December, 2013 Political Class Insanity, Part 3: The President As An Eloquent Lampshade, Bad IRS Star Trek Parodies, Walmart Pickier Than Harvard, and More

This is our third post on political class inanity this month, a monthly series we do every month to capture the lunacy, ineptness, and wasteful spending of the American political class. The first post in this month’s series can be found at:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/12/december-2013-political-class-insanity.html

We will continue documenting all of the fiascos that continually get shoved on us by our politicians at least for the next few days. Afterward, unfortunately, we will have to return to do a series of Obama Care insanity and its disasters, a piece of legislation that never stops finding ways to screw up the country and its citizens.

1) When President Obama came into office in 2008, his approval rating was well over 70%. There was great hope for his administration to lead the country to better days. In many ways he was viewed more as a messiah than as a human leader.

Well, those days are long over. Despite being protected and coddled by the mainstream press, his lack luster performance in office, the lies of his administration, his mishandling of every economic matter and issue, his divisive rhetoric, etc. has thrown the country into a deep funk.

His total lack of leader potential and ability has even started to draw the ire and sarcasm of the mainstream press that once so adored him. Consider the recent naming of him to GQ’s “least influential” people in 2013:

He can blame Republicans in Congress all he likes and get away with it because congressional Republicans are the worst. But the fact remains that I have spent the majority of this man's presidency watching bad things happen, then hearing a thoughtful speech about how we gotta make sure the bad things never happen again, and then watching as nothing gets done. Next time there's an election, I want Nate Silver to analyze the data and tell me who to vote for so that I don't end up casting my ballot for a very eloquent hat stand.

But this is not the first time that he made the least influential list. Back in 2011, GQ had this to say about the President when he was the 25th entrant:

Okay, so we're cheating a bit with this one. He did order the raid that wiped Osama bin Laden off the face of the earth. But then he used that surplus of political capital to let everyone in Washington stick a boot in his ass. This is a man who should be the most transformational figure of the century. Hell, he promised to be that. Instead he wields all the power of a substitute teacher at night school.

When the President of the United States is quite accurately compared to an eloquent hat stand and a substitute teacher in night school, you can be pretty sure that the country is now officially leaderless.

2) The Washington Post reported on Congressional hearings back in June about excessive wasteful spending done by IRS party planners for an employee conference. Among those expenses was $64,000 spent on something called “plastic squirting fish” and $50,000 spent on a horrible Star Trek parody video. 

Now this is wasteful spending but Congressman Elijah Cummings did make an insightful comment during the hearings, indicating that at least he realized how stupid these types of government expenditures, types of expenditures that are repeated thousands and thousands of times every year across the Federal bureaucracy, are relative to average American citizens: 

“I swear to God, I have looked at that video over and over again, and I swear I do not see the redeeming value. I was up at 3:00 this morning watching it, because I was trying to get to the redeeming value. I couldn’t get there. I live in a block where most people don’t even make $50,000 a year, and still we can produce a video that has no redeeming value — none — and spend taxpayers’ hard- earned dollars for that.”

Kudos to at least one Congressman who gets it.

3) How badly has the political class mismanaged the economy over the past few years? Well, according to a recent article in the Business Insider, you actually have a better statistical chance of getting admitted into Harvard University than you do of being hired at a new Wal-Mart that is opening up in the Washington D.C. area:

• The store is currently combing through more than 23,000 applications for 600 available positions, reports NBC Washington.
• That means that Wal-Mart will be able to hire one person for every 38 applications it receives — i.e., just 2.6% of applicants will walk out with a job.
• That’s more difficult than getting into Harvard. The Ivy League university accepts 6.1% of applicants

Now, that is insanity and ineptness from the American political class.

4) Although most Americans would probably not describe themselves as “extremists,” most people probably just want to go about their lives as freely and silently as they can, according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), they would be wrong. It seems the DHS is more paranoid and scared of average Americans expressing their Constitutional rights to freedom, liberty, and the tenets of the Constitution than truly scary terrorists and other extremists. 

If you fall into any of the following groups of Americans, the DHS is probably following you, using many -so-called “fusion sites” around the country to do their Orwellian Big Brother job of tracking your every move:

• Military veterans
• Tax resistance groups
• Alternative media followers
• Opponents of open borders, i.e. those Americans who believe that those who illegally enter this country should not be rewarded with free welfare benefits such as housing, education, etc.
• Animal rights groups
• Environmental protection groups
• Pro life groups
• Anyone who shares the same beliefs as those that led the American Revolution.

Thus, if you have served in our armed forces to protect the country, if you are tired of politicians wasting our tax money and want it to stop and taxes lowered, if you dare to gather information from non-administration controlled media outlets, if you believe that national security requires closed borders, if you love animals, if you love the nature, and you love the principles of liberty, the government is watching you because of your radical ideas. Insanity and true paranoia.

5) According to a recent article in the Hollywood trade publication Variety, President Obama has nominated a television soap opera producer, Colleen Bell, to become America’s next Ambassador to Hungary. Let me say that again so that it sinks in: President Obama has nominated a television soap opera producer, Colleen Bell, to become America’s next ambassador to Hungary.

In most people’s minds, an ambassador is a vital diplomatic rank and position, traditionally earned after a lifetime of dedicated foreign service. It’s an important position and rank that few career diplomats in the State Department ever reach. Apparently, Ms. Bell has no such experience, training, or credentials and has never had any kind of diplomat experience for such an important government function.

However, while Ms. Bell has never been a diplomat, this "Bold and the Beautiful" producer has logged several years of service to Barack Obama himself. She and her husband, Bradley Bell, raised $2.1 million for Obama’s 2012 reelection, according to The New York Times. Yes, why should we demand and enjoy competence in important government positions when it is so much easier just to reward your political friends and financiers with plum assignments like ambassadorships?

She will become the latest member of Obama’s Hollywood political campaign fundraising team to be rewarded with an ambassadorship during his Presidency:

• John Emerson, who was the former president of Capital Group Private Client Services, is now the U.S. Ambassador to Germany.
• Political consultant, Noah Mamet, is a current ambassadorial nominee to serve as U.S. Ambassador to Argentina.
• Former HBO executive, James Costos, is the U.S. Ambassador to Spain.

And these are just the Hollywood political backers that are representing American interests around the world but who have no diplomatic or ambassador credentials. It does not include other, non-Hollywood political backers who are now ambassadors solely because of their fundraising abilities and not their diplomatic abilities. Pathetic abuse of power.

So what insanity did we learn today? We have a “least influential President,” we have an IRS that wastes money like there is no tomorrow, we have an economic malaise that makes Walmart more difficult to get into than Harvard, we have a paranoid and dangerous Department of Homeland Security/Big Brother, and we have Hollywood entertainment types masquerading as diplomats. Yeah, this is all going to end badly.

More insanity tomorrow but until then, please consider joining our drive for Federal term limits in order to start fixing what the current set of politicians has broken. Because really, how much worse could it get if we started over with all new people in Washington:

www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com

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

July, 2013 Political Class Insanity, Part 7: Prostitutes In The State Department, EPA's Hidden Man Caves, Ambassdorships For Sale, And More

This is the seventh in a series that reviews the monthly insanity from the American political class. It is truly unbelievable that we need so much time to chronicle the insanity, lunacy, wasteful spending, and other idiocy that the American politicians can wrought every month. And of course, they do so much bad stuff they never get around to resolving the truly major issues of our times, issues that threaten and hinder most Americans.

So let’s see if we can finish up the insanity today…but no promises:

1) Although most Presidential administrations do it, the Obama administration has taken it to unheard of heights. What is it? The awarding of ambassadorships not based on experience and not based on time spent in the State Department and not based on intelligence but based solely on how much money a person has raised for President Obama’s political campaigns or how much a person has helped Obama‘s political activities and accomplishments.

This latest insult to good government was reported by a June 28, 2013 article in the Washington Examiner. Patrick Gaspard, who is the current executive director of the Democratic National Committee, was a former political director for the Obama administration. He has been nominated to be the new ambassador to South Africa.

