February, 2014 Political Class Insanity, Bonus Post: Syphilis In Peru, Ungratefulness In Afghanistan, Going Postal and More

Every month we write about the latest insanity and idiocy that the American political class generates every thirty days or so. The first post in this month’s series can be accessed at:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2014/02/february-2014-political-class-insanity.html

The challenge of writing about this type of political incompetence is not that there is not enough to write about. Just the opposite: you cannot keep up with the wasteful spending, ineffective programs and operations of government, the idiotic comments, etc. As soon as you dare to think you have it all covered for this month, more insanity pops up.

Thus, while we thought yesterday’s post would be the last for this month, by the time we wrote and posted the first five insanity posts, more insanity popped up, insanity which we will cover below:

1) We have a $17 TRILLION national debt. We just cut the retirement benefits that had been promised to our brave military veterans. We have almost 50 million Americans who are receiving food assistance from the Federal government every month. Despite all this, since 2012, the American taxpayer has paid out $464,272 to determine why gay men get syphilis in Peru. Not America, Peru:

“Syphilis remains an uncontrolled infectious disease globally, with high prevalence and incidence in certain high risk populations, affecting more than 20 percent of men who have sex with men (MSM) in Peru…The incidence of syphilis in MSM in Peru is about 9 cases per 100 person-years. We are proposing a study to improve our understanding of syphilis epidemiology and molecular biology, particularly among MSM.” according to the grant, awarded by the Federal government’s National Institutes of Health (NIH).

A few observations:

• How many American homeless could have been fed for that nearly half a million dollars?
• Adding insult to injury, the money went to a Peruvian university to do the study, it cannot even be justified that an American university using American citizens was doing the study and being paid with American taxpayer money.
• They could have saved the money and just asked me the question they are trying to answer: gay men get syphilis in Peru because they have unprotected sex with other men in Peru. Duh.

With all of the economic, financial, and debt issues we have in this country, this type of nonsensical spending has to stop.

2) We have often talked about how the past so-called farm bills that Washington has passed have almost always been a legal way for corrupt politicians to profit and help out big business, always to the detriment of America’s taxpayers and their health. Just in the past few days we reviewed an article and analysis by the Washington Examiner that showed how rich, non-farming politicians, lobbyists, etc., are able to get farm subsidies even thought they physically live In D.C., New York City, and Chicago, none of which are close to being farm meccas.

Well, Congress has just passed the latest rendition of the legislation and all it needs now is Obama’s signature. Did the Washington politicians clean up their act and clean up the farm trough of wasteful spending and corruption? 

Apparently not. Kendric Ward of Watchdog.org characterizes the latest farm bill as “the ultimate in pork-barrel politics.” Among some of the bigger insults to taxpayers:

• Government price supports on sugar will continue to force Americans to pay twice what global consumers pay for sugar.
• Taxpayers provide loans totaling just over $1 billion to sugar producers every year, but in 2012 only three sugar producer firms received the bulk of the money. Want to bet that those three firms also made a lot of campaign contributions to incumbent politicians?
• Ward claims that junk-food additives, such as obesity producing high-fructose corn syrup, will continue to be subsidized.
• Those subsidies are enough to buy every kid under 18 in the country eight 2-liter bottles of soda every year. 
• Major, wealthy corporations including McDonald’s, Fruit of the Loom and other giant agricultural companies and trade associations will continue to receive funds from the $200 million-per-year Market Access Program, which subsidizes ad campaigns for large American farm related companies

Corporate welfare for rich companies. Subsidizing obesity which is a main driver of high health costs in this country. Higher consumer costs. Just another day in the office for the most inept set of politicians that Washington has ever seen.

3) We deployed military forces into Afghanistan over twelve years ago to fight both Bin Laden ‘s followers and the Afghan Taliban who were supporting them. We have probably spent over a half a trillion dollars in protecting the presidential administration of Afghan president Hamid Karzai. Thousands of American soldiers have died and been wounded in carrying out this assignment. 

We have propped up his administration, one that is infested and infected with rampant corruption, with cash and other enticements that have probably made him and his accomplices rich beyond anyone’s dreams.

And what do we have to show for it? According to a recent interview that Karzai gave to the London Times:

• The Taliban, who we have been fighting and protecting him from, are not his enemy, they are his “brothers.”
• Americans are his “rivals.”
• Americans “did not work for me, they worked against me.”
• Although the United States spent hundreds of billions of dollars in Afghanistan during the Afghan war, Mr. Karzai said the money did not help him: “The money they should have paid to the police they paid to private security firms and creating militias who caused lawlessness, corruption and highway robbery.” 
• In other words, he ran a pure, and honest government operation, it was the Americans and their billions of dollars that corrupted his nation.
• He had not talked to President Obama in over seven months even though the U.S. has spent so much money and blood in the country, making both of them an insult to those that died and were wounded in the battling.

No doubt that Afghanistan has been one of the biggest con jobs ever pulled on the American public, made possible by the incompetence in both the Bush and Obama administrations and the corruptible Afghan politicians. Those Afghan politicians fleeced and scammed our politicians for 12 long and expensive years, leaving us poorer and nothing to show for our effort. 

Unfortunately, it took twelve long years for our politicians to finally figure it out. Our military forces cannot get out of the country fast enough and leave the ungrateful and despicable Karzai to his Taliban “friends,” friends who I think will end the friendship quite quickly after American and NATO forces leave the country.

4) The U.S. Post Office lost $5 billion in 2013. Their first class mail volumes have been disappearing quickly as various forms of electronic communications, e.g. online bill payment, Skype, Facebook, Twitter, email, etc., make traditional first class snail mail less and less attractive. It is a part of the Federal government who has shown absolutely no ability to institute a functioning, useable, and hacker proof information systems process, with Obama Care’s failures just the latest in a long line of failed Federal government data systems efforts.

In the face of these realities, U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren thinks that it would be a good idea for the U.S. Post Office to get into the banking business to offset its declining revenue stream. In a recently published op-ed piece in the Huffington Post, Warren cited an Office of the Inspector General report that found 68 million Americans have no checking or savings account and rely on non-bank financial services like payday loans and check cashing to the tune of $89 billion in 2012.

Warren sees this as a lucrative area for the Postal Service to get into to boost sagging revenues: “The OIG explored the possibility of the USPS offering basic banking services—bill paying, check cashing, small loans—to its customers. With post offices and postal workers already on the ground, USPS could partner with banks to make a critical difference for millions of Americans who don't have basic banking services because there are almost no banks or bank branches in their neighborhoods.”

A couple of problems here, Senator:

• Did you ever think there are not banking services in these neighborhoods because private banking experts do not see a way to make profits in these neighborhoods? Trust me, if there was money to be made with basic banking services, someone would be filling that market void today already.
• How many different banks would the Post Office have to interface with and do you really think the Post Office and the Federal government has the wherewithal to cope with the different money handling and data systems interfaces necessary for all of those different banks, given the disaster that is Obama Care’s systems and procedures?
• Many of us have probably had a wide range of experiences dealing the Post Office. I would bet there are far more negative experiences than positive experiences, a lot more. Thus, Senator, do we really think that a lot of Americans are going to trust their money to these same people and operations?
• To wipe out the five billion deficit, the Post Office would have to clear almost $17 million a day, six days a week to equal that deficit. Given that the Senator argued for “nothing fancy, just basic bill paying, check cashing, and small dollar loans,” is this enough to make any kind of dent into the unprofitable operation, even if it could be done logistically?

Another half baked Washington idea with no chance of working from an out of touch politician, an idea that takes time away from fixing the major issues of our times of which a fading/declining need for a postal system is not one of them.

Okay let’s review: syphilis in Peru, the next edition of farm corruption and cronyism, ungrateful Afhgans, and a post office idea that has no chance of delivery. Your tax dollars at work, for nothing in return again this month. More insanity next month. Unfortunately.

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

Political Class Craziness, Greed, and Incompetence From Around The World

Although the American political class provides daily examples of craziness, greed, and incompetence, they have not cornered the market on such behavior. Recent news accounts prove that the afflictions of our political class exist elsewhere in the world:

- A November 1, 2010 Associated Press report reviewed the status of a government housing development in New Delhi, India. The original intent of the Adarsh Housing Society shelter effort was to provide affordable shelter to the wounded Indian war veterans, disabled veterans, and the widows of Indian soldiers killed in battle. Sounds like a wonderful concept.

However, according to the article, the effort turned into a huge scam with housing units being sold far below market price to top politicians, their relatives, and retired Indian military generals. Additionally, rather than a regular, six story apartment building, the original plans were never implemented and in their place, a 31 story luxury high rise was built despite violating zoning and environmental laws. The original apartments were budgeted to be sold for about $130,000 but once the political class got involved, the cost of the units in the luxury apartment building now go for about $1.8 million. The highest ranking local politician offered to resign when it was uncovered that his mother-in-law and other relatives had apartments in the luxury high rise.

Sound familiar? The politicians vote themselves the perks while the less fortunate of a society suffer.

- In England, an article in the Daily Mail that was summarized in the November 29, 2010 issue of The Week magazine, reviewed how the new Prime Minister of England, David Cameron, was getting along. Mr. Cameron has been on a government downsizing and expense reduction mission since taking office, reducing Britain's military, government payroll, and other government agencies.

The problem is that he has not taken the same tact with regards to the government agencies and expenses that touch his life. According to the article, he has created a new staff of public relations experts solely dedicated to creating a brand campaign that expands and improves his image. He has created a new job title called "head of e-media" which pays a salary of $120,000 a year and whose duties are only to write about Cameron on blogs and Twitter. He has a personal photographer whose $56,000 a year job is to take positive pictures of Cameron at work and at play. He has a "special advisor" whose sole duty is to tend to the wardrobe needs of him and his family.

Sound familiar? Everyone needs to sacrifice for the good of the country... except for those that are running the country whose wages and the benefits of their jobs far exceed those of the citizens they should be humbly representing.

- According to an article in the London Observer, as summarized in the November 19, 2010 issue of The Week magazine, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi allegedly personally intervened in a police matter in order to get theft charges dropped against a 17 year old belly dancer. The belly dancer claims that the Prime Minister invited her to his personal villa for an "erotic ritual" which involved a cast of naked women. The Prime Minister's response to the accusations: "It's better to have a passion for beautiful girls than to be gay." An offensive remark and certainly not a denial.

The article goes on to summarize past tawdry incidents in Berlusconi's past. These include the promise of jobs for young women in exchange for "their attentions" and the gift of a pricey necklace he gave to an 18 year old woman (Berlusconi is 74 years old.) The article goes on to say that as a result of all of these distractions, the government work and cooperation that needs to take place between Berlusconi and Parliament has brought the Italian government to a virtual standstill.

Sound familiar? Bill Clinton, Eliot Spitzer, Jim MacGreevey, John Ensign, Mark Sanford, Gary Hart, Gary Condit, Larry Craig... Government functions negatively affected by political class sexual exploits.

- According to a Washington Post article by David Ignatius that was summarized in the December 3, 2010 issue of The Week magazine, the Afghan government and NATO military leaders have been negotiating with a Taliban representative in an effort to find a middle ground for peace talks. Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour has been flown via British military helicopter from the countryside to the capital of Kabul a number of times to hold face-to-face negotiations with the Afghan president and has been given large sums of money for his trouble. The top U.S. general in Afghanistan hailed the talks and negotiations as a path to reconciliation and peace.

One problem with this effort. The Taliban negotiator is not Mansour but a total imposter who apparently has no connection to the Taliban whatsoever. Officials now believe that it was just a con game played on the upper echelons of the Afghan government and British and American military, perpetuated by an individual whose sole aim was to get some money for himself. Maybe that is why the Taliban constantly claimed that they were not in negotiations with the Afghan government, because they really weren't.

Sound familiar? Didn't a Virginia  husband and wife gain deep entry to a formal White House dinner even though they were not invited and had absolutely no ties to the hosts, the Obamas, or any of the guests? Reminds me of an old Far Side cartoon where a bunch of bears are standing around a coffin when the bear in the coffin sits up and shouts: "I was hibernating, don't you guys ever take a pulse?" Doesn't the U.S. government ever take a pulse or check an id?

- Another article in the December 3, 2010 issue of The Week magazine reviewed how the Mexican government is urging any Mexicans, who are living in the United States and who are returning to Mexico for the Christmas holidays, to travel in convoys when they return. This is a safety suggestion since many returning Mexicans are known to be carrying money and gifts and could be targets of the drug cartels, robbers, and kidnappers. The government has actually set up a convoy coordination agency and suggests that all holiday traveling be done in daylight.

Sound familiar? Fortunately, this situation has not yet happened in the United States. But unless we come up with a strategy that effectively addresses the drug problem in this country, who knows when and how deeply the Mexican drug cartel-induced  lawlessness will cross the border and prompt similar warnings in this country?

See, we are not the only country who has to deal with corrupt, pompous, sexually active, and incompetent politicians. Makes you wonder what type of people are drawn to the world of politics, regardless of where they live. The sad part is we are subjected to their craziness, greed, and incompetence without ever getting a major problem solved that would affect a large segment of the population.

That is why term limits, as explained in Step 39 of "Love My Country, Loathe My Government," is a good idea for this country as well as the rest of the world. Better to get a hard working, dedicated politician for a short amount of time in office than be saddled with a long term politician that gets nothing done accept find more and more ways to enrich himself and slow down the functions of government.

And while we are at it, we should also implement Steps 26 and 29 from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government." Step 26 would implement a process to address the drug problem in the United States and Step 29 would implement a process to address the illegal immigration problem in the country, two steps that are needed to prevent the Mexican convoy problem from becoming a United States convoy problem. That is one act of craziness we do not need in this country.


Our recent 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/

More Of The Mess That Is Afghanistan

Consider some recent news articles whose information has been accumulated and summarized in recent editions of The Week magazine, all of which illustrate what a mess Afghanistan is:

• The November 5, 2010 issue of The Week magazine reported that Afghan President Hamid Karzai regularly receives bags of cash from the United States main menace in the word, Iran. These Iranian cash deliveries total about $2 million a year and are a regular part of the Afghanistan government's operations, according to Karzai. He also stated that he also receives regular cash deliveries from the U.S. government, a claim that our government has disavowed.
• In the same article, Transparency International's most recent list of the most corrupt countries in the world ranks Afghanistan as the second most corrupt country in the world, trailing only Somalia. Considering that Somalia really has no central and functioning government anymore, you could make the case that Afghanistan is the most corrupt government in the world.
• The October 29, 2010 issue of The Week magazine contained an article that reviewed the recent elections that were held throughout Afghanistan. According to the article, election fraud was so widespread that almost 25% of the ballots representing over one million votes have been thrown. Reasons for invalidating so many ballots included ballot box stuffing, vote buying, and intimidation by armed thugs that prevented people from getting to voting stations.
• According to a short article that appeared in the St. Petersburg Times last week, The Defense Department, the State Department, and the U.S. Agency For International development, who spend the most U.S. taxpayer money on Afghanistan reconstruction projects, cannot easily show where they spent their taxpayer budget dollars. The do not track the money the pay contractors in any kind of shared database according a special inspector general, which is important since between 2007 and 2009, almost 7,000 contractors received almost $18 billion of U.S. taxpayer money. The budget processes are so bad that Afghanistan projects cannot be easily separated form other U.S. funded projects around the world. There was no mention in the article, and I have not seen any mention elsewhere, that this money is being spent efficiently and effectively, helping to rebuild Afghanistan and helping us win the war. Given the ineffectiveness of most programs run by our political class, one would probably be safe to assume that the reconstruction program is not going well while it eats up and wastes billions of taxpayer dollars.
• An article from the October 29, 2010 issue of The Week magazine reviewed how Karzai's government is actually in negotiations with the Taliban, the very forces that U.S. and NATO forces are battling every day. The general tone of those commenting in the article on these negotiations is that the fighting war we have been conducting over the past nine years cannot be won for a number of reasons, including the widespread culture of corruption that pervades the country and the fact that the Taliban know that Obama will start pulling down troop levels within a year. The most disturbing aspect of this whole fiasco, as outlined in the article, is an accusation that the Pakistani intelligence agency, the ISI, is really an ally of the Taliban and fully supports the Taliban effort despite the claim by the Pakistani government that the are our allies in the battle against terrorism. As proof, the article points out that the original leader of the Taliban, based on remarks from an unnamed NATO officer, Mullah Muhammad Omar, has not been involved in these talks since it is not in the interest of Pakistan for these talks to succeed. The unnamed source claims that the ISI protects Omar, helping him travel between the cities of Quetta and Karachi. The article also asserts that the ISI is likely actively protecting Osama Bin Laden and his closest advisors in homes in northwest Pakistan and that "nobody in al Qaida is living in a cave."

What a mess. Billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars wasted on reconstruction projects that are either non-existent or noneffective, inadequate government budget controls and tracking, a corrupt government that does not show any urgency to become uncorrupt, fraudulent elections, our Afghan allies cozying up to our enemy (Iran) and our Pakistani allies that are trying to control the events in Afghanistan to their benefit, not ours, while they protect our two most hunted enemies, Omar and Bin Laden.

This all adds up to the growing feeling that we will  not be able to win militarily anytime soon and that Obama's deadline for withdrawal will only sustain the Taliban and their associated terrorists until we leave. One gets the feeling that we are heading towards a Vietnam ending. In that situation we got the North Vietnamese and South Vietnamese to negotiate a settlement, allowing the U.S. to pull out, fully knowing that the settlement was good for as long as the North Vietnamese held off attacking and taking over the South. Once they attacked, the settlement was useless. Same scenario here: Karzai and the Taliban will enter into some type of agreement, giving the U.S. and NATO a window for withdrawal, at which point the Taliban will restore themselves to power a decade after we ran them out of town. The settlement will be useless.

Thus, we will have come full circle to where we were in 2001: Omar running the country, Bin Laden being given safe haven and Pakistan, our supposed ally, pulling the strings. The only difference would have been the untold billions of dollars wasted and the thousands of young American killed and wounded. What a mess.

One can only debate what would have happened if the political class had had some degree of focus in this mess. Bush threw the Taliban out of office but then lost focus and allowed them to rearm and grow while he launched the disaster that is Iraq. I wonder what would have happened if Obama had spent half as much effort on Afghanistan as he as spent over the past month trying to get fellow Democrats elected. No focus on anybody's part and brave Americans have died as a result.

The political class needs to make a hard decision, something that they have never been very good at. Our politicians either need to go all in and try to win the war, understanding the Pakistan is not our ally and making the necessary adjustments to our relationship and that Karzai will continue to play us for fools as long as we allow him to run the second most corrupt country in the world. If we are not willing to stomach those types of changes, then we should get out of the country tomorrow, saving lives and taxpayers' money in the process. It would be messy but to continue the current state of mess is like death by a thousand cuts and the end result will be the same, we leave the country and the Taliban come back into power.

We can only hope that our politicians thoroughly think through a future situation before they commit us militarily again, anywhere in the world. We cannot afford the cost in dollars and lives when a political class does not fully commit to a well thought out, focused, finite plan.



Our new 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://www.realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/