June, 2016, Part 5, Political Class Insanity: Scrounging For MIlitary Spare Parts, More Chicago Violence, Fast And Furious Still Killing, and More

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

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

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

1) Venezuela has been a classic socialist country for a long time. Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has spoken highly of the country’s political system which is not a surprise since Mr. Sanders is a socialist himself. 

However, Venezuela is sinking into a financial and economic morass and human disaster. Food is scarce, medicine is running out, and black markets are thriving, given that the socialist economic system cannot provide sufficient consumer goods for the population (e.g., citizens cannot even find toilet paper in the stores). And the latest financial disaster from this country according to the LA Times: it now costs $150 to buy one dozen eggs. This comes out to about $13 an egg, assuming you can find eggs. I can get a dozen large brown eggs in my local supermarket for the cost of one egg in Venezuela.

Somehow, Sanders things this is a good economic system to bring to this country. Oppressive taxation, destruction of individual freedoms, rampant inflation, and shortage of consumer goods. Insanity.

2) Let’s stay in Venezuela and talk about an article that was in the May 27, 2016 issue of The Week magazine. It is not only the price of eggs that is being destroyed by excessive and socialist government policies in that country: 

• The medical infrastructure in the country is in tatters also.
• Power shortages means that patients and infants die because the respirators cannot be powered up.
• Water shortages reduce the amount of hygiene that can be practiced by doctors and nurses.
• Doctors struggle to work without medicine, gloves, and soap.
• The nation’s death rate for mothers is up fivefold and the death rate for infants is up 100 fold.

Although the parliament has passed legislation to get international healthcare and medicine aid, the socialist President has vetoed the legislation with the following insane quote and logic: "I doubt that anywhere in the world, except Cuba, there exists a better health system than this one.”

And this is the chaos that Bernie Sanders and others in the political class want to bring to this country. Insane.

3) The Heritage Foundation recently reported that Obama’s Fast and Furious campaign, an illegal and un-Constitutional Mexican cartel gun running operation, has resulted in at least 69 Mexicans being killed with the weapons that Fast and Furious operation put in the hands of Mexican drug cartels. This information comes from actual Justice Department documents that were obtained under Freedom Of Information Act requests by Judicial Watch.

Not only have at least 69 people been killed using Obama administration’s Fast and Furious guns, the documents showed widespread use of the weapons across different cartels. Twenty two people were killed by Fast and Furious weapons in a single gun fight. Approximately 2,000 weapons passed through the program and into cartel hands. Only 94 of these weapons have been recovered and no drug cartel personnel have been arrested as a result of the program.

According to Hans Spakovsky, senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation: “These revelations confirm just how dangerous this reckless law enforcement operation was that happened under [former Attorney General] Eric Holder’s watch—and that the administration has tried to hide by refusing to turn over internal documents and communications about it. There have been many political scandals in Washington over the years, but this is the only one that led directly to the murder of many individuals because of the irresponsible and thoughtless political decisions of the president, the attorney general, and their political appointees.”

Just another example of the lawlessness of the most lawless administration ever. Unfortunately, the lawlessness in this setting has gotten dozens of people, many of them innocent, non-cartel Mexican civilians, killed using U.S. weapons paid for with U.S. tax dollars in a U.S. program that failed miserably.

4) While Obama has been busy finding ways to allow men into girls’ and women’s rest rooms, changing rooms, and locker rooms across the country, his home town of Chicago has not been doing real well on many fronts but especially the violence front. According to reporting by Monica Davey and Mitch Smith, writing for the New York Times on May 28, 2016: 

• Homicides and shootings in the city are up over 50% vs. the same time period last year.
• 233 Chicagoans have been killed already in the city.
• Reverend Corey Brooks, a pastor in the city’s south side states the obvious: “If something doesn’t change, if we don’t get jobs for these kids, if we don’t change the economic situation, I’m worried that we could be looking at a bloodbath. If something doesn’t happen, I fear that we’re potentially looking at one of the worst summers we’ve ever had.”
• Much of the violence is due to gang violence and drug dealing activities.
• Over a recent weekend 64 people got shot and six of them died.
• Although Chicago’s population of 2.7 million is nearly equally split among whites, blacks and Hispanics, most of the shootings occur in black and Hispanic neighborhoods on the city’s South and West Sides, and the majority of the victims have been African-American.

So yes, as the first African-American focuses on bathroom issues, back in his hometown, African-Americans are trying just to survive the violence that surrounds them everyday, bathroom issues really not being on top of their minds.

5) Yesterday, we discussed the reality that the majority of the aircraft used by our Marines for combat are not airworthy. This sad fact exists in the reality that over the past seven years of the Obama administration, the American taxpayer has probably spent well over four TRILLION dollars on the Defense Department. Over $4 TRILLION and we have Martines defending us with very inferior equipment and aircraft.

But according to Justin Johnson, writing for the Heritage Foundation on May 17, 2016, the Marines are not the only arm of our armed forces who are not getting optimal use out of the TRILLIONS of dollars we spend on our military:

1. As we discussed earlier this week, our Marines have had to pull parts off of aircraft that are sitting in museums to keep their F-18 fighter jets in operation. Despite raiding museums, only about 30% of our Marines’ aircraft are able to be flown. Even with that drastic action, only about 30 percent of their F-18s are ready to fly. This has caused average Marine pilot training time to drop from 25-30 hours a month to around 4 hours a month, not giving them the experience they need to protect themselves in combat.

2. Only one third of our Army brigades are combat ready today. The Army’s size has fallen to the lowest level since World War II, leading the top Army general to predict that the Army would be at a “high military risk” if it had to fight a sustained war.

3. Not only are the Marines scrounging for parts for their aircraft, the Air Force has had to cannibalize parts from some of its F-16 fighters to keep other F-16 fighters in operation. They also have gone to museums to get parts for their planes, namely the B-1 bombers, leaving half of the Air Force’s planes not ready for combat situations.

4. The Navy claims it is about 75 ships short of what it needs to fulfill its current missions and has had to extend the deployments of the ships it currently has, wearing them and their sailors out quicker than normal.

5. Marine aircraft are so fragile that the recent rate serious crashes of Marine Corps planes is nearly double the ten year average.

6. The average age of the Air Force’s B-52 bombers is 53 years old, meaning that some of these workhorse plans are over 53 years old. The article makes the analogy that most people would not want to drive across country in a 53 year old car so why do we make our service people fly around the world to engage in combat in 53 year old planes?

Never has so much taxpayer money been spent and never have we gotten so little in return. This has lead to a weakening of our defense forces and placed unnecessary risk and strain on our brave service people. 

Another day, another set of political class insanity: wasteful military spending that weakens our national defense, more violence in Chicago as Chicago native Obama worries about bathroom policies, Fast and Furious guns still killing people at the hands of the drug cartels, and the Venezuelan experiment in socialism continues to crashdown.

That will do it for the insanity for this month. We were not able to match the record setting posts of insanity we set last month but this month’s insanity was certainly robust enough. The next few days will be used to follow a subset of political class insanity as we go “by the numbers,” using the latest government and opinion poll numbers to show how badly we are being served by the current set of American politicians since while politicians might lie, the numbers do not.

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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

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

June, 2016, Part 4, Political Class Insanity: Zombie Voters In LA, Failing MIlitary Hardware, Failing Foreign Policy,and More

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

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

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

1) We often debate in this blog about which Federal government entity is the most incompetent. Candidates always include the IRS, Homeland Security’s TSA entity, the Social Security Administration and the Veterans Administration. Today, the TSA steps forward for its ineptness in performing its most important job, security at the nation’s airports.

According to CBS News in New York City:

• A cellphone camera video at JFK airport shows airport workers entering a restricted area of the airport without going through a security check.
• This behavior was recorded over a number of days with airport workers strolling through a turnstile after scanning their security card and entering a PIN number. However, the workers’ identities were not verified and their bags were not checked for weapons or bombs.
• Senator Bill Nelson stated the obvious: “I’m horrified, but I’m not surprised. I think one of the main threats is employees of the airport getting on carrying contraband, possibly weapons. There you have the potential for disaster.”
• The article reminded its readers that in 2014, a Delta airline employee was able to smuggle more than 100 guns through Atlanta’s airport security and hand them off to a passenger who was heading to New York.

So as innocent American citizens are getting groped at security lines at our airports, potential terrorists are walking into restricted areas with no security, no groping. This ineptness comes out on top of the recent news that TSA operatives failed to detect 95% of fake bombs and guns that were put through TSA screening points and the reality that TSA’s incompetence has been causing thousands of travelers to miss their flights because they could not get through security lines fast enough. Looks like the TSA may have taken the lead as the most incompetent Federal organization.

2) One of the most critical components of our democracy is the one person, one vote notion. We operate our government and maintain our freedoms via voting for people that theoretically represent our views and positions. Under this process, every living citizen gets equal representation of their views.

I say “living citizen” because according to a recent investigative reporting effort by the CBS television affiliate in Los Angeles, there are a lot of dead citizens continuing to vote, undermining the very foundation of our democracy. Details of the investigation,that was done by CBS reporter David Goldstein found that:

• L.A. resident John Cenkner died in 2003.
• However, Mr. Cenkner continued to vote in elections that were held in 2004, 2005, 2006, 2008, and 2010.
• And he was not the only dead person voting after his death with at least 215 other dead people who managed to vote after they died in just L.A county alone.
• This number was derived by comparing county voting records with death records from the Social Security Administration.

Now, 215 is what could be positively identified. There are likely many more that were not identified or could not be identified because of the commonness of a name, e.g. John Smith. Repeat this voter fraud across the thousands of counties across the country and you eventually have to conclude we have a voter fraud problem in this country, a fraud problem that undermines our democracy.

3) Although the Defense Department budget has varied over the years, let’s assume that the average annual budget for the Pentagon is around a whopping $600 billion. This comes out to well over $5,000 a year for every U.S. household. It is a lot of money, one would hope that we are getting good value for our taxpayer wealth and that our fighting forces are getting the best possible equipment and support.

And as always, hoping that the Washington political class and the Federal government was getting us good value for our tax dollars is just another disappointment. According to reporting by Lucas Tomlinson and Jennifer Griffin on April 17, 2016 for Fox News:

• Despite a Defense Department budget of about $600 billion a year, the vast majority of Marine Corps aircraft cannot be considered airworthy.
• Out of 276 F/A Hornet fighter jets, only 30% are able to be flown.
• Only 42 out of 147 CH-53E Super Stallion helicopters are airworthy.
• There are combination of factors at work including the overuse of the aircraft in Iraq and Afghanistan, budget cuts to the Defense Department budget which is still close to $600 billion a year, and the reality that a lot of highly trained Marine mechanics have left the service for the private sector.
• To keep many of their aircraft operational, the Marines cannibalize parts off of non-working aircraft since they cannot get new parts and in one case, they took a landing gear door off of a jet that was in a museum.
• Sometimes it takes 18 months to get parts of some of the early model F-18 jets that the Marines use.
• One Marine air wing currently has only two operative jets out of.
• This results in Marine pilots getting less training and flying time experience that makes them less effective in combat.

$600 billion or so a year for years and this is what the Washington political class has given us: inferior aircraft that endangers the pilots and soldiers that use them and their ability to fight for our defense and freedom. Pathetically insane.

4) The Obama Presidency will likely go down as a disaster from a foreign affairs perspective:

• Meddling in internal Libyan and Syrian affairs that caused hundreds of thousands to either be killed or wounded by warfare and turned millions into refugees while destroying two whole countries in the process.
• Allowing North Korea and Iran over almost 8 years to easily get closer to becoming nuclear weapons powers.
• Allowing Russia to rise and become a dangerous military power on the world stage including the invasion of the Ukraine.
• Allowing China to assert itself throughout the south Pacific and build up man made islands that will serve as military bases which threaten international shipping and commerce.
• Allowing the creation of ISIS, the most violent, dangerous, and wealthy terror organization of all time.
• Failing to support the countries, cities, and citizens of Paris and Brussels, France and Belgium after massive terror attacks.
• Ticking off the heads of state of countries that should be our allies by spying on their personal communications.

To this list of failures and the dangers they have caused, consider the new reality, according to reporting by the Heritage Foundation that China is just about ready to deploy nuclear powered submarines, armed with nuclear long range missiles, within range of much of the United States. According to the the reporting:

• This deployment of nuclear armed submarines is part of a larger trend in Chinese military upgrades.
• China is “developing a suite of weapons platforms that were once thought to be reserved for only the U.S. or would take nations like China and Russia decades to develop.”
• For example, China is building its first two aircraft carriers.
• It is now into its fifth generation of stealth fighter jets and has advanced its air defense systems so much that it may now negate the U.S. advantage in stealth aircraft technology.
• It may already have or will soon have anti-satellite weapons that could knock the satellites that help U.S. military efforts.
• It has a missile that may now be able to attack enemy vessels from as far as 2,500 miles away, equivalent to launching a missile in Miami and having it take out a target somewhere in the Rocky Mountains.
• China may also be working on a hypersonic missile that travels five times the speed of sound and which could render current air defense systems useless.

Thus, while we are spending $600 billion a year on defense but our Marines have to go to museums to get spare parts, China is building and deploying a modern military machine that could allow it to rule vast parts of the earth if it ever decided to use their new military capabilities. That is what is called a massive foreign affairs failure.

In summary, from a foreign affairs perspective - compared to when Obama took office: Russia is now a real military threat to both Europe and in the Middle East, China is now a real political threat to the South Pacific and around the world, ISIS is now terrorizing the world but did not exist eight years ago, the Middle East is in crisis mode from Yemen to Syria to Libya to the Israeli/Palestinian standoff to Iranians nuclear progress, North Korea is eight years closer to having advanced nuclear weapons. Bravo, Mr. President. Oh, and thanks a lot for working and focusing on getting men into women’s bathrooms and locker rooms across the country, a very important effort relative what is going on in the rest of the world.

Another day, another set of 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