February, 2024, Part 1, By The Numbers: Wasting Taxpayer Wealth Around the World, Our Failing Education System, and The Racism At The FAA

 On a periodic basis we review the wasteful government spending via a continuing theme of “By The Numbers.” We review how poorly taxpayer wealth is being spent and wasted on stupid programs and projects and also how many government programs are being ripped off of billions and billions of dollars by fraud and criminal enterprises. Today is just another sad chapter on how politicians and government bureaucrats are pretty inept when it comes to safeguarding taxpayer dollars.

1)The Federal government is currently approaching a mind boggling $37,000,000,000,000 in national debt. Washington politicians for decades have been spending money on stupid projects while millions of Americans go hungry, homeless, and in need of drug addiction help while running up trillions of dollars in debt.

Recent disclosures from the State Department illustrate the bad priorities  of the American political class:

• New Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, has immediately issued a critical reform of the department.

• Going forward, all official State Department personnel who desire to travel will now be subjected to rigorous review and approval process.

• One of the prime reasons for this new rule is State Department employee,  Jessica Stern.

• She is the so-called “Special Envoy to Advance the Human Rights of LGBTQI+ Persons.”

• As we said above, millions of Americans are in need and Ms. Stern has the massive title above which has entitled her to travel to 22 different countries, courtesy of the American taxpayer, to spread LGBTQI+ ideology.

Visits of one State Department official to 22 different countries that have nothing to do with helping needy Americans. Imagine how much those trips cost the taxpayers for nothing in return.

2)Staying with wasteful spending  numbers, consider the numbers that recently were discussed when Congressman Brian Mast was interviewed by NBC’s Margaret Brennan:

• Mast stated during the interview that he supported the “purging of people throughout the State Department and other agencies where we’re freezing aid,” which he said were “very important and necessary steps to make sure that we secure America.”

• Brennan  then asked for examples which Mast had handy.

• $500,000 of American taxpayer wealth was spent to expand atheism in Nepal.

• $50,000 was spent on a transgender opera in Colombia.

• $47,000 was spent to do an LGBTQ comic book in Peru.

• $20,000 was spent to do drag shows in Ecuador, that was $20,000 for EACH show.

Obviously, these are just the tiny tip of a huge iceberg of wasted American tax dollars, being spent while millions and millions of Americans are homeless, hungry, and in need of medical care.

3)According to Vivek Ramaswamy, and previous posts in this blog, we as a nation are doing a horrible job educating our kids:

• 75% of eighth graders are not math proficient according to international standards and tests.

• The U.S. ranks 26th out of 38 developed nations.

• "There are kids in other countries where English is not even their first language, out-beating our own students on English proficiency and I just think, speaking as an American and as a parent myself, that's unacceptable." 

• Only 31% of fourth graders are reading at their grade level as announced by the National  Assessment of Educational Progress.

• Several years ago it was revealed that when 2,000 students across 23 schools in Baltimore were tested for math every one of them was NOT doing math at their expected levels.

• In 2024, the Illinois Assessment of Readiness released data and  analysis showing that only 31% of elementary school students tested were proficient in reading and only 19% were proficient in math.

Bottom line: the American political class and their management of billions and billions of dollars of taxpayer wealth has tragically failed the country’s kids from an educational attainment perspective. The disgusting numbers do not lie.

4)Speaking of a disgusting waste of taxpayer wealth:

• We already know that Biden’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan left behind tens of billions of dollars worth of taxpayer funded military equipment.

• And for whatever insane reason, the Biden administration has sent almost $3 billion in humanitarian aid to Afghanistan.

• And according to a Federal audit of that insanity, at least $11 million of that aid has been taken by the Taliban.

• According to the audit, the inspector general agency (SIGAR) monitoring U.S. government spending in Afghanistan found that “the $10.9 million paid by 38 U.S. Department of State (State), U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) implementing partners is likely only a fraction of the total amount of U.S. assistance funds provided to the Taliban in taxes, fees, duties, and utilities because UN agencies receiving U.S. funds did not collect data or provide relevant information about their subawardees’ payments. From October 2021 through September 2023, the UN received $1.6 billion in U.S. funding for programming in Afghanistan, approximately 63 percent of all U.S. assistance funding for Afghanistan during that period.” 

Unbelievable that after over twenty years of wasting upwards of $2 trillion dollars in the country, after the disastrous and embarrassing withdrawal due to Biden’s failed planning, the American taxpayer is still sending money to Taliban, a terrorist organization that suppresses freedom of its citizens especially women. Pathetic.

5)As everyone knows, there was a terrible airliner crash in Washington D.C. recently, killing 67 people.  A  horrible tragedy and while we do not yet know how this terrible incident happened, the following numbers might give an indication of what might have happened:

• The FAA denied jobs to 1,000 air traffic controller applicants for air traffic controller jobs because officially they were “too white.”

• As a result of this type of racism, 285 out of 313 air traffic control facilities across the country are now understaffed, endangering the flying public.

This is what happens when politicians insert race and special interests into life  decisions and tragically sometimes the consequences are fatal.

Enough numbers for today: still wasting  taxpayer wealth around the world for no good reason, spending trillions on education and getting little in return, and racism via D.E.I. nonsense is endangering lives. Politicians may lie but the numbers do not.

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https://www.change.org/p/deseat-congress-reset-freedom

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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:

https://www.amazon.com/Love-My-Country-Loathe-Government/dp/1604942789/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=love+my+country%2C+loathe+my+government&qid=1607716020&sr=8-1

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

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http://www.cato.org

http://www.openthebooks.com

http://www.conventionofstates.com

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

 

July, 2018, Part 4, Political Class Insanity: Wasting Millions In Afghanistan and Shredding Constitutional Rights In Washington

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

Let’s get started:

1) We have previously talked about the U.S. effort in Afghanistan and how quite likely there has never been any other situation in the history of the Federal government where so much taxpayer wealth was spent for so little in return. But a recent article by Brian Doherty in the August, 2018 edition of Reason magazine brings us up to date on how very bad our tax dollars were misspent in the country:

• Special Inspector General for Afghanistan (SIGAR), John Sopko, recently announced that the U.S. taxpayer has spent an amazing $126 BILLION just for reconstruction projects in Afghanistan, i.e. exclusive of military costs, since 2002.
• If you adjust this 17 year effort for inflation, then we have spent more in this one country than what was spent for the entire Marshall plan after World War II.
• And while the Marshall Plan is generally hailed as a huge success for rebuilding Europe after the war, the same cannot be said for Afghanistan reconstruction.
• For example, $43 million was spent for a single single automobile propane gas filling station somewhere in the hinterland of Afghanistan.
• The Pentagon could never explain why such a single station cost so much in Afghanistan but only $500,000 for an identical station in Pakistan.
• And not only were the costs outlandish, there was no propane gas infrastructure to bring propane gas to the station so it was basically useless….for $43 million.
• The Pentagon also spent $500,000 to construct a typical Afghan village that was to be used to train Afghan police and military personnel “to conduct simulated police search and clearance exercises.”
• Unfortunately, poor construction and lack of oversight resulted in shoddy construction and the facility “began to disintegrate.”
• Despite this disaster, the contractor still got paid in full.
• The American taxpayer spent $60 million for what was supposed to be a brand new Marriott hotel in the downtown area of the country’s capital, Kabul.
• But when Senator Rand Paul toured the site he found out how badly this project went: “I walked the halls of this deserted, unfinished shell of a dream,” which had “barren rooms, empty elevator shafts, and no electric power” which “ left the entire site uninhabited and uninhabitable.”
• But it is not just the $60 million that got wasted since the the tall building skeleton is close to the American embassy which makes it an ideal point to launch attacks against the embassy which means that more money has to be spent every day just to secure this disaster from the Taliban and other terrorists.
• According to findings of those auditing the entire effort in the country, “Every day that we distribute money, people squander or steal it, and no one is ever held accountable."
• SIGAR recently found that an effort to bring electricity to the countryside wasted another $60 million since “mismanagement of the contract has resulted in the U.S. government spending almost $60 million on a power-transmission project that is not operational because land acquisition and right of way issues have not been resolved and because there is no contract provision to permanently connect the system to a power source,” i.e. we built a power transmission project that does not connect to any power source that would supply the transmission facility.
• In addition to probably never becoming operational, SIGAR found that three of the 18 power towers were shoddily built and could fall down onto villages along the path of the wires, endangering local villagers.
• U.S. taxpayers paid to build two schools in the country that were constructed so poorly that SUGAR concluded that one of the buildings “may be beyond repair or rehabilitation” and is “located in an area of high seismic activity: SIGAR believes it is likely to collapse in the event of an earthquake…”
• The U.S. government has spent about $8 billion to get rid of opium poppy crops in the country which has resulted in the confiscation of almost half a million tons of opium.
• While that half a million tons sounds impressive, it represents about 5% of the total opium going out of the country in just a single year.
• The Pentagon spent $28 million on camouflage uniforms for Afghanistan that were designed for a woodland environment even though only 2% of Afghanistan could be considered woodland.
• Also, in addition to ordering and paying for camouflage uniforms that are basically useless in the country, the Pentagon “used a proprietary pattern that involved extra fees and had not been shown to be any more effective than standard patterns.”
• Despite spending all of this money on reconstruction, and untold billions of dollars on direct military in country costs, the security of the country is still a disaster with the United Nations reporting that there are on average 65 “security incidents” per day in the country, i.e. despite our best efforts, the country is no more secure, safe, or built up than it was back in 2002 when this whole disaster of an operation was undertaken.

How much is $126 billion? It would be enough to give every American a check for just under $400, or a family of four a check for about $1,600. It could pay for about about a quarter of a million teachers or police officers at $50,000 a year for ten years. How many shelters for the homeless or drug addiction treatments could it have done for needy and suffering Americans? A lot. Instead, the Federal Government, two Presidential administrations, and the Pentagon wasted it away for nothing in return half a world away. Insanity.

2) We have often reported on how the Obama administration weaponized the IRS to harass, impede, and prevent non-profit organizations that were at odds with Obama’s policies to exercise their First Amendment rights. This is not a disputed fact any more, Lois Lerner and others in the IRS actively blocked Conservative, Tea Party, and Republican groups from attaining tax exempt status to exercise their free speech rights.

But now we find out that it was not just Obama’s Democratic administration that were at fault and violating millions of Americans’ Constitutional rights. According to government records obtained by Judicial Watch:

• A former staff member of REPUBLICAN Senator John McCain urged the IRS to target conservative and Tea Party groups for “financially ruinous audits.”
• These IRS conversations occurred on April 20, 2013 and included McCain staff member, Henry Kerner, and high ranking IRS employees including the infamous Lois Lerner, the director of the IRS exempt organization group.
• During the conversation, Kerner asked Lerner to “audit so many [organizations] that it is financially ruinous.”
• Despite this now documented and real conversation and meeting, Lerner is on record in front of Congress claiming that her blocking of groups tax exempt status were “absolutely incorrect, insensitive, and inappropriate.”
• But since Obama and his henchman wanted this to happen, Lerner faced no consequences for her illegal and unethical practices of denying Americans their First Amendment rights.
• But it gets worse from a timing perspective since shortly after this meeting, the Treasury inspector general released their report that found, “Early in Calendar Year 2010, the IRS began using inappropriate criteria to identify organizations applying for tax-exempt status.”
• This criteria included delaying the approval of the applications to the IRS until after the 2012 elections which means that many voices that would have likely opposed Obama’s reelection were blocked by Lerner and her IRS cronies. 

And thanks to Judicial Watch we now know it was not just the Democrat in the White House that wanted to squelch Americans’ First Amendment rights but also at least on Republican in the Senate that wanted the same infringement also. Which proves our long standing point: why there may be two major political parties in Washington, there is really only one political class, a class of arrogant, law breaking and self serving people that want their way even if it means shredding the Constitution and the rights laid out in it.

That will do it for today’s insanity: still wasting billions in Afghanistan and wasting First Amendment rights in Washington. More insanity to follow.

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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

August, 2017, Part 1, Political Class Insanity: Vote For The Worst Federal Government Entity Today!

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

1) Joseph Lawler, writing for the Washington Examiner on July 27, 2017, reviewed how even if you are a major screw up working at the IRS you really are never fired:

• The IRS Inspector General recently reported that the IRS is still hiring former employees that it fired for various types of misconduct.
• The Inspector General report found that of the 2,000 former IRS employees that the IRS rehired in 2015 and 2016, more than 19%, or 200 individuals, had earlier been fired or had resigned in the midst of an investigation into their bad behavior.
• Some of those 200 had been investigated for improperly accessing taxpayer private tax records while some had actually cheated on their own taxes.
• Senator Richard Burr had requested the inspector general report, calling the IRS' rehiring of fired workers a "mind boggling abuse of taxpayer money."
• Burr was also ticked off that during Senate testimony, IRS Commissioner John Koskinen testified under oath that the IRS does not hire workers it had previously fired.

Ah, the la-la land of Washington D.C. where government workers can get away with just about anything and still get a good paying, taxpayer funded job and lying to Congress and the American people, under oath, is a generally accepted practice with no criminal consequences. Insanity.

2) Over the years it has been a tough call as to what Washington bureaucracy wastes the most taxpayer money with the Social Security Administration, Medicare, Medicaid, and the Pentagon usually topping the list of the most inept and inefficient organizations. Anneta Grieffe, writing for the Dennis Michael Lynch website on July 25 2017 puts a vote in for the Pentagon with her latest report on waste:

• A recent 17 page report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) found that the Pentagon wasted over $28 million over the past decade by buying the wrong type of uniforms for Afghan soldiers.
• Unbelievably, someone in the Pentagon authorized the purchase of $28 million worth of forest camouflage uniforms, useless in a country like Afghanistan which has very few forests, instead of desert camouflage uniforms.
• Adding insult to injury, the forest camouflage uniforms are more expensive than the desert camouflage uniforms.
• Adding further insult to injury, SIGAR report cited another major screw up in that the Pentagon spent extra money for the license to the camouflage uniforms when they could have gotten a pattern for free.
• As always, the politicians get involved AFTER the damage is done with Senator Claire McCaskill ranting: “This is a contracting decision that makes you smack your head in frustration. It’s a prime example of wasting hard-earned taxpayer dollars, and we’ve got to get to the bottom of how this happened.”

She and the rest in Congress should all be smacked in their head for allowing this and thousands and thousands of other government wasteful spending endeavors to occur and endure.

3) As we always do lately, let’s check in with Chicago and see how their violence is doing. As you know, Chicago has been in the grip of a crime wave and violence wave for years now with no local, state, or Federal politician having the brains or the willpower to stop it. 

Probably driven by the illegal drug trade, Mexican cartels and other local gangs use violence to protect and secure drug sales turf every day, with the residual violence killing innocent city citizens on a daily basis. The reality is that the very stringent and tight gun control laws in the city has done absolutely nothing except make lawful and frightened citizens have a tougher time arming themselves to defend themselves.

As far as the latest from the streets of Chicago:

• In a recent week, six people were killed and 35 others were injured by the city’s violence.
• This puts this year’s death toll at a rate that was slightly higher than last year’s carnage. 391 deaths in 2017 vs. 387 vs. the same timeframe from last year, a year in which 783 Chicago citizens died from criminal violence, about two per day.
• If there is any good news from this recent week of violence is that the number of people shot is down so far this year, 2,112, vs. 2,337 in 2016. 
• This violence continues despite the boast by Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson that his department has removed more than 5,000 firearms from city streets this year.
• And yet, there have still been more murders this year vs. last year, indicating that maybe more gun control is not the way to resolve this situation.

While there has been some small encouraging signs of winning back the Chicago streets, e.g. murder arrests are up 10% and gun confiscation is up over 30%, getting more than two civilians killed every day is still a disaster with no politician in sight having the answer.

4) While the Pentagon was busy wasting tens of millions of dollars on the wrong type of uniforms, the Social Security Administration (SSA) was busy wasting hundreds of millions of dollars through sheer incompetence:

• According to a new inspector general report, the SSA improperly paid out over $200 million over the years to people who collected SSA benefits under two different Social Security numbers or people who were dead.
• This double SSA number blunder happened in at least 5,000 instances identified in the inspector general report.
• In 13,000 cases, SSA benefits were paid to dead people even though they were recorded and recognized as dead somewhere in the bowels of the SSA data systems processed.
• In addition, the report found that a whopping 4.9 million Americans currently have more than one SSA number assigned to their names.
• In one example, an individual who died in 1997 had his SSA benefits properly terminated but the SSA never checked if he had a second number assigned to his name, which he did, and that number resulted in $31,000 being cashed 14 years later.

Always tough to pick out the worst performing Federal government organization, the Pentagon that paid for the wrong kind of uniforms, the IRS who hires back people that should have not been rehired  or the Social Security Administration who doubles pays benefits to living people and continues to pay benefits to dead people. More insanity to follow over the next week or so.

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.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

December, 2016, Part 6, Political Class Insanity: Wasteful Spending In Afghanistan and the Pentagon, Pelosi Goes Racist, and The Economic Recovery That Isn't

It has been almost a month since Donald Trump has been elected which means at some point in the future we may run out of material to talk about. With the demise of the Obama administration, eight years worth of wasteful and excessive spending for nothing in return, foreign affairs blunders, Obama Care disasters, and assorted other administration and government blunders and screwups might end with the onset of a new administration. Trump may usher in a new paradigm of government actions that are limited, effective, cost efficient, and protective of the Constitution. If so, then this blog would run out of material to discuss and would have to be shut down.

But I doubt it. Even if Trump is truly a different type of President, he is still fighting over 500 embedded and entrenched politicians in Congress and thousands and thousands of government bureaucrats who will not go peacefully into the night for the good of the country. I wish him well and hopefully he can fix at least some of the myriad of problems the American political class creates everyday but until then, enjoy the latest political class insanity from Washington and beyond:

1) We have often discussed the reality that the Pentagon’s financial systems and processes are so screwed up that even trained, professional auditors have thrown up their hands after trying, and failing, to understand and straighten out the Pentagon’s financial situation. So far, no one has been able to tame the out of control spending of the Pentagon, likely making it easy for fraud and criminal activity to ravage taxpayer wealth earmarked for our national defense.

And according to the Washington Post, things have not changed much:

• The Pentagon had tied to hide an internal study that identified a whopping $125 billion in “administrative waste” in its business functions and operations. 
• They tried to hide the findings in order to not give Congress an excuse to clean up its act or cut its budget. 
• The original study was supposed to identify ways to be more administratively efficient in order to funnel those efficiency savings back into combat operations but the findings were so bad that the decision was made to try and hide the findings. 
• This waste comes out to roughly about $1,050 for every American household. 

Seems some things never change or Congress and the President have no desire or ability to save taxpayers money.

2) One never knows what nonsense is going to come out Nancy Pelosi’s mouth. After Trump announced that he wants to have Dr. Ben Carson head up the Federal Housing and Urban Development (HUD) agency, Pelosi went off on the choice: “Dr. Ben Carson is a disconcerting and disturbingly unqualified choice to lead a department as complex and consequential as Housing and Urban Development. Our country deserves a HUD Secretary with the relevant experience to protect the rights of homeowners and renters, particularly in low income and minority communities, and to ensure that everyone in our country can have access to safe and affordable housing without facing discrimination or homelessness. There is no evidence that Dr. Carson brings the necessary credentials to hold a position with such immense responsibilities and impact on families and communities across America.”

A few realities Ms. Pelosi:

• Dr. Carson is an African-American so I would think that he would be sensitive to minority communities. 
• Dr. Carson actually grew up poor and living in public housing so he knows firsthand what is is like to live in a HUD facility, an experience that I bet no other HUD head ever had. 
• Dr. Carson is a former brain surgeon, I bet he is smart enough to work through issues and problems, smarter than most people serving in Congress and that his work ethic is high above most of the rest of the world. You do not become a renowned brain surgeon by sliding by. 

Imagine how Democrats would have reacted if Obama had nominated Dr. Carson for the same position, the cries of racism would have been rampant, such hypocrisy.

In fact, if Pelosi really believes this trash, let me take her words and twist them slightly to that she can see how stupid and racist she sounds: “Former community organizer and short term Senator Barack Obama is a disconcerting and disturbingly unqualified choice for President of the United States. Our country deserves a President with the relevant experience to protect the rights of all Americans and to ensure that everyone in our country can have access to safe and free lives. There is no evidence that Senator Obama brings the necessary credentials to hold a position with such immense responsibilities and impact on families and communities across America.”

Of course, I bet Pelosi would find this Obama statement as racist but her Carson statement as not racist. Insanity.

3) Perry Chiaramonte, writing for Fox News on November 17, 2016, provided another disgusting example of wasteful Pentagon spending:

• Back in December, 2006, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), a U.S. government financial institution, approved a plan to build a 209 room, five star hotel and apartment complex next to the U.S. embassy in the capital of Afghanistan. 
• This was supposed to be a cornerstone of the country’s post war reconstruction program. 
• Ten years later, millions and millions of dollars later, the only thing to show for the effort is a “ghost hotel.” 
• According to the Office of the Special Inspector General For Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), $85 million in taxpayer wealth has been lost because of “troubling management practices and lax oversight.” 
• And expenses for the doomed project continue to go on to pay for security for the failed effort since it is right across the street from the U.S. embassy. 
• "The Marriott Hotel Kabul is emblematic of our reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan,” Special Inspector General John Sopko told FoxNews.com. “Great ideas, tons of money, poor execution and no oversight create incredible opportunities for fraud." 
• Although tens of millions of dollars were wasted during the Bush administration, additional tens of millions of dollars continued to be wasted deep into the Obama administration. 
• According to SIGAR inspector,the $85 million got U.S. taxpayers a building with major cracks in the roof, damaged fireproofing, demolished walls, uninstalled doors and windows, and incomplete water and electrical systems. 
• In addition, “The SIGAR inspectors accused OPIC of not doing enough to monitor the construction on-site and taking the builder’s status reports at face value. OPIC accepted either invoices or receipts as proof to demonstrate how the loan proceeds had been spent,” they wrote. “However, without on-site verification of activities and progress, neither the invoices nor receipts required by OPIC provided sufficient evidence to support purported purchases.” 

Despite this disaster, want to bet that no one has or will be held accountable for wasting $85 million in taxpayer wealth?

4) While Obama likes to brag that he singlehandedly saved the U.S. economy, we have often pointed out the following realities of his “salvation:”

• The labor participation rate is at 40 year lows despite six years of the Obama recovery. 
• The average/median household income and wage levels have remained stagnant for most of the Obama recovery. 
• Millions of Americans cannot find a full time job, settling for part time employment, despite the Obama recovery. 
• A record 94 million American adults are NOT in the labor force despite the Obama recovery. 
• More than everAmericans over the age of 65 are still in the workforce, likely because they need the money despite the Obama recovery. 
• More Americans under the age of 30 are still living with their parents because they cannot find good enough jobs to live on their despite the Obama recovery. 
• The country’s annual GDP levels have never attained even the historical level of growth despite the Obama recovery. 

Stewart Lawrence, writing for the Daily Caller website on December 6, 2016, filled in some of the latest details of the lousy Obama recovery:

• The U-6 unemployment rate is a more accurate measure of unemployment in today’s economy, not the U-3 unemployment rate that Obama likes to tout because so many American adults have dropped out of the workforce because they became too discouraged to look for a job. 
• The better U-6 measure currently stands at around 9.3% about double the U-3 rate, a spread that is at historical highs, not unexpected given that the labor participation rate is at such a low level. 
• There are a whopping 6 million Americans working part time who desire full time work but cannot find it, the highest level in 30 years. 
• According to Mr.Lawrence: “Many economists have begun referring to a “new normal” in the US labor market — a permanently high number of under-employed part-timers.” 
• Since most part time workers earn less than full time workers, it is no surprise that wage and income levels have remained stagnant for most of the Obama recovery. 
• The labor participation rate has continued to decline steeply throughout the entire Obama recovery, to steep to be explained away by Baby Boomer retiring from the workforce, especially since a record number of Americans over the age of 65 have decided to stay in the workforce. 
• The Federal Reserve predicts that the labor participation rate will continue to decline if nothing changes in Washington, getting down to a depressing 61% by 2022. 
• And whatever jobs the Obama recovery created have usually been lower wage jobs with the economy seeing a net loss of one million higher paying jobs through 2014 in market segments such as accounting and legal, but seeing a net gain of two million jobs in low paying market segments such as fast food locations, another factor in stagnant wages and income. 

Over taxation, over regulation, over optimism and delusions by this Presidency.

That will do it for today’s insanity: an economic recovery that isn’t, wasteful Afghan and Pentagon spending that is, and the nsanity of Pelosi continues. More insanity tomorrow.

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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:


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