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

Political Class Insanity, August, 2012, Part 1 - When Secrets Are Not Secrets, When Green Looks Like Red, And Other Political Insanity

Every month since we began this blog we have taken time out to review the latest insanity, idiocy, waste, and bad priorities from the political class at all levels of government. Unfortunately, as we have gone through time, one posting every month has not been enough to cover all of the insanity. Same this month, we will need today and tomorrow's posts to get it all in as we go through political silly season, i.e. the run up to the November elections.

Thus, here is the first batch of insanity for this month:

- The July 2, 2012 issue of Business Week reported that the latest Farm Bill working its way through Congress contains a $1.2 million allocation of taxpayer money to North Carolina producers of roses "to study how to extend the vase life of flowers." Of all the problems facing the nation and its citizens today, where on that list of top 50 problems would the "vase life of flowers fall" and is it worthy of even $1 dollar of taxpayer wealth never mind $1.2 million?

- The same article from Business Week reported that the American taxpayer paid American cotton farmers $639 million in direct payments. However, this kind of direct payment is a violation of existing free trade agreements, so the American taxpayer, via the Washington political class, had to also cough up another $147 million, which was really blackmail money paid to Brazilian cotton farmers to not object and legally retaliate for the trade violation.

- The LA Times recently reported, as summarized in the July 20, 2012 issue of The Week magazine, political class advertising this year will be close to $10 billion nationwide, according to Borell Associates, a media consulting firm. If true, this would be a whopping 43% increase over the 2008 Presidential election cycle. Imagine how much more long term good for humanity $10 billion would do rather than wasting it on negative, false, and misleading political advertising and activities.

- A New York Post article, which was summarized in the July 6, 2012 issue of The Week magazine, reported that an airline terminal at JFK airport was shut down and hundreds of travelers were forced to go through security checkpoints again. The reason? A TSA baggage screener realized that his metal detector was unplugged.

Makes you wonder why the TSA screener did not see the problem right away before hundreds of people had gone through his station. Or as a local law enforcement is quoted as saying: "This is a failing of the most basic level of diligence." Stating the obvious was never so obvious.

- A July 23, 2012 Associated Press article focused on the security leaks that have occurred from the highest levels of the Federal government and reported: "U.S. officials said the number of people with access to some of the nation's most carefully guarded secrets topped 4.86 million in 2011."

I do not care how careful the Federal government is with the nation's secrets, I would no longer consider them "secret" if 4.86 million people have access to them. I think they move from the realm of secret to the realm of common knowledge at that point in time.

- One of the largest tragedies of the 9-11 attacks is that many of those who hijacked the airplanes that crashed into the Twin Towers and the  Pentagon learned how to fly those plans by attending flight training schools right here in this country. As a result, the Federal government maintains a no-fly list to try and stop suspicious people from ever getting on a plane and duplicating this means of terrorist attack.

However, according to an Associated Press article from July 18, 2012, the Federal government never took what seems like the logical step of preventing the 500 or so American citizens on this terrorist no-fly list from taking flight training lessons from training schools in this country. This astounding security screwup came to light in Congressional Homeland Security hearings last month.

And a further screwup, according to the article, is that Homeland Security does not know whether an American on the terrorist no-fly list has actually undergone flight training in the U.S. in the past 10 years. Unbelievable, have we learned nothing about terrorism since the attacks?

- And finally for today, this little news brief from North Carolina. According to a news report from a local North Carolina news source (http://www.wral.com/news/state/nccapitol/blogpost/11274640/), the Governor of North Carolina, Bev Perdue, was trying to prevent one of her vetoes from being overturned.

Her veto was relative to fracking, a controversial method of extracting oil and natural gas form the ground. The Governor did not want this procedure to be implemented in her state and the legislature was trying to override the veto she had done over a bill that would allow fracking.

Unfortunately, one of her anti-fracking supporters in the state assembly hit the wrong button when the vote came up in the Assembly and this screw up was the deciding vote that allowed the Assembly to override the Governor's veto. She hit the green button to override the veto when should have hit the red button to uphold the veto. North Carolina legislature rules do not allow a lawmaker to change their vote once it is cast if it will change the outcome of the overall results.

The supporter said she was tired and that is why she hit the wrong button. Seems she is like the rest of us, tired of politicians that do not get it right, not even when it comes to determining the difference between a red button and a green button.

Tune in tomorrow for other tales from the crypt, also known as the American political class.

Please visit our Presidential website, "The United States Of Purple," at:

http://www.unitedstatesofpurple.com/

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

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

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at http://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.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment/