April, 2015, Political Class Insanity, Part 4: Finally Rooting Out Food Stamp Fraud, Taxpayer Funding Or Marijuana Farms, and More

It is the beginning of another month which means it is time to review the latest political class insanity that has cropped up over the past 30 days or so. As regular readers of this blog know, political class insanity comes in many different forms including, but not limited to, the following craziness:

• Spending taxpayer wealth on idiotic programs and projects.
• Wasting taxpayer wealth on their own selfish financial and political needs.
• Implementing legislation to resolve problems that make the original problems worse or which created unintended bad consequences as a result of their legislation.
• Implementing legislation that supports their political donors and financial backers rather than the typical American citizen.
• Issuing idiotic and stupid comments.
• Overseeing government organizations that are incompetent, inefficient, ineffective, and wasteful of taxpayer wealth.

As always, it is highly likely we will identify new forms of insanity over the next few days as we review the past ineptness coming out of Washington and other bastions of American politicians.

1) Everyone likes the idea of the government stepping in to help out disaster victims. What is seldom reported is the botched job the government usually does in handling the disaster aftermath and more importantly, the funding that eventually gets wasted to support the government effort. From 9-11 to Hurricane Katrina, we could probably go on for days about how the political class and government agencies probably wasted more money than they used to actually help disaster victims.

Which brings us to one of the latest disasters that the government and politicians had to handle, Hurricane Sandy, which ravaged the middle Atlantic states a few years ago. According to an article posted on the Convention of States website from the Washington Free Beacon, nearly one million dollars in taxpayer funding was given to a New York City cherry factory that had a hidden basement filled with hundreds of hydroponically grown marijuana plants.

The company, Dell’s Maraschino Cherries in Brooklyn, got $900,000 in Hurricane Sandy relief cash after it’s “cherry” inventories were damaged by the 2012 storm. But that money might have to be given back, assuming it still exists, after investigators found a hidden door in the factory. 

The door led to a 2,500-square-foot basement containing hundreds of thousands in cash and about 100 pounds of weed: “We have advised Dell’s that the funds are subject to recapture and the city can commence legal proceedings, if necessary,” said a spokesman for the city’s Department of Small Business Services, which administered the Federal Sandy money.

To add insult to injury, the company has also received hundreds of thousands of dollars from New York state taxpayers in state government for power subsidies, which was important since the marijuana plants that were being grown need strong grow lights to grow in the basement, eating up a lot of electricity. Adding more insults, the article reported that the New York District Attorney’s office had been tipped off about the illegal drug activity going on at Dell’s….. in 2009, years before the government gave them almost a million dollars of taxpayer wealth. Insanity.

2) In 1978, Washington politicians passed a law that allowed Federal employees who are union members to spend part of their day addressing union issues. The theory behind the law was that since not all Federal employees have to pay dues and be union members, the law was supposed to provide a financial help to the unions in their union activities by allowing union work to be done with taxpayer funding. 

But some in Washington think that after 37 years, the program and intent of the program have gotten out of control. According to the Office of Personnel Management, in 2012 (the most recent year there are statistics for) Federal workers spent a whopping 3.4 million man-hours on union issues and not the work they were hired for. The estimated cost to taxpayers was more than $157 million.

What’s worse is that two of the most dysfunctional government entities, those that have experienced the most failure in serving their respective clients, purposes, and goals, the Veterans Administration and the IRS, also appear to have the most Federal workers doing union work vs. helping Americans. In both entities, hundreds of workers spent 100% of their time doing only union work.

At the VA, a whopping 259 employees worked solely on union issues. At the IRS, which only disclosed their statistics when the National Review sent them a Freedom of Information Act request, the number of employees was 201. These are 259 employees that are not serving our underserved veterans and their medical needs and 201 IRS employees that are not serving the tax filing needs and questions of Americans.

Georgia Senator Johnny Isakson is co-sponsoring a bill in the Senate to curtail the practice for the same reasons we just discussed: "The VA's had problems getting veterans appointments within 30 days, yet they're taking thousands of hours to organize the union. Something's wrong with their priorities. We need to get it fixed."

While we wish the Senator luck in this endeavor to protect taxpayer wealth, three previous efforts to do the same thing failed to get out of Congress. Thus, even a simple thing of controlling out of control employees is beyond the reach of the Washington political class unless the fourth time is the charm.

3) What is an interesting correlation with the previous piece of insanity is the recent speech of IRS Commissioner John Koskinen. He asserted that IRS taxpayer/customer service levels have gotten so bad that the IRS is ignoring an embarrassing 60% of taxpayers’ phone calls. And apparently the trend is not good since a couple of weeks ago they were not answering 57% of the phone calls. 

Maybe if the good Commissioner had used the 201 employees discussed above for the jobs they were hired to do, vs. union work, and had not used a lot of IRS resources to harass tea party and other organizations, he would actually be able to do a better job than failing 60% of the time. Rather than do his job efficiently and effectively, the good Commissioner is crying poverty and is looking for more budget money rather than fixing what is wrong within his organization. At a 60% failure rate, if he worked in the real world, he would no longer be holding that job for his ineptness.

4) I am not going to try to summarize the following insanity and insulting deception that the Washington political class set up to to avoid the additional costs that Obama Care would impose on Congressional members and their staffs. Instead, I have copied below the press release that recently came out from U.S Senator David Vitter and Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton on how the Obama administration's Office of Personnel Management has been using taxpayer money to illegally subsidize healthcare for Congress: 

The Affordable Care Act clearly states that Congress and staff must participate in the new insurance framework based on health-care exchanges, but there’s no available exchange for large employers, like Congress who has nearly 16,000 employees. That meant members of Congress and staff could only participate in the individual exchanges. Just like the rest of America, Congress had to abide by the same Obamacare rules and use these expensive individual exchanges with no employer contribution to help pay their premiums with non-taxable dollars.

In fact, part of the political price to pass the law was that specific provision that there would be no special treatment for Congress. But Republican and Democrat leaders in Congress begged Obama to step in. Rather than losing their tax-free premium subsidy, which would mean higher health insurance bills for themselves and their families, congressional leadership cut a side deal with the administration. The result? The Obama administration’s Office of Personnel Management (OPM) ignored the law and decreed that Congress could participate as a “small business” eligible to purchase a “Gold-tier” plan from Washington D.C.’s health-care exchange.

The District of Columbia defines a “small business” as fifty employees or less. Congress has nearly 16,000. According to the documents disclosed by Judicial Watch in a taxpayer lawsuit challenging this scam, the House and Senate filed false applications with the D.C. Health Benefits Exchange claiming they each were a “small business” with “fifty or fewer full-time equivalent employees.”

The applications state that the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives each have 45 employees and that the federal institutions are actually “local/state governments.” The “electronic signature” section of the application states that the signatory has “provided true and correct information to all questions” and is aware that if “not truthful, there may be a penalty.” When we requested to see these documents, the names of the signatories had been blacked out by the D.C. Exchange.

These documents appear to be an outright fraud. They are the basis for using taxpayer money to illicitly subsidize health insurance for Congress. More than 12,300 members of Congress, their staff, spouses, and dependents obtained health insurance through the exchange between October 2013 and September 2014, and that number surely is climbing. It would be hard to credibly attack Obama’s executive overreach (and as the House did – sue to stop him from violating Obamacare), when Congress is a co-conspirator.

The classic "do as I say, not as I do," a common theme of the Washington political class. Or in this case, "pay as I say [relative to Obama Care], not as I pay."

5) The following is political class insanity but in a somewhat good way, especially when you consider that over 45 million Americans are receiving food assistance from the Federal government and other welfare rolls are at record highs. According to an article on the www.800whistleblower.com website, Maine Governor Paul LePage is among the states cracking down on welfare fraud by instituting work requirements for benefits recipients:

• Beginning in 2014, Maine required non-disabled residents who get Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits (food assistance/”food stamps”) to put in at least a 20-hour work week, attending vocational training, or volunteering.
• The results of the work and volunteer requirement was astonishing.
• According to David Sorensen, spokesman for the Department of Health and Services, of the 12,000 non-disabled enrollees without children who were previously on the dole, only 2,680 remain as of now, an amazing drop of almost 80%.
• Could it be that a large number of people receiving food assistance, and other forms of welfare, simply because it is so easy to do so?

And it is not as if the work and volunteer requirements were onerous, with the volunteer option coming out to only 24 hours a month, less than an hour a day. That meager requirement was enough to reduce these welfare loads by a 80% or so. 

Previously we reported in this blog that when the English government required disability payment recipients to re-register in order to continue receiving benefits, they also experienced an incredible decrease in people claiming benefits. Lesson learned: when you make it easy for people to get free money, they will take it, whether it is food assistance leeches in Maine or disability fakers in England.

Imagine how much taxpayer money could be saved if this Maine model was repeated across the country. The insanity of it all is that why this type of gross mismanagement has been going on for decades, not a single Washington politician has had the will, intelligence, and courage to do what the Maine governor has done. How insane and pathetic is that?

Unfortunately, after five days, we are still not through the latest month of political class insanity, more 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.loathemygovernmobama,washington post,politifactent.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

I Am A Global Warming Doubter But A Believer In Science Update, Part 2: Is Global Cooling More Of A Threat Than Global Warming/Climate Change?

This is the second of two posts that review the evidence over the past two year's worth of posts in this blog that prove you can be a global warming doubter and still be a firm believer in science and the scientific method. The first eight instances which scientifically cast doubt on the whole global warming/climate change theory can be accessed at:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/11/i-am-global-warming-doubter-and.html

The remaining past evidence of global warming doubt, from a scientific basis, is listed below. Over the next few days, we will update these peices of evidence with new science that provide further evidence that man made global warming/climate change could actually be much adieu about nothing and no reason for the government and the ruling political class to use such potential nonsense to increase the taxes and control of our lives that they love to do.

9) An article earlier in 2013 in the well respected magazine, The Economist, pointed out how reality is not matching up with the dire, doomsday predictions of global warming advocates. Even though greenhouse gas emissions have soared during the past 15 years, with 100 billion tons of carbon having been added to the atmosphere between 2000 and 2010, both air and ground temperatures during that time have remained unchanged. 

Surface temperatures have been at the lower end of the projected range of various global warming models since 2005. If the temps remain flat, they may shortly actually begin to fall below projections, i.e. the global warming forecasts are not close to the reality of the cooler temperatures found on earth today.

The Economist article proposes several theories of why this gap between expect climate behavior is different than actual climate behavioral but basically concludes: we really do not know what is going on climate-wise.

10) As a follow up to the Economist article findings, consider what David Whitehouse of the Global Warming Policy Foundation notes: “The global temperature standstill shows that climate models are diverging from observations. If we have not passed it already, we are on the threshold of global observations becoming incompatible with the consensus theory of climate change.”

Uh-oh. Forecasts not matching reality. Could it be the forecast methodology and assumptions are wrong and are not matching up to the scientific reality because man made global warming does not exist?

11) On February 18, 2013, the Space and Science Research Center (SSCR), located in Orlando, Florida, issued is annual Global Climate Status Report for 2013. According to this organization’s website, the Mission of the SSRC is “to provide an independent un-biased resource for governments, media, corporations, and the people on important areas of scientific research, in particular the cause and effects of climate change, and to serve as an objective resource for the planning and analysis of the next climate change - predicted to be one of decades of record cold weather.”

What? A climate research group of scientists is predicting a coming a global COOLING period ahead, not global warming???? How can that be, Al Gore said that ALL climate scientists agreed that global warming was an oncoming issue? How dare the SSCR differ from Al!

I do not know anything about the SSRC. For all I know, they could be a front for the oil and coal industries and their research is pure propaganda. However, they apparently do deserve a hearing, a peer scientific review of their findings to either verify or refute their findings and conclusions. That is what science is all about. Because, if they are right, and a global cooling/ice age is about to hit us, that is a whole different set of problems and agendas vs. global warming. 

12) Forbes magazine reported on a recent survey of over 1,000 geoscientists and engineers regarding global warming. The survey was done by peer-reviewed Organization Studies. 

The bottom line results found that only 36% of those scientists surveyed agree with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) claim that human activity is causing a serious global warming problem. A majority of scientists in the survey believe that nature is the primary cause of recent global warming and/or that future global warming will not be a very serious problem. 

The article goes into detail defending the results and comparing the findings to assertions of global warming advocates who, rather debunking these findings with science, seem more content to attack the integrity of the survey and those who participated in it.

13) The United Kingdom’s Daily Mail newspaper reported in an October 13, 2012 article on the latest worldwide temperature readings and research:

• The world stopped getting warmer almost 16 years ago, according to new data released in early October, 2012. 
• The temperature readings and findings come from over 3,000 measuring points, on land and sea, around the world. 
• The latest measurements reveal that from the beginning of 1997 until August 2012, there was no discernible rise in aggregate global temperatures. 
• This means that the ‘plateau’ or ‘pause’ in global warming has now lasted for about the same time as the previous period when temperatures rose, 1980 to 1996. 
• Before that, world temperatures had been stable or declining for about 40 years. 
• Since 1880, the first time reliable temperature statistics have been kept, the average world temperatures are up only .75 degree Celsius. 

Judith Curry, who is the head of the climate science department at Georgia Tech university, said it was clear that the computer models used to predict future warming were ‘deeply flawed’. Is she right? I do not know but she is a scientist whose view is worthy of considering, especially based on the non-warming of the earth over the past 15 years.

14) Last fall, Hurricane Sandy devastated the Middle Atlantic states and caused widespread destruction with high winds and flooding. On cue, before the death and destruction had been totaled, Al Gore was out and accusing those of us who had our doubts about global warming to shut up because Hurricane Sandy, one storm, proved global warming or climate change. However, he failed to mention the following realities: 

• In September of 1938, a hurricane grew to become a huge Category 5 hurricane before making landfall as a Category 3 hurricane, obviously a huge storm, larger in ferocity than Hurricane Sandy’s Category 2 status. 
• The hurricane glanced by NYC and hit land on Long Island on September 21. 
• The hurricane was estimated to have killed between 682 and 800 people, more than Hurricane Sandy is expected to have killed despite higher population density than Long Island in 1938. 
• The 1938 storm damaged or destroyed over 57,000 homes and caused property losses estimated at $306 million ($4.7 billion in 2012). 
• As late as 1951, damaged trees and buildings were still seen in the affected areas. 
• According to Wikipedia, this 1938 storm “remains the most powerful, costliest and deadliest hurricane in recent New England history, eclipsed in landfall intensity perhaps only by the Great Colonial Hurricane of 1635, 377 years before Hurricane Sandy." 
• The Great September Gale of 1815 which hit New York City directly as a Category 3 hurricane, caused extensive damage and created an inlet that separated the Long Island resort towns of the Rockaways and Long Beach into two separate barrier islands. 
• The 1821 Category 4 storm made four separate landfalls in Virginia, New Jersey, New York, and southern New England, created the highest recorded storm surge in Manhattan of nearly 13 feet and severely impacted the farming regions of Long Island and southern New England. 
• The 1869 Saxby Gale affected areas in Northern New England, decimating the Maine coastline and the Canadian Outer Banks. It was the last major hurricane to affect New England until the 1938 storm. 
• The 1893 New York hurricane, a Category 2 storm, directly hit the city itself, causing a great storm surge that pummeled the coastline, completely removing the Long Island resort town of Hog Island. 

Thus, to think that one storm proves man made global warming is ludicrous and certainly not scientific reasoning or research. Stronger storms over the past few centuries, before global warming could have even been considered, have come and gone with the resultant damage and loss of life. 

15) According to an article in Salon.com that was summarized in the September 28, 2013 issue of The Week magazine, carbon dioxide global warming gases in the U.S. are at their lowest point in 20 years, down 14% from their peak in 2007 as a result of fracking and the expanded use of natural gas, which is less damaging to the environment than coal and oil. This reduction is resulting in 500 megatons worth of emissions not going into the air, which is twice the amount of positive impact than what the original Kyoto agreement had on every other country in the world. 

16) An article from the Washington Post that was summarized in the March 1, 2013 issue of The Week reported similar numbers when it claimed that U.S. carbon emissions had fallen 13% relative to 2005 levels with a large part of that due to the increase use of natural gas and wind power. 

17) A Reason magazine article that was summarized in the January 18, 2013 issue of The Week magazine reported that U.S. power plant emissions were down 12% from their peak in 2007 even though the economy is larger than it was six years ago, mainly due to the wider use of natural gas. 

18) And finally, a Business Week graph in the January 7, 2013 issue of Business Week claimed that the demand and use of coal is up in every region of the world except the United States, with coal energy production almost catching up to oil energy production, not a good thing if you believe in global warming. 

The continual preaching and whining by Gore and others like himself get really tiring over time. To accuse folks like myself, global warming doubters, is an insult to our beliefs and trust in science. We believe that unbiased scientific research and sane and rational approaches to a problem are the correct way to go, not the pop science and sensationalism that Gore and others scream from the roof tops without looking at ALL of the research

So please, believers of global warming, or climate change if you prefer, a little sensitivity to those of us that feel, based on scientific processes and violation of scientific processes, that there is a valid scientific reason to doubt man made global warming and climate change. Yelling at us and calling us ignorant is no way to arrive at a conclusive consensus of what is going on in the environment and what to do about it. 

Besides, based on the 18 points we have made above and yesterday, there is plenty of scientific research and analyses to prove that if anything, we have as much science and proof that man made global warming and climate change DO NOT exist, despite Al Gore’s rantings. 

Polar ice packs are growing, temperatures are flat, the earth has been hotter in its past than today, some science is indicating global cooling, the premier scientific lab in the world (CERN) says no to global warming, and anyway, the U.S. has done an outstanding job, without government and political class help, in reducing the nation’s carbon footprint, something everyone should be happy with. 

In the next two days, we will review further proof that the global warming, climate change hysteria needs to chill as we review the latest research and science which occurred after we reported on the 18 points we just made. After that, we will propose an approach that makes for a cleaner world and handles global warming regardless of whether it is a myth or a reality.

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

The Lamest Set Of Politicians EVER - Only 18 Trivial Laws Passed In The First Seven Months Of 2013

In the first seven months of 2012, the political class in Washington had managed to pass and enact a meager 54 pieces of legislation. At that time, it was viewed as the least productive set of Federal politicians in the history of the United States. A pathetic performance from so-called leaders, people who on average earn more than three times the annual income of the average American family.

But, as we have observed many times in this blog, just when you think our politicians cannot get any worse, they manage to under perform even more. According to an article in a recent issue of Business Week magazine, in the first seven months of 2013, Washington politicians have managed to enact a meager 18 pieces of legislation. Beyond pathetic.

Now, I have never supported passing legislation for the sake of passing legislation. Far more often than not, when politicians pass laws to resolve a problem they end up making the problem worse or waste far more taxpayer wealth. 

But if minimal legislation enactment resolves major issues, I am all for it. And Lord knows we are suffering through a ton of weighty problems in this country:

1. Unemployment is chronic and has set records for being above 7% for the longest period in our history.
2. Our national debt is any almost incomprehensible $17 TRILLION, a per American debt load of well over $50,000 per person.
3. Our public schools have been under educating our kids for decades relative to kids around the world in countries who spend far less than we do to educate our kids.
4. We have been fighting a losing war on drugs for decades which has created violent international drug cartels without fixing the original problem with drug addiction.
5. Our borders leak and we have over 10 million illegal immigrants hiding in this country.
6. Our health care costs are ever escalating and Obama Care is making the situation worse every day.
7. Decades after the oil shocks of the 1970s, we still do not have a coherent national energy policy and strategy.

If Congress and Obama enacted only seven pieces of legislation but those seven pieces resolved these seven problems, I would be ecstatic. 

But, passing only 18 pieces of legislation in seven months is really pathetic. And what is beyond pathetic, as documented in Business Week, is what these 18 pieces of legislation were actually for. Trust me when I tell you that none of the 18 were worth the pay rate of Obama and the 535 members of Congress:

1) Four of the pieces of legislation were not new laws at all, they only renewed existing laws:

• Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2013
• Animal Drug and Animal Generic Drug User Fee Reauthorization Act of 2013.
• Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Reauthorization Act of 2013.
• Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act, needed to avoid a government shutdown.

2) Two of the eighteen pieces of legislation were not renewals of existing laws but were simply small tweaks to existing laws:

• H.R. 475 amended the IRS code, adding a $.75 excise tax on some flu vaccines.
• S.716 modified the Stop Trading On Congressional Knowledge Act of 2012

3) One of the eighteen pieces of legislation undid an existing law:

• The Reducing Flight Delay Act of 2013.

4) That leaves 11 remaining, underwhelming pieces of legislation:

• NO Budget NO Pay Act of 2013 which stopped salary payments to Congressional members if their respective houses of Congress did not produce a government budget proposal on time. Doesn’t stipulate that the budget is good or has been passed, just makes sure that each house has a budget document on time, no matter how lame it is.
• The District Of Columbia Chief Financial Officer Vacancy Act which allowed the acting chief financial officer to act as the DC chief financial officer until the job is officially filled.
• The Stolen Valor Act of 2012 which made lying about your military service for financial gain a crime.
• The Freedom Fish Act which allowed Tennessee and Kentucky fishermen to fish in areas that the Army Corp Of Engineers wanted to ban fishing from.
• H.R. 360 which awarded a Congressional Gold Medal to 1963 Sixteenth Baptist Church bombing victims.
• H.R. 324 awarded the same medal to a World War II American/Canadian commando unit.
• The Disaster Relief Appropriations Act sent $60 billion to Hurricane Sandy victims, possibly the only real piece of legislation passed in the past seven months.
• H.R. 1151 ordered the Secretary of State to endorse Taiwan’s attendance at an international aviations regulations meeting. You cannot make up this nonsense.
• H.R. 1071 let’s the U.S. Mint print coins for baseball’s 75th anniversary of its Hall of Fame opening.
• H.R. 2383 renamed a bridge in the St. Louis area for recently passed away baseball legend Stan Musial.

Again, you could not make up such an inane, underwhelming list of legislative accomplishments if you tried. Not a single one of these enacted bills will have any impact on the seven major issues we listed above, issues that touch the lives of every single American in one way or another. 

These eighteen pieces of legislation, giving out medals, renaming a bridge, opening up fishing grounds, etc. should have been handled in the first hour of the first day of their first meeting back in January. It should not have taken seven months to come up with this garbage.

How much did this cost the American taxpayer? If you assume the average Congressional member makes about $170,000 a year and throw in the President’s salary, on a seven month prorated basis, just the salary cost to come up with these 18 pieces of legislation is well over $50 million. I maintain that we would have been better off as a nation if we had saved the $50 million and did not have to deal with these 18 pieces of legislation.

But the cost is far higher than $50 million. This estimate is just for salaries. It does not include the loaded benefits of Washington politicians and does not include the salary and benefits of the thousands of Congressional and Presidential staff members who worked to produce this lame list of legislative “accomplishments.” I would venture a guess that the American taxpayer paid over a billion dollars for this legislative non-accomplishment.

But the far greater cost is that we have allowed the Washington political class to waste and wallow away another seven months of inaction and we are no closer to resolving any of the major issues facing the nation. Seven months have gone by and unemployment is still chronic, our debt is still going up, our kids are still getting under educated, etc. That is the true loss and true embarrassment of this, the lamest set of Washington politicians in the history of our nation.

If you feel the same way and are tired of their lameness, please join our cause to implement term limits for all Federal politicians at the following website:

www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com

Because really, after a paltry passage of eighteen bills in seven months, bills that are next to useless when running the affairs of the nation, how much worse could it get? 

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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

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

Guest Commentators Christmas Week Specials, Part 1: An Ode To The Role Of Big Government (Not!) By Dr. Elaina F. George

This Christmas week we will be sharing the views of other Americans from across the country regarding freedom and liberty. These citizens also realize that we currently are living with a political class that has enlarged government from a servant of the people into an overbearing, intrusive, obese waste of resources that is endangering our personal and economic futures, much along the lines of Jabba The Hutt from Star Wars.

Today's post is an essay on government ineffectiveness and inefficiency from Dr. Elaina George, a member of the national advisory council of the Project 21 black leadership network. She is a board-certified otolaryngologist and host of a weekly talk radio show, "Medicine On Call," that explores health issues and the politics of medicine. Comments may be sent to Project21@nationalcenter.org. She is assoicated with Project 21, the National Leadership Network Of  Conservative African-Americans.

Dr. George touches on the many shortcomings and overreaching of government including the failure of public/government schools, the government funding of obesity in the country, the "nanny state," and the loss of freedom in this country.


**************************************

An Ode To The Role Of Big Government


by Elaina F. George, MD 

In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, a vision of the federal government as our savior is being perpetuated by the media and the left.

This romanticized vision of the benefits of an ever-expanding government assuming command of everything — from disaster relief to managing our waistlines to promoting breastfeeding to mandatory vaccinations and to how we live and die — needs to be given serious thought.

What price are we paying to allow the government to extend far beyond its constitutional mandate to "provide for the common defense" and "promote the general welfare" to the degree that America is descending into a nanny state that doesn't "secure the blessings of liberty"?

Despite the praise for the government's response to Hurricane Sandy, the sight of people standing in lines for hours for gasoline or huddled in their homes with limited or no supplies of food and water seems to provide an answer to the question.

Dependence on the government has led to potentially tragic vulnerability. As a people, too many of us have voluntarily ceded our individual authority and responsibility to a system designed to treat us as a collective group of children incapable of making decisions for our own good and the security of our families.

Fear is the predominant driving force encouraging so many to remain passive — apparently valuing safety above the freedom to speak, think and strive to achieve the full extent of one's God-given talent — which is systematically stripped away by government intervention.

Does the good of the many really outweigh the needs of the few when we are moving ever more rapidly towards creating a society that is increasingly more petty, selfish and small-minded in the name of fairness and spreading the wealth around?

Some might consider it a fair compromise if the government actually took measures to protect us from harm. But the assumption really doesn't meet the reality:

• Instead of the endless campaigns against obesity that rely on proposed moratoriums on Big Gulps and large servings of movie popcorn, how about scaling back taxpayer subsidies on sugar and corn? Studies suggest that high fructose corn syrup plays a substantial role in rising obesity rates despite the government essentially paying for its production. Yet the government promotes them and props them up with public monies.
• Instead of watching the cancer rates rise and simply spending increasing amounts of money on treatment leading to exploding health care costs, there are those who say that the government should look more into controversial practices such as organic farming and genetically-modified foods.
• The government should stop promoting policies that lock children in bloated, wasteful and ineffective public schools where teachers and administrators essentially pride themselves for fostering mediocrity — especially among the poor and minority children. Instead of acquiescing to recent decisions such as the one in Florida, where the state's board of education set academic goals on the basis of race, perhaps it is time to give power back to parents, teachers and the children who are left without a choice and are unable to compete successfully in our society.

Chest-thumping about the wonders of FEMA and the alleged efficiency of the federal government leaves lingering doubts. Remember the people affected by Hurricane Katrina who were forced into formaldehyde-laced trailers? How about the prolonged fiasco surrounding the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico?

This is the recent past — government has not changed. And declining goods and services in the northeast may yet reveal that a big government hasn't really been the solution to Hurricane Sandy's victims.

Expanding government can still be controlled. But America is coming to a potential point of no return. Emotions cannot be allowed to dominate the promulgation of policy. An explosion of government interference will not help our nation, and — once big enough — cannot be stopped.

Published by the National Center for Public Policy Research. Reprints permitted provided source is credited. New Visions Commentaries reflect the views of their author, and not necessarily those of Project 21, other Project 21 members, or the National Center for Public Policy Research, its board or staff.

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:

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http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

Wishing Al Gore Would Shut Up, Why I Am A Global Warming Doubter But Still A Believer In Science - Part 1

Between the upcoming elections, the ever increasing political class insanity, and the dire economic strait’s the political class has imposed on us, we have not had a lot of time to discuss global warming. However, Al Gore has brought the topic back to the forefront with his typical shallow, and in this case uncaring comments, regarding the tenuous and inane connection between Hurricane Sandy and global warming.

I say uncaring because as I write this, several days after Gore tried to make the connection of Sandy to global warming, thousands and thousands of people were without a combination of power, shelter, food, and hope. This was not a time to stoke you own ego and views, it is a time to help those Americans that need help.

If man made global warming is a reality, it will not be cured in the next few weeks. Mr. Gore should have just shut up for a while, there will be plenty of time to continue the debate without distracting the news networks, the country, and America from starting the hurricane support and recovery efforts. But having a politician put himself in the background is always a little too much to expect.

But egomaniacs need to be in the news, maybe Mr. Gore should have considered some weather history as it relates to the northeast. Let’s start with the Hurricane of 1938, 74 years ago and way before the theory of global warming was formed. Research on the impact of that long ago storm uncovers the following details:

• In September of 1938, the hurricane grew to become a huge Category 5 hurricane on the before making landfall as a Category 3 hurricane, obviously a huge storm, larger in ferocity than Hurricane Sandy’s Cateogry 2 status.
• The hurricane glanced by NYC and hit land on Long Island on September 21.
• The hurricane was estimated to have killed between 682 and 800 people, more than Hurricane Sandy is expected ot have killed despite higher population density than Long Island in 1938.
• The 1938 storm damaged or destroyed over 57,000 homes and caused property losses estimated at $306 million ($4.7 billion in 2012).
• As late as 1951, damaged trees and buildings were still seen in the affected areas.
• According to Wikipedia, this 1938 storm “remains the most powerful, costliest and deadliest hurricane in recent New England history, eclipsed in landfall intensity perhaps only by the Great Colonial Hurricane of 1635, 377 years before Hurricane Sandy.

Thus, Hurricane Sandy is not this once in history event, it was more than equaled a very long time ago. But Wikipedia also does an in depth history of other northeast storms:

• The Great September Gale of 1815 (the term hurricane was not yet common in the American vernacular), which hit New York City directly as a Category 3 hurricane, caused extensive damage and created an inlet that separated the Long Island resort towns of the Rockaways and Long Beach into two separate barrier islands.
• The 1821 Norfolk and Long Island, a Category 4 storm which made four separate landfalls in Virginia, New Jersey, New York, and southern New England, created the highest recorded storm surge in Manhattan of nearly 13 feet and severely impacted the farming regions of Long Island and southern New England.
• The 1869 Saxby Gale affected areas in Northern New England, decimating the Maine coastline and the Canadian Outer Banks. It was the last major hurricane to affect New England until the 1938 storm.
• The 1893 New York hurricane, a Category 2 storm, directly hit the city itself, causing a great storm surge that pummeled the coastline, completely removing the Long Island resort town of Hog Island.

Thus, to think that one storm proves man made global warming is ludicrous. Stronger storms over the past few centuries, before global warming could have even been considered, have come and gone with the resultant damage and loss of life.

This continual preaching and whining by Gore and others like himself get really tiring over time. To accuse folks like myself, global warming doubters, is an insult to our beliefs and trust in science. We believe that unbiased scientific research and sane and rational approach to a problem is the correct way to go, not the pop science and sensationalism that Gore and others scream from the roof tops without looking at ALL of the research.

We have covered this garbage science in two previous posts:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2012/10/i-am-global-warming-doubter-and.html

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2012/02/i-am-global-warming-doubter-and.html

These two posts went into great detail to show why we are global warming doubters, based on research and science, not Al Gore.

However, since we did those two post, additional research and science on man made global warming has come to the surface. The United Kingdom’s Daily Mail newspaper reported in an October 13, 2012 article on the latest worldwide temperature readings and research:

• The world stopped getting warmer almost 16 years ago, according to new data released in early October.
• The temperature readings and findings come from over 3,000 measuring points, on land and sea, around the world.
• The latest measurements reveal that from the beginning of 1997 until August 2012, there was no discernible rise in aggregate global temperatures.
• This means that the ‘plateau’ or ‘pause’ in global warming has now lasted for about the same time as the previous period when temperatures rose, 1980 to 1996.
• Before that, world temperatures had been stable or declining for about 40 years.
• Since 1880, the first time reliable temperature statistics have been kept, the average world temperatures are up only .75 degree Celsius.

As always, scientists had differing views of what the data means:

• Professor Phil Jones, director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, dismissed the significance of the plateau, saying that 15 or 16 years is too short a period from which to draw conclusions. The professor did not provide any insight on what the proper period would be.
• Judith Curry, who is the head of the climate science department at Georgia Tech university, said it was clear that the computer models used to predict future warming were ‘deeply flawed’.

Who to believe? Whatever the case, there is substantial SCIENTIFIC proof out there in the world that man made global warming is not a reality. Unfortunately, our media industry has deteriorated so far away from integrity that we seldom hear about contrary evidence against global warming, instead having to sit through the non-scientific rantings of people like Al Gore.

But what if man made global warming is a reality? Well, rather than continuing to yell at each other, we proposed a solution to this potential problem in the following post:

http://www.loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2012/02/united-states-of-purple-presidency_09.html

This solution would solve many real problems and address the potential problem of man made global warming in such a way that was market driven, was fair, kept any additional wealth out of the hands of our politicians, and did not need a huge government bureaucracy that would likely be inefficient and ineffective, like every other government bureaucracy.

On Monday we will examine a logical way to approach the problem that is much more coherent and sane than Al Gore ranting about a single weather event that has not happened in the last 74 years. I contend that my approach is a more realistic than his. And my way does not distract the world from the suffering that Hurricane Sandy vicitms are still living through.

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.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment/