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This is our fifth in this month’s series on political class insanity, our monthly view of how idiotic our current set of politicians have become in their operation of American government at all levels. We are well on our way to setting the one month’s record, currently eight, of blog posts needed to cover all of the lunacy they generate in one month.
Yesterday, we examined how the city of Oahu was likely to become one of the next “Detroits” from a municipal bankruptcy perspective, with its politicians running up high expense with no way to pay for them. We learned that a former mayor of New Orleans was recently indicted, having taken advantage to growth his personal wealth as a consequence of Hurricane Katrina rather than focus on helping his city’s suffering citizens. And finally, we learned how a military weapons program refused to die even thought the Air Force, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the White House wanted to kill it but corporate lobbying and its money kept it alive.
Well, today prepare for more of the same incompetence, wasted spending, and other lunacy from our current set of politicians.
1) According to the United Liberty website on July 30, 2013, Congressman Justin Amash was able to cross party lines and combine an impressive number of supporters, from both parties in Congress, to support his amendment to keep the NSA from collecting data from innocent Americans. As you probably know, the Obama administration has been using the NSA to collect just about every piece of electronic communications of every American even though the vast majority of us are doing nothing illegal or wrong. This is a gross violation of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution.
In spite of the impressive cross party effort, Congressman Amash’s amendment failed when voted on by just a handful of votes. However, once United Liberty’s researchers, via an organization called MapLight, took a closer look at the election campaign donation data from the top defense contractors in the country, those companies that get rich helping the Obama administration execute these government spying plans, they found that House members who voted to continue the controversial NSA spy programs and defeat the Amash amendment, reportedly received $41,635 each on average from defense and intelligence firms, $12.97 million in total form these companies over a 2-year period ending in December 31, 2012.
Not surprisingly the analysis also showed House members who voted in support of the amendment that addresses the NSA’s illegal, immoral, and despicable citizen spying programs received a little over $18,700 on average from the same contractors. Thus, just another example where money talks and citizens have either their taxpayer wealth wasted or their freedom and privacy eroded, all for campaign dollars. Disgusting, and another good reason for term limits, an idea that would make reelection campaign funding irrelevant and unnecessary, freeing up politicians to vote for the good of the country and our liberty and not their own careers.
2) A quote from outspoken Texas Senator Ted Cruz that was documented in the August, 2013 issue of Reason magazine is truly amazing when it comes to politicians not acting within integrity: “We’ve had probably five or six luncheons with a bunch of Republican Senators standing up and looking at Rand [Paul] and me and yelling at the top of their lungs - I mean really upset. And they say: ‘Why did you do this? As a result of what you did, when I go home, my constituents are yelling at me that I have to stand on principle.”
What a novel thought! A politician that stands on principle rather than self serving politics. A politician that tries to do the right thing to help the country rather than the things that are most likely to get them reelected. A politician that stands in integrity rather than one that stands in the shadow of people that financially support his perpetual reelection campaign.
Is it no wonder there is never any progress on problem resolution, that politicians are always caught with their pants down (literally) rather than putting down a major problem. When principled behavior is the exception and not the norm, what we get today in the political class is all that is possible. And that is not much.
I guess nothing has changed since 2009 when Senator Joseph Lieberman, as quoted in the November 9, 2009 issue of the San Francisco Examiner stated: "I may be at a point in my career that I am going to do what is right and what makes sense." Does this mean that for all of the decades he served in the Washington political class he was only doing stuff that did not make any sense or that was not right? Is only at the end of career he starts to act with principle? Disgusting.
3) Speaking of a lack of principles, consider the actions and words of a Hawaiian politician. I am always amused when politicians, the most divisive set of people in the country when it comes to dividing groups of Americans and pitting them against each other, lectures us on how to behave and not be racist, prejudiced, or hateful. And when they have the opportunity to not divide and not be prejudiced, they turn out to be the biggest culprits.
According to a short article in the August, 2013 issue of Reason magazine, Hawaiian state politician Faye Hanohano decreed that when state government workers were hanging pieces of artwork in her office, she did not want any art made by “Haoles, Japs, or Pakes.” These are derogatory words used to describe whites, Japanese, and Chinese. Way to go Ms/ Hanohano, setting the bar for compassion and understanding among different groups of citizens that you serve. Pathetic.
4) We are constantly making our case, quite strongly if I do say so myself, that we are currently be served by the worst and most incompetent set of politicians this country has ever experienced. They waste our wealth, they insult our intelligence with their incompetent and immoral behavior, and they fail to resolve any problem of any magnitude, with their actions usually making existing problems even worse.
Data from an article, also in the August, 2013 issue of Reason magazine, shows how poorly they are managing our economy and our freedom relative to the rest of the world. According to latest Economic Freedom Index, and multivariate measure of how free a country’s economic policies are, the United States index of economic freedom, based on a scale of zero to ten, was 8.65 in 2000, 8.21 in 2005 and has plummeted down to 7.70 in 2010.
Where the United States used to constantly have the third best economic freedom performance in the world, the latest analysis puts our economic freedom at a disappointing 18th in the world. Maybe, just maybe, as the American political class has gone about reducing our freedom, raising our taxes, spending our children’s and grandchildren’s future wealth by running up $17 trillion in national debt, and over regulating the economy, contributing to our 18th place ranking, that is why our unemployment stays so high and over 20 million Americans are unemployed or underemployed.
And this performance and ranking helps reinforce our theory that these politicians currently in office, against any standard or benchmark, are quite possibly the worst our nation has ever endured.
5) The good news that is not really good news. The good news is that America is no longer the fattest country in the world. According to a blurb in the July 19, 2013 issue of The Week magazine, Mexico now has the fattest citizens in the world, with 32.8% of its citizens being classified as obese.
Unfortunately, Americans have not gotten skinny all of a sudden. The same blurb pointed out that an unacceptable 31. 8% of American adults are classified as obese. This is a main driver of our high health care costs in this country since obesity leads to all kinds of unnecessary health care maladies and the associated costs including diabetes and heart disease.
Despite its heavy influence on high health care costs, Obama Care does virtually nothing to attack and minimize this root cause, a piece of insanity we relive and review every month in the coming disaster known as Obama Care.
6) And finally for today, one last little fib from the Obama administration. An article in the May 31, 2013 issue of The Week magazine pointed out again how President Obama had promised in 2008 that his administration would be the most transparent administration ever, according to the article his administration has prosecuted twice as many whistle blowers and secret leakers than ALL other Presidential administrations COMBINED.
I would hate to se how bad it would be if his was not the most transparent administration ever (sarcasm implied).
That does it for today but not for this month’s political class insanity. More to follow at least for a couple of more days as we try to identify all of the lunacy and idiocy flowing out from our politicians. Until then, if you agree with us that we are currently living under the worst set of politicians of all time, please visit our term limits website and join our cause to rid the country of career politicians and replace them with concerned citizens:
www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
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
If you had not heard, the U.S. Postal Service is in very dire shape as laid out in the September 6, 2011 Associated Press article:
- Postmaster General Patrick Donahue recently warned Congress that the Postal Service is on the brink of financial default.
- If Congress does not act by September 30, the Postal Service will default on a Congressionally mandated $5.5 billion payment to the U.S. Treasury.
- If no Congressional action is taken, about a year from now the Post Office could run out of money to pay its operating expenses.
- The Postal Service lost more than $8 billion last year despite having cut 110,000 jobs and closed smaller Post Office locations.
Other reports have reported that email and other electronic communications options have steadily reduced the amount of first class mail over the past several years. This has placed financial burdens on the Postal Service which is faced with a declining revenue stream but high fixed costs of physical post office locations, vehicles that go out everyday regardless of how much mail needs to be delivered, and employee unions that severely limit layoffs.
Although there are long term structural and market head winds for the Postal Service, the current short term crisis is really a Congressionally instigated problem. In 2006, Congress mandated that the Postal Service create a fund to start prefunding the medical benefits of employees for the many decades out.
In other words, Congress wanted large upfront payments from the Postal Service's annual operations budgets to fund the future medical benefits of employees that have not even been hired yet, or possibly not even born yet. This fund would start funding employee medical benefits starting in 2017 and be the sole source of money for those benefits.
However, Congress severely missed the forecast of how much money could be put away by the Postal Service in light of its declining revenue and declining market size. Also, according to the article, this is the only Federal government agency that is required to prefund its medical costs decades into the future.
Two observations on this whole mess, one complimentary and one critical. From a complimentary perspective, it appears that some people in the Post Service actually understand the root causes of the agency's problems. Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe understands that he has a huge fixed cost problem with a permanently declining revenue stream.
He and others in the Postal Service want to shut down 3,700 more Post Office locations, further cut the workforce by 220,000 employees, eliminate Saturday mail delivery, withdraw from the Federal retirement system and set up and manage its own retirement systems, get back $6.9 billion from the Federal government that it claims it overpaid into the current government retirement systems, and adjust union contracts for future flexibility in staffing. All good, solid, and appropriate actions in light of the current situation. Best of luck to Mr. Donahoe.
Of course, the critical comments, as always, are reserved for our politicians. Consider some quotes and opinions from members of Congress that were quoted in the article:
- Senator Joe Lieberman - "We must act quickly. The U.S. Postal Service is not an 18th century relic, it is a 21st century national asset, but times are changing rapidly now and so, too, must the Post Office."
- Senator Susan Collins: She is quoted as stating that "the Postal Service supports a $1.1 trillion mailing industry employing more than 8 million people in direct mail, periodicals, catalogs, financial services, and other businesses."
- Senator Tom Carper: he stated that Congress needs to work on areas where agreement can be found.
Carper and Collins have introduced Postal Service reform legislation in the Senate and several other reform plans have been introduced in the House of Representatives. However, how fast can a Senate reform bill be approved, how fast can a House bill be approved, how fast can these two bill be reconciled, how fast can the President sign the reform bill, and how fast can the changes in a final bill be implemented? Given the speed, or lack of speed, track record of the political class, it does not appear like any reform legislation will be forthcoming any time in the next few weeks, not in time to avoid default on the required payment.
Let's review. According to our politicians, the Postal Service is a national asset, it supports a major part of the nation's advertising industry, and Congress needs to do something but is only at the start of the reform legislative process. So, why are we only a few weeks away from a Postal service default?
The political class should have known about this looming crisis long ago. It should not have been a surprise to them that Postal Service mail volumes were in a permanent state of decline. It should not have been a surprise to them that Postal Service revenues were in a permanent state of decline. It should not have been a surprise to them that legislation they passed in 2006 was going to overwhelm Postal Service operating revenues. They should have known but we are still only weeks away from a default.
Given that the Postal Service is a "national asset," it never should have come to this point of crisis and panic. But it did, as does just about any problem that confronts the political class. Failing public schools, lost war on drugs, subprime financial crisis, escalating health care costs, terrorist attacks, etc., problems are never anticipated in time, problems' root causes are never understood, and problems are never solved, or are solved in a panicky last moment in a suboptimal way, usually wasting taxpayer money in the process.
Step 34 from "Love My Country, Loath My Government" would address this type of institutional incompetence. Given the mess of an impending Postal Service default, Congressional members in both the House and Senate would be removed from any committee or subcommittee post they sit on that had Postal Service oversight and responsibility, according to Step 34. That is the only way to get their attention and force them to actually be accountable for their Congressional behavior.
One final thought. If our politicians are so concerned about saving this national asset, why did they spend five summer weeks and the entire month of August on vacation? I guess it is not such a national asset to our politicians if their vacation time is more important than this national asset.
Lesson learned: if you have anything to mail, do it soon before this national asset is a day late and $5.5 billion short.
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 http://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.loathemygovernment.com/
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment.com/
I really do wish that our politicians give us all a break from their verbal insanity and rantings and abide by that old saying: "Its better to remain silent and thought ignorant than to speak up and remove all doubt." Unfortunately, the politicians in this country rarely abide by this sound advice, resulting in the following bits of craziness:
- Senator Joseph Lieberman, as quoted in the November 9, 2009 issue of the San Francisco Examiner: " I may be at a point in my career that I am going to do what is right and what makes sense." Does this mean that for all of the decades he served in the Washington political class he was only doing stuff that did not make any sense or that was not right? Given the sorry record of the political class over the past forty years, his statement actually makes a lot of sense and probably applies to most in the political class.
- President Barack Obama, as quoted in the August 10, 2009 issue of the New York Times: "I've got a lot on my plate, and it's very important for us to sequence these big initiatives in a way they don't all just crash at the same time." Does that mean it is better for the big initiatives to crash sequentially? Given the multiple, major issues facing the country, solving these problems sequentially is not acceptable, we do not have the time to wait.
- U.S. Congressman Hank Johnson, as quoted in the The Hill on March 31, 2010, actually quoting from a Congressional hearing on Guam: "My fear is that the whole island (Guam) will become so overly populated it will tip over and capsize." Why is the Congressman only worried about tiny Guam, shouldn't Congress be worried about Manhattan island capsizing with its millions of people? The sad part of this travesty is I believe the Congressman actually got re-elected this past November.
- President Barack Obama, as quoted in the July 21, 2010 issue of the The New York Times regarding his signing of the legislation that supposedly reformed the financial markets in the country: "If you've ever applied for a credit card, a student loan, or a mortgage, you know the feeling of signing your name to pages of barely understandable fine print." Does that he mean he also does not understand anything approved by Congress and just signs it anyway?
- Former President Bill Clinton, as quoted by the Associated Press on September 21, 2010: "Do you know how many political and economic decisions are made in this world by people who don't know what in the living daylights they are talking about?" Given the failed Cash For Clunkers program, the failed home mortgage program, the failed economic stimulus program, the failed Cash For Caulkers program, the failed first time home buyers rebate program, and the failure to see the biggest economic downturn since the Depression until it happened, I would say all of the political and economic decisions are made by people who don't know what in the living daylights they are talking about.
Senator Michael Bennet, as quoted in the Washington Post on September 3, 2010: "We have managed to acquire $13 TRILLION of debt on our balance sheet. In my view, we have nothing to show for it." By "we" I certainly hope the Senator is talking about the failure of the five hundred or so people in Congress and the White House who spent these trillions of dollars and got nothing in return, not the millions of taxpayers who foolishly entrusted their hard earned tax dollars to his waste. Plus, the Senator is slightly off since in just the nine months since he offered these insightful words, the political class has manged to acquire well over $14 TRILLION of debt with nothing to show for it.
- Congressman Don Young, as quoted on KTVA Television on January 3, 2011: "You should actually sign a contract: I will serve at least 25 years." No, you should actually sign a contract, and pass a law, that says the country deserves term limits from every one of it's politicians and those term limits should not be anywhere close to 25 years.
- Former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, as quoted in the January, 2011 issue of Reason magazine: "Everything was going great, and all of a sudden secret money form God knows where - because they won't disclose it - is pouring in." Now I know why the Democrats got a beat down last November. It was not because the national debt under their reign exploded to unheard of heights. It was not because we had stubbornly high unemployment for a long time. It was not because every economic program that was passed on her watch was a total failure. It was not because she allowed Americans with a differing opinion to be called every obscene name in the book. No, it was because mysterious money showed up. Delusional.
- Ms. Pelosi has been the source of many mind numbing quotes during her time as head of the House. She ranted that 500 million Americans were losing their jobs every week (there are just over 300 million Americans currently alive), she explained that unemployment benefits was the best way to create jobs (leading to the perverted circular reasoning and conclusion that if every American was unemployed and collecting unemployment benefits there would not longer be any unemployment), and the best of all, we would not know what is in the Obama Care legislation until it was passed I guess the President might not have understood that effort either).
Her latest gem comes from a speech she gave at Tufts University last week: "But the fact is that elections shouldn't matter as much as they do." Maybe she is taking hints from Congressman Young but I would beg to disagree. Elections do matter since they are the mechanism of freedom in this country. For a leading political figure to state, and by deduction agree with, that elections do not matter, is unconscionable.
- Vice President Joe Biden, as quoted in a PBS interview on January 27, 2011: "I would not refer to him (President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt) as a dictator." Let's review: Mubarak has ruled with an iron fist for four decades, he has not allowed any legitimate elections during that time frame, he has allowed his cohorts in the armed forces to own broad swaths of the Egyptian economy for their own benefit, he maintained a vicious secret police force that were not adverse to using torture, and he maintained a continuous state of emergency for decades. Wow, glad the Vice President could clear that up, I would have sworn that Mubarak was a dictator. Biden must think that Qaddafi is the second coming of Gandhi.
- The beauty of the Vice President is that his actions can speak volumes even when he does not say anything. During President Obama's speech last night, where he unveiled his deficit reduction plan, the Vice President verbally said nothing of note. However, midway through the speech, cameras got the Vice President in full nap mode as the President addressed the biggest challenge facing the country.
Doctor, doctor, please make them stop talking. Every time they say something it hurts. It hurts because I realize that our financial, economic, health, and retirement future, along with our freedom and liberty, is in the hands of these people, who don't know what in the living daylights they are talking about. Guam capsizing, unemployed people creating jobs, not doing the right thing or the thing that makes sense, changing the definition of what a dictator is, etc. The drone and pain never ends, doctor.
Please prescribe something that will 1) change our election processes do allow some smart Americans and true leaders to finally win an election, 2) impose term limits so that we are not forced to live with this insanity for 25 years or so as Congressman Young would like to see, and 3) prescribe some sedatives for every member of the political class since the less they say and more importantly, the less they do, makes for a better life for the rest of us. Stop the droning today!
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 http://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.com
If a private company had been around for over two hundred years, we would probably hold it in pretty high regard. For any human institution to exist that long means that the institution is flexible, creative, efficient, and well managed. If not, they would not have been around so long.
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the political class in this country that runs our government at all levels. Although our governments have also been around for over two hundred years, it is highly doubtful that many of us would describe any level of U.S. government as flexible, creative, efficient, and well managed. If they were in the private sector, they would have disappeared long ago. Some days one has to step back and wonder: our politicians have been at this government thing for a long, long time, you think and hope that they had gotten some of the kinks worked out long ago and could do at least some things efficiently and effectively.
But, alas, that does not seem to be the case. Thus, this post will start off a series of posts that, unfortunately, all come to the conclusion that it is really amateur hour in Washington and in city halls and state capitals around the country. It is hard to find things that any of these entities do well and cost effectively. This should not be the case, these government institutions have been around forever, but it looks like they are still managed by the amateurs from our political class, that learn, or not learn, as they go along. As a result, our wealth, our time, our safety and most importantly, our freedoms, erode over time as the amateurs muddle through problem after problem, really never solving any of them.
Consider:
- An Associated Press article from January 15, 2011 reported that the Federal government was going to scrap the high tech fence that it tried to build along the U.S./Mexican border to stem the flow of illegal aliens into this country. Some highlights/lowlights of this effort include:
- About a billion dollars of taxpayer money has already been spent on the fence with virtually no success in stemming the flood of illegal immigrants.
- Only 53 miles of the fence were completed which means the Federal government spent about $19 million per mile of completed fence. Atrocious.
- At this rate, if the Federal government had continued and fenced the entire length of the border with Mexico, just the construction cost would have been almost $40 billion, not a really efficient solution to the problem.
- Senator Joe Lieberman, the chairman of the Senate committee responsible for Homeland Security, was quoted in the article as saying the decision to ditch the fence "ends a long troubled program that spent far too much of the tapxayers' money for the results it delivered." Gee, Senator, maybe you should have thought through the problem a little more to begin with, maybe about a billion dollars ago.
- Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told members of Congress that an"independent, quantitative, science-based review made clear" that the fence "cannot meet its original objective of providing a single integrated border security technology solution." As with Senator Lieberman, maybe Homeland Security should have done a "science-based" study BEFORE you spent a billion dollars.
- Problems with this high tech, virtual fence included the fact that the radar used had trouble telling the difference between vegetation and people in windy weather, cameras moved too slowly, and satellite communications were too slow. All of these technical problems should have been measurable and quantified prior to spending a billion dollars.
Amateur hour. If the political class cannot even build a simple fence, can really expect them to operate heavy machinery like health care reform, education reform, etc.?
- A very sad article from the Associated Press was reported on January 16, 2011. It covered the horrendous financial shape that the city of Camden, New Jersey finds itself in. Camden is a long time city on the banks of the Delaware river, sitting opposite Philadelphia. It should have a lot going for it including easy access to a major metro area, waterfront property for business development and shipping, it once had a thriving industrial base, and it is also close to the state capital of Trenton. However, the AP reported that:
- The city may have to lay off 383 city employees which is about 25% of the entire city payroll in a desperate attempt to fix its budget deficit.
- The layoffs would cut the police force in half and the fire department by one third.
- These police force cuts would be happening in a city with the second most dangerous rating in the country, with a violent crime rate five times the national average.
- The city also has high rates of drug dealing, prostitution, and many other violent crimes.
- Three out of Camden's last seven mayors have been convicted for corruption.
- The Camden schools are partially under state control due to nonperformance.
- Although the state has given the city about $175 million for city upgrades and to expand the state aquarium, a hospital, and a unit of the state university, nothing has helped revitalize any aspect of the town. In other words, $175 million wasted.
- More than half of is operating budget comes from the state government, which itself is under heavy financial strain and is likely to reduce that support going forward.
What a waste and disaster. Talk about mismanagement. Too much overhead, not enough foresight to plan ahead, total dependence on outside agencies to exist. Sounds like General Motors and Chrysler a few years ago. And this is a place that has the geographic advantages listed above but has been so mismanaged by the political class that it has dug itself a hole that it may never get out of. One would have thought that politicians would have had some sense of how to run a city government after all of these years. Amateur hour.
- More disturbing news from the Associated Press on January 17, 2011. An AP article reported that former Presidential candidate and North Carolina Senator John Edwards is under intense Federal investigation to determine if he knew that some of his campaign funds were used to cover up his extra marital affair and out of wedlock child and whether other financial practices violate campaign laws. A Federal grand jury is going through records and testimony to determine if and what laws were broken.
Apparently this is not a causal investigation since it has been going on for over two years by the U.S. attorney in Raleigh. The article lists out an extensive and interrelated web of campaign practices, finances, and political organizations.
Now, let's be very clear that no indictments or accusations have been made, Mr., Edwards needs to be considered innocent until proven guilt. However, the facts are the facts and even if there were no campaign finance laws broken, we know that he did have an extra marital affair and a baby out of wedlock, all, by the way, while his wife battled cancer. Seems like we go through something like this on a constant basis, from Spitzer to Ensign to MacGreevey to Sanford to Clinton to many others. Political class members that would rather do the easy and fun stuff, have an affair, than do the hard important stuff, run an efficient and effective government operation. Amateur hour.
- One final example of amateur hour and this comes from an Associate Press report from September 22, 2010. The article reported on an interview that Zeituni Onyango gave to WBZ-TV in Boston. Highlights of the interview include the following:
- Onyango came to the United States from Kenya in 2000 and was denied asylum by an immigration judge in 2004.
- She stayed in the country illegally, living in Boston public housing where she still receives $700 per month in disability benefits despite having never contributed into the system.
- She had no trepidations about accepting government assistance despite being here illegally (she has since been granted asylum) for at least four years, given her following quote: "You people who preach Jesus Christ, almighty God, and the rest of it, you are here to help people, help the poor, help other countries and help women. That's what the United States is supposed to do." Talk about having outlandish and outsized, obnoxious entitlement expectations.
Any number of amateur hour, incompetent government operations in this case:
- Why did it take so long to determine her asylum status, four years? Hasn't the Federal government being doing this kind of work for centuries, Ellis Island comes to mind, which seems to have been doing things much more efficiently and quicker without the modern technology of today.
- Once it was determined she could not stay, why was she not deported immediately?
- How in the word did she get public housing assistance and $700 a month without working a day for this country in her life? Unemployed Americans will eventually lose their unemployment benefits, Social Security is going bankrupt, Medicare is going bankrupt but we hand out $700 a month to people like Onyango?
Oh, by the way, Zeituni Onyango is President Obama's aunt. Takes a little luster off of the President's image that he would allow his relative to live in public housing, given the success and wealth he has generated from his book sales and other sources. Also, wouldn't it have been a grand gesture if he took care of his aunt's living needs and not wasted $700 a month of the taxpayer's wealth to do so?
Amateur hour here in so many ways. Inability to efficiently process asylum seekers, inability to actually deport someone who was refused asylum, inability to truly help American citizens in their time of need while diverting resources to illegal aliens, and the inability of a national political leader to take care of his own family member and relieve the care from the government's strained resources. Disgraceful.
Several steps would help alleviate some of this amateur hour and waste from our political class:
- Step 34 would increase accountability for politicians sitting on Congressional committees that do not do their jobs and execute their responsibilities by yanking them off of those committees and replacing them with people who will be successful in executing those committee responsibilities. For example, those politicians responsible for an efficient asylum process and those that had anything do to with the billion dollar fence failure on the Mexican border would be kicked off these committees who oversee these government efforts.
- Step 39 would impose term limits on all politicians. Many of the situations we are currently in such as the Camden mess and the Edwards-type scandals all had to do with incompetent politicians either staying too long or the taint of campaign funds being misused. We need to get back to the concept of citizen politicians, not career politicians.
- Step 1 would reduce the Federal government by 10% a year for five years. A critical component of that effort is a ground up, zero based approach at looking at every function and every department in the Federal government to check its operational effectiveness and efficiency, replacing and/or eliminating personnel and functions that do not adequately serve the taxpayers. This effort would include tightening up fraud enforcement and eligibility requirements so that American citizens are served, not the world's citizens are served.
The time for amateur hour should be over by now. the Federal government has been around for over two centuries, the people that run it should have gotten most of it right by now. The fact that they have not indicates that a new approach and the steps above need to be implemented so that two hundred years from now some other American is still not lamenting the amateur hour status of our political class.
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
