December, 2018, Part 9, Political Class Insanity: More Legal Woes for the Clintons, Taxing Our Texts, Welfare Galore for Non-Citizens and More

It is another month which means it is again time to review the latest political class insanity from Washington and around the world. Political class insanity takes many forms including the wasting of taxpayer wealth, criminal fraud within government programs, inane and stupid political quotes and actions, the inability to create and implement effective and efficient government programs, stupid and ill performing economic policies and strategies, and other forms of insanity that continue to evolve and surprise and shock us.

Let’s get started:

1) Not to be redundant, but for the past several posts we have discussed the continuing saga of the criminal investigations into the activities of Bill and Hillary Clinton. And today will be no different as Dick Morris, writing for the Western Journalism website, reports on yet another potential criminal and ethical problem facing the Clintons:

• Huawei is a major Chinese corporation.
• Its chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, was recently arrested in Canada based on an extradition warrant from the U.S.
• The accusation is that Huawei conspired to evade U.S. sanctions on Iran.
• Meng is the daughter of the company’s founder, Ren Zhengfei.
• Huawei has had a long history of ties with the Clintons.
• Terry McAuliffe, a top Clinton fundraiser, once bought a Chinese car company, Green Tech Automotive, a producer of electric cars.
• McAuliffe convinced Huawei to incest in the company using a financing company called Gulf Coast Funds Management which so happened to be run by….wait for it, Hillary Clinton’s brother, Tony Rodham.
• Rodham helped Huawei employees get U.S. government visa’s.
• Unfortunately, the Federal government had already turned down previous requests for visas for Huawei employees because of the company’s relationships with the Chinese military.
• Those relationships and actions included helping Saddam Hussein install fiber optic cable in violations of U.S. sanctions of Iraq, helping the Taliban install a phone system in Afghanistan, stealing proprietary company information from Cisco Systems, and other actions in violation of U.S. foreign policies and efforts.

And yet Clinton supporters and relatives were dealing with these folks. Innocent until proven guilty but since Meng Wanzhou may get extradited to the U.S. and eventually end up in a courtroom, who knows what Clinton secrets will come out.

2) Claire McCaskill is a Democratic Missouri Senator who is soon to be an ex-Senator since she lost her re-election campaign. She has been around for a while, with a lot of that time when the Democrats controlled the Senate, which you need to keep in mind as we go forward. In other words, if she has a problem with the Senate, then she was part of the problem as was her political party.

In her farewell address to the Senate, that is exactly what she talked about, stating that the Senate was a worse place now than when she was first elected to the Senate: “I'd be lying if I didn’t say I was worried about this place," outgoing Sen. Claire McCaskill said in her farewell address, adding the Senate is "no longer the world's greatest deliberative body."

Well, whose fault is that, Senator? You were part of this deliberative body for years and years. Your political party, via Harry Reid, dominated the Senate for years. And over those years I do not remember that you ever expressed these concerns until AFTER you were defeated. Sour grapes, Senator.If you had concerns about the greatness of the Senate, you should have worked for that greatness when you were in office, something that I do not believe you did.

3) Consider some old Beatles lyrics:

If you drive a car, I'll tax the street,

If you try to sit, I'll tax your seat.

If you get too cold I'll tax the heat,

If you take a walk, I'll tax your feet.

And now if you live in California and have a cell phone, they might actually tax your text messaging capability:

• According to CNN, California regulators would like to tax your text messaging to increase the tax revenue to fund programs for “underserved residents.”
• This texting surcharge has been proposed by the California Public Utilities Commission.
• It would not be a per text tax but a flat text added onto to everyone’s cellular bill on any account that includes text message service.
• The commission will vote on the proposal on January 10 but is getting strong opposition from the cellular industry.
• The proposal may also be in conflict with a recent FCC ruling.

So, long ago if you drove, walked, sat or got cold, the Beatles said you would get taxed. To that list we may now have to add taxing your texting. So sad, is there any part of our lives that politicians and government employees do not want to get their hands on?

4) Of course there is a lot of talk about the so-called “migrant caravan” stuck on the U.S./Mexican border. These are people mostly from Central America that think they can march up through Mexico and resettle in the U.S., no questions asked. President Trump is doing the right thing, upholding the rule of law on how and where foreigners can enter the country and apply for asylum or citizenship. This process has worked pretty well for a while and is the law of the land.

But of course, as what happens often, liberals and Democrats, don’t see it that way, regardless of what the law is. They would open the borders to hordes of people from around the world, with their assumption being that these non-citizens can be turned into Democrats when it comes to voting. 

They seem to forget or dismiss the reality that allowing this to happen would crash our social safety systems and budgets, allow terrorists to enter the country, allow drug cartel and gang members to enter the country, allow criminals to enter the country, and allow those with infectious diseases to enter our country, our schools, our towns, and our society.

They also seem to forget that we have some huge, unfilled needs of Americans in distress. Millions of Americans are hungry, homeless, drug addicted, without health insurance and healthcare, etc. Maybe, just maybe we should take our limited resources and help out our fellow Americans before we start worrying about the rest of the world.

But let’s stop talking about opinions and talk about some cold hard facts about illegal immigration in this country using real, valid Federal government numbers and facts:

• A recent article by the Washington Examiner, written by Paul Bedard, pointed out that 63% of the non-citizens in this country, both legal and illegal, are on some sort of welfare plan, supported by taxpaying American citizens.
• This comes out to a whopping 4.6 million households.
• According to Mr. Bedard: “A majority of “non-citizens,” including those with legal green card rights, are tapping into welfare programs set up to help poor and ailing Americans, a Census Bureau finding that bolsters President Trump’s concern about immigrants costing the nation.”
• According to the latest government numbers, 63% of non-citizens are using a welfare program.
• For those that have been in this country over 10 years, that number jumps up to 70%, i.e. once non-citizens get onto a welfare program on average they do not get off of it and integrate into American society as productive people.

• According to the Center for Immigration Studies: “Concern over immigrant welfare use is justified, as households headed by non-citizens use means-tested welfare at high rates. Non-citizens in the data include illegal immigrants, long-term temporary visitors like guest workers, and permanent residents who have not naturalized. While barriers to welfare use exist for these groups, it has not prevented them from making extensive use of the welfare system, often receiving benefits on behalf of U.S.-born children.” 
• And if 63% and 70% were not bad enough, about half of those numbers are taken up by immigrants who are here illegally but somehow beat the system to get taxpayer funded benefits.
• The sad part is that while 63% of non-citizens are on some type of government welfare, only 35% of American citizen households are on some sort of welfare program.
• These results are pretty consistent across the biggest immigrant states in the country, i.e. non-citizens on a percentage basis get far more support than citizens:

• The same is true across different programs, i.e. food programs, Medicaid, etc., non-citizens have twice the usage rate as citizens.

So sad that Democrats and liberals would overburden our citizens and our tax system while neglecting the needs of millions of citizens to take care of the rest of the world’s needy. This is so sad especially since we all know it is not because they are great humanitarians but because they want to consolidate political power for their own greed and use. Insanity.

Another day of insanity: more potential legal trouble for the Clintons, a departing Senator’s sour grapes, taxing our texts, and illegal immigrants sucking up our taxpayer dollars. More insanity to follow, it never seems to end.

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

August, 2016, Part 9, Political Class Insanity: Bernie Sanders Hypocrisy, Record Setting Regulations, Hackers Paradise, 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. We thought were done with the insanity last week but a bunch more popped up that cannot wait until next month. This brings us to a total of nine days of insanity that gets us within the monthly record of ten days of insanity as we continue to be served by the worst set of Washington politicians….ever:

1) It’s been no secret that Obama has overseen the worst economic recovery in decades. Overall economic growth has set records of low growth, there are still over 45 million Americans on food assistance every month, wages and income levels have been flat, and the real unemployment rate is still over 9%.

This anemic performance has been attained despite spending over $800 billion on a failed a failed economic stimulus program, record low energy costs, and the Federal Reserve pumping trillions of fake dollars into the economy. Which leaves one of the prime culprits in the failure of Obamanomics being over regulation. We have already pointed out that this administration has already added tens of thousands of minor and major regulations which has acted like an anchor to the economy.

This point was recently driven home by an article by the American Action Forum organization:

• On average, during the Obama administration, the Federal government has instituted a major regulation every three days.
• A major regulation is defined by a regulation that will add over $100 million in costs to the economy.
• The American Action Forum has tracked the number of major regulations enacted by Obama and found that he has put forth 600 major regulations so far.
• During Bush’s entire Presidency the Federal government enacted only 426 major regulations over eight years while Obama has put forth 600 in less than eight years.
• And Obama is not done since his administration has many more major, economy killing regulations on deck including new greenhouse gas standards for heavy-duty trucks at a price tag of $31 billion, and efficiency standards for manufactured housing that will cost $4.1 billion. 
• By the time he leaves office, Obama will have put forth about 641 major regulations that cost American businesses and consumers tens of billions of dollars every year for questionable or non-existent societal benefit.

As we have said before, this over regulation is a sign of a Federal bureaucracy that is out of control. It is very hard to believe that previous administrations were so inept that they failed to see the need for over 600 major regulations and thousands and thousands of non-major regulations. This is nothing more than bureaucrats trying to justify their highly paid, useless government jobs.

2) Some political class insanity is so easy to identify. The following example of wasteful spending is one of those cases:

• The Federal government recently sent $450,000 of taxpayer wealth to Arizona State University to study whether air conditioning helps people when it is hot outside.
• Yes, we had to use tax dollars to verify what is obvious to everyone except those that work for the Federal government.
• Not unexpectedly, our favorite waster of taxpayer money, the National Science Foundation, was back in action, funding a study to create "a simulation platform to enhance infrastructure and community resilience to extreme heat events.” 
• Other inane objectives include studying “factors including the types of homes people live in (and whether they have and use air conditioning),” things like “shading, landscaping and material choice” and how that relates to “how people experience heat indoors,” and researchers will also compare heat tolerability between different “work situations” like an “air conditioned office versus [an] outdoor worker” to figure out who deals with heat better.

Regarding that last point, I can answer that question right now for far less money: heat tolerability is much higher when a person is in an air conditioned environment vs. working outside in hot weather. Duh, are you kidding me?

