Even When The Feds Get It Right They Still Get It Wrong

Even when the Federal government and the Washington political class do something good for taxpayers, they cannot help themselves but step right back into another screw up that overwhelms whatever good their first good deed did. Consider the recent announcement of good news that the Feds had busted 46 doctors and other healthcare professionals across the country for bilking the government, and the American taxpayer, out of $712 million.

Details of the fraud and bust include the following, as reported by CNN:

• This was the largest Medicare bust ever.
• In total, 243 people were arrested in 17 cities for Medicare billing of $712 million worth of patient care that was either unnecessary or never given.
• In one case, owners of a mental health facility in Miami billed tens of millions of dollars for psychotherapy sessions based on treatment that was little more than moving patients to different locations. 
• Four other people are charged for mass-marketing a talking glucose monitor, shipping the monitors to Medicare patients across the country who didn't need or order them, and then billing Medicare for the devices to the tune of more than $22 million.
• Health care providers got in on the scam by paying kickbacks to fraudsters who got their hands on Medicare patients' personal information which they would then use to bill Medicare for care never given. 
• These fraudsters often got the patient information by preying on the down and out in society by canvassing places like homeless shelters and soup kitchens.
• A Los Angeles doctor allegedly billed $23 million for 1,000 power wheelchairs and home health services that were not medically necessary and often not provided. 
• In a Florida case, a health care provider received $1.6 million from Medicare for prescription drugs that were never purchased and never given.
• "In these cases, we followed the money and found criminals who were attracted to doctors offices, clinics, hospitals and nursing homes in search of what they viewed as an ATM," said FBI Director James B. Comey.
• The DOJ's Medicare Fraud Strike Force team led the investigations which since 2007 it has charged 2,300 people who have falsely billed the Medicare program for more than $7 billion. 
• In recent years, the Strike Force team has expanded from two cities to nine.

Great news, criminals ripping off the American taxpayer might finally be brought to justice. But let’s consider some of the downside to this whole, less than comprehensive law enforcement effort:

• These people were arrested for ripping off $712 million. However, there is no mention of how much of that $712 million will actually be recovered, much of it is likely to already have been spent and is gone forever.
• We have previously reported many times that credible, nonpartisan analyses and sources estimate that Medicare loses anywhere from $40 to $60 billion a year to waste and criminal activity. Thus, if we assume that the $712 million was all ripped off in one year, unlikely, than the recovery rate from the “biggest bust in Medicare history” is a measly 1.8% on $40 billion or 1.2% on $60 billion.
• Since the $712 million was probably obtained over a period of years, then the recovery rate is highly likely to be well below 1%. And this is the biggest bust in history, meaning other busts likely got far less.
• The strike force has been in operation for nine years, 2007 to 2015 and has busted criminals who had illegally collected $7 billion in Medicare funds. If we assume the lower end of annual Medicare ripoffs and waste is $40 billion, nine years worth of such behavior is about $360 billion. That means the task force has recovered a staggering...only 1.9% of the criminal activity and waste.

Look, I am happy that hundreds of people were busted and hundreds of millions of dollars were identified as stolen (not recovered). If some of that money can be recovered and funneled to reducing the national debt, helping the homeless and unemployed, feeding the hungry, then great. 

But come on, a measly 1.9% rate for nine years. Seems the taxpayers are still being abused by a government that cannot get out of its own way when it comes to wasting taxpayer wealth. 

But the story somehow gets a little worse. Even if the Feds can collect the $712 million that these 243 people stole, it will get wiped out by the embarrassing findings of a recent inspector general report relative to Obama Care. That Federal audit report found that the Department of Health and Human Services cannot find out what happened to about $2.8 billion of Obama Care subsidies that have already been paid out.

This should not come as a surprise. The entire Obama Care data processing effort has been a disaster from day one. The online exchanges failed to work properly for weeks. The systems security features were almost non-existent, subjecting millions of Americans to identity theft risk. The interface between the exchanges and insurance companies were chaotic.

Thus, we should not be surprised when the inspector general’s report shows that those systems now cannot track almost $3 billion in just the first four months into the Obama Care world. Apparently the whole system was launched without finishing and checking the accuracy of the back end processes that would communicate between the Federal exchange and insurance companies. 

The audit went onto say that HHS did not have an internal system to ensure that subsidies went to the right enrollees, or in the correct amounts: “[The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services] CMS’s internal controls did not effectively ensure the accuracy of nearly $2.8 billion in aggregate financial assistance payments made to insurance companies under the Affordable Care Act during the first four months that these payments were made,” the inspector general said. Furthermore, “CMS’s (HHS) system of internal controls could not ensure that CMS made correct financial assistance payments.” 

Other findings in the report show that HHS did not have a process in place at the time money was being paid out to “prevent or detect any possible substantial errors” in Obama Care subsidy payments and could not “ensure that financial assistance payments were made on behalf of confirmed enrollees and in the correct amounts.”

Great, the Justice Department may have recovered upwards of $712 million that were likely stolen over a period of years from HHS’s Medicare program and then HHS goes out and likely lost almost $3 billion, in just four months, by being totally inept when it comes to Obama Care subsidies. Even when the Federal government and the political class that operate it give us good news they still manage to overwhelm us with bad news.

There are only two solutions to this incredible criminal waste and theft of taxpayer wealth, a short term and long term solution:

- Short Term: Nine years after trying to track down criminals that are stealing from taxpayers via the Federal government and it is safe to say that hundreds of billions of dollars went unaccounted for and the recovery rate is incredibly small, less than 2%. Thus the better short term solution is to offer rewards for anyone who turns in anyone who is scamming the government. Give them a 10% reward of what ever is recovered from their tip.

Police departments have been using this tip process for decades to have the community help them apprehend street criminals. Why not use the same theory to apprehend white collar criminals who rip off taxpayers? Get the whole citizenry involved with the potential of a large financial reward, a cut of what money is recovered. Waiting nine years for the task force to put a substantial dent in the criminal activity is not working, time to try something new and creative.

- Long term: this is just another example of a government beast that is out of control and totally dysfunctional. As we have pointed out a number of times, the Federal government today is no different than Jabba The Hutt from the Star Wars stories. Jabba was a large, formless blob that fulfilled no worthwhile function but who consumed massive amounts of resources via tyranny. 

Severely downsize the Federal government and have it work on far fewer efforts that might actually work rather than what they do today, work on way too many efforts that are either not needed, too expensive, are criminally infected, or plain just do not work.

Because even when the Federal government gets it right (finds the criminals involved in $712 million worth of fraud over years), it still gets it wrong (loses almost $3 billion in just four months).

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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

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

Aporil, 1015, Part 3 Political Class Insanity: Lies, Porn, Sexual Harassment, and More In Washington

Every month we do a regular series under the theme, “political class insanity.” We look at the many, many different, and often original, ways that the American political class wastes our tax dollars, undermines our freedoms, and generally act in the most idiotic ways possible, via their quotes, actions, and laws. For past examples of hundreds of instances of political class insanity, just page through the historical listings on the right side of this page at the beginning of each month or enter “political class insanity” in the search box above.

We usually do not start a new month’s insanity until the current month has ended. However, given the political class idiocy seems to be increasing, we started May’s insanity review a day early in order to get a little head start on what is shaping up as an epic month of insanity.

1) Many, many times we have pointed out that this has not turned out to be the “most transparent” Presidential administration ever nor has it ever been one that thinks all laws should be obeyed. Lay on the propensity for this administration to flat out lie and we have one of the most out of integrity Presidencies ever. Ever.

Today we add to that horrible legend. A while ago, the commissioner of the IRS testified under oath in front of Congress that thousands of emails of IRS employee Lois Lerner had been “lost.” These were important emails since they likely showed that Lerner and other high ranking IRS employees, and possibly White House employees, had purposely and illegally used the IRS to hinder the First Amendment rights of conservative and Republican groups to be politically active within IRS guidelines.

Two serious problems if this was reality. First, it would have been an obvious criminal act to not retain those emails for which someone should have been brought up on criminal charges. That fact is indisputable from a law perspective. Secondly, however, if those emails were not lost, merely hidden to avoid uncovering massive political fraud and illegal acts, and someone testified UNDER OATH in front of Congress that they were lost, then you have a whole other set of law breaking.

Given this administration’s penchant for lying, it should come as no surprise that those emails were not destroyed, that thousands of them do exist. This is in direct opposition to what the IRS Commissioner testified to in front of Congress. A Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration has found those “lost” emails that were claimed to have been lost forever. The find included 6,400 lost Lerner emails.

Back in early 2015 when another 32,000 lost Lerner emails were “found,”Katie Pavlich wrote for Townhall that Deputy Inspector General for Investigations, Timothy Camus, had told the House Oversight Committee that there was “potential criminal activity” involved in the disappearance and possible hiding of Lerner’s relevant emails: “Not surprisingly, in order to stonewall the congressional investigation into the targeting of conservative groups, IRS officials never asked IT professionals to look into gathering back-up tapes or recovering emails requested by Congress. Despite IRS Commissioner John Koskinen repeatedly saying under oath in previous hearings that Lerner’s emails could not be recovered, Camus and investigators have been successful in recovering nearly 33,000 emails relevant to the IRS investigation.”

If this administration had not lied so many times in the past, you could give it the benefit of the doubt and assume the emails were lost due to incompetence. However, it is becoming pretty obvious that this administration has stonewalled Congress in its attempt to find out if there was massive government, IRS, and White House abuse of First Amendment rights of political opponents. Lies, criminal activity by government officials, and shredding of the Constitution, insanity at the highest levels of government and Washington's political class.

2) If you work in the private sector and sexually harass 17 women, there is no doubt you would no longer have a job. If you work in the private sector and watch pornography on company computers and company time, there is no doubt you would no longer have a job. In both instances, you might also be in jail.

Which makes working for the Federal government so cool in that you can harass upwards of 17 women and view pornography on the job and not get fired. In fact, you might even get promoted. According to recent Congressional committee testimony, despite the sexual harassment of many women, one EPA government official was actually promoted despite at least 17 females employees' sexual harassment claims beginning as early as 2009. EPA rules require employment termination after just two sexual harassment claims but apparently that is more a guideline than a hard and fast principle.

Another two EPA employees were caught watching porn and but were only put on paid leave. One eventually retired but still received the full benefits as if nothing had happened.

"It is well past time someone is held accountable for these management failings," said Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah. "We have a duty and obligation to the American taxpayer to fire the people who are abusing the system." Elijah Cummings, the committee's top Democrat, was equally critical: "There is no doubt that these employees should have been fired," the Maryland congressman said.

Nice work if you can get it, high pay to watch porn and harass some female co-workers without fear of any retribution. 

3) Let’s get back to the Obama promise that his administration would be the most transparent ever, a claim that has been proven wrong so many times. Recall from past discussions that the Veterans Administration (VA) is a highly dysfunctional organization, paying its executives high pay and high bonuses while veterans died and suffered from not getting the medical support they had been promised.

This scandal eventually blew up with the head of the VA being fired and Obama and Congress promising to shake things up for the better for our vets. Well, maybe Congress did. According to a recent Washington Examiner article by Luke Rosiak, a Veterans Affairs hospital threatened its staff members with a $20,000 fine if they became whistle blowers for VA misdoings. 

This latest VA scandal was at the Veteran's Affairs Caribbean Healthcare System where upper level executives began threatening employees who leak information to outsiders with a $20,000 fine. Not only that, they tried to pressure the Office of the Inspector General to identify hospital workers who previously leaked documents showing evidence of widespread wrongdoing in the facility.

The cause for the alarm is likely connected to at least two recent instances of bad behavior on the part of the hospital. First, a patient at the facility recently died after a doctor performed an unnecessary procedure without authorization from the primary physician. The doctor also allowed his wife, a medical trainee who he was supervising, to participate in the procedure to get experience in it.

Second, the hospital's director, DeWayne Hamlin, had been arrested in Florida with painkillers in his possession and tried to have a low-level employee fired after that employee whistle blew the situation to supervisors in Washington. When an investigator said her review found that the whistle blower did nothing wrong, Hamlin then ordered that the investigator be fired.

So much for the “most transparent” administration ever, it is an administration that goes after whistle blowers like no others before it.

4) I love it when politicians think we are so stupid that we will believe anything they say, even when they say they never said it in the first place. As most people know, there have been riots going on over the past week over the death of a young African American who was in police custody. 

At the onset of the riot situation, the mayor of Baltimore was videotaped at a news conference saying that she was going to give rioters “space to destroy.” Well, that statement was taken a green light to act unlawfully, violently, and without fear of reprisal by the rioters, resulting in billions of dollars worth of property damage, injured civilians, and police officers, and a total disrespect for the rule of law.

A few days later, the same mayor said she never said that she was going to give rioters the “space to destroy.” Is she that dense that she forgot what she said a few days ago on video or does she think we are that dumb that we do not realize what she said a few days ago? In either case, it is pure insanity that this woman is in charge of a major U.S. city. 

To say her conflicting claims, go to the 4:00 mark of the following video clip:

http://dailyheadlines.net/2015/04/baltimore-mayor-backtracks-she-did-not-saygive-those-who-wish-to-destroy-space-to-do-that/

5) One last piece of insanity for today. According to a recent article by Bloomberg that was summarized in the April 17, 2015 issue of The Week magazine: 

• Average American household income fell by almost 1% in 2014.
• The average household income of the bottom fifth of the nation;s earners fell by 3.5%.
• The average income of the wealthiest 1% rose by almost 1% in 2014.

Now, I am not saying tax the rich more because they earned more. Even if you taxed the rich at a 100% rate, it would make minimal difference in the lives of the other 99%.

What I am saying is that we continue to be served by the most economically ignorant set of politicians ever who cannot and have not put forth coherent economic policies to grow the economy and provide good earning opportunities for 99% of the American households.

So what insanity did we learn of today:

• If you work for the Federal government, it is okay to lie to Congress.
• If you work for the Federal government is is okay to harass women and watch porn on the job.
• If you work for the Federal government it is okay to harass and threaten whistle blowers even though it is against the law.
• If you are a politician it is okay to pull a Star Wars mind trick on Americans, adapting the movie phrase, “These are not the droids you are looking for” to “That is not the quote I said just two days ago.”
• And if you are a Washington politician, economic experience, common sense, and training is obviously not a required skill of the job, given how poorly Washington manages the nation;s economic affairs.

More insanity tomorrow.

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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

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

March, 2014 Political Class Insanity, Part 3: Rubber Duck Races In Wisconsin, Ambassadorships For Sale, The Would-Be Terrorist Nun, and More

This is our third post in this month’s series of political class insanity. Every month we review the latest lunacy, idiocy, disrespect, and wasteful spending of the American political class in all facets of their incompetence. Unfortunately, their level of incompetence seems to be getting worse as it takes longer and longer each month to cover how damaging they are to our wealth and our freedom.

Let’s see what insanity we uncovered today:

1) Tax time is approaching so it was timely to read some words from Sandra Block of Dailyfinance.com that appeared in the January 28, 2014 issue of The Week magazine. According to her research, in 2013 the IRS was able to only answer 61% of calls from taxpayers. This appears to be just picking up the telephone, where they failed 39% of the time. Ut does not include the number of times they answered the phone and gave out the wrong information.

Additionally, the average wait time for a call that was actually answered by the IRS was a disgraceful 18 minutes. And this is the same government agency that is supposed to be the hub in implementing the 2,000 plus page Obama Care legislation. If the IRS cannot do the job they were originally set up to do and have been doing poorly for decades, it is highly unlikely they will do any better handling the Obama Care complexities and bureaucracy.

2) Former U.S. Congressman Mel Reynolds resigned from Congress in 1995 after being convicted of statutory rape, something that you really do not want a standing U.S. Congressman to be convicted of. While serving in prison for that conviction, he was also convicted of bank fraud. Yes, that is correct, WHILE IN PRISON he was convicted of a serious financial crime.

Recently, he was back in the news when he was arrested in Zimbabwe on pornography charges for allegedly taking lewd photos and videos of models and prostitutes. Again, this was a U.S. Congressman at one time, which is insane in itself. Even worse, though, despite the conviction on rape and the conviction on bank fraud, a political peer, Bill Clinton, took care of him by commuting his original prison sentence in 2001.

How many ordinary Americans do you think Clinton would have pardoned if they had been convicted of both statutory rape and bank fraud? I would bet none since they are not part of the political class inner sanctum where insanity and felony convictions are inconveniences more than anything.

3) One of the major budget items in the Federal government across many Federal departments is to protect the country from terrorists. I do not now the exact numbers but I would venture a guess that annually we allow the Federal government to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to protect us from attack.

For those hundreds of billions of dollars you would expect us to have the absolute best terrorism and security protection in the world, in the history of the world. That would probably be a gross inaccurate assumption, however, based on an article that appeared in the February 28, 2014 issue of The Week magazine:

• According to the article, an 84 year old nun was recently convicted for breaking into one of the supposedly “most secure” nuclear facilities in the country.
• Note, that I did not say “tried to break in,” she actually made it inside the facility.
• Once inside, she threw around human blood in protest of nuclear technology besides hanging banners and spray painting peace signs.
• She was one of three people who got in after cutting through a chain link fence around the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
• Not only did they get through the fence, they actually got inside the uranium processing and storage facility.
• Although she was sentenced to 35 months in jail, she pleaded with the judge to put her away for life to honor her protest and principles.

So let me get this right. We pay hundreds of billions of dollars to protect ourselves, our families and our country from terrorist attacks and an 84 year old nun with two accomplices, one 64 years old and one 58 years old, can cut a chain link fence and get close to the uranium in a government facility. Does not seem like we are getting good value for our money in this government area.

The really terrifying thought is if an 84 nun can do this, imagine what a determined terrorist or terrorists could do inside a domestic nuclear facility, who did not want to just hang banners or spray paint some walls. That is the true insanity of what a farce the Federal government’s anti-terrorism efforts are.

4) We have often made the case that government in America is like Jabba The Hutt from Star Wars, a gross, obese entity that cannot get out of its own way. Often, one part of the government does not know what another part is doing or how one part of the government passes a law or regulation that makes no sense to another part of government.

The first Jabba example this month comes from the political class in the state government of Wisconsin, as explained in the February 28, 2014 issue of The Week magazine. One part of the state government in Wisconsin, the state legislature, passed a bill that legalized rubber duck races in the state. A rubber duck race is defined to be when participants throw hundreds of plastic duck toys into a river and watch them race to a finish line. The fact that the state legislature is working on such nonsense is a piece of insanity in itself.

However, another part of the state government in Wisconsin, the Justice department, warned that the legislation might be breaking state gambling laws. Thus, budget shortfalls, failing schools, and other state issues are being neglected while at least two parts of the state government try to decide if rubber duck races are legal. Pathetic.

5) The other Jabba The Hutt issue is going on in New Jersey. That state, along with a host of other northern states, are suffering through one of the coldest and snowiest winters in a long time. This is causing state and local governments to run out of rock salt that is needed to keep their roads clear of snow and ice. There has just been too much needed this year to keep up with the high snowfall levels.

The problem could be easily solved if a non-U.S. ship containing 40,000 tons of rock salt that was being shipped from Maine to other areas would be allowed to dock and unload. This is obviously the simple, needed remedy to keep the roads clean and protect Americans from accidents.

But obvious and simple are not two traits of the American political class, as witnessed by this situation.. It appears that a 1920 Federal law allows only U.S. ships to move goods from one U.S. port to another. Since the rock salt, all 40,000 tons of it were loaded on a non-U.S. ship, that ship is not allowed to dock in an American port and unload, even it means saving lives and protecting the health and welfare of Americans.

You cannot make this nonsense up. Local and state politicians are asking for an obvious waiver to this 94 year old law in order to do their jobs and keep the roads clean this winter. However, according to an article in the February 28, 2014 issue of The Week magazine, Federal government authorities say that the waiver is unlikely to be granted, safety of Americans be damned. Lunacy of the utmost degree.

6) We have covered this issue already but additional information is now available so it is worth reviewing again. We had previously reported that 53% of President Obama’s nominees to be foreign ambassadors for the United States were either political allies or people who had raised at least a half a million dollars for the President’s election campaigns. According to an article in the February 28, 2014 issue of The Week, this is almost twice the rate of previous administrations.

Thus, the President was more interested in rewarding his political allies and election financers than putting experienced State Department career diplomats into important government positions overseas. Better to take of one’s friends than to put the best people in the right places to optimize U.S. interests. 

The additional information on this travesty came out when many of these nominees went before Congressional committees for review and approval:

• The nominee to be ambassador to Norway admitted he had never been there, did not speak the language and ended up insulting the current government in that country in a number of ways. He mistakenly referred to the prime minister of Norway as the president and mistakenly called the existing majority party in the Norwegian government an extremist “fringe political entity" which it is not.
• The nominee to be ambassador to Argentina cannot speak Spanish, a nice asset to have as ambassador to a Spanish speaking country.
• A television soap opera producer, with no foreign service experience, was named as the potential ambassador to Hungary.
• Jennifer Rubin, writing in the Washington Post correctly stated that such a practice “is a grave insult to competent foreign service officers.”
• Jacob Heilbrunn, writing in the National Interest correctly stated that sending wealthy campaign fund raisers to foreign lands as ambassadors is not optimal since “it signals to the host country that the U.S. doesn’t take it very seriously.”

How embarrassing for our country and how disappointing for this Presidency. We are sending amateurs overseas as rewards for winning an election and we are doing it at unheard of levels. So much for “hope and change,” it is just politics as usual or even worse, not better.

That will do it for today. Amateur hour in the State Department, rock salt held captive by a 94 year old law, the importance of rubber duck races in Wisconsin, a nun that foiled the Federal government’s entire anti-terror effort, and more. More insanity tomorrow if you dare. In the meantime, please join our term limits effort at:

www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com

Because if rubber duck races are the priorities of our current politicians, how much worse could it get if we replace them all and see what happens?

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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

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

The Unthinkable: Government Accounting Processes Force Even Trained Auditors To Give Up

Many, many times and in so many ways we have written how the size of the Federal government has gotten totally out of control, so large and so atrophied:

• Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security have gotten so big and so unwieldy from a government bureaucracy perspective that they lose over $200 billion a year to waste and criminal fraud.
• During the financial crisis, the Federal Reserve Board was trying to increase the amount of short term Treasury debt that was in the market while the Treasury Department was trying to increase the amount of long term Treasury debt in the market while reducing the amount of short term debt, i.e. the government was so big that two parts of it were trying to do the exact opposite of what each other was doing.
• The tax code has gotten so large and so complicated that the IRS cannot even keep up, admitting that it fails to collect over $380 billion a year from tax evaders.
• The Transportation Safety Administration is so inefficient that it recently purchased almost $200 million worth of airport security equipment that it will never use.
• The Defense Department has gotten so large that one of its own task forces found that the Department buys over $30 billion worth of military parts every year that are either obsolete or unneeded.

The list goes on and on. Our Federal government has morphed into a political Jabba The Hutt, an overbearing, overweight, repressive, inefficient, non-agile character out of the Star Wars movies. This political Jabba wastes taxpayer wealth, destroys freedom and liberties, and never actually resolves any major issues of problems.

Nowhere is this illusion been more vivid than in a recent article from the Huffington Post on January 18, 2013:

• The Government Accountability Office (GAO) announced in the third week in January that it will be unable to complete a complete financial audit of the Federal government since there are serious accounting problems with the Department of Defense.
• At that time, the GAO also identified the Department of Homeland Security as having operational and accounting problems so substantial that it was impossible for investigators to audit it.
• Can you imagine, two major government departments that are so screwed up that even the expert auditors from the GAO, trained professionals that are supposed to bring order to chaos, have thrown up their hands and said they give up, these two departments cannot be audited because of how screwed up they have become.
• And these are not two insignificant entities: the article states that the Department of Defense has a net annual cost of $799.1 billion and the Department of Homeland Security has a net cost of $48.7 billion.
• If you add these two numbers up and divide the total by the 115 million households in the U.S., you end up with over $7,300 per household in taxes that that the Federal government cannot account for every year.
• This is an atrocious insult to every American taxpayer who pays their fair share of taxes to a government that then proceeds to misappropriate, misspend, and outright lose those taxes at a rate of $7,300 per household.
• This was the official GAO reasons of why they could not complete their audit: "The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) cannot render an opinion on the 2012 consolidated financial statements of the federal government because of widespread material internal control weaknesses, significant uncertainties, and other limitations. As was the case in 2011, the main obstacles to a GAO opinion on the accrual-based consolidated financial statements were: Serious financial management problems at the Department of Defense (DOD) that made its financial statements unauditable. The federal government’s inability to adequately account for and reconcile intragovernmental activity and balances between federal agencies. The federal government’s ineffective process for preparing the consolidated financial statements."

I love the phrase, “as was the case in 2011,” in other words, this type of screwup happens every year. The other adjectives used to describe the situation are also quite damning: serious problems, unsuitable, ineffective, control weaknesses, limitations, uncertainties, etc. What a disgrace.

How much corruption, criminal fraud, outright wasteful spending is going on in these two departments? We may never know because of how messed up the government and the political class that should be overseeing these operations have allowed the political Jabba The Hutt to grow out of control.

But not only are the actual accounting and audit processes out of whack, the process for fixing them are also a train wreck, according to the article:

• A GAO source told the Huffington Post writer that Pentagon meetings with the auditors were often canceled at the last minute because the Pentagon could not get its paperwork and financial statements compiled on time.
• Gene L. Dodaro, Comptroller General of the United States and head of the GAO, tried to throw the Pentagon a bone/compliment and recognize the improvements in accounting practices made over time but since the Defense Department’s accounting processes and results are still unaudtiable, how much improvement really could have been made?
• The GAO report said that the Pentagon was working on a way to get its financial statements to a point where they could actually be audited, "following years of unsuccessful financial improvements." How can an “improvement” be “unsuccessful?” Makes no sense.
• The target is to have valid financial statements available by September, 2017. However, in October 2011, the goal was to have audit-readiness by fiscal year 2014 so good luck hitting that 2017 date.
• And in reality, that 2017 date is really unacceptable. That would mean that for four more years, over $800 billion a year would be a mystery as far as how it was being spent and how much of it was being wasted.
• The agency slammed the Pentagon for its financial readiness, saying that recent work has "raised concerns" about the Pentagon's ability to implement a valid accounting process and plan.

Thus, the financial statements are a farce, the past improvements to remedy the statements and accounting processes have been a farce, and the ability to fix the processes going forward look like they will also be a farce. I have never heard of any business, any corporation, any non-profit organization, any government agency, or any human endeavor being so screwed up that it could not even be audited by trained professional to find out how screwed up it was. Until now, that is.

Several steps from “Love My Country, Loathe My Government” need to be implemented right away to start to address and fix this insult to the American taxpayer:

1. Step 46 would impose very strict accounting and auditing processes on every single Federal government entity along the lines of the Sarbannes-Oxley legislation that is imposed on private businesses and companies. If non-government entities have to live under and obey strict, generally accepted accounting rules and guidelines, there is no reason why government entities should be exempted from those same rules. Maybe if Sarbannes-Oxley had been in place all along we would not annual have over $800 billion at risk.
2. Step 34 establishes a process to remove Congressional members from their committee posts if their committees fall down on the jobs they are supposed to be doing. In this case, any Congressional member who allowed the Defense Department budgeting and accounting process to get this screwed up needs to be removed form those committees immediately. Given how massive this screwup is, they probably should also be drummed out of office.
3. Step 1 would reduce Federal government spending 10% a year for five years across the board. Possibly the only way to get the political Jabba under control is to starve it down to a smaller, more manageable entity that could actually be audited.

Is there any wonder why we have a $16.4 TRILLION national debt when two large government departments are so big and so out of control that an audit is not only difficult, it is impossible?

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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

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

Abra Kadabra - The Right Hand Of The Federal Government Still Does Not Know What The Left Hand Is Doing

Several times we have discussed the fact that our Federal government has grown so large and unwieldy, becoming more like Jabba The Hutt of Star Wars (a parasitic blob that wastes resources) than an efficient and effective organization, that we often come across ludicrous situations where one part of the Federal government is doing something that is in direct conflict with what another tentacle of the government is doing:

• A little while ago we saw how the Federal Reserve Board and the Treasury Department were doing the exact opposite of each other. One entity was busy trying to reduce the volume of long term Treasury bills in the market and increase the amount of short term Treasury bills while the other entity was trying to expand the volume of long term notes and reduce the volume of short term notes.See the following link for more details: http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2011/10/clueless-in-washington.html
• Another time we saw how the Department of Agriculture was increasing the amount of cheap corn in the market with its farm subsidies, making obesity provoking foods less expensive and more widely used due to the proliferation of cheap corn fructose while other parts of the government were trying to reduce the use of corn fructose infested foods to fight obesity. See the following link for more detail: http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2012/06/your-local-and-state-government-in.html

I am sure I could pull up some other examples from past blog posts but you get the idea. This thing called the Federal government has gotten so large and cumbersome that it cannot help but get in the way of itself every day. If the loss of taxpayer wealth and loss of freedom was not so tragic, some of these antics and working at cross purposes would be kind of funny in a Keystone Kop kind of way.

Unfortunately, these actions do waste incredible amounts of taxpayer money and do rob us of our freedom as the government intrudes to our personal lives more and more with its bureaucratic bumbling.

Today let's talk about the latest crashing together of different government priorities and how this crashing negates the use of taxpayer wealth in the process. Specifically, the latest cross purpose example comes out of the recently passed Senate farm bill. Most of the following information comes from an article in the July 8, 2012 issue of Money News:

• The Federal government and every state government adds a multitude of taxes onto each pack of cigarettes that consumers buy in order to 1) collect taxes on each pack sold and 2) to discourage the purchase and use of cigarettes (not included in the Money News article).
• The Federal government recently announced a new $54 million, 12-week TV ad campaign it will be airing to encourage smokers to give up the smoking habit.
• State level and Federal spending on anti-smoking efforts have topped $800 million in some years.
• Which raises the question that if government entities want to discourage smoking, why does the latest Senate approved farm bill contain continued taxpayer financial support for the industry responsible for the product targeted by those anti-smoking ads, namely the tobacco farming industry?
• From 1995 through 2011, the Federal government has paid out $1.329 billion in subsidies for the tobacco industry. In 2011 alone, Federal taxpayers paid out over $190 million in tobacco subsidies to 58,350 recipients, according to analyses done by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.
• North Carolina receives the largest share of the subsidies — 39.7% of the total or $528 million from 1995 through 2011 — followed by Kentucky at 28.7%. The taxpayer waste is not even spread out across a lot of states if only two states sop up almost 70% of the total subsidy.

So let me get this straight. Smoking is a leading cause of disease and death in this country and a prime driver in our problem with escalating health care costs. As a result, the Federal and state governments in this country spend taxpayer money, sometimes to the tune of $800 million a year, to discourage Americans from smoking. This is so important in one part of the Federal government that it is launching a $54 million television ad campaign to encourage people to stop smoking.

However, in the past seven years, the same people running these same government entities have also given away over $1.3 billion of taxpayer wealth to tobacco farmers to help them grow tobacco that leads to disease and death and contributes to our escalating health care costs.

Wouldn't this money have been better spent by either returning it to the American taxpayer, using it to fund lung cancer research, or to help treat victims of lung cancer, a cancer that is most often caused by tobacco smoking? These seems like better uses for over a billion dollars than giving it to tobacco farmers who grow a product that governments spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year to discourage people from using. Makes no sense.

But making no sense by our political class should not come as any surprise. They do it every day. How else to you explain the fact that these same politicians have overspent and incurred a national debt of almost $16 TRILLION without resolving a single major issue facing American families today: our public schools still fail to educate, we are still losing a war on drugs, our borders still leak, we still do not have a national energy policy, our health care costs continue to rise, our infrastructure continues to decay, etc.

That is why Step 1 from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" is so important. Step 1 would reduce Federal government spending by 10% a year for five years. Not only would this result in a tremendous relief to our national debt problem and spur our economy, it would force these politicians to focus on a much smaller set of priorities since they would have far less taxpayer money to spend and waste and divert their attention. With a smaller set of priorities, maybe, just maybe, they might resolve an issue or two.

Lord knows paying tobacco farmers to grow tobacco to be consumed by consumers that the Federal government wants to discourage consumers from consuming is not the right priority.

We invite all readers of this blog to visit our new website, "The United States Of Purple," at:

http://www.unitedstatesofpurple.com/

The United States of Purple is a new grass roots approach to filling the office of President of The United States by focusing on the restoration of freedom in the United States, focusing on problem solving skills and results vs. personal political enrichment, and imposing term limits on all future Federal politicians. No more red states, no more blue states, just one United States Of America under the banner of Purple.

The United States Of Purple's website also provides you the formal opportunity to sign a petition to begin the process of implementing a Constitutional amendment to impose fixed term limits on all Federally elected politicians. Only by turning out the existing political class can we have a chance of addressing and finally resolving the major issues of or times.

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/

The Federal Government As Jabba The Hutt - Too Big and Too Slow To Get Anything Right

In the early part of "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" I make the case that the U.S. Federal government is really nothing more than the political incarnation of Jabba The Hutt from the Star Wars movies. As you may recall, Jabba was a formless, slow moving, overweight entity that ruled with an iron fist while devouring resources brought to him. He did not pay for anything, he just took them, and he was not there to help anyone but himself. Those he ruled over had no say in how their resources and wealth were used and had no chance in dislodging Jabba from his position of power. Kind of sounds like our political class currently sitting in DC.

Jabba came to mind today as I thought about some recent occurrences in which the Federal government has gotten so big that it is doubling back on itself and putting itself in some very weird situations and conflicts with the reality of the world around us:

• According to an article in the July 23, 2010 issue of The Week magazine, a Boston Federal judge has ruled parts of the Federal Defense of Marriage Act to be unconstitutional. This act forbids the Federal government from recognizing gay marriages and granting Federal benefits. The judge ruled that the Federal law forces Massachusetts to discriminate against it own citizens. Now for the weird part. the Obama administration is now forced to appeal the ruling, even though his administration and the Democrats in charge of Congress oppose the Defense of Marriage Act and want it repealed. The Federal government has gotten so big that it is expending legal resources for something that it does not want to exist in the first place.
• This weird situation is similar to the illegal alien situation we blogged about a few days ago. You may recall that the latest statistics relative to illegal border crossers shows that the Federal government recently had the highest levels of prosecutions for illegal aliens and the highest deportation levels of illegals but at the same time was fighting the new Arizona state law that was trying to stem the flow of illegal aliens into that state.
• Getting back to gay marriages, according to a July 15, 2010 Associated Press article, the country of Argentina recently became the first Latin American country to legalize gay marriage. The article reported that Chile and several other South American countries are likely to try and follow suit. Do we think that our Jabba, parading as the American political class, has any chance of making that happen in this country when it finds itself in court defending against gay rights?
• According to an article in the August issue of Reason magazine, since 1996 fourteen states and the District of Columbia have legalized marijuana use for medical purposes and several other states are considering doing the same. This is in direct conflict with Federal law which has sometimes resulted in Federal raids of medical marijuana providers which are illegal under Federal law but legal under state law. This is also in conflict with Obama the campaigner who wanted to decriminalize the drug when he ran for President but now defends the outlawing of it at the Federal level. Again, government has gotten so big that we have entered the weird zone regarding medical marijuana where it is legal at the same time as being illegal.
  If you think the Federal government has a problem now, wait until next week when the Associated Press reports that the Oakland City Council will vote on whether to allow industrial farming of marijuana to be established in city limits, industrial farms which would produce marijuana for medical use as well as for use in products ranging from baked goods to body oil. Winning applicants who would operate these farms would have to pay annual permit fees and eight percent of their sales to taxes as well as carry $2 million in liability insurance. Similar efforts are being pushed in other cities throughout the state along with a November ballot issue to legalize non-medical use of marijuana, according to the article. Now consider the contents of a short blurb in the July 23, 2010 issue of The Week magazine that reported on a Rand Study that concluded from their analysis that the legalization of marijuana would reduce the street price by up to 90%. Thus, the efforts in California may help reduce the street price of the drug which in turn would significantly reduce the power, wealth and influence of the Mexican drug cartels which would be a good thing. However, in the face of this good set of outcomes (more revenue for the local governments, less of a stigma of marijuana users, less law enforcement resources spent on busting marijuana users, the weakening of the Mexican drug cartels) do we think that the Jabba the Hutt beast in DC is nimble enough to understand what the benefits are or will it continue down its path of conflict at the Federal drug enforcement level?
• If I reach back into my book research I come across a Washington Post article from May, 2007, entitled "Federal Loans Fuel Push For Coal Power Plants." The article discusses a Depression era Federal program that provides low cost loans to build coal fired, high pollution power plants using taxpayer money. According to the article, "the support is a major force behind the rush to coal plants, which spew carbon dioxide that scientists blame for global warming." Thus, while the Obama administration is pushing a climate control bill in order to fight against global warming, the same government is funding power plants that do just the opposite. Makes no sense.
• In our last blog we reported on another Associate Press article about how the Feds had busted 94 people for defrauding the Medicare program. This was a good development but why was our Jabba so slow in getting these arrests done? Medicare fraud has been going on since the day Medicare started several decades ago, why did it take such a painfully slow time to start arresting the cheats? One of those arrested had filed over 3,700 fraudulent claims under her name, how slow can you get?

We could go on and on. The U.S. government has gotten so big and so slow, just like Jabba the Hutt, that its many folds of skin hide waste, stupidity and the doubling back on itself, i.e. government laws and actions in conflict with itself or the desires of those running the government. We could go on and on about how slow, ineffective, and wasteful our Jabba is, about how our Jabba never solves a problem whether it is insecure borders, failing public schools, escalating health care costs, etc., how our Jabba wastes untold billions of dollars on earmarks, useless initiatives, and fraud-infested programs, or how our Jabba does not know how to regulated the economy, resulting in sky high national debt levels and a very creaky economic situation with low growth and high unemployment.

Jabba is very bad for all of us but he is difficult to dislodge. Through the earmark process, the gerrymandering of Congressional districts, do-nothing campaign finance laws, and other methods, Jabba has many defenses against defeat in an election, defenses that even a Jedi light saber could not easily pierce. That is why November is so critical as is Step 39 in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government." Step 39 would impose term limits on politicians so that they never again get as fat, slow, wasteful, and ineffective as Jabba The Hutt and November is critical since it begins the process of voting out the Jabba incumbents and finally getting in some sleek, effective, and courageous Jedi warriors who will make the difficult decisions to get the size of government under control and make that downsized government more effective and less weird and less conflicted.







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.



Also visit the following sites for freedom:



http://www.cato.org/

http://www.reason.com/

http://www.robertringer.com/

http://www.realpolichick.blogspot.com/

http://www.flipcongress2010.com/