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

August, 2015, Political Class Insanity, Part 6: Hillary The Hoarder, 25 Year Old Pentagon Waste, Dodd-Frank and More

At the beginning of each month we take a week or so to review the latest insanity from the American political class. Insanity from them includes a wide range of very depressing actions which can include wasteful spending, idiotic quotes, an inefficient and ineffective government bureaucracy, failed economic policies, etc. Every month we continue to prove that we are being served by the worst set of politicians ever.

And as you will see, this month’s review and discussions do nothing to prove that this thesis is wrong in any way:

1) Hillary Clinton has popped up a number of times in the past few days of political class insanity so let’s add another piece of insanity to her pile. Consider a recent quote of hers that was printed in the July, 2015 issue of Reason magazine: “I don’t throw anything away. I’m like two steps short of a hoarder.” 

Which is interesting since she has deleted about 30,000 emails from her private computer server in her home so that Congressional investigators could not get access to which were likely embarrassing or criminal emails and documentation. Hoarders do not throw out anything, criminals throw out everything, be it incriminating evidence or incriminating emails.

2) According to an article in the September, 2015 issue of Reason magazine, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) in 1990 did a study of the armed forces operations. The study concluded that the Department of Defense suffers from “ineffective and inefficient inventory management practices and procedures [and]weaknesses in accurately forecasting the demand for spare parts.” Such ineptness “contributed to the accumulation of billions of dollars in spare parts that are excess to current needs.”

Great, identify a problem and go find a solution that will remedy the problem and save billions and billions of dollars in taxpayer wealth in the process. Simple, right? Twenty five years later, in April, 2015, the GAO went back to the Department of Defense to find out how the solutions they had proposed way back in 1990 were working out. What they found is that there were no solutions and that armed forces inventory management practices are just as bad and just as costly as they were when identified as deficient twenty five years ago.

The 2015 GAO study found that the Air Force alone had “identified about $2.6 billion in inventory that that was retained without proper economic justification and plans to retain it until late 2016.” The Army and Navy had not done any better in the GAO’s analysis. Thus, even when the problem is defined, outlined and solutions recommended, twenty five years later the Washington political class and the government operations it oversees is still unable to function efficiently and effectively, wasting untold tens of billions of taxpayer dollars in the process. 

3) Speaking of incompetence over time, five years ago this past July, the massive Dodd-Frank financial industries reform legislation was passed. It was supposed to stop bad financial services practices in order to prevent another Great Recession from occurring.

Has it worked? Well, we have not had another Great Recession since the legislation was passed so I guess an optimist would say it works. But a realist I think would say we have no idea since according to an article in the July 31, 2015 issue of The Week magazine, at least 20% of the regulations and rules that should have been written to support the legislation have not yet been even written, a whopping five years after the legislation was passed. 

You cannot say you are operating an efficient government entity when five years after the fact you still have not made a law operational. Insanely incompetent.

4) But politicians being insanely incompetent is a genetic trait across the world, not just in the U.S. Consider the sad story of the newly constructed Berlin Brandenburg International airport in Germany, as reported in a recent Business Week Article. The airport was supposed to open in 2012 but three years later:

• It is still not operating.
• The cost of construction has tripled from the original cost estimate.
• Two airport directors, three technical chiefs, architects, and many others have been fired or quit in disgust.
• Even though it is not operational, the German government is spending 16 million Euros a month to keep the facility from falling into disrepair which would cost even more to rehab it in the future.
• Three years ago when they first attempted to open the airport, it failed its fire safety procedures and tests. There was actually a plan, an idiotic plan, to station 800 employees around the airport to sit around all day to smell for fire and smoke. This was their fire safety backup plan. If one of these 800 thought they smelled smoke, they would use their cell phone to notify the authorities that maybe, somewhere there was a fire. You cannot make up this insanity.

Thus, politicians, wherever they are, seem to be just as incompetent but just as adept at wasting taxpayer wealth regardless of the country or project.

5) Democrat Alan Grayson is currently a Florida Congressman. He would like to run for the Senate from Florida in the next election even though the national Democratic Party bosses are supporting another candidate and basically ignoring Grayson. And this is where it gets nutty and insane, considering the recent Grayson quote on why he would be the better candidate: “Frankly, one reason why Democrats are willing to crawl over hot coals naked to vote for me is because I’m willing to tell the truth.”

Again, you cannot make this stuff up. Trust me, nobody is going to crawl over hot coals for any American politician, never mind one from a Florida district. If that was the case, he would not have lost an election a few years ago in his home Congressional district, apparently not enough naked Democrats crawled over hot coals for him in that election. 

Trust me, Mr.Grayson, given the record low approval ratings of Congress, no citizen is crawling over anything for any of you, given the pathetic job of governing you have ALL been doing in Washington. We might want to throw many of you onto the hot coals but we are not crossing them for you. Insanely conceited or pathetically delusional, you decide.

6) Last piece of insanity for today. As most people know, an Islamic domestic terrorist opened fire in Tennessee several weeks ago in an attack on armed forces recruiting locations in Tennessee. This terrorist attack resulted in the deaths of five members of our armed forces. Apparently, two members of our armed forces who were on location, one of whom died in the attack, returned fire on the terrorist in an attempt to protect themselves, their comrades, and others in the line of fire, a perfectly human response.

Which is where the insanity begins, according to a report on the Western Journalism website:

A Navy officer and Marine reportedly returned fire at the shooter who killed five service members in Chattanooga, Tenn., even though current policy does not permit military members to carry firearms on facilities such as those where the attack occurred.

…

The center's commanding officer, Lt. Cmdr. Timothy White, used his personal firearm to engage the shooter during the attack, according to sources quoted in the Navy Times. A report from the Washington Post said that one of the Marines killed in the shooting might have been carrying a 9 mm Glock and possibly returned fire on Abdulazeez. The Navy officer could face disciplinary action for violating policy about possessing a weapon on the facility that was supposed a gun-free zone.

Are you kidding me? The officer “could face disciplinary action” for protecting himself and others? Maybe if the Department of Defense and Homeland Security were actually doing their jobs and protecting their people properly this officer would not have to do what was necessary to protect himself and others. Insanity.

That will do it for today’s insanity. Gets depressing after a while, doesn’t it? Inept politicians running inept government functions in a wasteful and idiotic manner. And even worse? We are still days away from finishing up this month’s review of political 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.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

December, 2014, Part 6 Political Class Insanity:Presidential Lies, More Afghanistan Waste, Fixing Africa But Not America and More

It’s the beginning of another month which means it is time again to review the latest political class insanity from America’s politicians. Whether it is wasteful spending, inane quotes, faulty government operations, or insulting the American public, there is always new material spewing forth from these people, usually enough to fill up half a dozen or so posts every month. Given what we know today, this month should be no different as the insanity seems to be expanding exponentially from those in office today.

This is our sixth installment this month and we are nowhere near the end of the latest insanity from our politicians. A lot of what you will see today and in the following days comes from events that happened this past summer. It is only now that we have been able to get through the recent insanity that we can now review older, but still crazy, political class insanity.

1) Kelly Cohen, writing for the Washington Examiner on June 12, 2014, reported that the Pentagon had spent $3 million on a fleet of eight boats that were to be sent to fight in Afghanistan. Unfortunately for the taxpayer and our fighting forces who may have needed the boats, they are still stuck stateside in a U.S. Navy warehouse in Yorktown, Virginia.

The boats, which cost $375,000 each, were supposed to be used by the Afghan National Police to patrol a river along the Afghanistan-Uzbekistan border. The Defense Department purchased them in October 2010 and were slated for arrival in Afghanistan the following June. However, the order and subsequent delivery of the boats were cancelled just nine months later and the boats were sent straight to the warehouse in Yorktown. 

John Sopko, the designated special Inspector General for all U.S. Afghanistan operations, uncovered this disgrace and has demanded answers on why and how the order was cancelled, how much it is now costing taxpayers to pay for storage of the boats, and what would become of the boats’ usage and fate. His initial request for information was not met and he has since asked again for answers: "The list of unanswered questions is particularly troubling given the fact [...] that this program had been an important national security priority for the Afghan National Security Forces prior to its cancellation." 

More out of control and useless and wasteful spending by an out of control Defense Department. As readers of this blog know, Mr. Sopko has been a very busy man over the years, uncovering billions of dollars worth of wasteful spending by the Federal government in Afghanistan. His good work also includes a May, 2014 analysis that showed an $11 million Afghan prison, completely funded by U.S. tax dollars, is already falling apart and virtually useless.

2) This next piece of insanity is really, truly depressing and also comes to us compliments of the investigative audit work of Pentagon auditors. According to their analysis and calculations, adjusted for inflation, total American taxpayer aid to Afghanistan now exceeds the cost of the Marshall plan that was implemented after World War II to rebuild Europe

The Marshall Plan is almost universally regarded as a total success. After six years of war had ravaged Europe, the Marshall Plan and the billions of dollars spent helped get the entire continent back on its feet and on the path to democracy, thwarting the intentions of the Communists and other potential dictators in the process. However, according to a report Mr. Sopko recently submitted to Congress, Afghanistan is high unlikely to meet the same happy fate that Europe met, despite spending more real money than what was spent in Europe.

Sopko wrote that:

• Afghanistan is still mired in political, corruption, and financial crises more after more than a decade of foreign aid support.
• Afghanistan will likely remain dependent on foreign donors, primarily the United States, for years to come.
• U.S. spending on a whole slew of Afghan projects and programs over the last dozen years is now over $104 billion, more than the inflation adjusted $103.4 billion value of Marshall Plan expenditures.
• “SIGAR [Sopko’s inspector general office] calculates that by the end of 2014, the United States will have committed more funds to reconstruct Afghanistan, in inflation-adjusted terms, than it spent on 16 European countries after World War II under the Marshall Plan.” 

This really puts it into perspective. Successfully saving sixteen countries fates via the Marshall plan cost less than failing to save a single country, Afghanistan, from failure. I do not think anyone can argue that today’s political class and Federal government are so much more less competent than previous versions of each. 

In fact, I still assert we are living through the reign of the worst set of Washington politicians in the history of the country. This is just another historical example that strengthens my argument.

3) Kelsey Harris, writing for the Heritage Foundation on July 3, 2014, pointed out that the newly created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), a bureaucratic monster created by the useless Dodd-Frank financial industry reform legislation, is renovating its Washington, D.C., headquarters, a building that it only rents, at a cost per square foot that is more expensive than Trump World Tower in New York City.

The CFPB renovations will likely cost taxpayers more than $215 million, causing members of the House Financial Services Committee to question agency officials about its rising price tag. Cost projections have increased an amazing $65 million in just the past six months and $120 million since last year’s estimate.

But one should not be surprised by another government project cost overrun, given what the government employees are treating themselves to:

• There will be a four-story glass staircase.
• There will be a two-story inside waterfall.
• Somewhere in the facility will be a sunken garden.

Somewhere in America, millions of Americans are homeless and hungry, millions need drug addiction treatment, millions need new job training skills, and millions of veterans are not getting the medical help they need and have been promised. But Washington bureaucrats will be able to go to their high paying jobs and use a glass staircase, gaze at a two story waterfall, or lounge in a sunken garden at the taxpayers’ expense.

Those that are running this cost overrun operation and the politicians that let them get away with such waste and bad priorities should be ashamed of themselves. But it seems like shame is not possible with those in the political class in Washington.

4) Most experts and people would agree that the U.S. needs some major infrastructure improvements to its roads, bridges, electrical grids, etc. And back in August, President Obama announced that he wanted to invest $7 billion in infrastructure projects….in Africa.

Yes, while America’s roads crumble and our electrical grid creaks, the President announced $7 billion of U.S. taxpayer money would be used to invest in African energy and electricity grid infrastructure. This is part of the Power Africa program the Obama administration announced in June 2013, which originally aimed to provide 10,000 megawatts of electricity for 20 million homes and businesses in six sub-Saharan African countries. 

So when you car hits its next pot hole, when another bridge collapses in the country, when the local power grid goes out because of its age, smile knowing that many Africans have modern energy capabilities and infrastructure due to your tax dollars, courtesy of President Obama.

5) One last piece of insanity from the President to wrap up today’s episode. His path of lies, deceptions, and/or ignorance is long and sad:

• ŸHe said he would close down the terrorist prison at Guantanamo but he didn’t. 
• He said he would cut the national annual government deficit in half but he ended up tripling it for a number of years.
• He said he would go through the Federal government budget line by line to weed out wasteful spending but he didn’t.
• He said his health care reforms would reduce the average household’s annual insurance premiums by $2,500 but premiums actually went up, not down.
• He said the Obama Care data systems experiences would be wonderful but they were not.
• He said that if you liked your current doctor, hospital, insurance plan, etc. you could keep it but he was wrong.
• He said the Benghazi terror attack was caused by a video when he knew it wasn’t.

We could go on but you get the idea. This is probably the most dishonest and least transparent Presidential administration and President in the history of the country.

And we recently came across another deception, as witnessed by the following link:

http://www.ijreview.com/2014/08/166764-obama-vacations-flashback-2008/

The link contains a video of then Senator Barack Obama discussing the perceived reality that a President should be prepared to give up having any kind of personal life and once elected to that office, that President should “give their life to it.”: “The bargain that any President strikes with us, you give me this office and in turn my, fears, doubts, insecurities, foibles, need for sleep, family life, vacations, leisure is gone. I am giving myself to you.”

Given that the President has embarked on well over four hundred political campaign fund raising events during his Presidency, more than any other President, given that the President has played well over two hundred rounds of golf during his Presidency, given that the President has taken many extended vacations to Hawaii, Ireland, Africa, Martha’s Vineyard, and other exotic places, it does not seem that he has given “his life to the job” or foregone leisure as he promised. Resulting in just another big political sham and we are insane to have believed him, given his now proven track record of deception.

The bad news is that today we have had to wade through another depressing set of political class shenanigans and insanity. The good news is, at least for this month, we are nearing the end of this review, hopefully wrapping up the latest 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.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

Wastebook 2015 - The Unrelenting Wasteful Spending of Washington

Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma has been one of the very few politicians in Washington who have taken the time to identify and document the incredible amount of taxpayer wealth that the government wastes every year. From funding stupid science projects to criminal fraud to inefficient and ineffective management of government operations, the incompetence of the Federal government and the politicians that oversee its operations is truly insulting to those of us that fund their ineptness and waste. Previous years' examples of wasteful spending as identified by senator Coburn can be accessed in this blog by entering either “coburn” or “wastebook” in the search box above. 

The Senator’s annual summary of wasteful spending is entitled Wastebook followed by the year of its publication. He has just releases “Wastebook 2015” and trust me, as you will see below, the wasteful spending on idiocy continues unabated under the Obama administration. Before we go into the latest Wastebook results, let’s do a quick review of the major wasteful spending examples that we have previously exposed in this blog: 

• Medicare and Medicaid likely lose over $100 billion a year to waste, fraud, and inefficiencies. 
• Social Security easily loses over $100 billion a year to waste and fraud. 
• The IRS readily admits that it fails to collect almost $400 billion a year in taxes owed. 
• Obama’s debt reduction commission recommended that over $100 billion a year could be removed from the Pentagon’s budget without compromising national security; I contend that this is a substantially low ball figure. 
• The Navy recently spent almost $300 million to build two ships to near completion, decided that they were not needed, and then spent another $10 million to junk them. 
• The State Department spent $60 million to build a consulate in Afghanistan and then realized that it could not be defended against a terrorist attack and abandoned it without ever using it. 
• The National Science Foundation annually wastes billions of dollars on such inane projects as a video game that simulates prom week, determining when dogs became man’s best friend, and other such nonsense. 

 You get the idea. We have a Federal government bureaucracy that is out of control when it comes to smartly spending our tax dollars. And that out of control spending has resulted in about an $18 TRILLION national debt with nothing to show for it. And we got to $18 TRILLION by wasting money like the following “Wastebook 2015” items: 

 1) According to Coburn’s research, the National Institute of Health’s Center for Alternative and Complimentary Medicine spent $387,000 to study the effects of Swedish massages on rabbits. This is the same government organization that says it does not have a big enough budget for Ebola vaccines but apparently has enough for rabbit massages. 

 2) The Department of Interior spent $10,000 to monitor the growth rate of saltmarsh grass, i.e., the government is paying people to watch grass grow.

3) The National Science Foundation has granted more than $200,000 to a research project that is trying to determine how and why Wikipedia is sexist. 

 4) At a cost of $371,026 the National Institute of Health funded a study to see if mothers love dogs as much as they love kids. 

 5) The Federal government granted $804,254 for the development of a smartphone game called “Kiddio: Food Fight.” The game is intended to teach parents how to convince their children to try and eat new healthier food choices. I guess telling your kids you cannot leave the table until you eat your vegetables is no longer a valid way of child rearing like it was for my mother. 

6) The National Endowment for the Humanities has provided $47,000 for undergraduate classes that teach students about laughing and humor. 

 7) The National Science Foundation spent $856,000 to teach mountain lions how to walk on treadmills as part of a research project whose aim was to better understand mountain lions’ instincts. 

 8) A Government Accountability Office (GAO) study found that the Federal government has recently paid more $700,000,000 to over 57,000 government employees who have not shown up to work for a variety of reasons. In some cases, workers accused of serious misconduct are reportedly getting paid to stay home and do nothing. The Department of Defense (DOD) has the highest number of paid leaves on record. During the three years that ended in September 2013, DOD put 8,600 employees on leave for one to three months, close to 900 for three months to a full year and 123 employees for more than a year. 

 9) The country that put men on the moon, the United States, no longer has the capability of putting a man into orbit, relying on the Russians to put an American in orbit at the outrageous cost of $70 million per astronaut per trip. Once up in space at the International Space Station, more money is wasted on such idiotic projects as the design and creation of better golf clubs. 

 10) The Coast Guard has reduced its focus and resources on drug and migrant interdictions and but now offers free patrols for private yacht parties. 

 11) The IRS has mistakenly given over $4 billion to identity thieves across the country since it was too incompetent to identify thousands and thousands of bogus tax returns. 

 12) The Federal government spent $331,000 to see if people would stab voodoo dolls when angry and hungry at the same time. 

 13) That same government spent $171,000 to study the gambling habits of monkeys, finding out that monkeys share “our unfounded belief in winning and losing streaks,” a completely useless finding for every single American. 

 14) Coburn said that the Defense Department has budgeted $80 million over four years to build a Tactical Assault Light Operator Suit, and is spending some of that taxpayer money collaborating with Hollywood costume designers along the way. No use having a Tactical Assault Light Operator Suit if it does not look cool. As if $80 million was not enough to waste, Coburn’s research cited one industry source that estimates that $1 billion would eventually be needed to build just a single prototype. 

 15) The report estimated the annual level of waste related to food stamp fraud at about $3 billion. 

 16) In 2012, the State Department funded a gathering of world musicians from around the world in Florida, where they participated in a flash mob. 

 Unbelievable. Hundreds of billions of dollars wasted every year for nothing in return. Millions of Americans are homeless and hungry but the government spends money on rabbit massages. 

Thousands and thousands of veterans are not getting the medical care they need but the government spends money the gambling habits of monkeys. 

 Tens of millions of Americans cannot afford health insurance or health care but the government spends money on voodoo doll research. 

 Millions of Americans are fighting destructive addictions to tobacco, alcohol, and drugs but the government spends money on treadmill walking lions. 

 Pathetic leadership from the American political class. Especially from Obama who apparently has broken another campaign promise when he promised to go through the Federal government “line-by-line” to weed out waste. 

 So the next time a politician or a big government loving friend says that taxes need to be raised to fund essential government work, ask him how the massaged rabbits are making out. Until the Federal government and those that operate it stop the insanity of these types of spending, no American should pay one cent more in any kind of taxes. 

 Step 1 From “Love My Country, Loathe My Government” was custom made for this tragedy. Step 1 would reduce Federal government spending by 10% a year for fives years. This approach would bring the Federal government spending in line with its tax revenue stream, it would result in focusing the government on just essential projects since it would not have the budget to do these kinds of frivolous projects, and it would help out those in our society that really need the help vs. the well connected that really need nothing, including our tax dollars.

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

October, 2013, Political Class Insanity, Part 6: A Country Founded By Geniuses and Run By Idiots

Please note: Nancy Pelosi recently made the outrageous comment that there was no waste to be cut in the Federal govnerment, i.e. EVERY dollar the Washington political class spends is essential to our country. Keep this insanity in mind as we go through this month's polticial class insanity, you will quickly see that she is very much out of touch with the reality of today's wasteful federal government.

This will be the sixth and final installment in this month’s political class insanity where we review the lunacy that continues to be created by the nation’s political class, the worst set of politicians to ever hold office in the history of this country. I thought we would need more than six posts to cover it all this month but it looks like a lot of the insanity has been related to the impending disaster that is Obama Care and the tired, old calls for shredding the Second Amendment. We will cover them in a separate series of posts on their own special brand of insanity.

1) In early August, 2013, Commissioners in Weld County, Colorado unanimously voted to make 'North Colorado' the 51st US state. The Republican board hopes to secede from the state in protest of laws passed by the Democratically controlled state legislature this year. The initiative will be added to the ballot this November. More than 11,000 people have liked the 51st State Initiative's Facebook page.

The 51st State website claims that their objective is simple. "We just want to be left alone to live our lives without heavy-handed restrictions from the state capitol," read a post on the website: "The concerns of rural Coloradans have been ignored for years," William Garcia, chairman of the Weld County Commissioners, said in a statement. "The last session was the straw that broke the camel's back for many people. They want change. They want to be heard.”

Think people are getting fed up with the American political class? And these are not the only Americans who want out from underneath what the believe is an ever growing government and ever shrinking set of freedoms. According to the Washington Times, at least three other western counties are trying to do the same thing: Cheyenne, Sedgwick and Yuma also plan to place the 51st state referendum on the fall ballot.

Secession drives are underway in northern California and in rural Maryland. Yes, something might be ready to give, it only takes so long until you realize that America’s politicians only care about their own self enrichment, their perpetual reelection campaigns, and have no ability to resolve the major issues of their times. 

Sounds like these folks who want to form their own state have reached the same conclusion that are term limits effort reached: really….how much worse could it get if you had your own state? (www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com)

2) CBS News reported early this month that the Department of Defense was hurriedly  spending taxpayer wealth on televisions, playground equipment, violins, clarinets, a volleyball court, and other non-defense things so that they would not see their budget decreased next year, the infamous “spend it or lose it approach” to budget management. And according to CBS, this insane wasteful spending of taxpayer wealth is not confined to just the Department of Defense, it is rampant across all Federal agencies and entities, the news report just focused on this one department and its idiotic spending spree.

3) The Export-Import Bank is a Federal government entity which is supposed to provide low cost loans to foreign entities who use those loans to buy American made goods. It is a blatant form of political cronyism, using American taxpayer wealth to help out the profits of large American companies.

If a potential foreign buyer needs financing help to buy goods from an American company, than that company and its shareholders should be the ones to provide the financing and assume all of the risks of financing. The American taxpayer should not be the lender of last resort.

But it is actually worse than this. According to an article in the Washington Free Beacon this past summer, a whopping 83% of the bank’s loans in 2012 went to the customers of only one company: Boeing. 83%, tell me that the Boeing airline company is not getting a free ride on the American taxpayers’ dime. The loans go to foreign airlines who get low interest rates to purchase Boeing airplanes.

Besides the blatant cronyism of this swindle, there are two other major problems. First, domestic airlines like Delta and United do not get the same deals from the Export-import Bank. Thus, ironically, their market competitiveness against foreign airlines is diminished by our own Federal government, insanity. Second, would it not be better to invest that money in loans to domestic companies and domestic households rather than foreign companies? Would it not be netter to just return that money to the taxpayers so we could decide how to expand the economy with our own money?

Oh, by the way, according to the Open Secrets website, Boeing ranks 83 out of over 20,000 entities that have made recent contributions to politicians’ election campaigns ($3.5 million) and 12 out of 4,369 companies when it comes to lobbying expense (almost $32 million in lobbying expense in the past two years.) Any doubts why the political class supports the continuation of the Export-Import Bank when over 80% of its budget supports Boeing?

4) So, who is doing good in this lousy economy? Consider some recently releases of U.S. Census data: 

• Between 2000 and 2012 median household incomes for the nation as a whole dropped 6.6% — from $55,030 to $51,371. 
• But wait, the income of the typical D.C. household rose 23.3% between 2000 and 2012 to an inflation-adjusted $66,583, according to the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey.
• The Washington, D.C. metro area — which includes the surrounding suburbs in Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia — has it even better, with a median household income of $88,233 that ranks highest among the U.S.’s 25 most populous metro areas. 
• Tampa, Florida’s median income, by contrast, is under $45,000,almost a whopping 50% less than the D.C. median income.

Thus, if you are a lobbyists, politicians, political crony, or just fortunate enough to live in the D.C. area, this is a great economy. If you are none of these, than not so great. Maybe that is why the Washington political class has not moved to fix what ails the vast majority of the country, they are not feeling the pain of falling incomes, high unemployment, high under employment, etc.

5) We will close this month’s insanity with a set of truisms that popped up in my email. They are attributed to comedian Jeff Foxworthy but I have no idea if that is true. What is true is the frustration and insanity that the following realities are causing to most Americans, realities and insanity that are courtesy of out of touch politicians:

If you can get arrested for hunting or fishing without a license, but not for entering and remaining in the country illegally…

If you have to get your parents’ permission to go on a field trip or to take an aspirin in school, but not to get an abortion…

If you MUST show your identification to board an airplane, cash a check, buy liquor, or check out a library book and rent a video, but not to vote for who runs the government…

If the government wants to prevent stable, law-abiding citizens from owning gun magazines that hold more than ten rounds, but gives twenty F-16 fighter jets to the crazy new leaders in Egypt…

If, in the nation’s largest city, you can buy two 16-ounce sodas, but not one 24-ounce soda, because 24-ounces of a sugary drink might make you fat…

If an 80-year-old woman or a three-year-old girl who is confined to a wheelchair can be strip-searched by the TSA at the airport, but a woman in a burka or a hijab is only subject to having her neck and head searched…

If your government believes that the best way to eradicate trillions of dollars of debt is to spend trillions more…

If a seven-year-old boy can be thrown out of school for saying his teacher is “cute,” but hosting a sexual exploration or diversity class in grade school is perfectly acceptable…

If hard work and success are met with higher taxes and more government regulation and intrusion, while not working is rewarded with Food Stamps, WIC checks, Medicaid benefits, subsidized housing, and free cell phones…

If the government’s plan for getting people back to work is to provide incentives for not working, by granting 99 weeks of unemployment checks, without any requirement to prove that gainful employment was diligently sought, but couldn’t be found…

If you pay your mortgage faithfully, denying yourself the newest big-screen TV, while your neighbor buys iPhones, time shares, a wall-sized do-it-all plasma screen TV and new cars, and the government forgives his debt when he defaults on his mortgage…

If being stripped of your Constitutional right to defend yourself makes you more “safe” according to the government… you might just be living in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is beyond doubt run by idiots.

Such is the insanity in America today, brought to you in an ever increasing dosage by the entrenched American political class. If you are just as tired of it as the rest of us, please join the effort to impose term limits on this insane bunch of loons by going to our Term Limits Now website:

www.howmuchwosecoulditget.com

Because really…how much worse could it get?

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