October, 2015, Part 3, Political Class Insanity: We Mostly Think That Congress Is Corrupt, Hillary Ignores the Rules, and More

It is the beginning of another month which means it is time again to review the latest political class insanity from the American political class. Each month it takes us multiple posts to cover the wasteful spending, incompetent government organizations and employees, government programs that usually make a problem worse than resolving it, inane and idiotic politician comments, etc.

To review past posts on this insanity and idiocy, just click on the first few posts in each month listed to the right of this page. After reviewing just a handful of these insanity post we think you will agree that we are currently being served by the worst set of American politicians ever to hold office in our entire history

Let’s continue with the latest insanity review that we started two days ago:

1) While it is pretty obvious to anyone who reads our monthly updates on political class insanity that we are being served by horrible politicians, maybe, just maybe, the country is coming to that same conclusion as a whole. According to a recent Gallup poll:

• 52% of those polled believe that most members of Congress are corrupt.
• 79% of those polled believe that 79% of Congress is out of touch with the issues of the day.
• Unfortunately, many of those polled feel that their particular representatives in Congress are not as bad as others with 59% claiming that their elected member of Congress is not corrupt and that 47% (still a bad number) are in touch with the issues of the day.

Seems like we all know that people in Congress stink at their jobs and the results or non-results they generate. The question now is what do we do about it so that I no longer have enough material every month to write about the latest political class insanity.

2) Anyone remotely in touch with today’s politicians knows that Hillary Clinton is in a ton of political and legal trouble. This all relates to her nonchalant handling of classified material and bypassing government security protocols to have a non-secure email server in her private residence and also have her email capabilities running in a bathroom in an unsecure data system vendor’s facility. 

We now know that there have been serious hacking attempts from inside Russia to get at her highly classified Secretary of State files and communications. And you know if the Russians were hacking her, at least the Chinese were also hacking her, putting national security in danger. 

Why was this allowed to happen against the law and security requirements of the Federal government? Well, according to recent inspector general findings, the State Department higher officials during the Clinton tenure routinely and callously ignored the legal requirement that they attend data security training. This casual attitude to protecting state secrets permeated up to and including Hillary Clinton herself who also blew off data security training.

Details of the inspector general’s findings include the following:

• State Department Inspector General Harold W. Geisel produced six scathing reports that found top Hillary Clinton State Department managers did not submit themselves to mandatory “security awareness training” during Clinton’s tenure. 
• That training covers procedures for properly handling of sensitive and classified government documents and how to secure computer information, something one cannot do from their private home.
• This refusal to submit to the training is a violation of the requirement set out by the department itself and government-wide data security standards.
• And Hillary cannot claim ignorance in this area since Geisel had been warning of this security laxity since November, 2010, stating that the State Department “should improve methods to identify individuals with significant security responsibilities, ensure that they take the required training every 3 years, record the training records in the Office of Personnel Management-approved centralized system, and provide management with tools to monitor compliance with the training requirement.”
• A random audit in November, 2012 found that 46 out of 46 State Department employees “had not taken the recommended role-based security-related training course in the time-frame (that is, 6 months) as recommended in the Information Assurance Training Plan.”
• According to official government requirements and standards: “A strong IT security program cannot be put in place without significant attention given to training agency IT users on security policy, procedures, and techniques, as well as the various management, operational, and technical controls necessary and available to secure IT resources. Failure to give attention to the area of security training puts an enterprise at great risk because security of agency resources is as much a human issue as it is a technology issue.” 
• “There was a corporate culture among the highest echelons of State Department that she perhaps deliberately chose to ignore these security protocols. And consequently, they just were not enforced,” said James Williamson, a former Special Forces and counter-terrorism officer who is now president and CEO of Global Executive Management. “I would hold Mrs. Clinton directly responsible for inculcation of this culture within her organization,” Williamson said.

But alas, as often happens with people in Washington, not following the rules or breaking the law holds no ramifications for those that do so, they are special when it comes to rules. Could it be that the Obama administration’s Middle East performance and screw ups are because the rest of the world, including our enemies, knew exactly what was going on because they had access to an unsecured email computer server in someone’s house, a server that was accessed and maintained by people that decided to ignore data security training. 

Just saying, but in any case, the lack of accountability and punishment for such idiocy is insane.

3) One of Obama’s biggest campaign promises was that he was going to operate the most transparent Presidential administration in the history of the country. Sounds great in the heat of the political campaign. Right after he was sworn in, he issued the following statement:

I direct the Attorney General to issue new guidelines governing the FOIA to the heads of executive departments and agencies, reaffirming the commitment to accountability and transparency, and to publish such guidelines in the Federal Register. In doing so, the Attorney General should review FOIA reports produced by the agencies under Executive Order 13392 of December 14, 2005. I also direct the Director of the Office of Management and Budget to update guidance to the agencies to increase and improve information dissemination to the public, including through the use of new technologies, and to publish such guidance in the Federal Register.

But as we saw with dozens of other Obama promises this one also turned out to be a massive lie or massive incompetence. He has in actuality operated one of the most opaque and secretive administration ever. His administration has lost Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, it has failed to comply with requests in a timely manner or at all as required by law, it has tried to charge money for the execution of FOIA requests, a clear violation of the law, and many documents that were eventually produced for a FOIA request was so redacted as to be useless.

To see how many times Obama has fallen short on this promise, enter “freedom of information act” in the search box above or go to the following link for a comprehensive summary of abuses:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-transparent-failure-of-obamas.html

How insane has this whole transparency issue become within this most secretive Presidential administration? Well, Cause of Action, an independent government accountability entity has gone to court with a Freedom Of Information Act complaint about….Freedom of Information Act complaints:

“Cause of Action a government accountability organization, sued 10 cabinet agencies, the Office of Management and Budget, and the Internal Revenue Service today for refusing to disclose communications concerning documents the agencies shared with the White House. The records would reveal whether and how the White House politicizes records requests sent to federal agencies.

“Accountable and transparent government does not involve instructing agencies to send politically sensitive records to the White House for review. The bureaucracy has violated the law by stonewalling the public’s access to documents for political reasons. Cause of Action’s own investigation reveals that the White House is actually demanding access from agencies to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and Congressional document requests, as well as the documents subject to those requests, in a manner that may obstruct congressional oversight and violate the spirit of FOIA,” stated Dan Epstein, Cause of Action’s executive director.

Yes, we have fallen so far down the corruption rabbit hole that Freedom Of Information Act requests are needed to be made about Freedom of Information Act requests. You cannot make this stuff up.

That’s enough for today relative to political class insanity. We have a Secretary of State who thinks her and her organization are not bound by government rules and laws, a promised transparent Presidency that needs to be investigated for not being transparent, and a citizenry who overwhelming appears to believe, with good reason, that members of Congress are all corrupt, with the possible exception of their representative. 

More insanity in the coming days, with an emphasis of how insane our economic plight has become under this administration and this Congress.

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