Gaspard had previously come under scrutiny for being connected to ACORN, the community organizing group that was accused of providing advice to undercover activists about running a prostitution ring. Thus, it appears that Gaspard has no State Department or diplomatic experience, he is simply a Democratic Party political operative.

But it gets more insane. Kirk Wagar isn’t even a political operative. He is a disability insurance attorney in Miami. His qualifications to be a U.S. ambassador: he helped raise $500,000 for Obama's re-election campaign in 2012. He has been nominated by Obama to be the ambassador to Singapore.

Alexa Wesner is the founder of an organization that helps investment groups to participate in Get Out the Vote efforts in Texas. She has been nominated as the American ambassador to Austria. And what a coincidence, she also helped raise $500,000 for Obama's re-election by hosting a $38,500 a plate dinner in 2011.

Isn’t it good to know that our international standing as a nation is not represented by professional, experienced diplomats but by people with no international training, experience, or smarts? Insanity.

2) Short sighted and ignorant gun control advocates constantly want to pass new laws in an impossible journey to document gun possession of everyone in the world. They somehow think that the Federal government would be a good approach to keeping track of guns in this country.

However, that assumption recently took a hit if you understand what a recent Federal Inspector General analysis and report found out. According to the report, hundreds of shotguns, pistols, rifles and machine guns have mysteriously disappeared from United States Park Police (USPP) Federal police weapons lockers and the government has no idea how it happened or who made the theft happen.

Again, this is the same Federal government, operated by the Obama administration, that has lobbied to restrict responsible gun owners’ Second Amendment rights, has been so inept that it could not even keep an accurate inventory of weapons assigned to less than eight hundred Federal police officers.

The Interior Department’s Inspector General (IG) report summed up this incompetence quite nicely when it stated these government folks have zero understanding of “Basic tenets of property management and supervisory oversight” for “firearms management.”

But it gets worse, according to extracts directly from the report:

1. Our review revealed that USPP had no proper accounting for hundreds of weapons. We discovered hundreds of handguns, rifles, and shotguns not accounted for on the official USPP inventory.
2. We also found that individuals appointed to oversee the program, including senior command officers, gave only minimal supervision to officers and other program staff who had access to unassigned weapons.
3. We found credible evidence of conditions that would allow for theft and misuse of firearms, and the ability to conceal the fact if weapons were missing.
4. Commanders, up to and including the Chief of Police, have a lackadaisical attitude toward firearms management.

Seems like the government has some explaining do before it says law abiding Americans need to have their guns tracked and documented, given the government cannot keep track of its own weapons.

3) Going back to the State Department, CBS News reported on June 13, 2013 that it had received documents from the Diplomatic Security Service (DSS), an internal government watchdog entity, that implicate the State Department in a series of global misconduct incidents:

• The DDS investigation cited eight specific examples of gross misconduct.
• One incident alleges that a State Department security official in Lebanon “engaged in sexual assaults” with foreign nationals hired as embassy guards.
• But the indecent behavior was not restricted to low level State Department employees since an ambassador was suspected of patronizing prostitutes in a public park. The DDS investigation found that the ambassador was permitted to return to his post despite having, “routinely ditched…his protective security detail” in order to “solicit sexual favors from prostitutes.”
• Another alleged incident charged that members of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s security detail “engaged prostitutes while on official trips in foreign countries.” The investigation found that this type of problem was “endemic.”
• Aurelia Fedenisn, Former State Department internal investigator, is quoted by CBS: “We also uncovered several allegations of criminal wrongdoing in cases, some of which never became cases.”

Three very disgusting things about this scandal. First, it is just plain embarrassing to the country to have its foreign based employees misbehaving like this around the world. Second, more abuse of taxpayer dollars since we are paying for the prostitution and other misbehavior, either directly or indirectly.

Third, and this might be the most troubling, the State Department tried to cover up the misbehavior and to some degree intimidate the whistle blowers who uncovered the acts of prostitution and such. According to CBS, many times DDS agents and investigators were directly told to back off their investigation of misconduct by State Department employees. To the credit of DDS, they publicly exposed the cover ups in their report: “Hindering such cases calls into question the integrity of the investigative process, can result in counterintelligence vulnerabilities and can allow criminal behavior to continue.”

