to still be spent on obsolete military bases. The process should be done much quicker. Second, while a couple of thousand U.S. troops in Great Britain will no longer be needed, there will still be tens of thousands of U.S. troops still on the continent costing tens of billions of dollars a year.

But it is a start and that is the good news. To the tune of half a billion dollars a year.

2) Congress also deserves some credit for starting to cut down on Federal government bureaucracy if only a little bit. They voted to eliminate 48 useless annual government reports that probably very few people ever read and which almost definitely never was worth the effort to compile. Hopefully, the President will sign the bill terminating these reports.

To show you how inane these reports are, consider just a few of the more outlandish ones:

• One report dated back to 1930 and was related to dog and cat fur imports. Yes, in 2014, someone, somewhere in th Federal government was compiling the amount of dog and cat fur imports, all paid for by the American taxpayer.
• Another report tracked how many acres of farmland was devoted to raising peanuts.
• Another report reconciled all of the reports related to the Corporation for National And Community Service.

The good news is that this is a small but positive step at cutting down unnecessary Federal bureaucracies and it will save the American taxpayer about $1 million a year. The bad news is that the Federal government will still be compiling another 4,921 annual reports every year, most of which are probably just as useless as the ones that have been discontinued.

If we could somehow terminate half of those $4,921 annual reports and save at the same rate, we could reduce unnecessary government report expenses by about $50 million a year. $50 million a year could shelter a lot of homeless, feed a lot of hungry, treat a lot of the addicted and do a lot lot more good than being used to create reports that no one ever uses.

3) The Philadelphia Inquirer recently reported that a statewide grand jury has recommended criminal charges be filed against Pennsylvania State Attorney General Kathleen Kane. The charge include perjury and contempt of court related to the leaking of secret grand jury information. Let me say up front that these are only charges and that she is presumed innocent until proven guilty.

However, the good news is that someone in the state government of Pennsylvania is actually looking out for the integrity of the law in the state regardless of political position held or political power. The fact that charges were brought is a sign of hope that all are treated the same under the law, at least in Pennsylvania.

The background of the case is centered around a local grand jury that handed down indictments of two Democratic state legislators for taking bribes in exchange for their votes on a bill.Although the grand jury came back with criminal indictments, Attorney General Kane refused to prosecute the case involving two members of her same political party.

As a result, a judge convened a state grand jury with a special prosecutor to follow up on the whole situation which ended up indictments of Kane. Again, innocent until proven guilty but the good news is that the process worked and even the top law enforcement agent in the state is not above the law and scrutiny for integrity.

4) And last piece of good news: the price of oil continues to drop with the resultant price of gas at the pump continues to drop also. Now some politicians are licking their jobs at this good news and thinking that raising the gas tax at this time is a good thing to do. God forbid the American consumer get a break. 

However, I am more hopeful than ever that the American consumer will not stand for more taxation at a time when government wasteful spending is at an all time high. Just in case, may I suggest you give your Washington representatives a call and tell them no to more taxes, in any form.

That will do it for the three days of good news we have reviewed.Today we learned that small but positive steps have been taken to cut down unnecessary military base expenses and government report expenses. We have learned that at least in Pennsylvania, no politician is above the law. And gas prices continue to sink despite the best efforts of Washington politicians to make it more expensive to gas up. 

I hope you enjoyed this brief review of hope and good news because tomorrow we dive right back into the insanity, incompetence, wasteful spending, and dangers of the American political class.

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