3) First, hackers hacked into Hillary Clinton’s private server and got access to top secret and secret government documents that have likely resulted in people getting killed and secret government information getting into the hands of foreign governments and enemies. The hackers cracked the computers of the Democratic National Committee and we found out how the Democrats rigged the election process and democracy to make sure that their preferred candidate got the nomination.

And now, according to a Washington examiner article by Anna Giaritelli on August 12, 2016, hackers hacked the computers of the Democratic National Committee back in June and got access to confidential information on all Democrats in Congress. This confidential information included the personal phone numbers and private email addresses of these Democrats’ Congressional offices and information on the political action committees supporting each of these politicians.

At best, these Congressional members are about to get a lot of unwanted phone calls and email from the publication of this information. At worst, who knows what else the hackers got from the Democrats’ computer systems that may endanger people’s lives and government secrets.

And these people want to serve the country and all of its citizens when they have failed at least three times, in just a matter of a few months, to protect the personal, confidential, and national security information they were entrusted to protect. Insanity. 

4) A recent article by David Ruiz for the Washington Free Beacon discussed how a current U.S. Senator, Claire McCaskill, boldly claimed that no favors or special treatment was done for people who donated money to the Clinton Foundation. But according to Mr. Ruiz: “After McCaskill claimed there were no pay-for-play favors done by Clinton’s State Department for Foundation donors, host Chris Wallace brought up the appointment of securities trader Rajiv Fernando, a seven-figure donor to the Clinton Foundation, to the International Security Advisory Board, a decision that had many staffers inside the State Department baffled.”

Which certainly sounds like there was a special treatment example, to which McCaskill tried to spin this situation: “I’m not sure that was a good idea. On the other hand, I think everyone glosses over the fact that this Foundation was doing charitable work around the world.” Oh, so now I understand, it is okay to break the law and cause massive conflict of interest as long as the law breaking charitable organization, the Clinton Foundation, does charitable work. 

Fernando eventually resigned when ABC News started to investigate the obvious connection between giving to the Clinton Foundation and getting named to a government advisory board. Sorry Senator, not buying your spin or insanity, not when it is so easy to rebut your claims.

5) One last piece of insanity for this month. Senator Bernie Sanders made a spirited bid to upset Hillary Clinton and become the Democrats’ Presidential candidate. We now know that the entire Democratic Party infrastructure and executives undermined his effort with some really dirty politics so I feel a little bad about his gung ho effort.

But I always disagreed with his inane economic policies, which hovered between socialism and communism. He was constantly attacking the wealthy in this country and promoting the concept that rich people, no matter how hard they worked to get rich, deserved to have their wealth stripped by the government and given to the political class to manage. We have seen how poorly those economic concepts are working in Venezuela today as the citizens of that socialistic/communistic country has citizens that cannot find enough toilet paper to use and have to leave the country to find food. 

But today we are not talking about political theories but about hypocrisies. Several months ago I looked up how much the Sanders household was worth, information that is readily available from different Internet sources. At that time, most sources estimated that he and his wife had a total net worth of about half a million dollars, a small fraction of the net worth of Hillary Clinton.

So at least at that time I gave him credit for fighting for the poor since relative to most politicians he was relatively poor. I recently did that same search and found that the estimates of his wealth were basically unchanged.

But times have changed. According to recent new reports including Daily Wire website reporting by Hank Berrien, Senator Sanders recently purchased a $600,000 summer home somewhere in Vermont woods. And this is not a log cabin in the wilderness since according to Mr. Berrien, the home includes “four bedrooms and 500 feet of Lake Champlain beachfront.” 

But the Senator also owns a house on Capitol Hill in DC, which you know costs a lot, and another house back in Burlington, Vermont. Which raises any number of questions and suspicions:

• Despite getting paid about $175,000 a year as a Senator, how does he afford up to three mortgages on three different homes, including one in one of the most expensive cities in the country?
• And we know his wife is no longer working, having been fired for bankrupting the small Vermont college she was in charge of.
• Is it possible that he was bought off to silently go away and not make any troubles for Hillary Clinton’s Presidential campaign?
• How can Sanders look himself in the face or any of his supporters after issuing the following quote during his campaign: "We must reject the foundations of this contemporary economy as immoral and unsustainable.”

Given that he now has three homes, the Senator seems to be doing very well in this “contemporary economy,” despite railing against the very person he has become. Millions of Americans in the 99% cannot afford a single home, never mind three, Senator. You are a hypocrite of the highest dimension.

Too much regulation, too much wasteful spending, too much hypocrisy, too much insanity.

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

October, 2015, Part 1, Political Class Insanity: Failure I Syria, Failure at the DEA, Failure at the Department of Education 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 politicians' 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 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.

So let’s get started with the latest insanity:

1) The Federal Department of Education has an annual budget of over $60 billion a year. Which means since 2005, the American taxpayer has probably spent well over half a trillion Federal tax dollars on education in this country. This half a trillion dollars does not include what state and local government spend on educating our kids.

Given this outrageous amount being spent by the Federal government, one would hope that we are turning out the brightest kids in the world for these prices. But alas, hope and reality when it comes to Federal government spending seldom match up. According to a recent Washington Post article that was summarized in the September 18, 2015 issue of The Week magazine, the average SAT scores for high schools students graduating in 2005 is at the lowest levels since 2005. In other words, for well over half a trillion dollars, our kids are getting dumber.

In just the past year, the average combined SAT scores for 2015 seniors in high school was 1490 out of 2400, down 7 points from 2014. Only 42% of all high schools seniors and a very depressing 16% of African-American students achieved a score of at least 1550, a benchmark for college readiness.

Obviously, this disgraceful performance for our tax dollars was achieved over two different Presidential administrations including almost seven years of the Obama administration. One would have hoped that the first African-American President could have brought some focus and hope to the this very low SAT performance by African-American students but again, hope and reality are two different things.

If public education in this country was a new kitchen blender or new car that cost half a trillion dollars and performed this poorly, we would surely have returned it to the store or car dealer and demanded our money back. Unfortunately, we somehow allow the Washington politicians to get away with this pitiful performance and not hold them accountable or demand they start doing things differently since maintaining the status quo is accomplishing little if anything. As far as Obama’s once infamous “hope and change” political slogan, that apparently did not apply to the sad state of public education in this country on his watch.

2) Given the putrid performance of the Federal Department of Education, it should not come as a surprise that another Federal agency, the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), is also a disgrace and waste of money. The DEA is the main Federal law enforcement entity that is fighting the drug war for us in this country. According to a recent USA Today article, the DEA appears to be just another incompetent and corrupt government agency:

• An internal Justice Department investigation found that the DEA allowed some of its agents to stay on the job even though they were found to actually have distributed illegal drugs rather than stop their circulation, lied to authorities, and committed other illegal and unethical acts.
• In one of the most heinous acts of disgrace, DEA agents who attended so-called sex parties that were funded by drug cartels had not been fired from their jobs.
• Even when agents were identified for job termination for unethical or illegal acts, only 26% were actually fired.
• In one case where a review board proved that a DEA agent had actually distributed illegal drugs he was still not fired and given only a 14 day suspension.

Unbelievable that a Federal drug agent cannot be fired or will not be fired for distributing illegal drugs, the exact same thing that he was supposed to be preventing. Only in a government job can you get away with doing the exact opposite of what you are supposed to to… and get paid for doing it. Insane.

3) When President Obama talked at the funeral of U.S. Senator Daniel Inoyue, he mentioned his himself more than the dead Senator.

When President Obama put out a statement relating to the death of Neil Armstrong, the first human to walk on the moon, accompanying that statement was a picture of the President and not a picture of Armstrong.

When President Obama had his official White House portrait done he made sure that it was larger than any other President portrait.

When the latest day of remembrance for the victims of the 9-11 attacks was held around the country, the President did not attend any of the memorials in New York City.

He did not attend the memorials in the spot in Pennsylvania where brave passengers brought down a hijacked jet.

He did not attend the memorials at the Pentagon which were in the same city where he was. 

He did not post any tributes to or honor the brave firemen and policemen who gave their lives trying to save Americans that day. 

No, but he did tweet out a picture of himself at the permanent 9-11 memorial in New York City:



The man does not do humility very well at all. Pathetic.4) It is really tough trying to determine what is the biggest failure of a government program but recent Congressional testimony certainly put forth a really good candidate for biggest failure, possibly of all time. A major component of Obama’s fight against ISIS that he put forth over a year ago was to spend a lot of American taxpayer money to train Syrians to carry the fight against ISIS in Syria. How is that program working out, one year and half a billion dollars later: 

• A top U.S. general testified that only “four or five” U.S. trained Syrians are still battling against ISIS. The original objective was to have 5,400 trained soldiers ready to go by the end of 2015. Thus, the Obama administration missed their target by about 99.9%.
• Congressional reaction was brutal. Senator Claire McCaskill stated: "So we're counting on our fingers and toes at this point when we envisioned 5,400 by the end of the year" and went on to suggest that perhaps (PERHAPS???) it's time to declare the $500 million program a failure.
• Senator Jeff Sessions observed that: "This is a total failure. A failure. I wish it weren't so, but that's a fact." 
• In a sad understatement, Christine Wormouth, testifying as undersecretary of defense for policy testified: "The program is much smaller than we hoped." 
• Defense officials said that there are only another 100-120 potential fighters in the pipeline, indicating that this program is not on the verge of being successful.

Beyond pathetic. How many people in the real world outside of Washington would still have a job if they missed their objective by 99.9%? Only in Washington can your performance be so horrid and their be no negative ramifications to those who were responsible for the failure.A massively failed defense department program that cost half a billion dollars for nothing in return, a massively narcissist President, DEA agents who sell illegal drugs but do not get fired or prosecuted, and the long term failure of the Federal government in the area of education. Four examples of insanity and idiocy and it is just the first day of this month’s political class insanity. More tomorrow.
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

June, 2015, Part 4, Political Class Insanity: The Unneeded Export-Import Bank, Building Castles In The Afghan Desert, And Overwhelming Us With Useless Regulations

It is the start of another month which means it is time to review the latest political class insanity that the American political class has dropped on our heads in the past month or so. We do this review every month in order to continually prove our view that we are currently being served by the worst set of politicians in the history of our country. Their inane quotes, their failed programs and laws, their wasteful spending, their ineptness, and continued focus on their own careers and self enrichment at the expense of taxpayers is constant and disgraceful.