Prostitutes in Lebanon, previously covered lavish GSA and IRS conferences around the country, the Secret Service prostitute scandal when President Obama visited South America, some/many Federal employees are living the high life off of our tax dollars.

4) But wait! Seems we have not covered all of the Federal employee misbehavior from the past month yet. In a June 7, 2013 NY Daily News article, and other mainstream news sources such as Huffington Post, the EPA confessed to finding a “man cave” hidden in a Maryland EPA facility.

What is a “man cave?” Well, in the EPA organization, according to the Daily News, “a huge man cave [was] apparently built with taxpayer money in its main headquarters warehouse outside Washington, D.C. — complete with exercise equipment that could rival a gym's, big-screen televisions, couches, microwaves, refrigerators, pin-up photos, magazines and books, an official EPA report states. The Landover, Md., warehouse workers, who are employed by a private contractor, hid their recreation room oasis from security cameras by screens, partitions and piled up boxes.”

More disgusting waste of taxpayer wealth. But this abuse of government property was only half the issue. When the facility was inspected, if was determined that warehouse's record keeping was both incomplete and inaccurate. The warehouse was filled with EPA/taxpayer inventory that had gone neglected for years and is now mostly unusable.

Included in the lost, wasted assets were untouched refrigerators from 2007 and unopened computers from 2005. Thus, we have Federal contract employees, paid by the taxpayer, lounging about in their home made man cave and fitness center and not doing their assigned jobs, wasting taxpayer assets. Unbelievable.

That’s enough for today. I apologize for not getting through this month’s political class insanity in SEVEN posts, we will try and finish up tomorrow. But don’t blame me, blame those in Washington and State Department posts around the world for the mess that this government is in and the mess it has wrought on the country.

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:

http://www.reason.com/
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

The Obama Scandals: Scandal Number One, The Benghazi Terrorist Attack Cover Up

We are going to take a few days break from our updating of the disaster known as Obama Care to address the three, major unfolding scandals of the Obama administration:

1. The Benghazi consulate terrorist attack and cover up.
2. The use of the IRS to hamper, harass, and intimidate American citizens and organizations that held political opinions contrary to the Obama administration’s positions and opinions.
3. The unauthorized and secret confiscation of confidential telephone logs of Associated Press news reporters by the Obama Justice Department.

Any of these serious, serious scandals have the potential for criminal and civil lawsuits and other proceedings that could result in people losing their jobs, going to jail, paying fines, and being removed from political office.

Any of these scandals by themselves is indicative of a government that is out of control and at war with its own citizens. It is pretty obvious and certain that when the smoke settles on these three scandals, we will see that there were blatant attacks on citizens’ Constitutional rights for the sole benefit of political gain.

Every American who cherishes freedom, regardless of their political interests and passions, should be disgusted and insulted by these activities that were executed within the halls of Washington government. The audacity of their actions and the feeble excuses and cover ups in response to these scandalous events evoke the image of Nixon and the sorry tale of Watergate and subsequent impeachment.

The stories on these three scandals are exploding so quickly that it is taking some time to get a handle on how far reaching and wretched they are. Until I can get a coherent grasp on everything for summary in this blog, I am going to use the insights of people with far more experience than myself in the next three days to set the groundwork on bad these scandals are.

The first scandal that we will cover today is the lies, cover up, and deceit as they relate to the Benghazi consulate terrorist attack back in September. The best person I found to summarize what is going on is Thomas Sowell and the May 14, 2013 opinion piece he put out entitled, "Lies About Libya," which is reproduced below.

Mr. Sowell is an American economist, social theorist, political philosopher, and author. He is currently the Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow on Public Policy at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. I have found all of his previous writings on politics and economic matters to be insightful, well thought out, and usually correct even if his correct conclusions were almost always at odds with the American political class.

After his thoughts, I pose some questions of my own that need to be answered so that the four brave Americans who died as a result of this demonstration’s foul ups, cover ups, and possibly illegal activities are not forgotten.

**********************************

Lies About Libya
By Thomas Sowell
Tuesday, May 14, 2013

There can be honest differences of opinion on many subjects. But there can also be dishonest differences. Last week's testimony under oath about events in Benghazi on September 11, 2012 makes painfully clear that what the Obama administration told the American people about those events were lies out of whole cloth.

What we were told repeatedly last year by the President of the United States, the Secretary of State, and the American ambassador to the U.N., was that there was a protest demonstration in Benghazi against an anti-Islamic video produced by an American, and that this protest demonstration simply escalated out of control.

This "spontaneous protest" story did not originate in Libya but in Washington. Neither the Americans on duty in Libya during the attack on the consulate in Benghazi, nor officials of the Libyan government, said anything about a protest demonstration.

The highest American diplomat on the scene in Libya spoke directly with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by phone, and told her that it was a terrorist attack. The president of Libya announced that it was a terrorist attack. The C.I.A. told the Obama administration that it was a terrorist attack.

With lies, as with potato chips, it is hard to stop with just one. After the "spontaneous protest" story was discredited, the next claim was that this was the best information available at the time from intelligence sources.

But that claim cannot survive scrutiny, now that the 12 drafts of the Obama administration's talking points about Benghazi have belatedly come to light. As draft after draft of the talking points were made, e-mails from the State Department pressured the intelligence services to omit from these drafts their clear and unequivocal statement from the outset that this was a terrorist attack.

Attempts to make it seem that Ambassador Susan Rice's false story about a "spontaneous protest" was the result of her not having accurate information from the intelligence services have now been exposed as a second lie to excuse the first lie.

Despite Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's loudly proclaimed question "What difference, at this point, does it make?" the difference is between an honest mistake and a calculated lie to deceive the American people, in order to win an election.

Barack Obama's election campaign oratory had proclaimed the death of Osama bin Laden as an accomplishment of his administration, as part of a general defeat of Al-Qaeda and other terrorists. To admit that these terrorists were still in action, and strong enough to kill an American ambassador and three other Americans in a well-coordinated military style attack, would be a politically devastating admission during the election campaign.

Far better, politically, to come up with a story about a protest demonstration that just got out of hand. This could be presented as an isolated, one-time event, rather than part of a continuing pattern of terrorism by groups that were still active, despite President Obama's spin suggesting that they were not.

The problem with telling a lie, or even a succession of lies, is that a very small dose of the truth can sometimes make the whole thing collapse like a house of cards. The State Department's own foreign service officer Gregory Hicks was in Libya during the attack, so he knew the truth. When threats were not enough to silence him, it was then necessary to try to discredit him.

After years of getting glowing job evaluations, and awards of honors from the State Department for his work in various parts of the world, Mr. Hicks suddenly began to get bad job evaluations and was demoted to a desk job in Washington after he spoke with a Congressman about what he knew. The truth is dangerous to liars.

The Obama administration's excuse for not trying to get help to the Americans in Benghazi while they were under attack — namely, that it would take too long — is as shaky as its other statements. A small fighting unit in Tripoli was ready to get on a plane to Benghazi when they were ordered to "stand down." Other fighting units located outside of Libya are designed precisely for fast deployment — and nobody knew how many hours the attack would last.

But it will take more investigations to determine who gave the order to "stand down," and why. How many new lies that will generate is another question.

*********************************
Nice job of putting a ribbon around scandal number one of the Obama administration. I would add the following questions that need to be answered for the sake of the families who unnecessarily lost loved ones in the attack:

