November, 2014, Bonus Post, Political Class Insanity: NASA's Wasteful Spending, White Staffer And The Prostitute, and Subsidizing Cotton Farmers In Brazil

Please note: yesterday was supposed to be our last post on political class insanity for this month. However, before we could publish all of the posts that we had written to cover the last 30 days or so of insanity, more insanity popped up, resulting in this bonus post of political class insanity for the month of November, 2014. I promise this will be the last insanity post this month, not necessarily because we covered it all but because by covering it all we got too depressed to go on until early next month.

It is the start of another month which means it is time again to review the latest political class insanity that has been dumped on us by the worst set of politicians to ever hold office in the history of this country. From wasteful spending to bad priorities to general ineffectiveness, the insanity rolling out of Washington and other political centers and governments around the country seems to be accelerating as the idiocy of our political times increases.

1) A recent Heritage Foundation article by Daren Bakst revealed that the U.S. taxpayer recently paid out $300 million to help the Brazilian cotton industry. Apparently, back in 2002, Brazil brought a case against the U.S. in front of the World Trade Organization (WTO) that claimed American Federal government cotton subsidies paid out to American cotton farmers violated WTO rules.

We lost the case in front of the WTO, paid some fines, and finally reached an agreement with Brazil to pay them a final $300 million payment to make the whole affair go away. Well, go away at least temporarily, until 2018 or so. If the subsidies are not removed by 2018, Brazil and others could reinstate their complaint with the WTO and the fines could continue again beyond this final $300 million payment.

What do the subsidies do? According to the Heritage Foundation report: Stacked Income Protection Plan (STAX) which is a special supplemental crop insurance program just for cotton. Taxpayers are forced to subsidize an astonishing 80 percent of the premiums for participating farmers, and the program guarantees anywhere from 70 to 90 percent of anticipated revenue (it covers shallow losses, i.e. minor losses). Brazil had argued that this new program would increase U.S. trade-distorting subsidies.

So, Americans lose three ways:

1. Our tax money is used to subsidize cotton farmers in this country.
2. As with any government subsidy, this probably keeps the cost of cotton and cotton products higher than they normally would have been.
3. Our tax money is also used to subsidize Brazilian cotton farmers because Congress insists on always renewing the farm subsidies legislation whenever it comes up.

A triple play of losses for American taxpayers.

2) Many of you probably remember a Secret Service scandal a few years ago when the Secret Service’s advance security team went down to Columbia to secure the travel arrangements for a President Obama visit. But, in addition, the team members ended up cavorting with Columbian prostitutes while on the job. A lot of these folks lost their jobs and careers as a result of their bad judgment.

But the Washington Post recently reported that it was not just the Secret Service personnel who were cavorting. While the White House continues to claim that no White House officials were involved with prostitutes down in Columbia, newly reviewed government documents and interviews show that senior White House aides were indeed in possession of information at the time suggesting that a prostitute was an actual overnight guest in the hotel room of a Presidential advance-team member. I am shocked, this administration lied! Who would have thought. Yet that information was never thoroughly investigated or publicly acknowledged.

While the White House denied any of their people were involved, a separate set of investigators in the inspector general’s office of the Department of Homeland found additional evidence from records and eyewitnesses that this was not the case. The lead investigator in this inspector general office told Senate staffers that he felt pressure from his superiors in the office of Charles K. Edwards, who was then the acting inspector general, to withhold evidence that White House staff had been involved.

In this case the cover up is worse than the crime. For security reasons, a White house staffer should not be involved with a prostitute in a foreign land ahead of a Presidential visit. That is just stupid. Unfortunately, lying and cover ups after the fact from this administration is routine.

3) We keep coming up with additional stupid Federal spending uncovered by Senator Tom Coburn’s latest casebook publication. The latest ones include the following idiocy strictly centered within NASA:

• NASA's A3 Rocket-Testing Tower, also known as the "Tower of Pork," which is still being built even though the rocket launch program that would use this new tower was cancelled four years ago.- $44.5 million
• NASA Study on How Humans React to Space Aliens. An official NASA document justified the study, saying that "communicating with intelligent terrestrial beings removed from us in time can be deeply problematic." I do not know what that statement means, seems like nonsense, but really, communicating with alien life forms needs to be studied and financed? Americans have enough trouble communicating with the political class in Washington, that might be a better place to spend these communication dollars.- $392,000
• NASA at Comic-Con. To idiotic to even discuss.- $10,000
• NASA Study Predicting the Collapse of Human Civilization. Seems like a very small sum to study the collapse of the entire human civilization, I mean we are talking the collapse involving over 7 billion humans. - $30,000
• NASA's Loss of Electronic Devices. A report from NASA's inspector general said that NASA did not have a "complete and accurate inventory of agency-issued smartphones, tablets, cellphones, and Aircards." Apparently 14% of NASA’s electronic devices went unused for seven months from 2013-2014. Estimated cost of unused and lost devices: $97,000 per month. - $1.1 million

As we have said many times this past week, millions of Americans are hungry and homeless, millions are unemployed, millions are saddled with various addictions, and the Federal government spend millions of dollars on launch pads that will never be used, aliens that will never be met, and attending Comic-Con. Insane.

4) The wonderful website, Bankrupting America, had some great Halloween political class insanity this past week:

• The Washington Times recently reported that every year, Federal, state and local governments spend millions of dollars of taxpayer wealth on pumpkin patches and fall festivals; “Most of the festivals and events financed by state and local tax dollars this time of year focus on pumpkins, and many of those pumpkins are grown with the assistance of pricey farm subsidies courtesy of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.”
• From 1995-2012, More Than $2 Million Was Spent Subsidizing Pumpkin Farmers: “From 1995 to 2012, farm subsidies to American pumpkin growers came to more than $2 million, according to USDA figures compiled by the Environmental Working Group. Up until 2010, Federal pumpkin subsidies averaged about $75,000 a year. In 2011 and 2012, the two most recent years for which numbers were available, taxpayer handouts spiked to an average of $420,000 a year.”
• West Virginia Lawmakers Spent $75,000 To Support 21 Pumpkin Parties And Fall Festivals. According to The Washington Times: “In total, Mountain State lawmakers devoted nearly $75,000 to support 21 pumpkin parties and fall festivals. Much of that money came from state lottery funds intended to help the beleaguered state send more of its students to college and draw more businesses and jobs to West Virginia.”
• West Virginia Spent $13,000 Subsidizing Just One Of Those Festivals: “West Virginians may be one of happiest states to hear that some pumpkins were salvaged from the storms. The state’s legislators earmarked $13,000 in West Virginia’s budget for this year’s edition of the West Virginia Pumpkin Festival, including a $5,000 payout for advertising from the state tourism commission and another $8,200 subsidy to help cover general expenses.”
• Vermont Residents Subsidized Their Fall Fest Using State Lotto Money. The Washington Times reported: “The Burlington Pumpkin Harvest Festival received $4,100 in state lottery money. The state budget awarded $4,125 to the Frankford Autumnfest and $2,200 to Princeton’s Autumnfest. Not to be outdone, the Wetzel County Autumnfest snagged $4,500 in public funds.”

