April, 2015, Part 2, Political Class Insanity: Drunk In The Secret Service, Prostitute Soliciting InThe Justice Department, Crimes In The Senate and More

Every month we do a regular series under the theme, “political class insanity.” We look at the many,many different, and often original, ways that the American political class wastes our tax dollars, undermines our freedoms, and generally act in the most idiotic ways possible, via their quotes, actions, and laws. For past examples of hundreds of instances of political class insanity, just page through the historical listings on the right side of this page at the beginning of each month or enter “political class insanity” in the search box above.

We usually do not start a new month’s insanity until the current month has ended. However, given the political class idiocy seems to be increasing, we are starting May’s insanity review a day early in order to get a little head start on what is shaping up as an epic month of insanity.

1) Eric Holder recently stepped down as Attorney General for the country. Before he did so, he found it necessary to issue a department wide edict that warned Justice Department not to solicit prostitutes: “I want to reiterate to all Department personnel, including attorneys and law enforcement officers, that they are prohibited from soliciting, procuring, or accepting commercial sex. This rule applies at all times during an individual’s employment, including while off duty or on personal leave, and applies regardless of whether the activity is legal or tolerated in a particular jurisdiction, foreign or domestic.”

The good news is that he recognized the problem and took a step to fix it. The bad is: REALLY? Soliciting prostitutes at the Justice Department is such a big problem that Holder actually had to make it clear that it is not right nor acceptable? My goodness, how long has this been a problem, why was it not curtailed long ago, and why do I feel that taxpayer money was likely and somehow involved and wasted in Justice Department employees’ pursuit of prostitutes? Pathetic morals and integrity.

2) Harry Reid is a Nevada U.S. Senator and until the last election was the Senate Majority Leader. Today I will not go into how I think,based on his actions, that he was likely one of the worst Senate Majority Leaders of all time. Today, the only Harry Reid material we will review is the possible criminal actions he took while Senate Majority Leader.

According to a recent Department Of Homeland Security inspector general report, Reid may have illegally acted on behalf of a company that is represented by his son. The alleged and potential crime is that he intervened in order to secure 230 EB-5 investor visas for the SLS Hotel and Casino project in Las Vegas. An EB-5 visa allows a foreigner to invest at least $500,000 in this country in return for a green card. Once the visas were approved, $155 million was freed up to flow into the casino project.

A watchdog group Cause of Action filed a formal charge with the Senate Ethics office in late 2013, alleging that Reid had unlawfully intervened with two officials at the U.S.Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) in order to get visas processed. Previously, some of those visas had not been approved due to “suspicious financial activity” committed by those applying, i.e., USCIS had worries that some of the funds were lawfully obtained. After Reid’s intervention, all the visas were approved.

But this not the only potential Reid lawbreaking,the second one related to helping a fellow Senator help out a donor friend involving Medicare billing and Health and Human Services incident.According to reporting by Breitbart:

[Reid]…hosted a meeting between Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius. At the meeting, Menendez made the case for his friend and donor, Dr. Salomon Melgen, who was at the time embroiled in what was supposed to be an independent adjudicatory process at HHS involving $8.9 million the department said he overbilled Medicare.

Possibly coincidentally, Reid’s intervention came right after Melgen donated $300,000 to the Senate Majority PAC, which has close to the Nevada senator. By the end of 2012, Melgen had donated a total of $700,000 to the PAC. Yeah, just a coincident that the funding was wrapped up with a power play to fix a Medicare error or crime.

One would hope that the leaders in Washington had some integrity and respect for the law. But if these alleged crimes are true, it would just be another round of self-serving Washington politicians serving themselves,not the country or its taxpayers.

3) Hogan’s Heroes was a TV sitcom from the 60s and it had a regular character in the show called Sergeant Schultz, a German guard. Schultz was basically useless and never wanted to get involved in anything in order to claim ignorance. In fact, his regular recurring line on the show was, “I see nothing!” 

Well, it seems that 50 years later, our current President is channeling the Sergeant Schultz character. Despite having hundreds, if not thousands, of people directly working for him, despite having state of the art communications abilities, despite having the NSA,FBI, and CIA spying on the world and just about every U.S.citizen, Obama seems to get most of his information from TV news, about the same time everyone else gets it.

Tough to have a lot of faith in your government and politicians when it appears if they miss the nightly news broadcast they will clueless of what is going on in the world and in the country. Check out the best of Obama's Sergeant Schultz imitations on the wide variety of scandals engulfing his administration, all of which he found out about from the news broadcasts, not his own people:

http://www.mrctv.org/blog/compilation-obama-first-hearing-stories-news

4) American is supposed to be the “land of the free” but you would not believe that if you read an article from the April 24, 2015 issue of The Week magazine:

• The U.S. is now home to 25% of the world’s prison inmates but has only 5% of the world’s population.
• The total number of prison inmates across all levels of government was 320,000 in 1980 but 35 years later the prison population is almost eight times higher or 2.4 million people.
• It costs the American taxpayer $80 billion a year to house, feed,and clothe these 2.4 million inmates.
• Once released after serving their sentences, 60% of those released are back in prison within three years.

Do we think something is wrong with this picture? Many of those in prison are there because of non-violent drug crimes. Many in prison have no chance of ever being integrated back into society, given the 60% rate stated above. For $80 billion a year, we are getting very little back in return except for being the official world’s most imprisoned population. Insane.

5) Yesterday we discussed how far the Secret Service had fallen from being a highly respected law enforcement entity to just another incompetent government bureaucracy. Frequent fence jumpers at the White House, White House windows shot out, an intruder that got deep into the White House itself, etc.

To that infamous lists of failures we add another embarrassing incident that was summarized in the March 27, 2015 issue of The Week magazine. This incident happened when Secret Service personnel was investigating a suspicious package that had been left near the White House, fearing that it may have been a weapon or bomb. 

In the middle of the investigation, two senior drunk Secret Service agents drove their car right through the middle of the investigation. Which raises two questions:

1. How did the investigating Secret Service agents even allow a car to get that close to their investigation scene, never mind the fact it let drunk agents to be at the wheel of that car?
2. According to Congressional committee hearings, the director of the Secret Service only found out about the drunk incident when someone sent him an anonymous email five days later.

Seems like another week, another Secret Service screw up. Thank goodness their drunken actions did not result in accidently detonating a bomb and that no one got hurt….this time.

That will do it for today’s insanity: potential crimes in the highest reaches of the Senate, drunk Secret Service agents, soliciting Justice Department employees, and it is the rest of America that is in jail. Down the rabbit hole to political class insanity. More tomorrow.

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http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w