• Why was nearby U.S. military help not sent to rescue the two dozen or so consulate employees and workers during the seven hour terrorist siege?
• Who gave the direct order to nearby military resources to “stand down” and not rescue the consulate people?
• Who decided to not blame terrorists for the attack even though it was known almost immediately that this was a terrorist attack and instead manufacture a fictional story that some lame ant-Islam YouTube video caused the attack?
• Did U.S. ambassador to the UN Susan Rice know she was lying about the cause of the attack when she made the rounds on Sunday morning political talk shows with the inane YouTube story?
• Why were high ranking military personnel, who had military responsibility for that area of the world, quickly relieved of duty after the attack? Was it because they disagreed with the stand down order not to save those in need?
• Was this consulate operation actually a covert and illegal CIA front to illegally run guns to Syrian rebels without Congressional approval?
• Was this a botched kidnapping plot between Obama and the Muslim Brotherhood to eventually swap the kidnapped U.S. ambassador with the so-called blind Arab sheik, who is currently in a Federal prison, as part of a political ploy to make Obama look strong going into the November elections, a ploy that was fouled up by two brave Navy Seals on site doing their jobs and ignoring any stand down orders?
• Why were ineffective local people hired to as security guards to protect a U.S. consulate building in one of the most violent places in the world?
• Why were repeated requests for additional security refused for months ahead of the attack by the highest officials in the Federal government, especially the State Department?
• How could State Department procedures be so screwed up and the ambassador so weakly defended that the fatally wounded U.S. ambassador was taken to a local hospital by local Libyan citizens?
• Did the President actually leave the situation room in the White House during the attack, retire to the living quarters of the White House, not inquire about the situation during the seven hour siege, and promptly leave for a campaign fundraising event in Las Vegas the next day while the ruins of the consulate still burned?
• Why were State Department whistle blowers intimidated and demoted for telling the truth about the attack and who is responsible for attempting to suppress the truths they could and should tell?

I am sure there are and will be other questions that will arise as this scandal unfolds. It is a disgrace that we allowed this situation to occur and more of a disgrace that Washington politicians tried to cover up their actions in light of the attack.

We will get back into this swill in a little while as we disseminate additional reports but thank the words of Dr. Sowell for putting things into a concise summary of the lies. Until then, please do not forget the faces of those that died for no reason in Benghazi and help everyone seek answers and justice for their families:

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:

http://www.reason.com/
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

Special Post - Remembering Those that Died At The Libyan Consulate

Four months ago today, two courageous Navy Seals, Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, gave their lives defending the American consulate in Libya from a coordinated terrorist attack. In the process, they saved well over a dozen lives of embassy employees and singlehandedly found back the attack for over seven hours. Their families, and the nation, deserve answers to many questions including who in the Federal government told them to stand down, who in the Federal government denied them military support and back up even though it was readily available within the seven hour siege, why was the consulate so lightly defended in the face of growing local hostility, and what is the true reason behind the incident that resulted in the death of a U.S. ambassador.

November, 2012 Political Class Insanity, Part 1: Unprotected Americans In Libya, Unprotected Luggage, Unprotected Dogs In The Back Seat, And More

At the beginning of each month we take a look back at the past few weeks and see what insanity, waste, and lunacy the American political class has dumped on the country. We used to be able to do this review in a single post. However, as the level of insanity has grown, we have found it necessary to take at least one additional post to cover everything. Such is the case this month, our politicians are working overtime to either come up with harebrained and expense schemes that never work or turn out to be incapable of efficiently and effectively managing any program or the taxpayer wealth they are entrusted with.

Thus, the following is the first part of the political class insanity from November, 2012:

1) On October 23, 2012, the Bankrupting America Facebook page reported on an article from the Dayton Daily News. The Daily News reported that Greene County in Ohio had received Federal taxpayer money via the Department of Transportation to rehabilitate a covered bridge that is considered “historic.” Why is this a bad idea? Consider:

• The Stevenson Road Bridge is located in a lightly traveled area so fixing up the bridge was not essential to commerce, tourism, etc.
• The bridge is not on a road.
• It no longer is used by cars and trucks.
• It doesn’t lead to a park of any sort or any walking or biking trails.
• Apparently the only reason to use Federal taxpayer money to fix up the bridge, according to Catherine Wilson, director of the Green County Historical Society: “Covered bridges are pretty rare everywhere now. A lot of tourists visit them.”

Remember back several decades ago when the Statue Of Liberty, of the greatest symbols of our country, our democracy and our freedom was in need of refurbishment? Not a single taxpayer dollar was used for the refurbishment, only private funds were used. Today, that policy no longer holds since apparently an old, unimportant covered bridge in Ohio warrants Federal money while the Statue of Liberty did not. How far we have fallen.

But it seems that not all of the locals are please with wasting $610,000 on an unused, not vital bridge to nowhere. According to township trustee Jim Reed, spending on the nonfunctional, useless bridge that literally leads to nowhere will total more than the entire annual roads budget of the county and is just an insane way to use limited taxpayer dollars when many other urgent taxpayer needs exist:

“Those grants should be coming down for the basics – repairing aging water lines, sewer lines, roads/ These projects, because they’re somebody’s pet project, those are getting priority, and it makes absolutely no sense. There are roads – not county roads, but local roads in nearby jurisdictions — that are so rough, you need four-wheel drive to get to people’s homes. You can’t tell me that day-to-day travel projects aren’t more important than other frivolous projects.”

We could not agree with you more, Mr. Reed, kudos to a local politician that recognizes insanity when he sees it.

2) The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is one of those Federal government entities that keep on giving when it comes to insanity and wasteful spending. An October 19, 2012 Associated Press article reported that the TSA has moved to fire 25 employees at Newark Liberty International Airport and suspend 19 other employees, all of whom were accused of improper screening of checked luggage.

The alleged screening failures were uncovered in 2011 as a result of another TSA investigation. In that investigation, surveillance cameras were installed in one of the airport's 25 screening rooms to check for possible thefts of valuable belongings from the traveling public. Eight TSA employees were fired as a result of that investigation.

However, the cameras that were used to prove those thefts were left in place and uncovered how these 44 TSA employees were doing improper, and potentially dangerous or fatally flawed inspections. The main concern and reason for the TSA’s actions was that screeners failed to open up and physically check bags that had been flagged by X-ray machines.

The latest action raises to 52 the number of TSA employees at Newark identified in the investigation, making it the biggest single disciplinary action taken by the TSA at any U.S. airport. This breaks the record of 48 TSA employees that were cited in Hawaii previously for improper screening of luggage. Still feeling safe to travel yet?

But as we said above, the TSA continues to under perform and endanger the public in so many ways. Florida Congressman John Mica, chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, cited what he called the TSA's "parade of failures:”

"Clearly this is not a Newark problem or a Honolulu problem, or a problem isolated to one or two airports. I lay the blame at TSA because it's a bureaucracy that doesn't know how to manage an army of 65,000 employees."

While I would agree with the Congressman’s assessment, I would also lay some of the blame on him and his Congressional peers who sit on these TSA committees. This TSA legacy of disgraceful performance has been going on for a while, it is about time that Congressional members finally did their job to fix the problem.

3) Staying with our TSA friends, an ABC News investigative report from October 23, 2012 found out what were the top 20 airports in the country for theft of personal property by TSA employees. The criteria was the number of TSA employees per airport for theft. ABC News based their report and analysis on a Freedom of Information request they had submitted to the TSA. That request also uncovered the fact that over 400 TSA employees have already been fired for stealing from the traveling public.

The top 20 airports, with the number of fired TSA employees at each, are as follows so be extra careful if you are traveling through these airports:

1. Miami International Airport (29 TSA employees fired)

2. JFK International Airport (27)

3. Los Angeles International Airport (24)

4. Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (17)

5. Las Vegas-McCarren International Airport (15)

6. Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport and New York-Laguardia Airport (14 each)

8. Newark Liberty, Philadelphia International, and Seattle-Tacoma International airports (12 each)

11. Orlando International Airport (11)

12. Houston-George Bush Intercontinental Airport and Salt Lake City International Airport (10 each)

14. Washington Dulles International Airport (9)

15. Detroit Metro Airport and Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport (7)

17. Boston-Logan International, Denver International and San Diego International airports (6)

20. Chicago O'Hare International Airport (5)

ABC News also did its own, real world test of theft at airports. They intentionally left behind an Apple iPad at a security checkpoint at the Orlando airport. The iPad was not turned in but could be tracked since it was set up to be tracked. The tracking process followed iPad as it moved 30 miles away to the home of the TSA officer last seen handling it.

