July, 2016, Part 4, Political Class Insanity: Wasting Taxpayer Money in Tunisia and Iceland, More Dead in Chicago, 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. In fact, last month we set a record, needing ten full posts to cover it all.

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 posts 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.

It looks like our politicians have been especially insane over the past month or so let’s continue with the latest insanity from today’s American politicians:

1) The ways that the Washington political class can waste taxpayer money never ceases to amaze us. THE MRCTV website recently reported on just another screwball, useless waste of taxpayer wealth. Brittany Hughes reported on June 29, 2016 that the Federal government spent $39,000 to study Syrian refugees...in Iceland. You cannot make this stuff up.

The Federal government gave almost $39,000 to the San Jose State University Foundation to study and research the resettlement of Syrian refugees in Iceland. The Federal entity responsible for this atrocity is the National Science Foundation, an entity that we have discussed numerous times in this blog for their insanely stupid use of taxpayer money. For a list of previous posts regarding National Science Foundation’s wasteful projects, type “national science foundation” in the search box above.

The formal objective of the effort reads as follows: “In early 2016, Iceland received Syrian refugee families and placed them in three Icelandic communities. Now is an exceptional time to examine Iceland's reaction and capacity to address forced migration into the Arctic…There is great potential in Iceland to serve as a global model as it determines policies, procedures, and communications among the stakeholders for developing best-practices for addressing the challenges of refugees and forced migration. Providing culturally effective services to a population that continuously changes in country of origin, language needs, health and mental health needs, and cultural experiences will be a significant problem for service providers around the world. Knowledge gained through this research has the potential to provide critical insights other nations facing similar crises.”

There are two ways this is such an idiotic waste of money:

1. First of all, this studies the stories of Syrians settling in Iceland, a land that is completely different than the United States from a cultural, religion, language, laws, and societal perspective. To think that anything learned about this Iceland experience is transferable to the United States is ridiculous.
2. Second, the round trip flight for two researchers to fly from California to Iceland would be over $4,000. This would consume more than 10% of the entire budget from the grant. Add in hotel reservations and other travel expenses and I would estimate that 15-20% of the entire budget would be spent just on travel expenses. The point here is what kind of good data are you going to get on a mere $39,000? None, all you did is provide some free vacation money for some college researchers who did not get enough resources to do any kind of decent research which even if it was good research, it would not be applicable to our problems with refugees.

2) Unfortunately, we often come back to this next topic but it is news even if the Obama-friendly mainstream media does not cover it. Chicago has some of the toughest gun laws in the country. In the Obama and liberal mindset, this is a good thing since it should greatly reduce gun violence and crime. In reality, their mindset could not be any further from the truth.

According to MRCTV, in a recent Chicago two day weekend, seven Chicagoans were killed and 35 were wounded by gunfire. Those killed included a 17 year old boy and those wounded included a five year old girl. As the Chicago gun laws get stiffer, more and more citizens are left defenseless while criminals, gangs, and drug cartels ignore any and all gun laws. Why is that relationship so hard for people like Obama to understand? They are criminals, by definition, criminals do not obey laws, that is why they are criminals. 

And as time goes by, the Obama administration and the rest of the political class refuse to acknowledge and work on the root causes of the violence. The political class has been fighting and losing the war on drugs for decades but still insist on doing the same thing over and over which does not reduce drug addiction but does give rise to violent drug cartels and gangs. And the economic malaise that the current administration has caused to infect much of the country prevents people from lifting themselves out of poverty and the crime that usually follows poverty. 

But typical politicians, working on either the wrong solution to the right problem or the right solution to the wrong problem.

3) Let’s talk about another major foreign affairs failure of the current administration. Despite the deaths and wounding of thousands of Americans troops and probably the expenditure of over a trillion dollars of taxpayer wealth, according to Military Times article that was summarized in the July 1, 2016 issue of The Week magazine, the Taliban in Afghanistan now control more areas of the country than at any point since 2001 when the Taliban government was overthrown by a U.S.-led military campaign. Afghan government troops have suffered a 28% increase in battle fatalities over the past year. 

Thousands of U.S. wounded and dead, a trillion dollars expended, and we are no better off than where we were fifteen years ago. An epic fail of historic proportions.

4) Let’s stay with failed U.S. foreign policy. According to an article in the July 1m 2016 issue of The Week magazine, the United Nations estimates that a whopping 63.5 million people were displaced just in the past year, the largest refugee count since the end of World War II. 

Much of that displacement happened in the Middle East where 1) the terrorist group ISIS, that Obama once classified as the JV team of the terrorism world, has had much success in rampaging through large swaths of Syria and Iraq with little resistance; since Obama and the rest of the world have never had a plan to defeat to defeat ISIS, world setting refugee records should not be a surprise and 2) Obama and Clinton launched an illegal and un-Constitutional war to topple the government of Libya, leaving a void that terrorists quickly filled which caused untold thousands of Libyans to become refugees.

Ramsey Clark once said: “The greatest crime since World War II has been U.S. foreign policy.” That crime has continued under both the Bush and Obama administrations.

5) One last piece of insanity for today. Obama has constantly railed against anyone who says that we need to secure our southern border with Mexico. Surely those that want to make it more difficult for illegal drugs, drug cartel personnel, human traffickers, and illegal immigrant to cross into this country simply do not understand our history of immigration or are out and out racists. 

And yet...and yet, the Obama administration, via its State Department outpost in Tunisia announced with little fanfare that the State Department would give the government of Tunisia almost $25 million of taxpayer money to begin building border fortifications and resources to prevent illegal immigration from war torn Libya into Tunisia. The money will be used to install state-of-the-art electronic surveillance systems along the border to improve the existing barriers against illegal immigration and to train the Tunisian security forces on how to use the equipment.

Such hypocrisy. If American taxpayers want to build a wall to protect themselves, they are racists. But the Obama administration has no qualms about other countries building walls and using American taxpayer money to build those walls. 

Even if you are an American who does not want to build a wall along the Mexican border, wouldn’t you agree that spending that $25 million on hungry Americans, drug addicted Americans, American veterans’ sorely needed medical care, homeless Americans, and unemployed Americans is a far better use of American taxpayer wealth than sending it half way around a world for a non-strategic, minor country?

That will do it for today: building walls in foreign countries with American taxpayer money, setting refugee records because of a lousy U.S. foreign policy, losing to the Taliban, wasting taxpayer money in Iceland, and more violence in Chicago. Their insanity is wide and varied and unfortunately, expensive. More insanity tomorrow.

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