While these are relatively small amounts of taxpayer dollars wasted on pumpkins, just because you can waste a smaller amount of taxpayer wealth on stupid programs does not mean that you should.

That will definitely do it for the political class insanity this month. Sending money to cotton farmers in Brazil, sending White House staff to prostitutes in Columbia, sending taxpayer wealth up in smoke at NASA, and funding pumpkins, there is no limts to the ways Washington, and other American politicians, can waste our wealth and embarrass themselves and the rest of the country in the eyes of the world.

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

November, 2014, Part 4, Political Class Insanity: Politicians For Sale, Lost War On Poverty, More Wastebook Waste, and More

It is the start of another month which means it is time again to review the latest political class insanity that has been dumped on us by the worst set of politicians to ever hold office in the history of this country. From wasteful spending to bad priorities to general ineffectiveness, the insanity rolling out of Washington and other political centers and governments around the country seems to be accelerating as the idiocy of our political times increases.

Last month we set a record by needing almost two full weeks of posts to get all of the insanity documented and discussed. Given what I see today, we will be hard pressed not to get close to or exceed that record of insanity this month. It keeps getting worse and worse and the effectiveness of the political class gets less and less.

This is our fourth post in this month’s series so the insanity continues to flow out of the political class and into our lives, our wallets, and our freedoms:

1) It is election time so it is no surprise that the many moneyed interests across the country are donating millions of dollars to various political campaigns in the hope of eventually billions of dollars in return via tax breaks, favorable legislation, etc. The top donors according to a recent Politico article to our broken political processes, in just the third quarter of 2014, are:

• U.S. Chamber ($28.4 million)
• National Association of Realtors ($18 million)
• U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform ($9.1 million)
• General Electric ($5.3 million)
• Boeing ($4.4 million)
• CVS Health ($4.3 million)
• NAM ($4.3 million)
• American Hospital Association ($4.3 million)
• American Medical Association ($4.2 million)
• Comcast Corporation ($4.2 million)
• Koch Companies Public Sector ($4 million)
• The National Association of Broadcasters ($4 million)
• Google ($4 million)
• National Cable and Telecommunications Association ($3.8 million)
• PhRMA ($3.7 million)
• United Technologies ($3.6 million)
• Lockheed Martin ($3.4 million)
• AT&T Services ($3.5 million)
• American Chemistry Council ($3.2 million)
• Occidental Petroleum ($3.2 million)

Just these twenty entities gave the political class almost $123 million in the past three months. Does anyone really think that the politicians that received these funds care more about our needs than those that gave them millions and millions of dollars? 

Never has there been more of a need for Step 6 from “Love My Country, Loathe My Government,” a step that would allow only individual American citizens to contribute to political campaigns. No businesses, no unions, no PACs, no industry trade groups, etc. should be able to contribute to political campaigns. Only individual citizens, exercising their individual First Amendment rights, should have a say in financing political campaigns.

2) Cato recently pointed out that the War on Poverty recently celebrated its 50th anniversary. Passed during the Johnson administration, this war was supposed to eliminate poverty in the country. According to Cato, the American taxpayer has spent $19 TRILLION in this “war,” making it the most expensive war in the history of the country

What do we have to show for our $19 TRILLION:

• About 46 million Americans, about one out of every seven, need monthly government food assistance.
•  The poverty rate of today is about 15%, about what it was fifty years ago.
• Millions of Americans are homeless and millions cannot afford basic medical care.
• As we reported a few days ago, much of the middle class cannot afford the luxuries that used to be taken for granted by the middle class so imagine how much worse off poorer Americans are if the middle class is under such financial assault.

Einstein once said that “the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” After fifty years and $19 TRILLION our politicians must truly be insane, doing the same things and programs over and over, since the war on poverty has been lost many times over.

3) We have already discussed some of the bigger wasteful spending follies that Senator Tom Coburn uncovered within the Federal budget earlier via his latest “Wastebook” research late last month at the following post:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2014/10/wastebook-2015-unrelenting-wasteful_27.html

But since then we have come up with a few more from the Senator that are just as absurdly wasteful of taxpayer wealth:

•  The Federal government spent $190,000 to study compost digested by worms.
• It spent $297 million for the purchase of an unused mega blimp.
• It spent $1 million on a Virginia bus stop where only 15 people can huddle under a small roof. 

Almost half a million dollars spent on stupidity. As we said when we first discussed the Senator’s research, how many drug addicts could have been treated for half a million dollars? How many meals for the homeless and hungry could have been provided for half a million dollars? A half a million dollars is a very, very small part of the Federal government’s budget but it would be a very large part of a homeless American’s day.

4) And while Americans are going hungry, homeless, and unemployed, how is the Washington political class treating themselves? It must be a nice feeling to know that you can control how much you get paid even with such a pitiful performance while in office:

• The Speaker of the House currently gets an annual salary of $223,500, and will receive a payment of roughly that amount, depending on the years of service, for the rest of his life. 
• He gets paid this amount regardless of how poorly Congress and the political class performs in serving the country and its citizens.
• This $223,500 is about five times what the median U.S. household earns in a year.
• But that is probably at the lower rung of Congressional retirement benefits according to Cato. For example, Nancy Pelosi will not receive annually $223,500 for life, but roughly double that amount since 1) she is a member of Congress, 2) she is currently the House of Representatives’ Minority Leader, and 3) she is a retired Speaker of the House. 

ŸAnd Lord knows she is certainly not worth anywhere near that much, given her pathetic track record while serving in Congress.

Several steps from “Love My Country, Loathe My Government,” would remedy this disgrace and wasteful spending:

1. Step 37 would subject Congressional pay to an annual “customer/voter satisfaction” survey with the results determining how much Congressional members are paid, based on selected performance criteria
2. Step 39 would impose term limits on all Federal politicians, preventing them from every accumulating so many nonproductive years in Congress and pumping up their retirement benefits at taxpayer expense.
3. Step 41 would prohibit any member of Congress with a net worth of over $3 million from drawing a salary or pension from their service in Congress simply because they can afford to go without such compensation, given their personal wealth. Serving the country should be a calling, not a career.

The political class should not control their pay treatment and pension levels, we should, based on their performance, not their greed.

Another day another set of insanity. Overpaid and unaccountable politicians overseeing useless government expenditures to a failed $19 TRILLION failed war on poverty to the rich getting richer via the political process not via investment and hard work. More insanity 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.robertringer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

November, 2014, Part 1, Political Class Insanity: Terrorist Panties, Tic Tac Regulations, and More

It is the start of another month which means it is time again to review the latest political class insanity that has been dumped on us by the worst set of politicians to ever hold office in the history of this country. From wasteful spending to bad priorities to general ineffectiveness, the insanity rolling out of Washington and other political centers and government around the country seems to be accelerating as the idiocy of our political times increases.

Last month we set a record by needing almost two full weeks of posts to get all of the insanity documented and discussed. Given what I see today, we will be hard pressed not to get close to or exceed that record of insanity this month. It keeps getting worse and worse and the effectiveness of the political class gets less and less.

1) Before we start with this first piece of wasteful spending insanity, think back, if you are old enough to the late 1970s. At that time, the Statue of Liberty, the symbol of this country and its Constitutional freedoms and liberties, was in need of extensive and costly repair. 

Despite its place of honor in our history and collective freedom, not a single taxpayer dollar was used to restore it and refurbish it. The entire renovation cost was covered with private donations from citizens and businesses.

Now, consider the reality that Federal taxpayer dollars have been allocated to fund a Gammy awards museum in Cleveland, Mississippi. Forty years ago the Federal government would not fund the fixing of the Statue of Liberty but today the political class and Federal government will use taxpayer money to build a music museum in that thriving metro area of Cleveland, Mississippi.

According to research done for the 2015 publication of Senator Tom Coburn’s Wastebook 2015, the Federal government gave Delta State University $1.25 million, via the U.S. Commerce Department’s Economic Development Administration, to help build an access road and upgrade infrastructure in preparation for the 2015 opening of the $18-million Grammy Museum Mississippi.

If the state of Mississippi and the town of Cleveland wanted to build a Grammy Museum to hype tourism, than the state of Mississippi and the town of Cleveland should be for everything connected to the museum, the rest of America should not have to pay for such nonsense. 

As proposed in Step 44 of “Love my Country, Loathe My Government,” a step that says no Federal money should be spent on any project unless it materially effects and benefit’s the residents of at least five states, this money never, ever should have been appropriated for this project. It is the thousands and thousands of dumb, localized projects that end up wasting tens of billions of dollars every year, calumniating and contributing to our $18 TRILLION national debt.

If we did not have to pay to fix the Statue of Liberty we should not have to pay for a silly museum in the middle of nowhere in Mississippi. How many homeless and hungry Americans could have been given shelter and food instead of building roads for a local museum? How many ailing veterans could have gotten better medical care for that $l.25 million Federal tax dollars? 

2) According to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, six out of ten people polled said they do not trust the government to do what's right. Additionally, a majority feel that government’s ability to deal with and resolve big problems has been on the decline for the past few years.

While this is probably bad news for Democrats heading into next week’s midterm elections since they have controlled most of the Federal government over the past eight years or so, does anyone really think that Republicans can reduce that level of pessimism? They are all members of the same political class, a class of people that are always more interested in their own careers and self enrichment than resolving the problems of the country.

The insanity here is that a majority of Americans, and I would bet that it is a growing majority of Americans, have lost faith in the Federal government to do anything right. And the losing of faith makes turning the country around that much more difficult.

3) After the 9-11 attacks, the Washington political class thought it would be a great idea to create a new, super large Federal bureaucracy called the Department of Homeland Security. These folks were going to protect us in the future from new terrorist attacks within this country.

With the rise of the super dangerous terrorists groups like ISIS, one would hope that this was a good idea. That the people employed by the Department of Homeland Security would be on the borders, focusing on threats in far away lands, and on the job of making sure that terrorists do not wreck havoc like they did on 9-11. One would hope that, but as always, with the political class and the federal government, one would again be wrong. 

But first, a little background. The Kansas City Royals just missed winning the baseball World Series in the past week. To commemorate their march through their season, the playoffs and into the World Series, Peregrine Honig, owner of Honig’s Birdies Panties shop in Crossroads, Kansas, said she designed the Lucky Royals women’s panties that were set to go on sale shortly after the world series ended. The panties read, “Take the Crown,” with “KC” across the bottom. She had a few dozen made to sell in her shop.

However, apparently her designs on the panties violated Federal copyright laws. By connecting the “K” and the “C,” she infringed on major league baseball’s copyright. How did she find out she had violated copyright law? Two, not one, Department of Homeland Security agents showed up in her store, flashed their badges, told her that her panties violated Federal copyright laws, and confiscated the few dozen offending panties.

Really? ISIS is marching across the Middle East beheading innocent people, threatening to invade America, wiping religious minorities in their path, and the Department of Homeland Security is physically sending agents into a small lingerie store to confiscate panties? Really?

The Commerce Department couldn’t send a registered letter telling Ms. Honig to cease and desist? How did the Department of Homeland Security even get involved in such a trivial matter? Insane. Are illegal panties that much of a threat to the homeland? You cannot make this nonsense up.

4) According to the December, 2014 issue of Reason magazine, in 1997 the Federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) set out to regulate what was said on the labels of Tic Tacs, Certs, and other breath fresheners. A whopping seventeen years later, those draft regulations are finally done, resulting in a 145 page document to regulate Tic Tac et al labels. Seventeen years and they have juts gotten to the DRAFT of the regulations.

During the process, the FDA consulted with the Centers for Disease Control, the Federal trade Commission, the Department of Agriculture, and other Federal agencies. All this for a final effort that probably will be ignored by every American but at a cost of probably tens of millions of dollars. 

Your tax dollars at work (over seventeen years): determining what to put on a label of a breath mint. How many of billions of breath mints does one thing were consumed over that time frame without any kind of catastrophic effects, despite not having a federal approved label? Insanity.

That will do it for today. But buckle up, we are in for a long ride of insanity in the days, and possibly weeks to come.

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

September, 2014 Political Class Insanity, Part 6: Overpaying Chelsea Clinton, Pathetic IRS "Dog Ate Homework/Email Excuses" and More

This is our sixth post in our monthly series for this month that reviews, documents, and discusses American political class insanity. This insanity takes many forms, from wasteful spending to ineffective and inefficient government programs, to criminal fraud to stupid quotes to whatever, never underestimating the ability of the American class to screw things up.

Many of their missteps would actually be quite funny except for the fact that their ineptness almost always causes us to lose money, wealth, and freedom. Unfortunately, as witnessed by this being our sixth post just for this month, their insanity seems to be growing exponentially. 

1) The first insanity from our politicians comes to us via an article by the Tea Party Patriots website. Now, some of my more liberal friends, family members, and readers might automatically discount the following insanity since it comes from a Tea Party source. That would be a mistake since this is purely a factual report from a variety of main stream news sources, no opinion, no political slant, just facts.

These facts are the best six excuses and lies that IRS executives have conjured up in front of Congress and America for why they could not find the incriminating emails of Lois Lerner and other IRS employees. These emails would be critical in proving that the Obama administration was directly involved in persecuting and squashing the First Amendment rights of Americans with different opinions of this administration. 

While the IRS and the White House claimed that they did not exist for the longest time, recent news reports and Congressional testimony show that copies of them probably still exist. If true, there will likely by political, impeachment, criminal, and ethical problems for those involved in trying to deny they existed via the following seven excuses, excuses that now seem more pathetic than the classic, “the dog ate my homework:”

1. “We’re doing everything we can to find them.” The IRS withheld emails from Congressional investigators for a year before then claiming they were all lost in a computer crash

2. “The computer ate our emails.” In June, the IRS claimed a computer crash in 2011 had made it impossible to retrieve Lois Lerner’s emails.

3. “We’ve searched everywhere…” The IRS claimed its technicians tried, but failed to repair Lerner’s hard drive and produce the missing emails.

4. “We’ve already recycled those emails, because, like, they were irrelevant and taking up space.” The IRS also claimed it was impossible to produce the emails because officials had already “recycled” Lerner’s hard drive. 

5. “We “recycled” the Lois Lerner Blackberry also.” No computer, no problem? Think again. The IRS also “recycled” Lerner’s blackberry. News reports are now indicating that “recycled” means destroyed, just after Congress began its investigation.

6. “We didn’t save our instant messaging conversations either!”

The IRS didn’t save its internal messaging system either. How incompetent are the IRS data people: emails lost, computers crash, Blackberries destroyed, instant messaging messages thrown out. It is amazing these people can dress themselves in the morning.

7. “It’s too hard to retrieve the lost emails in the backup system.” This is my favorite, what good is a backup system if you cannot get access to the backed up emails? Why go through the expense and effort to have a useless back up system?

My gosh, my dog could have come up with better excuses than these. Insanity that they think Congress and the American people are going to just say, shucks, too late to prove the criminal misdeeds. People need to go to jail for not only denying First Amendment rights but also for being just plain inept and stupid.

2) Bill and Hillary Clinton’s daughter, Chelsea, is no longer going to do any more work for NBC News according to recent news reports. Apparently her title was “special correspondent,” according to a recent article by People magazine.

She must have been really, really special since it has been seven months since her last “journalistic” piece aired on NBC even though she was being paid an unbelievable $600,000 a year. This is about twelve times more than an average U.S. household earns in a year even though she is quite young and inexperienced and obviously not that busy if it has been seven months since she did anything worth airing.

Please do not tell me that the mainstream media is still independent in this country and is not in bed with the American political class. Not when there is this type of outrageous buddy system between well known politicians’ families and one of the largest news sources in the country.

3) Let’s go waste some taxpayer money for nothing in return. According to a recent report form the EPA’s Inspector General:

• Although the EPA’s Office of Environmental Information spent $2.2 million in 2011 in an attempt to reduce the agency's computing costs and speed up processing via a cloud processing system the agency, it never received the contracted work from two private contractors.
• Lockheed Martin was contracted to move the EPA email system to the cloud, something that later turned out to be impossible to do.
• According to the Inspector General findings: "In addition to paying the vendor full price for agreed-to services not performed as specified in the contract, the EPA is incurring additional costs for maintaining emails not migrated to the cloud." 
• The EPA also paid for services from CGI Inc. to provide "infrastructure-as-a-service" access to EPA clients but the Inspector General’s investigation found that the EPA's information office failed to justify if the contract was even necessary and the contract, which did not meet Federal requirements, cost a little more than $74,000.
• As you may or may not know, CGI was the Canadian company that completely botched the Obama Care information systems development but still, obviously, can be hired by other Federal entities to botch their jobs also.

More money spent for nothing in return. In the real world, outside of the political class and the government, people’s careers are ended and their jobs lost for such incompetence. Want to bet that no ine lost their job within the EPA for such incompetence?

4) Some members of the political class, only Democrats, like to claim that the economy is healthy and robust and that the Obama administration is doing a great economic job. Of course, the reality is quite different. Latest estimates put the number of unemployed and under employed Americans at just under 20 million people. Economic growth since the last recession ended is historically anemic despite record low interest rates for a record length of time, an energy boom, and hundreds of billions spent on a failed stimulus program.

But probably the most telling and the saddest fact about how this administration and this Washington political class have no idea how to implement and operate effective economic policies is the disgraceful amount of Americans that are currently receiving government food assistance, food stamps. According to a recent article in the Fiscal Times, there are currently more Americans on food stamps than before or during the Great Recession. "Although the number is down from the historical high of 48 million Americans in 2012, “total [Federal food assistance] enrollment remains nearly triple the 17 million food stamp users in 2000. In 2009 nearly 39 million people were on food stamps, and the number rose to 44 million in 2010.”"

Four years after the recession ended, four years after Obama proclaimed he had lifted the economy out of the recession, tens of millions of Americans have not yet experienced that recovery and need help putting food on their family’s plate every day. 

This is why Step 36 from “Love my Country, Loathe my Government” is so important. Step 36 would require every member of Congress and the White House to take and pass a course on economic theory and policy before starting their job. 

We see the idiocy and ineffectiveness of their economic policies when they have no economic training. How much worse could it be if we made them learn a few economic principles before passing legislation and policies that affect the economic well being of Americans?

5) According to a recent Associated Press article by Elizabeth Harrington, Federal tax credits intended to stimulate the economies of low-income communities around America have instead gone to doggie day cares, sculptures, recording studios, and breweries. These were the findings from a report released by Senator Tom Coburn.

One billion dollars in tax credits are sold to private investors every year via the Federal New Markets Tax Credit (NMTC) program. The credits are intended to spur private investment and create jobs in low economic areas.

However, given the wide and ambiguous definition of what constitutes a “low income community,” past credits have been taken advantage of by Hollywood producers, Wall Street bankers, and major corporations. Coburn calls the program a “billionaire’s fantasy island.”

“The New Market Tax Credit is a reverse Robin Hood scheme paid for with the taxes collected from working Americans to provide pay outs to big banks and corporations in the hope that those it took the money from might benefit,” Coburn said in a statement. “When government picks winners and losers, the losers usually end up being taxpayers. Washington should reduce federal taxes on working Americans and all business owners who create jobs by eliminating tax earmarks, loopholes, and giveaways like the New Markets Tax Credit.” 

Coburn’s report found that:

• The tax credit has subsidized almost 4,000 projects, including limousine services, eBay consignment selling services, churches, doggie day care and a dog grooming facility.
• Some of the tax credits went to major corporations like IHOP and Subway chain restaurants.
• Although ineligible to receive credits, hot tub facilities, golf courses and country clubs, and tanning salons investments actually did occur under the program.
• In one instance, a California wellness center also spent $65,000 of NMTC financing on a sculpture entitled, “Dancing on the Wind,” that features two figures “reaching toward the heavens.” Obviously, spending $65,000 on a statue is $65,000 that can not be spent on real economic development.

Although around for about fourteen years, want to bet that no one in the political class ever did an economic payback/viability analysis of whether or not the billions of dollars distributed under this program did any good? More wasted taxpayer wealth.

That will do it for today.  Overpaid politicians’ daughters, over funded and ineffective government programs, an under-imaginative IRS, an empty handed-EPA, and economically deficient politicians, just from today's poltiical class 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:

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

March, 2014 Political Class Insanity, Part 4: Embarrassed By Fake Zombie Attacks, Hackers, Snipers, and a Better Russian Foreign Policy

This is our fourth post this month in our monthly series on political class insanity. It highlights how the American political class continually wastes our tax dollars, implements idiotic programs, and cannot operate any government program or project without incompetence and waste. The first post in this month’s series can be accessed at:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2014/03/march-2014-political-class-insanity_2.html

You can review previous month’s instances of political lunacy at the beginning of every month from the listing on the right side of this page.

1) Recent news reports have been reviewing the massive political and liberty problems going on in the Ukraine, formerly a part of the Soviet Union. It appears that the ruling political class in the Ukraine was very corrupt which ruled a country that was on the verge of bankruptcy. When mixed in with the split between those citizens in the Ukraine that wanted to align the country with the West and those that wanted to align the country with Russia, you ended up with a very volatile situation.

The country eventually exploded into street riots, fighting, deaths, and the eventual overturning of the current government. And as of the past few days there are reports that Russian military forces have entered the country and have taken control of at least two airports. This intrusion was relatively simple since the Ukraine and Russia share a geographic border and the area where the intrusion occurred is the part of the country friendly to Russian influences.

Which gets to our Secretary of State, John Kerry. Kerry wants to put up a billion dollars worth of U.S. taxpayer money in a guaranteed loan to the Ukraine to help it survive all of the turmoil including its dire financial situation. Any number of problems with this insanity:

• The Ukraine interim government says it needs at least $35 billion so $1 billion would be like spitting on a forest fire, a total waste.
• Kerry does not specify what the money will be used for or what conditions would be imposed, just wants to give them a $1 billion, a sure fire way to waste it.
• Given that Russian troops are already on the ground in the country, seems like giving a weak interim government would be like giving the Russians the money directly since it is Russia that will eventually have the major influence on what goes on in the country.
• Our national debt is now over $17 TRILLION, we cannot afford to be given away billions of dollars into situations that the political class has no plan or end game for.
• Maybe if this administration had had an effective and proactive foreign policy and strategy to begin with, all of this may have been averted and the billion dollars not put at risk.

I feel sorry for the Ukrainians, outside influences are driving their eventual fate. But giving their new, inexperienced leaders a billon dollar loan guarantee, while it may feel good, is nothing more than flushing a billion dollars down the drain. 

The Obama administration has no plan and really no leverage on the situation while the Russians are right there, on the ground, in the country, and pulling all of the strings in connection with their grand plans and strategies. Lack of planning, lack of ability to plan, that is the American political class ineptness in this foreign affairs crisis.

2) In yesterday’s insanity post we described a situation where an 84 year old nun and two accomplices had easily penetrated a government nuclear facility and had gotten inside where they caused cosmetic damage in protest of nuclear technology. We pointed out that the Federal government spends hundreds of billions of dollars every year to protect the country from terrorist attacks, hundreds of billions of dollars that was easy defeated by an 84 year old nun.

Well, it appears that an elderly nun is not the only one that proved our domestic protection plans can be easily defeated despite the huge expenditures. Consider an excerpt from a Business Insider article about an April, 2013 sniper assault on an electrical substation in California:

The Wall Street Journal’s Rebecca Smith reports that a former Federal Energy Regulatory Commission chairman is acknowledging for the first time that a group of snipers shot up a Silicon Valley substation for 19 minutes last year, knocking out 17 transformers before slipping away into the night.

The attack was “the most significant incident of domestic terrorism involving the grid that has ever occurred” in the U.S., Jon Wellinghoff, who was chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission at the time, told Smith.

The sniper or snipers put the substation out of service for months. So now we have a nun and a few snipers that have proven how defenseless our national defense is against terrorists despite the inept Washington political class spending hundreds of billions of dollars every year to prevent just such attacks. Insane.

3) But our expensive defenselessness does not stop with a nun or solitary sniper. Consider a minority Senate report headed up by Senator Tom Coburn and published in February, 2014 on how defenseless our government’s cyber secrets and information processes are. The following examples of government computers and files being hacked comes directly from his report, The Federal Government’s Track Record on Cybersecurity and Critical Infrastructure:

• The Nuclear Regulatory Commission stored sensitive cybersecurity details for nuclear plants on an unprotected shared drive, making them more vulnerable to hackers and cyberthieves. 
• The Securities and Exchange Commission routinely exposed extremely sensitive data about the computer networks supporting the New York Stock Exchange, including NYSE’s cybersecurity measures. The information the SEC exposed reportedly could be extremely useful to a hacker or terrorist who wanted to penetrate the market’s defenses and attack its systems. 
• Last January, hackers gained access to U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' computers and downloaded an entire non-public database of information about the nation’s 85,000 dams — including sensitive information about each dam’s condition, the potential for fatalities if breached, location and nearest city.
• Last February, hackers reportedly broke into the national Emergency Broadcast System, implemented by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) as the federal government’s tool to address Americans in case of a national emergency. The hackers caused television stations in Michigan, Montana and North Dakota to broadcast zombie attack warnings. “Civil authorities in your area have reported that the bodies of the dead are rising from their graves and attacking the living,” an authoritative voice stated in the hacked broadcast message, while the familiar warning beep sounded. “Do not attempt to approach or apprehend these bodies as they are considered extremely dangerous.”
• Last March, hackers exploited a vulnerability on web servers belonging to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the federal government’s authority for federal and private-sector cybersecurity. The servers, which hosted the federal government’s database of known software vulnerabilities, had to be taken out of service for several days. 
• In addition, hackers have penetrated, taken control of, caused damage to and/or stolen sensitive personal and official information from computer systems at the Departments of Homeland Security, Justice, Defense, State, Labor, Energy, and Commerce; NASA; the Environmental Protection Agency; the Office of Personnel Management; the Federal Reserve; the Commodity Futures Trading Commission; the Food and Drug Administration; the U.S. Copyright Office; and the National Weather Service, according to public reporting.

Hundreds of billions of dollars every year and this political class cannot even protect the country from being hit by fake zombie attack warnings. Pathetic.

Obviously, the zombie attack hacking was not serious. But the other hacks that Coburn uncovered are very serious threats to Americans’ safety, threats that have obviously existed for years and which currently still exist. In fact, Coburn’s research found that the Federal government has spent $65 billon over recent years trying to secure the government’s computer systems, an effort and expenditure that has obviously failed in so many ways.

The Senator found out why the $65 million has not been effective, as he points out in his report: “And yet [government] agencies — even agencies with responsibilities for critical infrastructure, or vast repositories of sensitive data — continue to leave themselves vulnerable, often by failing to take the most basic steps towards securing their systems and information.” 

“Fail to take the most basic steps.” Sounds about right when discussing any government entity and its functions, a shortcoming that should be corrected by our elected officials but which never happens, possibly because they are too busy raising campaign funds for their next election.

Defeated by a nun, hackers, bogus zombies, and incompetence. Probably makes the Ukrainians think twice about allying with us, given how insanely inept the American political class and the government operates are. Last set of insanity 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.robertringer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

April, 2013 Political Class Insanity, Part 5: 70 More Examples Of Insane and Idiotic Government Spending

I promise this is the fith and last post on political class insanity for this month. The problem with writing about politicians’ wasteful spending and other antics is that the flow of information just keeps on coming.

Most of today’s post comes from the American Dream website. The operators of this website went to the trouble of documenting 60 idiotic spending programs from the American political class. I cannot vouch for all 60 expenses and their reality. However, we have already discussed a number of them that have been documented from reliable sources.

Each one of their assertions are linked to the original source of the information that you can click on to visit. Thus, I would assume that most, if not all, of these expenses are legitimate wastes of taxpayer funds, given our previous research to verify the reality of some of these expenses and the sourcing back to the original source.

Their original post with direct link sourcing can be accessed at:

http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/60-completely-outrageous-ways-the-u-s-government-is-wasting-money

#1 The National Science Foundation has given $384,949 to Yale University to do a study on “Sexual Conflict, Social Behavior and the Evolution of Waterfowl Genitalia”. Unbelievably, much of this research involves examining and measuring the reproductive organs of male ducks.

#2 The IRS spent $60,000 on a film parody of “Star Trek” and a film parody of “Gilligan’s Island”. Internal Revenue Service employees were the actors in the two parodies, so as you can imagine the acting was really bad.

#3 The National Institutes of Health has given $1.5 million to Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts to study why “three-quarters” of lesbians in the United States are overweight and why most gay males are not.

#4 The National Institutes of Health has also spent $2.7 million to study why lesbians have more “vulnerability to hazardous drinking”.

#5 The U.S. government is giving sixteen F-16s and 200 Abrams tanks to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt even though the new president of Egypt, Mohammed Morsi (a member of the Muslim Brotherhood), constantly makes statements such as the following…

“Dear brothers, we must not forget to nurse our children and grandchildren on hatred towards those Zionists and Jews, and all those who support them”

#6 During 2012, the salaries of Barack Obama’s three climate change advisers combined came to a grand total of more than $370,000.

#7 Overall, 139 different White House staffers were making at least $100,000 during 2012, and there were 20 White House staffers that made the maximum of $172,200.

#8 Amazingly, U.S. taxpayers spend more than 1.4 billion dollars a year on the Obamas. Meanwhile, British taxpayers only spend about 58 million dollars on the entire royal family.
#9 During 2012, $25,000 of Federal money was spent on a promotional tour for the Alabama Watermelon Queen.

#10 The U.S. government spent $505,000 “to promote specialty hair and beauty products for cats and dogs” in 2012.

#11 NASA spends close to a million dollars a year developing a menu of food for a manned mission to Mars even though it is being projected that a manned mission to Mars is still decades away.

#12 During 2012, the Federal government spent 15 million dollars to help Russian weapons institutes recruit nuclear scientists.

#13 Over the past 15 years, a total of approximately $5.25 million has been spent on hair care services for the U.S. Senate.

#14 The U.S. government spent 27 million dollars to teach Moroccans how to design and make pottery in 2012.

#15 At a time when we have an epidemic of unemployment in the United States, the U.S. Department of Education is spending $1.3 million to “reduce linguistic, academic, and employment barriers for skilled and low-skilled immigrants and refugees, and to integrate them into the U.S. workforce and professions.”

#16 The Federal government still sends about 20 million dollars a year to the surviving family members of veterans of World War I, even though World War I ended 94 years ago.

#17 The U.S. government is spending approximately 3.6 million dollars a year to support the lavish lifestyles of former millionaire presidents such as George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

#18 During fiscal 2012, the National Science Foundation gave researchers at Purdue University $350,000. They used part of that money to help fund a study that discovered that if golfers imagine that a hole is bigger it will help them with their putting.

#19 The U.S. government is giving hundreds of millions of dollars to the Palestinian Authority every year.

#20 Federal agencies have purchased a total of approximately 2 billion rounds of ammunition over the past 10 months. It is claimed that all of this ammunition is needed for “training purposes”.

#21 During 2012, the National Science Foundation spent $516,000 on the creation of a video game called “Prom Week” which apparently simulates “all the social interactions of the event.”

#22 If you can believe it, $10,000 of U.S. taxpayer money was actually used to purchase talking urinal cakes up in Michigan.

#23 When Joe Biden and his staff took a trip to London back in February, the hotel bill cost U.S. taxpayers $459,388.65.

#24 Joe Biden and his staff also stopped in Paris for one night back in February. The hotel bill for that one night came to $585,000.50.

#25 If you can believe it, close to 15,000 retired Federal employees are currently collecting Federal pensions for life worth at least $100,000 annually. That list includes such names as Newt Gingrich, Bob Dole, Trent Lott, Dick Gephardt and Dick Cheney.

#26 The U.S. Department of Agriculture has spent $300,000 to encourage Americans to eat caviar.

#27 The National Institutes of Health recently gave $666,905 to a group of researchers that is conducting a study on the benefits of watching reruns on television.

#28 The National Science Foundation has given 1.2 million dollars to a team of “scientists” that is spending part of that money on a study that is seeking to determine whether elderly Americans would benefit from playing World of Warcraft or not.

#29 The National Institutes of Health recently gave $548,731 to a team of researchers that concluded that those that drink heavily in their thirties also tend to feel more immature.

#30 The National Science Foundation recently spent $30,000 on a study to determine if “gaydar” actually exists. This is the conclusion that the researchers reached at the end of the study….

“Gaydar is indeed real and… its accuracy is driven by sensitivity to individual facial features.”

#31 In 2011, the National Institutes of Health spent $592,527 on a study that sought to figure out once and for all why chimpanzees throw poop.

#32 The National Institutes of Health has spent more than 5 million dollars on a website called Sexpulse that is targeted at “men who use the Internet to seek sex with men. The website “includes pornographic images of homosexual sex as well as naked and scantily clad men” and features “a Space Invaders-style interactive game that uses a penis-shaped blaster to shoot down gay epithets.”

#33 The General Services Administration spent $822,751 on a “training conference” for 300 west coast employees at the M Resort and Casino in Las Vegas.

The following is how the Washington Post described some of the wasteful expenses that happened during this “conference”…

Among the “excessive, wasteful and in some cases impermissable” spending the inspector general documented: $5,600 for three semi-private catered in-room parties and $44 per person daily breakfasts; $75,000 for a “team-building” exercise — the goal was to build a bicycle; $146,000 on catered food and drinks; and $6,325 on commemorative coins in velvet boxes to reward all participants for their work on stimulus projects. The $31,208 “networking” reception featured a $19-per-person artisanal cheese display and $7,000 of sushi. At the conference’s closing-night dinner, employees received “yearbooks” with their pictures, at a cost of $8,130.

#34 Do you remember when credit rating agency Egan Jones downgraded U.S. government debt from AA+ to AA? Well, someone in the federal government apparently did not like that at all. According to Zero Hedge, the SEC plans to file charges against Egan Jones for “misstatements” on a regulatory application with the SEC.

Normally, the SEC does not go after anyone. After all, when is the last time a major banker went to prison? No, the truth is that the SEC is usually just a huge waste of taxpayer money. According to ABC News, one investigation found that 17 senior SEC officials had been regularly viewing pornography while at work. While the American people were paying their salaries, this is what senior SEC officials were busy doing…

One senior attorney at SEC headquarters in Washington spent up to eight hours a day accessing Internet porn, according to the report, which has yet to be released. When he filled all the space on his government computer with pornographic images, he downloaded more to CDs and DVDs that accumulated in boxes in his offices.

An SEC accountant attempted to access porn websites 1,800 times in a two-week period and had 600 pornographic images on her computer hard drive.

Another SEC accountant used his SEC-issued computer to upload his own sexually explicit videos onto porn websites he joined.

And another SEC accountant attempted to access porn sites 16,000 times in a single month.

#35 According to InformationWeek, the Federal government is spending “millions of dollars” to train Asian call center workers.

#36 If you can believe it, the Federal government has actually spent $750,000 on a new soccer field for detainees held at Guantanamo Bay.

#37 The U.S. Agency for International Development spent 10 million dollars to create a version of “Sesame Street” for Pakistani television.

#38 The Obama administration has plans to spend between 16 and 20 million dollars to help students from Indonesia get master’s degrees.

#39 The National Science Foundation spent $198,000 on a University of California-Riverside study that explored “motivations, expectations and goal pursuit in social media.” One of the questions the study sought an answer to was the following: “Do unhappy people spend more time on Twitter or Facebook?”

#40 The Federal government actually has spent $175,587 “to determine if cocaine makes Japanese quail engage in sexually risky behavior”.

#41 In 2011, $147,138 was given to the American Museum of Magic in Marshall, Michigan. Their best magic trick is making U.S. taxpayer dollars disappear.

#42 The Federal government recently spent $74,000 to help Michigan “increase awareness about the role Michigan plays in the production of trees and poinsettias.”

#43 In 2011, the Federal government gave $550,000 toward the making of a documentary about how rock and roll contributed to the fall of the Soviet Union.

#44 The National Institutes of Health has contributed $55,382 toward a study of “hookah smoking habits” in the country of Jordan.

#45 The Federal government gave $606,000 to researchers at Columbia University to study how heterosexuals use the Internet to find love.

#46 A total of $133,277 was recently given to the International Center for the History of Electronic Games for video game preservation. The International Center for the History of Electronic Games says that it “collects, studies, and interprets video games, other electronic games, and related materials and the ways in which electronic games are changing how people play, learn, and connect with each other, including across boundaries of culture and geography.”

#47 The Federal government has given approximately $3 million to researchers at the University of California at Irvine to fund their research into video games such as World of Warcraft.

#48 In 2011, the National Science Foundation gave one team of researchers $149,990 to create a video game called “RapidGuppy” for cell phones and other mobile devices.

#49 The U.S. Department of Agriculture once handed researchers at the University of New Hampshire $700,000 to study methane gas emissions from dairy cows.

#50 In 2011, $936,818 was spent developing an online soap opera entitled “Diary of a Single Mom”. The show “chronicles the lives and challenges of three single mothers and their families trying to get ahead despite obstacles that all single mothers face, such as childcare, healthcare, education, and finances.”

#51 The Federal government once shelled out $2.6 million to train Chinese prostitutes to drink responsibly.

#52 Last year, the Federal government spent $96,000 to buy iPads for kindergarten students in Maine.

#53 The U.S. Postal Service once spent $13,500 for a single dinner at Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse.

#54 In 2011, the Air Force Academy completed work on an outdoor worship area for pagans and Wiccans. The worship area consists of “a small Stonehenge-like circle of boulders with [a] propane fire pit” and it cost $51,474 to build. The worship area is “for the handful of current or future cadets whose religions fall under the broad category of ‘Earth-based’, which includes Wiccans, druids and pagans.” At this point, that only includes 3 current students at the Air Force Academy.

#55 The National Institutes of Health once gave researchers $400,000 to study why gay men in Argentina engage in risky sexual behavior when they are drunk.

#56 The National Institutes of Health once gave researchers $442,340 to study the behavior of male prostitutes in Vietnam.

#57 The National Institutes of Health once spent $800,000 in “stimulus funds” to study the impact of a “genital-washing program” on men in South Africa.

#58 The National Science Foundation recently spent $200,000 on a study that examined how voters react when politicians change their stances on climate change.

#59 The Federal government recently spent $484,000 to help build a Mellow Mushroom pizzeria in Arlington, Texas.

#60 At this point, China is holding over a trillion dollars of U.S. government debt. But that didn’t stop the United States from sending 17.8 million dollars in foreign aid to China in 2011.

As a bonus, we will throw in the following additional insane wastes of U.S. taxpayer money from a December, 2011 CBS News website posting, courtesy of Senator Tom Coburn’s Wastebook 2011 publication:

#61 $30 million to help Pakistani Mango farmers: This was part of a four-year, $90 million effort to boost hiring and sales among Pakistani businesses funded through the U.S. Agency for International Development.

#62 $765,828 for pancakes: Federal funding went to the Anacostia Economic Development Corp to build an International House of Pancake franchise (and train its workers) in an "underserved community." The underserved community, however, turned out to the a toney area of Washington D.C. - Columbia Heights, which is termed "one of Washington's more desirable neighborhoods."

#63 $120 million in retirement and disability benefits to Federal employees who have died: The Inspector General for the U.S. Office of Personnel management found that "the amount of post-death improper payments is consistently $100 million - $150 million annually, totaling over $601 million in the last five years."

#64 $652,740 to create an Oklahoma "visitor's center": The scenic highway that runs from Talihina, Oklahoma to Mena, Ark., already has three visitor's centers, but this federal grant would create a fourth. The abandoned rock house that the government proposes to turn into a new visitor's center will cost more than 14 times the median value of a home in the area. That would be bad enough, but the Talimena Drive area is in good shape, while the rest of eastern Oklahoma's roads could use some serious attention. The area ranks 8th in the nation for its number of "structurally deficient" bridges.

#65 $113,277 for video games: The International Center for the History of Electronic Games got the money to conduct a detailed conservation survey of video games.

#66 $484,000 for pizza: A private developer was giving Federal grant money to build Mellow Mushroom Pizza Bakers, an Arlington, Texas, outlet known for its tongue-in-cheek references to drug and hippie culture.

#67 $100,000 for a celebrity chef show in Indonesia: The Washington State Fruit Commission asked for the grant to help promote their fruit and cooking recipes in "an emerging market."

#68 $10 million for Pakistani Sesame Street: We must really love the Pakistanis. We must have a close and trusting relationship with the country that somehow managed to miss the fact that Osama bin Laden was living within spitting distance of a Pakistani military base for years. Because, after funding the Pakistani Mango growers, the government felt it needed to spend some time and money remaking big bird and the other Sesame Street characters into a show called "SimSim Humara" for the Pakistani market.

#69 $550,000 for "Rockin' the Kremlin: A documentary on how rock and roll contributed to the end of the cold war.

#70 $702,558 to bring television to Vietnamese villages: No, it wasn't just for the sitcoms. Researchers at Pennsylvania State University wanted to know how television affects family formation and reproductive health. So where better to study the problem than 14 remote Vietnamese villages, where the government paid to bring the televisions and gas generators, because, of course, these villages also don't have electric power?

That is enough of this political class nonsense and waste for this month. If it did not cost us so much of our personal wealth, the antics and waste of our politicians would actually be quite funny. But they are not. They waste our tax dollars, erode our freedom, provide unfair advantages to certain individuals and companies in the marketplace, and are just plain embarrassing.

If you added up most of these 70 instances, just a sample of government waste, you would end up with over $300 million in waste. This number does not include the $1 billion in armaments given to Egypt, the $1.4 billion spent every year to satisfy the First family, or the millions of dollars spent every year on White House staffers, which would bring the total waste to about $3 billion a year, plus or minus.

This wasted $3 billion in taxpayer wealth could have been used for the following purposes, all of which are infinitely better than measuring duck genitalia:

• It could have operated White House tours for American families, kids, and schools for just over 3,100 years.
• It could have funded about 25% of the new money Obama wants to spend on infrastructure without raising taxes or increasing the national debt.
• It could have given a rebate of $26 back to every single American family, helping to fill up the family car with gas one time, given how high the price of gas has risen during this administration.
• It could have been used to fund research and remedies for the REAL issues facing Americans today including a failing public education system, a lost war on drugs, a non-existent national energy strategy, sky high health care costs, and more.

Remember, these savings are just from a handful of examples of government waste. I am sure there are probably thousands of other instances of waste from just the past few years so you can see that the numbers for the total universe of waste are huge, based on this small sample of 70.

This type of behavior is why term limits and other political process changes, as outlined in “Love My Country, Loathe My Government,” are required as soon as possible. Until these abuses are cleaned up, no American, rich or poor, should pay another penny in taxes. Anything else is 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.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w