When confronted two weeks later by ABC News, the TSA officer, Andy Ramirez, at first denied having the missing iPad. However, he ultimately turned it over after blaming his wife for taking it from the airport. Ramirez was later fired by the TSA. There was no information in the article by ABC News whether Mr. Ramirez or any of the dozens of people listed at the twenty airports above were ever criminally prosecuted or were just fired. One would think that criminal prosecution would cut down on the unacceptable level of thefts.

4) A September 19, 2012 Huffington Post/Money article, that summarized a report form the Newark Star Ledger, discussed a proposed law being considered by the state government of New Jersey. However, before we discuss the proposal, let’s review the financial situation of my former home state:

• New Jersey has been facing severe budget deficits for a number of years now as a result of out of control spending by the state’s political class for decades.
• The deficits have resulted in deep cutbacks across many parts of the state budget including parks, schools, etc.
• If New Jersey does not have the highest corporate and personal tax burden in the country, it is no worse than third or fourth.
• New Jersey’s unemployment rate has been close to 10% for a while, much higher than the national unemployment rate.

Okay, given all of these dire problems facing the state, what has one member of the state legislature been working on? Assemblywoman Grace Spencer (D-Essex) has introduced a bill that would require motorists to secure dogs and cats in a seat belt-like harness if they’re not being transported in crates. Failure to do so could result in a $20 dollar fine under the proposed legislation.

Come on, Ms. Spencer, this is what you are spending your time and New Jersey taxpayer money and resources on? Not on how to improve the failing public schools in the state, not on how to make the state government more efficient in the face of declining tax revenue, not working to reduce the overwhelming tax burden?

I have never seen a news report of any kind that says unsecured pets are a major problem. Trust your constituents to do the right thing from a human and pet safety perspective, you and your peers should be working on the major issues facing the state and it citizens, not a trivial and insane non-issue like this.

5) Reuters reported on October 17, 2012 that The State Department entrusted Libyan security tasks to a little-known British company, Blue Mountain, instead of the large firms it usually uses in overseas danger zones to protect the ill fated U.S. consulate in Libya, the site of the murder of the U.S. ambassador and three other brave American citizens.

Although the city where the consulate was located, Benghazi, had been plagued by rising violence since the civil war ended, security procedures at the diplomatic compound resulted in Blue Mountain guards patrolling with flashlights and batons instead of guns.

According to the Reuters report, the following details out how poorly protected our consulate and the Americans were:

• Blue Mountain hired about 20 Libyan men, including some who say they had minimal training, to screen visitors and patrol the mission at Benghazi, according to Reuters interviews.
• Some of the guards sustained injuries in the terrorist attack and said they were ill-prepared to protect themselves or others when heavily armed militants last month stormed the walls.
• The guards described how they were hired by Blue Mountain after only a minimal recruiting and screening process.
• The government had previous worries about some of the consulate guards before the recent attack, according to emails obtained by Reuters.
• One guard who had recently been fired and another on the company's payroll were suspected of throwing a homemade bomb into the U.S. compound in April.

In most of our political class insanity posts, we laugh, in a depressing way, at most government and political class insanity that wastes our time and money. Unfortunately, political class insanity in this case left many Americans unprotected and resulted in the needless death of four of them. With an annual Defense Department budget in the hundreds of billions of dollars, the insanity was not putting some qualified U.S. armed forces into this known trouble spot before the murders occurred. Insane.

More insanity tomorrow, stay tuned.

We invite all readers of this blog to visit our new website, "The United States Of Purple," at:

http://www.unitedstatesofpurple.com/

The United States of Purple is a new grass roots approach to filling the office of President of The United States by focusing on the restoration of freedom in the United States, focusing on problem solving skills and results vs. personal political enrichment, and imposing term limits on all future Federal politicians. No more red states, no more blue states, just one United States Of America under the banner of Purple.

The United States Of Purple's website also provides you the formal opportunity to sign a petition to begin the process of implementing a Constitutional amendment to impose fixed term limits on all Federally elected politicians. Only by turning out the existing political class can we have a chance of addressing and finally resolving the major issues of or times.

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 everydayPlease visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blgspot.com/
http://www.flipcongres2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment/