Part 7, The Obama Presidency, The End Of An Error - Miscellaneous Failures and Disappointments

As we near the end of the Obama Presidency, I thought it would be a good idea at the 100 day mark to review what he has done to and for this country over the past eight years. Before we do that, though, let me repeat my previous background statements on my past political actions:

• I have never voted for a Republican Presidential candidate in my life and I have been voting since the the Nixon era.
• Until 2010, I have never voted for a Republican for national office in my life.
• I am not affiliated with nor do I associate myself with the Republican Party, conservatives or people like Donald Trump.

Okay, now that we understand where I am coming from, let me just say that in my opinion Barack Obama has been the most inept, most divisive, most narcissist and worst diplomat in my lifetime to reside in the White House. From the economy, to race relations, to the national debt, to foreign relations to government operations, to blatant disregard for existing laws and the Constitution, in just about any measure we are far worse off as a nation than prior to him coming into office.

We will breaking down the failures and disappointments of this administration into some broad categories that will take us a number of days to cover as we analyze “The Obama Presidency - The End Of An Error.” Over the past week we have touched on a number of broad categories of Obama’s failures:

Broken Promises and Lies: http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2016/10/part-1-obama-presidency-end-of-error.html

Broken Laws and Constitution Violations: http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2016/10/part-2-obama-presidency-end-of-error.html

Once a Community Organizer, Still A Conmmunity Organizer:  http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2016/10/part-3-obama-presidency-end-of-error.html

Foreign Affairs and Diplomatic Disasters: http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2016/10/part-4-obama-presidency-end-of-error.html

The Unimpressive Set Of Obama "Firsts:" http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2016/10/part-5-obama-presidency-end-of-error.html

Gross Economic Management: http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2016/10/part-6-obama-presidency-end-of-error.html

Today, will be our last review of the many, many failures of the Obama administration and we will focus on a bunch of miscellaneous failures and other stuff that I have found trivial, repugnant, and embarrassing from this administration over the past eight years. These topics are in addition to the failures we have already discussed over the past six posts including Obama Care failures, foreign affairs failures, economic failures, and the scores of broken promises and lies from this President.

Miscellaneous Failures and Other Stuff 

When Obama spoke at the funeral of the Hawaiian Senator Daniel Inouye, a decorated World War II soldier and long time Senator, Obama's ego and narcissism was so large that he mentioned himself far more times than he mentioned the Senator. 

When Neil Armstrong died, Obama’s ego and narcissism was so large that he sent out a picture of himself looking up at the sky with no visual of Armstrong at all:

When Rosa Parks’s bus rebellion was being celebrated, Obama’s ego and narcissism was so large that he posted a picture of himself sitting in the bus seat where Rosa Parks sat but with no visual of Rosa Parks at all:

When Muhammad Ali died, Obama’s ego and narcissism was so large that he published a picture of himself underneath an Ali picture:

While on the Tonight Show, Obama joked that his bowling talents were the equivalent of a Special Olympics kid: “It's like -- it was like Special Olympics, or something." Class act, not.

Obama exchanged an Army deserter, Bowe Bergdahl, for five high valued and dangerous terrorists who were imprisoned at the Guantanamo terrorist prison, endangering the lives of innocents all over the Middle East and the world.

He then turned around and invited the deserter’s parents to a White House press event and a private meeting with himself while ignoring the families and soldiers who were wounded and killed when they went out to rescue the deserter Bergdahl.

When a Ferguson, Missouri African American young man assaulted a store owner, stole from the store owner’s store, and tried to assault a police officer, actions that resulted in his fatal shooting by the police officer, Obama sent three members of his administration to the funeral. When a young, Caucasian woman in San Francisco was killed by an illegal immigrant who had been arrested multiple times and deported multiple times but allowed to roam the streets by the Obama administration, the Obama White House was silent and sent no members of his administration to her funeral.

While over two dozen Americans were fighting for their lives in Benghazi, the President went to bed and then rose early to fly to a political fundraiser in Las Vegas.

His administration cooked up a lie about the cause of the Benghazi attacks in order to protect a campaign talking point and then lied to the world and the country via a United Nations speech.

He belittled and taunted millions of common American citizens that have legitimate scientific concerns and doubts about the whole global warming/climate change myth.

He played over 300 rounds of golf, attended a record number of political fundraising events, and went on many, many lavish vacations, after promising to have no personal life during his first Presidential campaign.

He took time off from work, despite the wide amount of issues and problems facing Americans today, to waste vast amounts of time to annually go on ESPN to discuss his college basketball March Madness picks, film an TV advertisement for a comedy show, he allowed himself to be interviewed by a lady who once filmed herself taking a milk bath filled with Fruit Loops, and wasted vast amounts of other Presidential time to go on many other TV shows.

Although he constantly promised to fix the broken processes and procedures at the dysfuncitonal Veterans Affairs Agency (VA), years later the VA was still totally dysfunctional with veterans not getting the medical help they need and were pronmised.

He enjoyed multiple vacations, rounds of golf, and political fundraisers while millions of Americans near the Gulf Of Mexico were fighting for their livelihoods and homes as a result of a massive oil platform disaster.

When American James Foley was gruesomely beheaded in the Middle East, Obama treated this event as an inconvenience that was interfering with his golf tee time, throwing together a half ass press conference after which he immediately headed to the course, never consoling Mr. Foley’s family like he did for Army deserter Bergdahl.

Whenever someone says something negative about Islamic terrorism, Obama gets vocal and offended but as Islamic terrorists practice genocide against religious minorities across the Middle East he is silent.

Whenever someone says something negative about Islamic terrorism, Obama gets vocal and offended but as Islamic terrorists enslave and torture religious minority women across the Middle East he is silent.

He conducted secret nuclear weapons negotiations with the terrorist Iranian regime that resulted in secret side deals in addition to a horrible public nuclear arms treaty.

He paid a $400 million cash ransom for the release of four Americans being illegally held by the Iranian regime, simultaneously violating the current and long standing U.S. policy of paying ransom to terrorists and likely giving a cash infusion into Iranian terrorist activities around the Middle East.

He allowed his Secretary of State to operate a crime syndicate that traded U.S. interests and assets for massive personal financial gain of that Secretary of State.

His administration interfered with several ongoing FBI criminal investigations to ensure that his former Secretary of State never went to jail or was held accountable for her crimes and transgressions.

After declining steadily for decades, the national level of violent crime has reversed this long term trend and may be starting to rise again.

He allowed several members of his cabinet to use secret email accounts and processes in direct violation of government regulations and laws.

Over six years since the Dodd-Frank legislation was passed, whose intent was to ensure that the conditions that caused the Great Recession never occurred again, his administration has still not completed the necessary government regulations and rules to implement that legislation, rendering it useless.

The following failures of the Obama administration are also common to recent Presidential administrations. However, just because other, recent administrations were not successful in these areas does not mean that the Obama Presidency was also not a failure. Keep in mind that these failures occurred despite the Obama administration spending about $30 TRILLION during its tenure, in other words, about $25 TRILLION spent and we have only the following failures to show for it:

• We are still under educating our kids relative to the kids around the world.
• We still have no effective and overarching energy strategy to wean us off of foreign energy sources.
• We still have no fair, comprehensive, and effective immigration policy.
• Our borders are still not secure allowing illegal drugs, foreign criminals, and quite probably terrorists to enter the country, endangering the lives of Americans.
• We are still losing the “War on Drugs.”
• Government operations are still inefficient, ineffective, wasteful, criminally infested, and expensive.
• Our country’s infrastructure is still falling apart.
• Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are still rushing towards financial insolvency with no plans proposed or in place to prevent their financial collapse.
• The possibility of peace in the Middle East has never been further out of reach.
• Health care costs are still rising dramatically despite Obama Care with no solution to this debacle proposed or likely.

Now, please do not come back to me and say Obama cannot be blamed for these failures because Republicans impeded him at all times. This is a bogus argument for three reasons:

1. In the first two years of his term, his political allies controlled both houses of Congress and he still was unable to get any of the above issues resolved except for passing the failed Obama Care legislation and the still incomplete Dodd-Frank regulations.
2. He has not proposed any solutions to the impending failure of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, he has not proposed any comprehensive plans to bring peace to the Middle East, he has not proposed any solutions for our failing public schools, etc., so the Republicans could not have blocked any of his plans and solutions since he never developed and presented them inthe first place.
3. Did I mention that his administration spent over $25 TRILLION and still could not resolve any of the above issues?

That will do it for our summary of the many, many failures of the Obama administration. They touched on just about any imaginable topic and area, from lies and lack of integrity to the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care to a completely failed foreign relations and diplomatic effort, etc., etc., This is the most ineffective, wasteful, and dysfunctional Presidency of my lifetime.

As we said previously in this series, eight years ago a community organizer with little international and Washington experience became President. Eight years later we have a soon to be ex-President who never matured into an effective leader, leaving office as the same small minded community organizer of eight years ago.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:


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

June, 2016, Part 3,Political Class Insanity: Taxpayers Pahying For Pecan Snacks, Economy Killing Regulations, and a Senseless Rant In Louisiana

It is the beginning of another month which means it is time again to review the latest political class insanity from the American political class. Each month it takes us multiple posts to cover the wasteful spending, incompetent government organizations and employees, government programs that usually make a problem worse than resolving it, inane and idiotic politician comments, etc. In fact, last month we set a record, needing ten full posts to cover it all.

To review past posts on this insanity and idiocy, just click on the first few posts in each month listed to the right of this page. After reviewing just a handful of these insanity posts we think you will agree that we are currently being served by the worst set of American politicians ever to hold office in our entire history.

It looks like our politicians have been especially insane over the past month or so let’s get started with the latest insanity from today’s American politicians:

1) Let’s start today’s insanity with some good old fashioned wasteful spending. According to Eric Scheiner, writing for the CNS News website on May 19, 2016, the United States Department of Agricultural recently gave out $247,000 of taxpayer wealth to “help develop a pecan snack.” Which, as always, raises the same question when the Washington political class wastes our money on nonsense like this: why isn’t the pecan industry spending $247,000 to develop a "pecan snack?”

But pecans are not the only food getting taxpayer research support. Mr. Scheiner points other wastes of taxpayer wealth that went out to industries, that should be paying for their own research, under the Federal government’s Value Added Producer Grant (VAPG) program in 2015:

• $247,677 to Front Porch Pecans LLC of Georgia “to help develop a pecan snack.”
• $250,000 to Calloway Farms LLC of Delaware “to expand the local market for watermelon.”
• $250,000 to Goat Milk Stuff LLC of Indiana “to expand caramel sales to the online customer base, and fund a marketing campaign.”
• $214,000 to Hillandale Farms Inc. of Pennsylvania “to further development a Mid-Tier Value Chain to add value to egg layer manure produced on the farm and other small farms within Central Pennsylvania.”

These programs account for almost a million dollars of unneeded and stupid subsidies to private businesses and industries that should be paying for these research efforts themselves rather forcing the taxpayer to pay for their needs. Even if you do not want this million dollars to go back to the taxpayer, imagine how many drug addicts, homeless Americans, hungry Americans and other needy souls could be helped for a million dollars a year vs. “expanding the caramel sales to the online customer base.” A pathetic waste of money.

2) It has always been our theory that one reason the Federal government spends so much money on such stupid projects as pecan snack development is that it has gotten so large and unwieldy that government bureaucrats make up projects of little value just to justify their continued existence and the continued funding of their jobs. As a result, government spending gets out of control to justify itself and its components.

The following example of political class insanity reinforces this theory. The following are details from a Heritage Foundation article written by James Gattuso and Diane Katz regarding the overwhelming amount of new business regulations that the Obama administration has burdened the economy and Americans with:

• During the Obama Presidency, the Federal government has added 20,642 new regulations to the American economy.
• This comes out to about 232 new regulations, on average, every month since Obama took office.
• This further breaks down, on average, to over 7 regulations being imposed on our economy and lives every DAY since the onset of the Obama administration, seven days a week for the seven and half years the Obama administration has been in place.
• These regulations require businesses, business owners and others to spend more and more time responding to likely unnecessary and burdensome government regulations than working on expanding their businesses and thus, expanding the economy.
• We say “likely unnecessary” regulations because it is difficult to believe that all of the Presidential administrations before Obama somehow missed 20,642 vitally important regulations that needed to be imposed.
• But as our theory goes, if a government bureaucracy is not constantly justifying its existence via producing more and more regulations, it will cease to exist. And this is how you end up getting 7 new regulations every day for seven and a half years.
• A Heritage Foundation analysis estimates that just the new regulations passed in 2015 added $22 billion a year in new regulatory costs to the American consumer and American businesses while at the same time muting economic growth.
• This brings the total annual cost of government regulation to about $100 billion a year or over $3,000, on average, for every U.S. household.
• This is $3,000 that every U.S. household cannot spend in the economy to help it grow and build up new employment opportunities.
• And Obama is not done yet since there are more than 2,000 proposed or final rules in the Obama regulatory pipeline including 144 that will likely cost $100 million a year or more. 
• The Heritage report is apolitical, correcting pointing out that the Bush’s administration also added a lot of regulations, adding about $76 billion a year to the economy in addition to Obama's additional $100 billion.

And according to the Heritage Foundation report and likely reality, we are certainly not getting good societal value back for the massive amount of new regulations that the Obama administration has imposed:

• We got reduced access to credit under the hundreds of rules created under the Dodd–Frank financial regulation statute
• We got fewer health care choices and higher medical and healthcare insurance costs from Obama Care.
• We got less Internet investment and innovation under the network neutrality rules dictated by the Federal Communications Commission.
• We got higher and higher electricity costs due to EPA regulations, e.g. Obama’s Clean Power Plan,” that even the EPA admits will have very minimal, if any, impacts on the environment.

And keep in mind that the vast majority of these rules that severely affect our lives are not done in a representative government way, in which we have a say in which regulations should happen via our elected representatives, but are done by government bureaucrats that are accountable to their bureaucratic bosses and not American citizens. This is how democracy dies, not by an external force but by the overwhelming mucking up of the economy by career bureaucrats protecting their home turf.

3) Politicians saying the darndest things help make this blog work since their  vocalizing of idiocy is so rich and full. Consider just a small example of their past hilarity:

• Nancy Pelosi, then Speaker of the House, once said that the Obama Care legislation had to be passed so that we could see what is in it. Forget about reading a proposed law BEFORE you vote on it, let’s just vote on it like it is a wrapped gift so that we can see what is inside of it. Probably the most inane comment any Washington political figure has ever made.
• A Georgia Congressman once stated in a public Congressional hearing that he was afraid that the island of Guam might tip over. Yeah, Congressman, that is why all islands have anchors so that they do not drift away or tip over.
• A Texas Congresswoman once wondered out loud if a Mars probe would be driving past the location on the moon where Neil Armstrong walked. Think about that one for a minute.

To this list of insanity, let’s add the recent inane quote from a Louisiana state politician. The state politician, Barbara Norton, insisted that the Declaration of Independence, is a “racist relic from our past” and should not be taught to school kids in the state’s schools. Yes, one of the greatest human documents EVER written, a document that formed the basis for our freedoms that we enjoy today, is somehow racist.

Her words are pretty nonsensical, especially how she tries and fails to somehow get Dr. Martin Luther King into her logic stream: “I’m not really sure what your intent is but one thing I do know is: all men were not created equal. When I think back to 1776, July the 4th, African-Americans were slaves and for you to bring a bill to request that our children will recite the Declaration, I think it’s a little bit unfair to us to ask those children to recite something that’s not the truth. In 1776, Dr. King was not even born. African-Americans were in slavery so since they were in slavery and the Declaration of Independence says we were all created equal, we were not created equal because in 1776, I, nor you, nor any of us were born, now was Dr. King born, so we were in slavery and to have our children to repeat again and again documents that were not even validated, I don’t think that’s fair because we are teaching them a lie.”

A number of observations:

• Only three sentences, but over 150 words, no way this rant was going to make any sense.
• How does Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. figure into this rant? Of course, he was not born in 1776, what is your point?
• The country eventually lived up to the promise of the Declaration from her perspective, slavery was eventually defeated via the Civil War.

Trying to figure out her rant is not worth the time from anyone's life. The Declaration was always an aspiration and a fine one at that, an aspiration that eventually got rid of slavery. Verbal and logic insanity.

That will do it for today’s insanity. A senseless rant out of Louisiana, over kill from a regulation perspective, and still wasting taxpayer money on stupid projects like pecan snack development. 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.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

December, 2015,By The Numbers, Part 1: Guns Reduce Crime, Americans Do Not Want More Syrians, Another Financial Bubble, and More

This is the first post this month as we continue our periodic discussion of “by the numbers.” We do this theme occasionally where we look at the reality of the numbers in the world and not the lies, deceptions, and spin of the American political class. I used to work for a boss whose favorite quote was: “There is nothing more devastating to an opinion than the correct number.” By looking at the statistics, trends, and numbers in our world we can cut through the politicians’ smoke screen to truly understand what is going on and hopefully, remedy the issues of the day.

And there will be a lot of smoke to cut through in the next few posts. Much of what we will touch on has to do with many of the current lies, deceptions, and ignorance many politicians, including this President, have been spewing regarding gun control and terrorism, two topics that this President seems to want to link together for his political gain. 

If you have an inability to believe that guns are anything but evil or that this President always stays in integrity, than do not waste your time reading any further. The numbers we will be reviewing come from reputable sources, often from the Obama administration itself, and these numbers will prove that the American political class only uses facts when they fit their political aims and schemes.

1) According to a Wall Street Journal report that was summarized in the December 4, 2015 issue of The Week magazine, more than $110 billion in auto loans have been given out to borrowers with credit scores below 660, the cutoff that is generally considered as less than “good” credit. About $70 billion went to borrowers with credit scores less than 620, the level considered to be bad credit. 

Sub-prime auto loans are now at almost the same level as they were in 2006, just prior to the onset of the Great Recession. Which seems to indicate that banks and other financial institutions have learned nothing from the horrid experiences they put the coutntry through in 2008 with their sub-prime housing loans that led directly to the Great Recession. And it also proves that Washington’s lame attempt to prevent a future occurrence of a sub-prime fiasco via the Dodd-Frank legislation is a failure since we are right back to where we started with dangerous car loans taking the place of dangerous home loans.

2) We have often made the case that much more often than not, American politicians do the exact opposite of what Americans want them to do, as measured by valid public opinion polls. This is because they are more concerned and focused on their own personal needs, careers, and enrichment rather than what Americans want them to do. The last set of examples of such thinking was summarized in the following post:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2015/10/october-2015-by-numbers-part-1-what.html

The following is just another example of such thinking. According to Obama, we should allow at least 10,000 Syrian refugees to immigrate into the country. But according to a recent NBC News/Survey Monkey poll, 56% of Americans are opposed to letting the Syrian refugees into the country and only 41% favor allowing them in. 

Thus, when the President goes off and ridicules those that are opposed to his view, claiming that there is nothing to be scared of from immigrant orphans and widows, he is actually insulting and opposing the majority of Americans. 

And as the recent terrorist shootings point out in California, such a cavalier attitude can get Americans killed and wounded since at least in this one female immigrant case, she was more than willing to kill Americans even if it turned her child into an orphan.

3) Obama and other liberal politicians are hell bent on stripping Americans of their Second Amendment rights. They cry out passionately they are trying to protect us from those with guns who would do us harm. Many of us know this is a total smoke screen to confiscate as many guns as possible and disarm the American citizenry in the face of an overreaching and liberty destroying Federal government and political class. 

And we know this is total bs because we looked at the government crime numbers and trends. Given the gun industry in this country has had a great run of record breaking sales during the Obama administration, the gun control logic would been that crime, especially violent crime, was rising rapidly as more and more citizens had guns. That is why those guns have to be taken away. But the latest FBI annual crime report shows the lunacy of their claims:

• Despite high guns sales and increasing gun ownership across the country, the overall national crime rate went down 1% in 2014 vs. 2013.
• It was also down 9.6% in the past five years and a whopping 22.1% over the past ten years.
• The rate of murder and manslaughter was down 1.2% year over year, down 6.1% over the past five years, and down 20.8% over the past ten years.
• Auto theft was down an amazing 48.1% over the past ten years.
• Rapes were down 17.2% over the past ten years and aggravated assault was down 20.1% over the past ten years.

Down, down, down. All of these downward crime rates occurred in the midst of record gun sales and increases in concealed weapons permits being issued. Could it be that the politicians are that stupid to see that arming law abiding citizens with safe firearms training is an effective crime prevention measure, that we really do not need their help in “protecting” ourselves, we can use the Second Amendment to do that for ourselves? The numbers do not lie, unlike politicians who do, especially when it comes to gun control hysteria.

4) The January, 2015 issue of Reason magazine had some very depressing numbers as it relates to foreign aid. Before we check those numbers, keep in mind the following sad domestic numbers in this country:

• 45 million Americans are receiving Federal food assistance every month.
• 14 million Americans cannot find a full time job.
• Millions of Americans find themselves homeless at least for part of the year every year.
• Millions of veterans are still probably not getting the health care attention that they were promised.

Thus, there are tens of millions of citizens that are having a rough go of it from a healthcare, housing, and food perspective. Which makes the numbers from Reason all that more frustrating. A chart from that article showed the top sixteen countries who received American taxpayer foreign aid in 2012, to the tune of almost $30 billion. 

Think how many Americans could have been helped for with that money vs. what little, if any, benefit we received back from usually hand over billions of dollars to corrupt foreign government officials and their crony pals. 

Some of the most insane features of this foreign aid includes the following:

• Russia received $440.9 million in American foreign aid in 2012. Really?!?! Russia, what conceivable reason could there be to give Russia upwards of half a billion dollars? What is better, giving Russia, a now strong global enemy, over $400 million or providing housing for homeless Americans?
• Israel, one of the most vibrant economies and democracies in the world, got over $3 billion in 2012, all in the form of military aid. What is better, taking care of our vets or funding $3 billion in military spending for Israel?
• Afghanistan got a whopping $12.9 billion in just 2012 alone. Has any U.S. foreign endeavor ever been more wasteful and insulting to the American taxpayer than the whole Afghanistan fiasco?
• Tanzania, Somalia, and Ethiopia each got well over $400 million each in 2012. Does anyone think that the U.S. taxpayer got back in benefits the over $1 billion that we paid out to these countries?

What these numbers, and what the Reason article nicely explained, is that the vast amount of wealth we spend on foreign aid is almost always a waste of money that makes no sense from a political, common sense, or societal perspective.

So, what did the numbers tell us today:

1. Foreign aid is a joke in so many ways.
2. Higher gun possession levels appear to reduce crime, not increase it.
3. The majority of Americans want less Syrian immigrants, not more.
4. The Federal government is failing in preventing another financial industry bubble from developing.

The numbers do not lie, politicians do. More numbers, and more lies, 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

The Obama Epic Fail Series - Government Management Policy

We are going to take a few days and discuss the track record of the Obama Presidency across several perspectives. The impetus for this discussion and review was the fact that when the world leaders and millions of French men and women rallied in France to protest and take a stand against global Islamic terrorism, this President embarrassed himself and the United States by NOT attending the gathering of world leaders in Paris. In our opinion, this was an epic fail and a missed historical opportunity.

Not only did he not attend, no high ranking member of his administration bothered to make the trip either. While world leaders of over 40 countries attended and high ranking officials of other countries made the trip, the highest ranking U.S. person was just the current French ambassador.

This snub of the French is a tremendous, and possibly historic, missed opportunity. This could have been a defining moment in the Obama Presidency where he rallied the rest of the world in its fight against global terrorism. The whole world was watching but apparently the President was back in the White House, rumored to be watching NFL football games instead of leading in Paris. 

If Obama was a true leader, he could have used the commonality of the fight against terrorism to also work on other global issues. The leaders of Israel and the PLO were at the rally with a common, shared goal of fighting terrorism. What a great time in might have been of using that common objective to move onto other problem resolution opportunities.

The Russian Foreign Minister was also at the Paris rally. Why not use the common goal of fighting terrorism to talk about the Ukraine and other troubling Russian and U.S. issues? But the President missed this historic window of leveraging this common objective across most of the world.

But missed opportunities seems to be the theme of this President. Whenever an opportunity to be bold, productive, epic, and a leader arose, this President, and the administration he has put in place, has usually failed and failed miserably. Bad economic policies, divisive race politics, a failing health care reform law, a clumsy foreign affairs management history, bad management processes as a Federal government bureaucracy teeters on the edge of total incompetence, etc., this administration has not been able to get out of its own way to attain any problem resolution at all.

Given that we are comfortable calling his absence in Paris an epic fail, we are going to take a few days and see if there are other epic fails that this administration has attained. We will discuss the policies track records of this Presidency over the next few days according to the following general topics and see if the failure as epic as his absence in Paris has been repeated in other areas of governance:

• Transparency and integrity
• Economic policy
• Foreign policy
• Healthcare policy
• Government management policy

Government Management Policy

I believe most politicians have such big egos that they are always looking for the legacy opportunities while neglecting the daily, hum drum operation of government. I am pretty sure LBJ is prouder of the civil rights bills that he helped get passed than making sure that Social Security checks went out on time. I am pretty sure that Nixon is prouder of his opening up relations with China than making sure that taxes got collected on time by the IRS.

This President is no different. Given the many epic failures of his administration that we have reviewed overt the past week or so, it is not surprising that he is now reaching, or over reaching, for any kind of positive legacy:

• Obama Care is turning out to be a disaster but he does not want to even adjust it via some common sense changes lest it be viewed as a failure.
• Dodd-Frank was passed years ago but it cannot be considered a positive legacy since much of the rules and regulations to support it have not even been written yet by the Obama administration.
• He is willing to bypass Congress and violate the Constitution by trying to unilaterally enact immigration rules and laws by himself.
• He wants to make community college free for those interested even though the merits of such an expensive boondoggle are few, if any.

As a result of feeding his ego and desperately trying to go down into history, Obama, like most of his predecessors, has neglected to effectively and efficiently operate even the most basic government functions. However, if you go down the list of government dysfunction under his administration, it seems that it is even worse than the dysfunction of those that came before him.

On top of this dysfunction, he cannot even claim that government is failing to provide even basic services because of budget cuts. The Federal government under his leadership has collected more taxes, spent more money, and had bigger budget deficits than any Presidency before his, which makes the following epic fails in government management even more despicable:

• Medicare, Medicaid and a handful of over Federal government welfare programs still lose over $100 billion a year to incompetence, wasteful spending, and criminal fraud.
• Social Security still loses over $100 billion a year to incompetence, wasteful spending, and criminal fraud.
• The IRS admits that it fails to collect well over $400 billion taxes from tax evaders but somehow finds the time and resources to suppress the First Amendment rights of huge numbers of American citizens.
• The Defense Department is so screwed up that professional auditors have actually given up trying to figure out the Department's financial and accounting dealings and misdealings, a situation that probably wastes tens, if not hundreds, of billions of dollars every year.
• Despite spending well over two hundred billion dollars via the Department of Education during his Presidency, our failing public school education processes are no better now than when Obama took office.
• Despite spending well over a hundred billion dollars via the Department of Energy during his Presidency, the nation still has no strategic and effective energy plan despite spending billions of dollars on a string of failed energy companies and projects with no societal benefit in return.
• The country via the Federal government still has no coordinated plan to attack the major health crisis and problems of our time, problems and crisis that continually drive up the cost of medical care and medical insurance int his country.
• The Federal government continued to hand out huge bonus checks to upper level executives and managers in the Veterans Administration even though thousands and thousands of veterans were not getting the medical care they were promised and what they well deserved, with some of them dying while waiting for proper and delayed treatment.
• Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security are quickly approaching the edge of fiscal insolvency but six years into this Presidency, the President has no plan on how to fix any for these programs in a cost effective and quality effective manner.
• The current national debt, while receding from the astronomical growth rates of the first four years of the Obama Presidency, will start rising drastically again very shortly due to the budget trajectory this Presidency has set the country on.
• Despite spending over a billion dollars and having a three year head start, this administration could not put together a relatively simple website process for Obama Care.
• Even worse than not be able to build the Obama Care website process, this administration proceeded with the rollout of the website despite knowing that it would fail almost immediately.
• Despite spending well over two hundred billion since the beginning of his administration, Obama's Department of Homeland Security has not been able to stop multiple terrorist attacks within the country (e.g. Boston Marathon bombing, Fort Hood shootings, underwear bomber, Times Square bomber, etc.), has not been able to secure our southern border, and has even done a horrible job protecting the White House with White House windows having been shot out, an intruder forcing his way deep inside of the building, and German tourists strolling into restricted areas before being stopped.
• This President has overseen the massive spying and data collection of information on the communications habits and content of just about every American, in clear violation of the Fourth Amendment, with little societal benefit to show for the violations.
• Despite failing America in delivering even basic services in a cost effective and quality manner, this administration continued to waste millions and millions of taxpayer dollars on such stupid projects as funding a study to determine when dogs became man's best friend, building a video game to simulate prom week, funding pottery classes in Morocco, and other such nonsense that affects virtually nobody in America except for those that receive the money to carry out such inane projects.

Yes, everyone wants to hit a home run, in baseball, in life and in the Presidency. But if you cannot hit singles and get on base, then the home runs are usually not very important. 

If you cannot operate basic government functions, then who cares whether or not you got free community college tuition for a small handful of people. The rest of America is seeing their tax dollars being spent in a haphazard and ineffective manner, whether it is endangering their retirement revenue stream and medical care, allowing tax cheaters to get away without paying their fair share, denying veterans the medial care they need, etc. 

If you cannot do basic government functions, if you allowed government to turn into Jabba the Hutt, the obese, disgusting, and resource consuming monster of Star Wars, then you are an epic fail when it comes to providing efficient and effective government services for hard earned taxpayer dollars.

That will do it for this series which examined the performance of the Obama administration along five different dimensions. Unfortunately for the country, this Presidency has been an epic failure along every single one of those five dimensions. By the time he leaves office, we will have wasted eight years of not resolving any major issue of our times, not streamlining government to make it more effective, not having any credibility in foreign affairs, and added more than eight trillion dollars to our national debt. Epic fail.

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