This month could be one of the worst ever, given the backlog that needs to be discussed. The insanity will cover a full range of areas where today’s politicians continue to disappoint and fail us. As always, the new ways they find to screw up is never ending and always creative.

This is the fourth installment in this month's review of political class insanity The first post in this series can be accessed at:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2015/06/june-2015-political-class-insanity.html

1) The Export-Import Bank in theory is supposed to help American businesses, from large to small businesses, sell their goods and services overseas. It does this by providing low cost loans to foreign buyers who purchase American made products. I have always had a problem with this since nowhere in the Constitution have I found a provision where the American taxpayer, via the Federal government, should operate as a low cost banking option for foreign entities.

There are also other serious issues with this arrangement:

• This financing of foreigners puts American businesses who buy from American businesses at a disadvantage. For example, if Delta wants to buy jets from Boeing, both American businesses, Delta can get no help from the Export-Import Bank. But if a foreign airline wants to buy from Boeing, it can get cheap financing from the Bank, via the American taxpayer, disadvantaging an American company, Delta, in the marketplace.
• If these low cost loans go bad, it is the taxpayer left holding the bag. Shouldn’t businesses like Boeing use shareholder value to finance the purchase of its jets and its risk, not the taxpayer?
• And finally, depending on how you do the measurement, the overwhelming portion of loans from the bank go to huge American businesses and the overwhelming portion of those loans actually do go towards purchases of Boeing products. This is not a program that does a lot of good for small/medium size businesses.

Given that the Bank’s future is coming up for vote in Congress, with a growing contingent of Congress people realizing what a bad program this is trying to kill it, maybe they should also consider the following insanity, facts, and realities of a very corrupt government operation (double click on the image for a larger view):



Just another wasteful, crony infested political class program.

2) We have previously discussed how the U.S. Navy spent $300 million on two new Navy ships, building them almost to completion before spending another $10 million to scrap them. We have previously discussed the story where the State Department spent $40 million to build a consulate complex in the hinterlands of Afghanistan only to abandon it before it was used because it could not be defended against a terrorist attack.

So it should come as no surprise that Washington and the Pentagon spent $26 million to build a military base in Afghanistan that…. nobody is using and nobody is likely to ever use. Details of this massive waste include the following:

• The base was built despite the fact that field generals said it was not needed and would be a waste of money.
• The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) found “$36 million in U.S. taxpayer funds was spent on a building the U.S. never used.”
• The request for the base was made in January, 2010 but by spring of 2010, just a few months later, Major General Richard Mills sent an informal letter to the deputy commanding general of the U.S. Forces Afghanistan. Mills found that the $36 million building and five other proposed projects were “not necessary” because “the need was already met via other means.”
• Two similar memos requesting the cancellation of the facility were sent on June 22, just five months after the funding for the base was requested, but were obviously ignored.
• Requests to stop construction of the base once construction started, since it was still deemed unnecessary, were also ignored.
• Senator Claire McCaskill, a Democrat who serves on the Permanent Subcommittee of Investigations, stated that the base was “one of the most outrageous, deliberate, and wasteful misuses of taxpayer dollars in Afghanistan we’ve ever seen.”
• Other Washington Congressional people also chimed in with their disgust of the wasteful spending, but of course took no responsibility for the fact that they are supposed to be protecting American taxpayer dollars BEFORE they are wasted, not be outraged AFTER they are wasted.

Makes you wonder how many military veterans could have finally gotten the medical support they neede and were promised if that wasted $36 million went towards their needs and not the wasteland of Afghanistan?

3) Ten Thousand Commandments is an annual survey conducted by the Competitive Enterprise Institute. It estimates the size, the scope and the cost of Federal regulations on American consumers, businesses, and the U.S. economy. It is a problem that continues to grow by leaps and bounds regardless of which party is in charge, placing undo strain and bureaucratic red tape in the way of Americans and businesses.

Quite often many of these new regulations have nothing to do with protecting Americans or protecting the environment. The Federal beast has gotten so large that often Federal employees and bureaucrats have to continually churn out new regulations to justify their unnecessary jobs and organizations and keep them from disappearing.

Depressing top line findings of this years study include:

• Federal regulation and intervention cost American consumers and businesses an estimated $1.88 trillion in 2014 in lost economic productivity and higher prices.
• If U.S. federal regulation was a country, the $1.88 trillion would be the world’s 10th largest economy, ranking behind Russia and ahead of India.
• Economy-wide regulatory costs amount to an average of $14,976 per household – around 29 percent of an average family budget of $51,100. Although not paid directly by individuals, this “cost” of regulation exceeds the amount an average family spends on health care, food and transportation. 
• The “Unconstitutionality Index” is the ratio of regulations issued by unelected agency officials compared to legislation enacted by Congress in a given year. In 2014, agencies issued 16 new regulations for every law—that’s 3,554 new regulations compared to 224 new laws.
• Many Americans complain about taxes, but regulatory compliance costs exceed what the IRS is expected to collect in both individual and corporate income taxes for last year—by more than $160 billion.
• Some 60 federal departments, agencies and commissions have 3,415 regulations in development at various stages in the pipeline. The top six federal rulemaking agencies account for 48 percent of all federal regulations. These are the Departments of the Treasury, Commerce, Interior, Health and Human Services and Transportation and the Environmental Protection Agency.
• The 2014 Federal Register contains 77,687 pages, the sixth highest page count in its history. Among the six all-time-high Federal Register total page counts, five occurred under President Obama.
• The George W. Bush administra­tion averaged 62 major regulations annually over eight years, while the Obama administration has averaged 81 major regulations annually over six years.

The Federal government has been around for well over two hundred years. You cannot tell me that we still need to be adding thousands of regulations to the the economy and businesses every year that fill needs that were somehow unidentified up until now. Almost 78,000 pages of regulations, out of control government and bureaucracy. No wonder the economy continues to limp along, it has a 78,000 page book on its back weighing it down.

And to add insult to injury, the Obama administration recently tried to sneak a whopping two thousand new regulations into place without anyone seeing it, despite claiming to be the most transparent administration ever. They quietly and sneakily released the regulations late on the Friday before the three day Memorial Day weekend. 

That will do it for today. Four days into this month’s political class insanity and we are nowhere close to be done. Tune in tomorrow for the next installment and I am absolutely sure that tomorrow will not be the end of the insanity for this month.

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

December, 2014, Part 1, Politicians Say The Darndest Things: Political Campaign MIsquotes, Democratic Racism Quotes, and Who Needs Statistics

It’s the end of another year so I thought it might be a good idea to go back over the past twelve months and pull out some of the darndest quotes from members of the political class and their supporters. While the myth is that really smart people get involved with government and political office, in reality, based on the quotes of politicians we have brought to light over the past few years, the exact opposite is reality: we are currently served by a set of people that are shallow, selfish, and obviously incapable of having the mentality capacity or will to resolve the major issues facing the country. If they did have those attributes, one would have thought that the major issues facing us all, e.g. poor schools, leaky borders, high health care costs, etc. would have been resolved long ago.

To find previous reference to silly, inane, and stupid political quotes in this blog, just enter the phrase, “politicians say the darndest things,” in the search box above. As you will see, 2014 is not the only year that politicians have been putting their foot in their mouths and showing how incapable they are when it comes to governing and problem resolution.

1) Quote: “…or you might have a farmer from Iowa who never went to law school, never practiced law, serving as the next chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Because if Democrats lose the majority, Chuck Grassley will be the next chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee.” Senate candidate from Iowa, Bruce Braley.

Comments: Bruce Braley ran for Senator from Iowa this past November. You know, Iowa, a big farming state with a lot of farmers and farming interests. Given that reality, one would have thought that a candidate would be a little sensitive to not insult farmers, especially in light of extolling lawyers at farmers’ expense. 

But that is exactly what he did. He told a group of lawyers at an Iowan fundraiser that current Republican Senator Chuck Grassley was just “a farmer from Iowa who never went to law school.” Braley added that, unlike Grassley, he was not a simple farmer and was far more worldly because he “went to law school’ and ‘practiced law.’” Needless to say, Mr. Braley is not going to Washington when the new Congress meets next month.

2) Quote: “I'm very excited to be here to support your next senator from Iowa, our friend Bruce Bailey." Michelle Obama, campaigning for the aforementioned Bruce Braley.

Comments: The obvious flub here is that Ms. Obama was campaigning for a candidate named Bruce Bailey, not the real candidate, Bruce Braley. She compounded the error since after introducing Braley incorrectly, she continued to mispronounce his name seven times in total, according to CNN.

One would have thought that the first Lady could at least get the poor man’s name correct since the whole reason she was in Iowa was to campaign for him.

But for Ms. Obama, that was not the only screw-up in her campaign efforts for Democrats last November. She introduced incumbent Colorado Senator Mark Udall as a “fifth-generation Coloradoan.” Which sounds nice on the surface, but was actually a more accurate distribution and reality of Udall’s opponent, Cory Gardner. Gardner was truly a fifth-generation Coloradoan, while Udall was born in Arizona.

3) Quote: "I'm not going to compromise a Constitutional right provided here in Kentucky in order to curry favor on one or (an)other side or members of the media." Alison Grimes, Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate from Kentucky, refusing to say who she voted for President in 2008 and 2012.

Comments: During an interview with the Louisville Courier-Journal editorial board, Grimes “Did you vote for President Obama in 2008 and 2012?” If she had just said yes, assuming that she did not vote for McCain or Romney, the issue would have probably died out in a few days. She is a Democrat, obviously she probably voted for Obama.

Instead, she hedged and she hawed and made an issue out of nothing and eventually lost to the Republican incumbent. Seems idiotic that by not confessing to whom she voted for she would have thought she would have distanced herself from Obama in the November election. 

4) Quote: “I may be a white boy, but I can jump.” Vice President Joe Biden, at an event during Black History Month when Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson challenged him to a basketball game.

Comment: Difficult to take someone seriously, whose boss is trying to smooth racial divisions in this country, when you are dealing in crude stereotypes, “white boy” and “white boys can’t jump.” If a Republican had something like that, he or she would probably have been eviscerated in the press and by Democrats for fomenting racial stereotypes. Biden says it, and nothing happens except for the fact that he continues to speak quotes that have nothing to do with resolving any issue in this country.

5) Quote: "Where are you going to get people to work to clean out hotel rooms or do our landscaping?" Ms. Alex Sink, failed Florida Democratic candidate for Florida governor in 2010.

Comment: Again, if a Republican had something like this the press and Democrats would have killed him or her. But Ms. Sink does show her contempt and low regard for illegal Hispanic immigrants when in her mind they are only good for cleaning up our hotel rooms and watering our shrubs, implying that they would not be able to move into higher paying better jobs and that we needed them in this country to do the jobs Americans would not do. Racist or condescending or both, really bad for any political candidate to be so pompous.

6) Quote: Illegal immigrants “pick our fruit and make our beds.” President Barack Obama

Comment: Maybe Alex Sink got her prejudices from the leader of her party, President Obama. During a speech President Obama gave justifying his right to use Executive Orders to grant amnesty, he actually said illegal immigrants “pick our fruit and make our beds.” As with Ms.Sink, the President asserts these types of people are never going to be anything else than fruit pickers, hotel cleaners, and weed pullers. Talk about elitsit, pompous and condescending.

7) Quote: “Make no mistake, my policies are on the ballot this fall.” President Obama when speaking about the November elections.

Comments: By associating every Democrat running for office in November with the President’s policies, mostly failed policies, he ensured that the Republicans would take control of all of Congress and sweep through state governments across the country. By selfishly making the elections all about him and his failed policies, ranging from Obama Care to anemic economic growth and policies to a bumbling foreign relations performance, his narcissism failed his party dramatically. 

For someone who is supposed to be the consummate political animal, her certainly came up small when insisting it was all about him.

8) Quote: “Frankly, it is irritating that anybody would be distracted by which statistics are accurate.” U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill

Comments: A recent study estimated that one in five women attending an American university is likely to be sexually assaulted during her college years. If true, this is a very serious problem since even one unwanted sexual assault is one too many. This study resulted in Senator McCaskill getting involved and trying to do something about his one in five ratio.

However, a subsequent study by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, one that had a better construct and much larger sample size, estimated that the true ratio was closer to 50 to 1, not 5 to 1. Again, any sexual assault is not to be taken lightly. But there is a big difference if the chance of sexual assault is ten times less likely than originally thought.

The real insanity of McCaskill’s quote is that like most politicians, why should she let reality enter into any political decision or action? Statistics were good and appropriate when it supported her position, 5 to 1, but should be ignored when it does not support her position and actions, 50 to 1. 

That will do it for today but we will continue our 2014 review of stupid political quotes tomorrow. Today we learned that a Senate candidate will lose an election if he insults his core constituency, that Michelle Obama does not really prepare for campaign rallies before going to them, the Vice President, the President, and a Florida politician continue to deal with and believe in racial stereotypes, and a U.S. Senator uses statistics only when it supports her position. 

And these are supposed to be the leaders of this country? Pathetic leadership, pathetic management skills, pathetic view of others.

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

TSA Horror Update, Part 2: How TSA Really Operates

Yesterday we did a review of the latest antics and outrages from the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA), the Federal entity that is supposed to keep airline traveling Americans safe. We learned that the organization failed to detect a fake bomb being smuggled onto a plane even though the undercover agent received a security patdown.

We learned that TSA decided it would be a good idea to update their agents uniforms despite an almost $17 TRILLION national debt and the fact that the $50 million wardrobe update would include buying the new uniforms from Mexican companies.

We learned that TSA security procedures were so slow and so bad that at least 11 individuals with real criminal backgrounds were given clearance passes to supposedly secure airport locations.

And to our amusement, we found out that a U.S. Senator is much like most Americans when she was made “uncomfortable” by a hand patdown by TSA agent at an airport gate when her hands registered a suspicious substance.

We concluded yesterday’s post with two suggestion on how fix the incompetence and better protect the traveling public. Very scary, very disgraceful behavior by a poorly performing government agency.

If you thought yesterday’s stories were harrowing, today will be even worse. The following paragraphs are lifted verbatim from a March 10, 2013 New York Post article. Rather than trying to summarize the contents of the article, I thought it better to read exactly what the article says since it is the a behind-the-scenes description of how the TSA actually operates, given by a former TSA employee from Newark Airport.

Newark Airport was where the fake bomb undercover operation took place, the operation where TSA screeners did not identify a fake bomb during security screening. I cannot say that this gentleman’s experience are true or if he is exaggerating the problems. However, given our previous research and writing on this topic, I would probably bet that most, if no all, of what he describes is pretty close to reality.

According to the Post article, the ex-TSA screener calls the TSA polices silly and that lazy workers do little to stop real terrorist and violent threats to Americans:

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

A LOT of what we do is make-believe.

I’ve had to screen small children and explain to their parents I had no choice but to “check” them. I would only place my hands on their arms and bottom half of their legs, and the entire “pat-down” lasted 10 seconds. This goes completely against TSA procedure.

Because the cameras are recording our every move, we have to do something. If someone isn’t checked or even screened properly, the entire terminal would shut down, as this constitutes a security breach.

But since most TSA supervisors are too daft to actually supervise, bending the rules is easy to do.

Did you know you don’t need a high-school diploma or GED to work as a security screener? These are the same screeners that TSA chief John Pistole and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano refer to as a first-class first line of defense in the war on terror.

These are the employees who could never keep a job in the private sector. I wouldn’t trust them to walk my dog.

An agent got through Newark last week with an improvised explosive device? That’s not even news to anyone who works there. It happens all the time. The failure rate is pretty high, especially with federal investigators, and the pat-down itself is ridiculous. As invasive as it is, you still can’t find anything using the back of your hand on certain areas.

When there are internal tests, conducted by the Newark training department, it’s easy to cheat because they use our co-workers. You could be working with someone all morning, and then they’re gone. Word gets around the checkpoint. Someone will come over to you and say, “Hey, it’s Joe. He’s got a blue duffel bag.”

What are the chances of you being on a flight where something happens? We always said it’s not a question of if terrorists get through — it’s a question of when. Our feeling is nothing’s happened because they haven’t wanted it to happen. We’re not any big deterrent. It’s all for show.

A real pat-down is when a police officer pulls you over, uses his hands to search, actually goes into your clothes. We have to use the back of our hands around certain areas. It just doesn’t work. It’s a really bad way to pat somebody down.

If I had to guess, I’m sure lots of things get through. One screener told me about something he did going through security when he went on vacation. Let’s just say the screeners did not catch something that was really obvious to anyone who was paying attention.

Most TSA screeners know their job is a complete joke. Their goal is to use this as a stepping stone to another government agency.

We work in a culture where common sense has no place. All but a very few TSA personnel know they’re employed by a bottom-of-the-barrel agency.

Our first question to anyone in a wheelchair is to ask if they’re able to stand for a pat-down. If someone is in a wheelchair, he likely can’t stand. Even when they’re sitting, we’re required to ask them to move so we can check under their buttocks.

All I needed was for a passenger to fall over because I asked them to stand. And if that did happen, the screener would be vilified and the official p.r. spin would be that he needed “additional training.” Every time you read about a TSA horror story, it’s usually about a screener doing what he or she is instructed to do.

Supervisors play absolutely no role in day-to-day functions except to tell you not to chew gum. Gum chewing is a huge issue with management. I once saw a supervisor make an officer open his mouth to prove he had a mint and not a piece of gum.

Goofing off and half-hour-long bathroom breaks are the only way to break up the monotony. There is also a lot of ogling of female passengers by the male screeners. So, ladies, cover up when you get to the airport. These guys are checking you out constantly.

A small number of screeners are delusional zealots who believe they’re keeping America safe by taking your snow globe, your 2-inch pocket knife, your 4-ounce bottle of shampoo and performing invasive pat-downs on your kids.

(Incidentally, the flap over the new rule allowing small pocketknives is overblown. Most of the public doesn’t realize it, but you are already allowed to bring scissors, screwdrivers, tweezers, knitting needles and any number of sharp instruments on board.)

The rest are only there for the paycheck and generous benefits. Screeners start at $15 per hour, and there is tons of overtime — mainly because they are filling in for the many screeners who don’t bother coming to work. For every 40 hours you work, you receive four hours of vacation and four hours of sick time.

One screener didn’t come to work for four weeks. When he finally reappeared, he asked for another week off. The answer was no. So what did this brainiac decide to do? He took another week off — and didn’t get terminated.

People have been caught falling asleep on the job. They get written up, it’s put in their file, and that’s it.

New hires see how bad it is working there, and, believe it or not, TSA does manage to hire some pretty decent people. They just don’t last because they can get a normal job.

It’s the people who’ve been there a good number of years who could never find employment elsewhere. When you have a real job, it usually means you have to actually work and think, which a lot of them have a hard time doing.

Anyone boarding an aircraft should feel maybe only a teeny tiny bit safer than if there were no TSA at all.

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

Let’s review some of the descriptions that were used to describe the worker environment within the TSA:

• Supervisors are too daft to actually supervise.
• Bending the rules is easy to do.
• Failure rate is pretty high.
• We’re not any big deterrent.
• It’s all for show.
• Lots of things get through.
• Their job is a complete joke.
• Gum chewing is a huge issue for management.
• People have been caught sleeping on the job.

Scary, scary stuff. Incompetent people managed by incompetent management, all doing an incompetent job of protecting Americans. And everyone knows about the situation, except all but one member of Congress (Senator McCaskill) which probably explains why the situation is never addressed, failures are never fired, and taxpayer wealth is constantly wasted for an illusion of safety and security.

This is a disaster waiting to happen, a disaster that will not be pretty and which would have been totally avoidable if our two suggestions from yesterday’s post had been implemented:

1) The United States is one of the few countries in the world where the government operates almost every aspect of airport security. Most countries do it far better than us by using outside experts and companies that are professionals, not government employees. And we have previously discussed the fact that when some domestic airports have used private, professional security firms, the results have been much more efficient, save, and less expensive, as proven by the private/Federal Screening Partnership Program:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2011/06/transportation-security-adminstration.html

2) TSA continues to be a great example of why Step 34 from “Love My Country, Loathe My Government” is so desperately needed. Step 34 would remove all Congressional committee members from committees that do not adequately do their job. In this case, we have known for a long time what Senator McCaskill has just found out: TSA is a bloated, ineffective, and fourth amendment rights destroying government bureaucracy.

Until these two steps are executed, I think I’ll drive.

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