We have spent a lot of our recent posts discussing how DOGE and Trump are identifying and eliminating the stupid and wasteful spending of the Federal government. However, that does not mean that the American political class had stopped doing stupid and inane things, be it wasting taxpayer wealth, enriching themselves and family members, implementing stupid government programs, etc.
We usually called these failures “political class insanity.” Thus, let’s catch up on the insanity that American politicians have continued to indulge in:
1)In one of the scariest assaults on the First Amendment and the freedom of religion, recently uncovered FBI documents from the Biden administration basically said Catholics are extreme terrorists. Not based on any concrete examples of terrorism, not based on any top secret intelligence gathering information, not based on the breaking of any laws, just Catholics are terrorists.
The depth of this First Amendment attack was recently explained by Senator Chuck Grassley:
According to the Senator, the Richmond office of the FBI put out an internal memo designating certain Catholic groups as terrorist organizations.
When questioned under oath in front of Congress in 2023, then FBI Director, Christopher Wray, said that the memo was an isolated incident.
However, we now know that the memo was widely circulated within the FBI and had input from other FBI offices.
An FBI whistle blower eventually exposed the fact that over 1,000 FBI personnel saw the memo.
The original memo discussed such topics as “Radical Traditionalist Catholic Ideology” and "racially or ethnically motivated violent extremism."
In one observation of stupidity, the memo said that Catholics that preferred Catholic mass to be done in the form of a traditional Latin Mass were red flags for terrorism and extremism.
The memo suggested that the FBI should secretly infiltrate Catholic organizations to get information and evidence of extremism.
Catholics were compared to Islamic extremists by one member of the Richmond office, you know, the types of people that blow up anyone and anything they do not agree with, that kill homosexuals, that repress women’s rights, that kill Christians around the world.
Another uncovered FBI memo extended this paranoia about Catholics but admitted a lack of hard evidence to support this position.
Unbelievable, a chapter right of Orwell's 1984 novel: screw the First Amendment, we will designate whoever we want as a danger to society regardless of the reality that we have no evidence they are a danger, we do not have to go through the court system to get permission to infiltrate and spy on innocent Americans practicing their freedom of religion right, and we have dedicated taxpayer resources for this biased witch hunt while real terrorists plan their next attack on America.
Disgusting priorities from the Biden administration.
2)Over the past several posts we continued to point out how members of Congress and Federal government employees make use, or misuse, of valuable taxpayer dollars for their own self enrichment or improved lifestyle. It seems these types of examples of abusing the taxpayer just keep on coming:
Jessica Stern was once Biden’s Special Envoy for LGBT rights.
Actually her whole title was : “Special Envoy to Advance the Human Rights of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Intersex Persons,” recalling the old axiom that says, the longer a person's title, the less important they are.
Apparently, this job required her to travel around the world.
She is now facing heat because of those travels that may have involved lavish and unnecessary wasting of taxpayer money.
According to released government documents, Stern repeatedly failed to report her travel expenses on time, requested extravagant travel accommodations (e.g. a $7,000 expense to rent a van in Rome for only a week, $3,000 to rent a car in Italy for only five days), and demanded attention from her staff to ensure inflight vegetarian meals.
Most egregious, she spent $42,000 for interpreters, travel perks, and an overtime photographer to document her trips to Nepal and Hungary.
Fortunately, the Trump administration has shut down this operation in the name of common sense and better priorities.
Think about the bad priorities of the Biden administration: 770,000 Americans were estimated to be homeless dating Biden’s last year in office and yet he was allowing his State Department, and Jessica Stern in particular, to jet around the world on LGBT jaunts and wasting taxpayer money in the process.
In Biden’s list of importance, gay rights in Nepal were more pressing than feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, and providing medical care to those in need in this country.
3)We have often pointed out the reality that politicians and government entities rarely, if ever, complete a project on time and on budget. From the Big Dig financial fiasco in Boston decades ago to other failed government projects, the concepts of on time and on budget are always promised and never delivered.
The latest example of this tradition of political ineptness continues to play out in California and Washington:
Decades ago, in 2008, California politicians thought it would be a great idea to build a high speed rail line that connected San Francisco to Los Angeles, over 800 miles in length.
It was envisioned that people could enjoy s smooth, scenic high speed train experience while never leaving the ground, an experience that would be good for the state's economy and the environment since it was hoped that many people would use the train and not their cars to travel up and down the state.
But like everything else the government tries to do, the project is well behind its schedule and well over budget.
It has been managed and mangled so badly that the Federal Department of Transportation recently completed a 310 page study that found that between the cost and time overruns, the state was in violation of an agreement with the Federal government to obtain $4 billion of taxpayer funding.
Specifically, the study referred to the project as a “Sisyphean endeavor” that currently has promised, short term, to complete only a fraction of what was promised by the politicians back in 2008, 33 years ago.
The entire project was supposed to be completed and operational by 2020 and cost $33 billion.
But as the study states and other sources state, the cost of just a small section of the project, only 181 miles of the promised 800 mile length, is now expected to be $35 billion and not be in service until 2030.
Thus, the current cost estimate for a fraction of the proposed route will now cost more than the original cost of the entire project and deliver only a small part of the project ten years later than promised
Fortunately, and not illogically, the Trump administration is thinking of canceling the Federal taxpayer portion of this project, given the total mismanagement from day one.
Just another example of the incompetence of the American political class. And yet, despite the reality that the project was supposed to cost $33 billion and be done by 2020 but a portion of the total line will not be done until 2030 and will cost more than the total original estimate, Nancy Pelosi disagreed with the Trump administration: "It is unfortunate that the Secretary has misrepresented the facts and lacks understanding of how California High-Speed Rail promotes commerce, improves quality of life for Californians and creates good-paying jobs - while also lowering the cost of housing by shortening the distance to commute from home to work. With his statement, it is clear the Secretary is either trying to mislead or has been misled on this issue."
It is kind of scary that a woman like Pelosi, who is so out of touch with reality, was actually Speaker of the House at one time. Of course in her statement, and the statements of other California politicians who ranted against the possible loss of Federal taxpayer funds, none of them pleaded meaculpa of the massive failures of the project so far, none of them discussed the cost and time overruns.
The California transportation department that has been in charge of the project, now actually says that the cost of the total project could exceed $200 billion, about six fold more than the original estimate. And that assumes that this estimate is legit: given the poor forecasting of costs in the past of this project that number is also probably bogus.
The old saying goes: "When you find yourself stuck in a hole, stop digging." This California project is in a financial hole and the state government will never climb out of it. So stop digging, stop throwing good money after bad.
Enough insanity for today: destroying the First Amendment, taking care of gays in Nepal while millions of Americans go hungry and homeless, and the high speed train to nowhere in California continues to go nowhere.
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If you agree that we need to deseat every member of Congress for their lack of success and accomplishment, then please consider going to the following petition link to help the cause:
https://www.change.org/p/deseat-congress-reset-freedom
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