May, 2017, Part 2, Political Class Insanity: NYC Education Insanity, Dangerous VA Insanity, And Elizabeth Warren Insanity

It is the beginning of another month which means it is again time to review the latest political class insanity from Washington and around the world. Political class insanity takes many forms including the wasting of taxpayer wealth, criminal fraud within government programs, inane and stupid political quotes and actions, the inability to create and implement effective and efficient government programs, stupid and ill performing economic policies and strategies, and other forms of insanity that continue to evolve and surprise and shock us.

Today and for all of the insanity posts this month, let’s start off with a welcome piece of honest political dialog. It comes from a State Department spokesperson. Mark Toner, who is about to start the daily State Department press briefing. In a joking matter, he makes the following quote: "Welcome to the State Department. I think we have some interns in the back. Welcome. Good to see you in this exercise in transparency and democracy."

He then burst out laughing at his own quote, indicating he also knew what a joke the Obama administration has been, especially Mr. Toner’s State Department, when it comes to cover ups, lack of transparency, denial of Freedom of Information Act requests, the prosecution of whistleblowers, etc. But at least it was a little refreshing to finally hear some actual honesty out of Washington as we see from the actual clip of the news conference:

http://www.againstcronycapitalism.org/2016/08/when-even-the-state-department-spokesperson-cant-keep-a-straight-face-about-things-anymore-video/

With that context of honesty, let’s see what other insanity has been going down:

1) We have often discussed the reality that when politicians dabble in economics and economic theory and strategies they almost always screw it up. Another area the are real good at failing is education. Since the Federal Department of Education was founded several decades ago, the Federal government has likely spent trillions of dollars on education with little success. Our kids constantly lag behind the kids of other countries when it comes to educational attainment when measured on international tests.

And those trillions of dollars don’t include the trillions of dollars state and local governments have spent on education. Consider the sad state of education in New York City today, as documented in a recent National Review article:

• The High School for Law and Community Service in the Bronx has a college-readiness rate of students leaving high school last year of 6.5%.
• Brooklyn’s Academy for Young Writers has a college-readiness score of only 12.3%.
• Brooklyn’s Victory Collegiate High School somehow has gotten its college readiness rating down to 2.7%.
• The graduation rate of these special schools range from only 76% to 86%.
• Only 36% of kids in NYC public schools can attain a passing grade in math and only 38% can do the same in English.
• And for black kids, the math numbers are a pitiful 20% and the English numbers are only 27%.
• And this pitiful situation is reached even though the city spends a whopping $23,516 a year on education expenses in the city per student.

Given this disgusting and pitiful situation, one would assume that the city politician would be doing everything possible to fix what is already in place and what is so dysfunctional. But that would be Mayor Bill de Blasio’s latest “reform”? He wants to create a Pre-Pre Kindergarten program in public schools. Rather than focus on fixing the existing grades and using limited resources to fix all of the above mentioned failures in the NYC public schools, he wants to take those limited resources and create a new grade for three year olds.

But the insanity get worse. According to the article, he needs $1.1 billion to start and run the operation city wide but has only found $36 million in the budget for the effort. Which raises an interesting question: if you have an extra $36 million laying around without a home, maybe using that money to fix the broken grades and educational processes that you already have in place might be a better use of those funds. 

Plus, we have written many times on how the Federal Head Start program has been a gigantic failure in giving kids a head start in getting educated. Study after study show that Head Start kids are no smarter and no better off when they get to real kindergarten than kids that do not attend Head Start programs. Given that actual history of failure, what makes anyone think that going even younger than Head Start is going to be anything but an expensive baby sitting service? You cannot make up stupidity of this quality.

2) We have often pointed out how useless and dysfunctional the Veterans Administration has been providing quality healthcare for our veterans. Many, many veterans have died while waiting to get to have their health care needs met while VA executives have fudged, changed, and manipulated data to protect their annual bonuses and high salaries. While Obama claimed for eight years that the VA performance was a disgrace and often pledged to fix it, his efforts fell pitifully short.

Another example of his failures was recently documented by an article by John Cooper and Jarrett Stepman writing for the Heritage Foundation on April 19, 2017:

• According to their reporting, the VA inspector general announced on April 12,2017 that the Washington DC VA Medical Center was putting the 98,000 veterans it serves at “unnecessary risk.”
• And this was the interim report, meaning that things are probably worse than this first cut at the dysfunction.
• In just over the past two years the facility had 194 patient safety reports regarding “the unavailability of equipment or supplies."
• Last June, surgical staff used expired equipment during a procedure because of “the lack of an inventory management program.”
• Eighteen out of 25 sterile storage areas were found to be dirty, leading the inspector general to conclude the center “lacks assurance that sterile supplies maintained their integrity.”
• More than 27,000 items purchased by the facility, with a value of more than $150 million, have gone unaccounted for. 
• In a bit of good news, the facility's director, Brian Hawkins, has been relieved of his duties at the medical center.

Unsterile equipment, expired equipment, likely stolen equipment and supplies, unavailable supplies, etc. Even when the political class recognizes a problem, like Obama did many years ago, they still cannot resolve the problem either out of inability or apathy. 

3) Let’s finish today’s insanity with just a plain ridiculous politician's quote. Senator Elizabeth Warren has been a rant lately about a lot of things, most of which are either non-constructive or just plain stupid. Let’s go the stupid route today. Consider a recent tweet from her:

Our military force's diversity is its greatest strength. The Army Secretary must show genuine support for ALL of our men & women in uniform

Yes, having a diverse military force is our greatest strength. It is not the bravery of those that serve. It is not having the latest and best military equipment. It is not having the best training. It is not having the best strategists. It is not about having military satellites to help defend the country. It is because we have men AND women in the armed forces, simple as that. And simple she is, unbelievable. Does she really believe this nonsense?

That will do it for today’s insanity: stupidity and lack of common sense in the NYC mayor’s office, lack of accountability and improvements in the VA, and a Senator who continues to be clueless about reality. More insanity to follow.

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

July, 2016, Part 3, Political Class Insanity: DHS Fail, Obama Care Fail, and Other Poltiical Class Fails

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 continue with the latest insanity from today’s American politicians:

1) Einstein once said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. A perfect example of this principle was discussed in the January, 2016 issue of Reason magazine. Barack Obama in the past, along with HIllary Clinton today, have been hot to trot to have Federal taxpayers provide universal pre-kindergarten funding for every kid in the country. Clinton’s justification and claim, unfounded as it is, is that universal pre-kindergarten would have significant societal benefits. This was the same claim that Obama made several years ago.

But as with many politicians’ grand claims, this one apparently is also false. We have already proven Obama’s claim wrong several years ago using research done by his own Health and Human Services (HHS) organization that showed Head Start daycare not only did not provide an educational boost to attendees as promised, in some cases, it actually retarded the intellectual development of kids that were in Head Start. That original discussion can be seen at:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/01/failing-our-kids-again-massive-fraud.html

And now new research from Mark Lipsey, Dale Farran, and Sandra Jo Wilson of Vanderbilt University show that the HHS study from several years ago still applies to today’s pre-kindergarten programs, despite what claims Clinton makes. Their research including the following components:

• They studied a group of more than 1,000 kids over several years that were divided up into a pre-kindergarten program and another group that did not attend any pre-kindergarten programs.
• Thus, we have a classic test and control experiment.
• Kids in the pre-kindergarten group did much better on a series of early learning measures than the other groups of kids…..until they got to actual kindergarten.
• By the end of the first year in school, "there were no longer significant differences between the two groups on any achievement measures.”
• In other words, the positive impact of pre-kindergarten lasted no more than a year.
• Even worse, by the end of the second grade, kids in the pre-kindergarten group actually performed slightly worse than the control group.

In other words, in this study, within two years kids were made dumber by going to pre-kindergarten vs. those that did not. These results are consistent with other studies we have already discussed including the link above. Thus, if Clinton wants us to pay for universal pre-kindergarten, at least be honest with the taxpayers and tell us what we are really funding, according to the researchers: nothing more than a Federal babysitting program with at best, no long term positive benefits to society and the kids and at worse, a potential dumbing down of those that attend such programs.

But Hillary being honest….might be a stretch.

2) Obama Care was supposed to resolve the major problem of ever escalating health care costs in this country. We have proven many times in the past several years how this legislation has failed epically to achieve that goal. To review the many failures of Obama Care, under the phrase “unfolding disaster” in the box above for access to dozens and dozens of past blog posts that proved how bad Obama Care has failed. Alternatively, just go through the past months' and years' buttons listed on the right side of this page since every month for years we have had to dedicate at least a few posts every month to the failures.

We have made the case that one of the reasons why Obama Care is a massive failure is that it never addressed the underlying root causes of our high healthcare costs. It tried to apply a health insurance solution to a public health problem. And as always, apply a solution to the wrong problem is never successful

One of the major root causes of our high healthcare costs is the epidemic of obesity in this country. Obesity leads to a myriad of health problems including heart disease, diabetes, strokes, failing knees, failing hips, etc. Until this and other root causes are mitigated, healthcare costs will continue to escalate. And relief is nowhere in sight and certainly be providing by Obama Care, three years after its launch.

According to the latest CDC study, more than 40% of American women are obese, not overweight, and that figure has jumped up 5% over the past decade. American men have held steady at a still high 35% over the same period. Without addressing this root cause, Obama Care has no chance of attaining its original objective of “bending the cost curve” of healthcare in this country. 

But Washington not knowing or addressing root causes of a problem is why we are still losing the war on drugs, why we still under educate our kids, why we still have not national energy strategy, why our borders still leak, etc.

3) We often wonder what Federal organization is the worst run, most inept. Usually the TSA, the Social Security Administration, the Veterans Administration and the Department of Homeland Security rise to the top of the incompetence list. Today we have a great candidate in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Keep in mind as you read the following insanity that this organization is supposed to keep us safe from terrorists.

According to reporting from the Western Journalism website by Scott Watson: 

• A DHS employee strolled into DHS headquarters with a gun, a knife, an infrared camera, pepper spray, and handcuffs.
• The employee, Jonathan Weinke, has/had top secret clearance and is now under investigation for conspiracy to commit workplace violence.
• He has also been charged with carrying a pistol without a license.
• Maybe not the smartest criminal or terrorist of all time, Weinke came under suspicion when he went through the regular security measure at work when his backpack was run through a security screening machine which is when security officers found a folding knife with a 3-inch blade, two hand-held radios, pepper spray, an infrared camera and a set of handcuffs.
• As a result, a search of his body resulted in finding a five shot hand gun with dangerous hollow point bullets. 
• A Federal search warrant lists potential charges as “attempt and conspiracy to assassinate, kidnap or assault a member of the executive branch of the government, false impersonation of a federal officer and possession of a firearm in a federal facility.”

Feel safe and secure with DHS personnel in charge, people that cannot even prevent their own employees from bringing weapons to the DHS workplace?

4) We have often pointed out the sick reality that the Obama administration has put thousands and thousands of Federal government regulations in place during the past seven and a half years. We have always asked two questions from these outrageous number of new regulations:

• Are we to believe that the previous 43 Presidential administrations were so inept that the Obama administration had to fix the world with thousands and thousands of new, likely useless, bureaucratic regulations?
• How much time, effort, and wealth are diverted by business owners and their employees from the real economy to comply with these regulations and how much do these regulations cost the American consumer and businesses?
• A recent Heritage Foundation article by Milton Padilla and Tori Whiting took a shot at what that cost to the country is of these again, probably useless regulations.
• Their article’s title asserts that “Obama’s 229 Major Regulations Cost $108 Billion Each Year.”
• The 229 major regulations are the total so-called major regulations since the beginning of his Presidency.
• Just the 43 major regulations Obama put into place from 2015 increased Federal government regulations costs by over $22 billion a year as estimated by the Heritage Foundation’s Red Tape Rising” study of Federal government regulations.
• Even more scary is that Obama has another 144 major regulations in the process of development that could be put into effect before he leaves office early next year.
• The biggest regulation whores include the EPA, the Department of Transportation, and the Department of Energy.
• The cost of $108 billion a year comes out to almost $900 a year for every American household, $900 that cannot be spent on vacations, dinners, new cars, etc., i.e. $900 that cannot be used to expand the economy and create jobs for unemployed Americans.
• Since the annual Index Of Economic Freedom shows that economic freedom in the United States has declined eight of the past nine years, roughly the length of the Obama administration, it leads one to make the reasonable conclusion that as Obama has increased regulatory burden on Americans and American businesses, our economic freedom and vitality have been declining.

This over regulation of America may explain that despite an $800 billion economic stimulus plan, record low energy costs, and a Fed that pumped trillions of dollars into the economy, Obama has presided over the most anemic recession recovery in a very, very long time. Quite possibly, putting thousands and thousands of regulations in place, regulations that divert energy and resources into government compliance rather than economic vitality, is the main reason why the Obama administration’s economic performance has been so pathetic.

That will do it for today’s insanity: gross over regulation, a Department of Homeland Security that cannot protect itself, another Obama Care fail, and how Einstein corrected predicted Federal government’s performance with pre-kindergarten failures. 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

Why There Is Still Hope For America, Part 1.......Despite The American Political Class

Unfortunately, when discussing the political class in America it usually gets pretty depressing. Runaway national debt, leaky borders, escalating healthcare costs, a lost war on drugs, failing public schools, selfish politicians whose only priority in life is their own personal enrichment and egos, a government bureaucracy that fails at everything it does, etc. It can get pretty depressing with all of the bad news that originates with a petty and inept political class. 

This situation led us to write the book, “Love My Country, Loathe My Government,” a fifty step plan to fix what ails the country. Sadly, since the book was published in 2009, the politicians in this country have followed absolutely none of the common sense steps that were proposed. Doing so would have put the country in a much better position today vs. what we are currently living through.

So rather than dwell on the continuing bad news that is spawned by today’s political class, lets take a couple of days to talk about some good things that are going on that should give us all some hope that eventually we can actually fix what the political class has broken and finally actually resolve some major issues of our times.

1) Step 26 from “Love My Country, Loathe My Government" proposed a process that would finally resolve the lost war on drugs that the political class and government declared over four decades ago. Since then, the American taxpayer has had to pay trillions of dollars to fight this losing war with the results being the reality that drug use is still pretty prevalent across the country and new, powerful and extremely violent drug cartels have been created as a result of the lost war on drugs.

However, there may be some for sanity in this area. According to research from the Drug Policy Alliance, one year after the state of Colorado legalized the sale and recreational use of marijuana, the following statistics have become reality:

• Since the first retail marijuana stores opened on January 1st, 2014, the state of Colorado has experienced a decrease in crime rates, a decrease in traffic fatalities, an increase in tax revenue from retail marijuana sales, and an increase in jobs.
• According to statistics from the Colorado Court System, pot possession arrests have dropped 84% in the year 2014 vs. 2010, saving millions of dollars in law enforcement and legal costs.

• During that same timeframe,  arrests for cultivating and distributing marijuana have dropped by more than 90%, saving more law enforcement and court costs.
• Violent crime in Denver went down by 2.2% in the first 11 months of 2014 vs. the first eleven months of 2013.
• In the same period, burglaries in Denver decreased by 9.5% and overall property crime went down by 8.9%.
• State tax revenue from retail marijuana sales amounted to $40.9 million in the first ten months of 2014, not including revenue from medical marijuana and licenses and fees.
• This is far more than the $2.5 million expense that has been set aside to put more health professionals in Colorado schools  who will focus on mental health support and on programs to educate students about drug use.
• Traffic fatalities went down 3% in 2014, according to the Colorado Department of Transportation, negating fears that the legalization of marijuana would lead to an increase in traffic fatalities.

Now, obviously the Drug Policy Alliance has a stake in making the Colorado pot legalization experiment look good. But you cannot argue with the statistics or their sources. Crime is down, tax revenue is up, drug use has not spiked the auto fatality rate, and most importantly, tens of millions of dollars that normally would have gone to criminal elements and drug cartels is staying local and providing legal and good jobs for local citizens.

Thus, there is some hope that the successful experiences with legalization in other countries and in Colorado may eventually lead to a cessation of the lost war on drugs, the repression of rights, and the freeing up of tax dollars for better and less dangerous uses than pursuing drug users.

2) As we have lamented many times in this blog, the current members of the American political class are either unable, unwilling, or not intelligent enough to rationally address the major issues of our times and put together and plan that actually resolves them. If they did have the ability, will, and intelligence, we would still not have to cope with failing public schools, the lack of a national energy strategy and policy, leaky borders, an expensive health care system, etc. These problems have plagued us for decades with no resolution.

Government programs are ineffective, inefficient, and often corrupted and infested with criminal fraud. Highly flaunted new government programs more often than not make the existing problem worse (e.g. Obama Care). Don’t believe me, name one current government program that actually works and meets its objectives with in budget:

• Social Security -  a big Ponzi scheme that is quickly heading for bankruptcy.
• Medicare and Medicaid - delivering inferior medical treatment for big dollars.
• Head Start - study after study proves that Head Start is nothing more than a Federal government babysitting service.
• IRS - incapable of collecting almost $400 billion a year from tax evaders but very good at suppressing the First Amendment rights of millions of citizens.

The list goes on and on. But according to an article by Nick Sorrentio from January 6, 2015, that appeared on his Against Crony Capitalism website, for the first time ever, voters say that “the government” is the biggest problem in America today.

Mr. Sorrentino takes a quote about a recent Gallup poll that was discussed in the Investors Business Daily: “Confirming the 2014 election zeitgeist, a new Gallup poll finds that Americans are fed up with ever-encroaching, corrupt and incompetent government, as represented by ObamaCare and other federal policies. 

For the first time since Gallup has conducted polling, people say that the “biggest problem” in America is “the government.” It topped all other categories, including terrorism. “2014 was the first year ever in Gallup records that dissatisfaction with government topped the list,” the 80-year-old firm said. “Government includes dissatisfaction with President Obama.””

After 13 years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the very violent and real problem of Islamic terrorism, a weak economic recovery, an $18 TRILLION national debt, ever increasing crony capitalism, failing public schools, unbridled government and NSA spying, a failed Obama Care website and failing Obama Care legislation,  a President who would rather attend political fund raisers and play golf than connect with the rest of the citizenry, etc., it is about time that Americans finally started to realize that more and more government  intrusion and control into our lives is not the solution. Never was, never will be.

Also, the reality that for the first time ever, more voters identify themselves as Independents vs. being either Republicans or Democrats is another good, hopeful sign that the country is waking up to the reality that almost always, the government is not here to help you. Government and the politicians that operate it are here to take your wealth, give it to themselves and their political backers, restrict your freedoms, and try to tell you how to talk, how to think, and how to run your life.

That is enough good news for today, we want to spread out the good news over a couple of days before getting back into political class shenanigans and failures. Today we learned that the legalization of marijuana in Colorado has been a success against most just about any measure of success and failure, making one wonder why it did not happen much sooner in the past and why it is not happening quicker going forward.

We also learned that more and more Americans, according to Gallup, are finally figuring out that government and the politicians that operate it today are not the answers to our problems and that both institutions, government and the political class, are long overdue for an overhaul and replenishment.

There is hope.

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 18 Largest Failures Of The Washington Political Class, Part 2

We have been pretty hard on Obama Care over the past month or so. It has failed in so many ways, financially, operationally, logically, etc. It deserves the mantle of worst piece of legislation ever enacted by the Federal government. To prove our point, let us refer you to the initial posts in two series of posts we did to cover the many, many failures of Obama Care, one series in August and one series in September:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/09/september-2013-obama-care-update-part-1.html

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/08/part-1-august-2013-obama-care-update.html

But a recent article in the Independent Journal Review reminded us that while Obama Care is the worst piece of legislation ever, the Federal government also has a quite impressive (in a negative way) history of 13 failed other major pieces of legislation. All of these failures cost American taxpayers trillions of dollars without ever coming close to resolving the problems that led to the enacting of new laws. In many cases, the enacting of legislation to remedy a problem actually made the problem worse. 

The first 14 failed pieces of legislation are from the original Independent Journal Review’s analysis and research. We have added a few of our own to this ignoble list that they did not cover or got to depressed to go on after doing the first 14. We covered the first nine failures yesterday. Today, we will review the second nine failures and provide a way to insure that these failures are eventually reversed and major issues are finally resolved

10) Banning DDT: The malaria-killing chemical (which saved 500 million lives in Africa) was banned in 1970 because it was believed to kill birds. Since then, subsequent research has shown that DDT, when used properly and prudently, can be a very effective, environment friendly pesticide that could have saved millions of lives. However, the United states and other Western nations refuse to admit they were wrong and the carnage goes on unabated.

11) The War on Terror: Started under President Bush, we have spent uncountable trillions of  dollars attempting to secure our borders and defeat terrorism. We have invaded and disrupted other countries, resulting in a massive loss of wealth, deaths and maiming injuries to our armed forces, and hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths. 

We have shredded the Fourth Amendment with a Presidential administration and Federal security apparatus that collects and stores just about every bit of electronic communications we make. In addition to spying on ourselves, we have been shown to do extensive spying on other countries, both friend and foe, damaging our international reputation and relations.

The Federal government’s budget for anti-terror activities has skyrocketed but we are not much safer from terrorist attacks than we were years ago, e.g. the successful Boston Marathon bombing, the successful Fort Hood mass shooting, the unsuccessful underwear bomber (only because of a faulty detonator), the unsuccessful Times Square bomber (again, only because of a faulty detonator), and the successful terror attack at Benghazi. 

12) The Assault Weapons Ban: Since the ban expired in 2006, the number of deaths from guns (assault weapons or not) has declined precipitously. Enough said.

13) Social Security: When it was started in 1935, Social Security was a tax of only one percent of income. Now it is over six percent and climbing. In the next 75 years, as America ages, Social Security will go broke. This is another government program that is quickly approaching financial insolvency with no remedial plans in sight from the dysfunctional Washington political class.

14) Obama Care: When he proposed the Affordable Care Act, President Obama assured Americans the plan would cost less than $1 trillion. The latest projection is the program will cost three times that:

Besides these dismal financial projections, check out the other myriad of problems with Obama Care as referenced to the two links above.

Pretty pathetic track record over the decades of failed Federal government programs. Programs that create permanent organized crime cartels and gangs. Programs that do not come close to hitting their original budget projections. Programs that make existing problems worse. 

But I think that the Independent Journal Review research, while excellent, left out a few other major disasters:

15) Head Start: Two extensive, major research studies that have been developed and published by the Obama administration have found that nearly fifty years after the Head Start program was started, kids that go through the program are no smarter, wiser, or better off than kids that do not go through the program. In fact, one of the studies found that some kids in some areas are worse off because of Heat Start.

It appears that for almost fifty years we were not helping our kids get a “head start,” we were just using Federal taxpayer dollars to run a massive, nation wide baby sitting service. 

16) National Energy Strategy: About forty years after the oil shocks of the 1970s, we are no closer to having a coherent, doable, and intelligent national energy strategy that minimizes the cost of energy while maximizing the protection of the environment.

Gasoline prices are about double what they were just four years ago or so. We still import a lot of our oil for out energy needs, making us vulnerable to international political events. The Department of Energy costs us tens of billions of dollars every year without any noticeable societal benefit in return or any noteworthy breakthroughs in energy research.

17) Budget Management: The Federal government debt is fast approaching a mind boggling $17 TRILLION. This puts a debt burden on every American, adult and child, of about $54,000 per person. Thus, a family of four would have to pay out over $200,000 just to cover their share of the national debt. Pathetic financial management skills.

18) Foreign Affairs: Ramsey Clark once said, “The biggest crime since World War II has been U.S. foreign policy.” He was quite possibly right. We have helped overthrow legitimate governments (e.g. Iran in the early 1950s), we have probably been involved in more wars and military actions than any other government on earth (e,g,, Korean War, Vietnam,  Bosnia, Somalia, Iraq/twice, Afghanistan), we use drones to launch missiles into many countries (e.g. Yemen, Pakistan) to kill terrorists but often end up killing civilians, we have supported oppressive tyrants because they pretend to be friendly to our needs and our wealth (e.g. the Shah in Iran, Mubarak in Egypt), we failed to anticipate the “Arab Spring” until it was well underway, and we have and continue to station armed forces all over the globe. 

All to get us to the dangerous and volatile position we find ourselves in today relative to the rest of the world.

These disasters have happened regardless of what branch of the political class sat in the White House or controlled Congress. These are eighteen failures of the Washington political class, not just one or two Presidents or a handful of Senators. This is systemic risk and failure throughout the entire system.

We proposed many solutions to these problems in our book, “Love My Country, Loathe Our Government.” From campaign finance reform to Congressional district gerrymandering reform to a brand new, fresh look at many of our major problems (lost war on drugs, high health care costs, failing  public education etc.). However, the most important step of all, if we are to breakthrough to real solutions to real problems, is to install term limits on all Washington politicians.

While many of these failures and failed programs have happened over decades, a large number of people currently in Congress were in office over that timeframe and were responsible for all 18 failures. They need to be removed from office so that we can get the old, ineffective ways of doing things replaced with new people with new ideas.

You can help make that transformation possible by joining our cause for term limits at:

www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com

Because really. Given the 18 major failures/disasters listed above, how much worse could it get if we started over with new people in Washington?

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

Washington D.C., The Great Kitchen Garbage Disposal - Subprime Lending Revisited, Head Start, and High Speed Rail

There are a lot of famous quotes on stupidity:

Stupid is as stupid does. Forest Gump

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. Albert Einstein

In politics, stupidity is not a handicap. Napoleon Bonaparte

Evil isn’t the real threat to the world. Stupid is just as destructive as Evil, maybe more so, and it’s a hell of a lot more common. What we really need is a crusade against Stupid. That might actually make a difference. Jim Butcher

Far be it for me to ever let my common sense get in the way of my stupidity. I say we press on. Sherrilyn Kenyon

There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf life. Frank Zappa

We’ll stop there. Yes, there is a lot of stupidity in the world and unfortunately, the Washington political class seems to attract a lot of stupid thinking. Consider the latest stupidity emanating out of the Beltway from the Washington political class and what quote above most ably describes the stupidity:

1) Consider what the brainiacs in Washington want to do the housing industry according to an April 2, 2013 article in the Washington Post:

• The Obama administration stated it is working to get banks to lend to a wider range of and potential homeowners by taking advantage of taxpayer-backed programs.
• These loans/mortgages would go to a “wider range” of people and would be backed by government organizations, i.e. the American taxpayer, such as the Federal Housing Administration to insure home loans that default would not hurt banks earnings.
• This “wider range” is a code phrase for giving mortgages to people with bad credit and less chance of supporting a mortgage before getting foreclosed on.
• Federal housing officials are encouraging the Justice Department to provide assurances to banks that they will not face legal or financial recriminations if they make loans to riskier borrowers who meet government standards but later default.
• Government officials are also encouraging lenders to use more subjective judgment in determining whether to offer a loan, in other words give out mortgages to people that are less likely and unlikely to ever be able to pay them back, resulting in defaults and the American taxpayer picking up the tab.

Didn’t we just relive this horror show? Wasn’t it called the “Great Recession” where sub prime lending to people with questionable credit received mortgages from banks, who made large profits but dumped the risks on the Federal government via Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the FHA, risk that was paid off by taxpayers? Didn’t that bailout cost the American taxpayer almost $200 billion with the final tab yet to come.

This insanity is especially stupid in light of recent news reports that reported the Federal Housing Authority was likely to need a $943 million taxpayer bailout to cover expected losses from mortgages it insured as the U.S. housing bubble was deflating during the Great Recession. The Obama administration reported this problem on April 10, 2013.

It would be the first bailout of the government's mortgage insurer in its nearly 80-year history. The FHA is required by Congress to keep enough cash on hand to cover all expected future losses and must take a taxpayer subsidy if its projected revenue falls short. And it could get worse. In November, an independent audit found that the FHA faces projected losses of $16.3 billion and was at risk of depleting its cash reserves. Guess who ends up paying for this shortfall?

So Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have already choked themselves and the American taxpayer on mortgages that were given to and defaulted on by low credit and low income people. The FHA may need billions dollars more because it backed mortgages on bad mortgage customers. And the Obama administration wants to loosen current credit processes so more people with bad credit and poor chances of carrying a mortgage get a mortgage, to be backed in case of default by the taxpayer. Stupid, did these people learn nothing from the Great Recession and the underlying mortgage/housing/subprime issues that created it?

My best analogy for this shortsightedness is a kitchen garbage disposal. It’s like the stupid person who mangles his right hand in the garbage disposal and just as the scabs and scar tissue are falling off from that disaster that person puts his left hand right back into the garbage disposal. Stupid is as stupid does and that is exactly what the Obama administration is about to do with reenacting the subprime disaster.

2) Apparently, one of the proposals in Obama’s delinquent and ridiculous budget proposal is to provide Federal pre-school programs for every kid in America. But why should we do that when we know that the existing Federal pre-school program in America, Head Start, has been a financial, educational, and administrative disaster:

• A detailed study by Obama’s own Health and Human Services Department conclusively showed that any positive gains by kids in Head Start programs are lost forever by the end of the first grade versus kids that had not been in Head Start programs, with all other areas of variation being controlled by the study analysis.
• Another detailed study, again by Obama’s own Health and Human Services Department, looked at third and fourth grade students and compared students that had been in Head Start programs vs. that had not been in Head Start. That study found that in general there were no differences between Head Start kids and non-head Start kids and in some areas, non-Head Start kids were actually further along from an educational and development perspective, all other sources of variability being controlled.
• Numerous government studies have found rampant waste and fraud throughout the Head Start program.

So, the many promises of the Head Start program from an educational, cultural, and childhood development perspective have never materialized and the program has been administered in a sloppy, fraudulent manner. Thus, we have spent billions and billions of dollars over the Head Start years to run an overrated, glorious babysitting service with no redeeming societal benefit in return.

And given this backdrop, the President wants to vastly expand the concept of daycare to every kid in the country without being able to fix the existing Head Start program. He just has the grandiose concept with no plan on remedial action on how to prevent a more expensive Head Start disaster.

In this example, we still have our right hand stuck down in the garbage disposal (Head Start) and want to stick the left hand down it also (Obama’s proposal). But alas, in politics, stupidity is not a handicap.

The previous posts we did that explain the Head Start fiasco in more detail can be found at:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2010/04/government-education-programs-that-do.html

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/01/failing-our-kids-again-massive-fraud.html

3) Our final example of stupidity also comes from the President’s budget proposal. Apparently, he still wants to build this national high speed rail line that will cost untold billions of dollars for questionable benefits. But before going down this garbage disposal, maybe he should fix the current Federal government railroad service, Amtrak.

Earlier this month (April 4, 2013 post) we reviewed an article from the March, 2013 issue of Reason magazine, an article that contained some interesting analyses of Amtrak, the distressed, Federally operated national train system:

• Amtrak is the most expensive way to transport oneself from city to city, on average costing consumers twice as much than commercial airline travel.
• The average American travels 15 miles a year via Amtrak but 15,000 miles a year via car.
• Amtrak per-passenger miles subsidies are more than nine times higher than subsidies paid to airlines and 20 times more than subsidies paid to car drivers.
• In 2012, Amtrak needed about $1.4 billion from the American taxpayer to run its operations.
• Only three of its twelve routes are profitable without taxpayer subsidies.

In our September 5, 2012 post we reviewed as New York Times article that described the insanity and waste in just one aspect of Amtrak:

• According to a New York Times article that was summarized in the August 17, 2012 issue of The Week magazine, Amtrak lost $834 million just on its food and beverage services over the past ten years.
• This comes out to about $83 million a year, or almost a quarter million dollars a day, 365 days a year.
• We found it amazing that any organization, even a government organization, can lose so much money so quickly just on food and drinks.
• The article blamed the astronomical losses on poor management, waste, and employee theft.
• Despite being in the train management industry for decades, it is apparent that the political class and the government agencies it operates have learned nothing on how to be efficient and effective.

Pitiful. Rather than learning from the Amtrak garbage disposal experience, billions wasted on an unprofitable rail line, imagine how much the American taxpayer would lose if the Federal government ever went ahead with their ill conceived and unnecessary high speed train pipe dream. Far be it for Washington to ever let common sense get in the way of its stupidity.

Einstein once said: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” We would substitute the word “stupidity” for “insanity” to summarize the state of the political thinking in Washington:

- Subprime mortgage lending to people with poor credit and poor chances of carrying a mortgage caused the Great Recession but Washington wants to go down that path again today.

- Head Start has been a disaster for over four decades and the Obama administration wants to do the same program on a grander scale, likely wasting a grander sum of money.

- The Obama administration wants to build a massive high speed rail line across the country even though the current Federal rail line loses over a billion dollars a year.

The Washington kitchen garbage disposal is alive and well, continually shredding taxpayer wealth every day.

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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.reason.com/
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

Failing Our Kids Again - The Massive Fraud That Is Head Start

A week or so ago we pointed out that the Pentagon has the Defense Department to look after its needs, companies have the Commerce Department to look after their needs, labor unions have the Labor Department to look after their needs and energy companies have the deep pockets of the cronyism infested Energy Department to look after their needs. But there is no Department to look after our kids’ needs. Consider the abuse our kids are constantly subjected to:

• In the very worse possible scenario, they are killed be an insane lunatic that shoots and kills over two dozen people in a school. Rather than immediately secure our schools and our kids inside them, politicians grandstand their own positions on gun control, leaving the other 132,000 schools no safer than before (even though we have already shown how easy it is to secure them: http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/01/how-about-more-hate-control-before-more_18.html)

Our public schools continue to under educate our kids, with the kids in dozens of other countries constantly outperforming U.S. kids on standardized tests.

We continue to subsidize tobacco growers and farmers that grow far too much corn than is needed, resulting in cheaper than needed tobacco products and cheap corn fructose. This in turn results in kids that smoke and kids that are obese because it is so inexpensive for it to happen via government subsidies.

Millions of kids are physically and sexually abused every year and thousands die as a result of this abuse.

With a $16.4 TRILLION national debt, we have subjected our kids and our grandkids to lives burdened with paying off the wasteful and sinful overspending of our generation.

Yes, we have not and are currently not taking care of our kids. And the latest government analyses and reports on the famous, or now infamous, Federal government Head Start program prove that we are not taking care of our pre school kids in particular, relative to what the political class and the Federal government it operates are supposed to be doing.

Before we discuss this latest scandal, let’s review a little history of the Head Start program:

• Officially, the Head Start program “promotes the school readiness of children ages birth to 5 from low-income families by enhancing their cognitive, social and emotional development.”
• Furthermore, “Head Start programs provide comprehensive services to enrolled children and their families, which include health, nutrition, social services and other services determined to be necessary by family needs assessments, in addition to education and cognitive development services. Head Start services are designed to be responsive to each child and family’s ethnic, cultural and linguistic heritage.”
• The program began as a small summer program under LBJ in 1965.
• Since then, the American taxpayer has spent about $180 billion on the program.
• The just released study of Head Start’s effectiveness involved the rigorous tracking and testing of over 5,000 kids over time, from their Head Start preschool days through third and fourth grades, and across over a hundred measures of success/failure.

And what have we gotten for this $180 billion? Apparently not much, according to the latest government analyses:

• The Health And Human Services study concluded that “by third grade, the $8 billion Head Start program had little to no impact on cognitive, social-emotional, health, or parenting practices of participants.”
• Additionally on a few measures, access to Head Start had HARMFUL effects on the children enrolled in the program.
• For example, one subset of kids that were tracked had lower math skills than their peers who did not attend Head Start, all other factors controlled for.
• But it was not only book learning where Head Start failed since researchers found Head Start also had little to no effect on the other socio-emotional, health, or parenting outcomes of children participating in the program.
• In other words, we have paid $180 billion to provide a Federal babysitting service.

But all of this should not be surprising since in 2010, the Health and Human Services Department did another extensive tracking study and found that Head Start provided no positive impacts for kids once they entered first grade. Given those results, it should not be a surprise that there were no positive results or takeaways from Head Start by the third and fourth grades.

So, we have another Federal government program that has failed miserably in delivering on its goals. But the failure in the class room is not the only atrocity of this program. In 2010, the General Accounting Office (GAO) did an undercover audit of the program and found there is massive fraud and abuse of the program by those people benefiting from taxpayer wealth in funding the local operations:

• The GAO conducted thirteen undercover eligibility tests based on fictitious families to determine the practice of Head Start grantees, those operating Head Start centers with taxpayer funding, were enrolling children not qualified to attend the program.
• The fictitious families were all above the income limits and had other disqualifying characteristics, as established by the Office of Head Start.
• The GAO found that in eight of the thirteen eligibility tests, the fictitious families were told by Head Start staff that they were eligible for the program and encouraged to attend class.
• In each of these eight cases, Head Start staff directly told the fictitious families to misrepresent their eligibility for the program.
• In seven cases, Head Start staff deliberately overlooked some families’ income to make these families eligible for participation.
• In at least four of the cases, the GAO was sent phony eligibility documents that excluded income information, originally provided to the Head Start staff;
• In two cases, Head Start staff designated on application forms that one parent was unemployed, even though the GAO presented documentation of both parents’ income.
• In one case, Head Start staff promised the fictitious family that no one would validate the income information submitted was correct.
• The GAO concluded that their undercover investigations “highlight the ease with which unscrupulous parents could fabricate documentation designed to make it appear as though their children were under-income or otherwise eligible for the program. At no point during our registrations was any of the information contained in fictitious documentation submitted by our parents verified, which indicates that the program is vulnerable to beneficiary fraud in addition to grantee fraud.”

Now, this was obviously not as rigorous a test and analysis as the 5,000 kid tracking study. But it is probably indicative of the overall operations of the program, ineffective in teaching and improving the lives of our kids and fraudulent, criminal, and wasteful in its execution.

Just as an aside, let’s think about what we could have done with that $180 billion, in light of the Newtown school shooting tragedy. In previous posts we documented how there are about 132,000 schools in the country and that the average salary for a trained police officer is about $55,000.


If we take these three numbers, number of schools, cost to put on police officer in each school to protect our kids, and use the wasted $180 billion to fund the process, we could have secured every one of our schools for 25 years, more than half the life of the Head Start program. In other words, every school could have had a trained police officer on sight to deter violence against our kids since about 1988.

Instead, we have spent our taxpayer dollars on a massive government bureaucracy that does not come close to fulfilling its relatively simple goal and is laced with fraud to boot. Disgraceful.

But not unexpected. The Federal government never does a “spring cleaning” of its programs to determine if they are worthy of taxpayer wealth. For over four decades we have been funding this program for no benefit in return. I am sure that there are many other dead end programs that are on autopilot, receiving funding year after year with no review on whether it is a worthwhile expense. And this is one of the many major reasons why we have a $16.4 TRILLION national debt, unnecessary Federal spending.

That is why some steps from “Love My Country, Loathe My Government” are so important if we are ever to inject sanity into Federal spending:

1. Step 1 would reduce Federal government spending 10% a year for five years into order to squeeze unnecessary programs and projects out of existence since the funding to support them would no longer be available.
2. Step 34 proposes a process that would hold Congressional members accountable for their actions, removing them from committee posts for dereliction of duty. Spending $180 billion and getting nothing in return would certainly count as dereliction of duty.
3. Step 39 would impose term limits on all Federal politicians since the current set of politicians have proven they are incapable of doing a “spring cleaning” of unnecessary federal spending items which in turn results in a $16.4 TRILLION national debt with nothing to show for it in return.

But expecting the Washington political class to fix itself is probably not going to happen. In fact, it is pretty obvious than many politicians in Washington cannot even identify these types of problems and their root causes.

Consider a statement from an official White House publication from 2011, the year after the Obama administration’s own Health And Human Services Department proved that Head Start program is a failure in actually giving American kids a “head start:”

“Studies show that children in early childhood education programs are more likely to score higher in reading and math, more likely to graduate from high school and attend college, more likely to hold a job, and more likely to earn more in that job. For every dollar we invest in these programs, we get nearly $10 back in reduced welfare rolls, fewer health care costs, and less crime.” – President Barack Obama, March 10, 2011, President

If you cannot even recognize the problem, e.g. Head Start is a complete failure in preparing kids for life and DOES NOT pay the American taxpayer back in a 10-to-1 ratio, the chances of terminating or fixing the failed effort or program is next to nil. That is why Obama Care is shaping up as an epic failure, an inability to define the true problem and the true underlying root causes. That is why the 40 year “War On Drugs” is a lost cause, an inability to understand the root causes of addiction and the need to use drugs. The list of failure to understand the resultant wasted taxpayer wealth goes on and on.

Which is why the three steps above are needed to stop the insanity that is Washington’s cult and heritage of failure.

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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

http://www.reason.com/
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w