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This week we have been reviewing random acts of wasteful spending, courtesy of the Federal government and the American political class. Random acts of waste involve one time instances of miscellaneous misspending of taxpayer money in foolish, ineffective, or just plain idiotic ways. This is different from systemic wasteful spending that occurs on a regular, recurring basis and includes such examples of waste and criminal fraud that happens every day in the Social Security and Medicare programs, just to name a few.
However, random acts of wasteful spending are no less important than systemic acts of wasteful spending since their toll eventually gets well up into the billions of dollars. This week we have already discussed the $80 million the State Department wasted BEFORE they realized the the U.S. consulate building they built in northern Afghanistan was not defendable against Taliban and terrorist attacks.
This week we also talked about the $300 million the U.S. Navy spent to build two ships BEFORE they realized those same ships were not needed. Adding insult to injury, the Navy then spent another $10 million to dismantle the same ships that were never used.
This week we also reviewed the totally unnecessary expenditure that the House Of Representatives granted itself where House members can get free auto leases and free gas, courtesy of the American taxpayer.
The list goes on and on of these types of random wasteful spending situations. But today let's focus on a newly discovered piece of waste, courtesy of our ill-advised and ill-executed mission in Iraq, as outlined in a New York Times article that was reprinted in the May 12, 2012 issue of the Tampa Bay Times:
- According to the article, the U.S. and Iraqi governments planned to jointly implement a massive police training program which was to include 350 U.S. law enforcement personnel that was supposed to be "the centerpiece of a hugely expanded civilian mission here [in Iraq]."
- The program has already spent $500 million but has fallen well short of its goals with only 50 law enforcement personnel having actually been deployed, vs. the planned 350. And it is quite possible that even those 50 might not make it in place by the end of the year.
- The $500 million has been spent only since last October, about $71 million a month on average, with virtually nothing to show for it.
- But it gets worse. The article goes on to explain that another large program with the Iraqi government, budgeted at $343 million, was supposed to be used in the construction of physical facilities that would be used to train the in-country police forces. These facilities were supposed to accommodate more than a thousand trainers and staff people for the next five years.
- The article does not provide any information on how much of the $343 million has already been spent but makes it quite clear that this program is also falling apart: "But like so much else in the nine years of war, occupation, and reconstruction here, it has not gone as planned."
- This conclusion is verified by a quote in the article from Robert Periot, director of the Security Sector Governance Center Of Innovation at the U.S. Institute of Peace; he called the project a "small program for a lot of money."
The waste just keeps on coming. Whether in Afghanistan, U.S. Navy yards, the House of Representatives, or now in Iraq, it seems that the political class and the Federal bureaucracy it oversees adhere to the old, wasteful saying: Ready! Fire! Aim! Why do these people always find out how bad and wasteful their efforts are AFTER they spend the taxpayers' wealth?
As we discussed all this week, if Federal employees and managers lost their jobs for wasting $832,000 on a Las Vegas conference, somebody in the Defense Department and/or State Department needs to lose their jobs for wasting many times $832,000 and have very little to show for the expenditures.
In addition, Step 34 from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" would come in very handy in this disaster also. Step 34 would provide an orderly, predefined process to remove those members of the Congressional committees that oversaw the government organizations that wasted possibly up to $843 million on this failed police training and police facilities program.
Firing bureaucrats and removing politicians from committee posts would probably cause others in the Federal government to more fully think through their budgets and associated expenses lest they too get a pink slip for incompetence. Only then would we finally return to the sanity approach of: Ready! Aim! And Maybe Fire, assuming that all of the contingencies and cost/benefits have been explored, BEFORE the order to Fire is executed.
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 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/
This blog has often talked about the American political class inability to get anything accomplished relative to the major issues facing Americans today. These major issues include the failed war on drugs, failing public schools, the lack of a national energy policy, a non-existent immigration plan and strategy, and the failure to solve the problem of escalating health care costs in this country.
However, this inability apparently is not restricted to the domestic side of political class responsibilities. If you look at our country's foreign policy recently you see very few successes (recent trade agreement with South Korea) and a whole lot of failures:
- There was a recent conference in Geneva that involved Iran and the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France, and Germany [Associated Press - December 7, 2010]. The conference was supposed to find a way to allow Iran to develop a peaceful nuclear energy program while preventing them from developing nuclear weapons. The talks ended with a promise of all countries to get together again in 2011. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley went so far to say that: "We are encouraged that there will be a follow-on meeting [in 2011].
Sound familiar? It seems this dance has been going on for a long time, with Iran skillfully sitting down for talks with the over eager other six nations and hinting at enough progress to not kill future talks but never agreeing to anything either. This has been going on for years, with no concessions from Iran but serving as their delaying tactic for their continued developed of a nuclear weapon capability. Lots of talk, no action.
- The never ending search for peace between the Palestinians and Israel also has recently been in the news. The United States, for years, has tried to mediate talks between the two factions, with a recent agreement stipulating that Israel would not do any more settlement construction in Jerusalem for 90 days. This agreement was necessary to prevent the Palestinians from walking out of the peace talks. The Obama administration was so desperate for the 90 day window that they agreed to get billions of dollars of weaponry to Israel and made other diplomatic commitments for their moratorium on construction, all for a mere 90 day freeze on construction.
However, shortly afterward, Israel declared that the U.S. was too consumed by the Wikileaks fiasco to talk peace (Associated press - December 7, 2010) and that the U.S. had stopped the peace talk process. The State Department denied that this was the case and the talks were still on. However, it appears that the Israelis are using the weak excuse of Wikileaks to get the military hardware and diplomatic air cover that the U.S. committed to but never wanted to continue the peace talks anyway. Thus, all of the United States' plans to keep both sides happy and talking are likely to fail. Lots of talk, no action.
- Every time that North Korea acts up, the United States goes begging to China to please, please intervene and keep the North Koreans in check. However, China apparently has very little motivation to keep the North Koreans in check according to recent news reports and documents:
- China likes having a buffer between itself and U.S. ally South Korea. If the North government should collapse, then South Korean, and possibly U.S. troops, could be sitting on the Chinese border, something they probably do not want.
- If the North Korean government should collapse, there is a very high probability that millions of starving North Korean citizens would flee to the more prosperous China in search of food and shelter, an event that the Chinese definitely do not want to cope with.
- The North Koreans intermittently act aggressively towards Japan, a military and economic competitor of nearby China. With North Korea as a wild card, it distracts Japan in its affairs and confrontations with China.
As with the Mideast peace talks and hopes and the delaying Iranians nuclear meetings, lots of talk, no action when it comes to North Korea.
What do all of these situations have in common? Namely, the United States no longer has the leverage to make/convince others to do what it wants. Without leverage, other parties will do what the want and is best for them, not what is best for U.S. interests. Especially today, with a fragile economy, the United States has lost the leverage of economic power. China's economy has grown so much and made us so dependent on it that we can do nothing but go to the Chinese and beg for them to do something about North Korea.
The Israelis are living in a prosperous economic environment that is relatively secure. The Palestinian leaders exist and continue in power because of the hatred it sows among its citizens towards Israel. None of the parties involved, Israeli and Palestinians citizens and leaders really want peace as defined by the United States. We have no leverage to make them change their minds from the status quo but we are gullible enough to sign short term and costly agreements that the Israelis abide by or ignore at their will. Again, no leverage to make them do what we want, they have more to lose than to gain.
What leverage do we have with the Iranians? Obviously, the five or six rounds of sanctions that have been imposed on them have had insufficient leverage to make them stand down from their nuclear weapon ambitions. Plus, we are dealing with some very irrational and possibly insane rulers, both in Iran and North Korea. Without leverage to apply to their irrational interests, the United States is relegated to diplomatic beggar again and sits at these meetings with no power or leverage to enact anything effective. As a result, the Iranians play us for fools as they delay and delay as they develop and develop nuclear weaponry.
A wise old business saying goes as follows: "Never be so in love with a business deal that you cannot walk away from the negotiating table." Our political class and politicians have become so in love with these "deals," a nuclear free Iran, a well behaved North Korea, and a lasting a stable Middle East peace accord that they cannot walk away from the table. We continue to sit at the table and talk and talk because we have diplomatically, militarily, and economically no leverage to do anything else, looking diplomatically impotent in every case. Without leverage or the creativity to create leverage, you get played for a fool, which is exactly the position that our politicians have put is in today.
Which should not surprise us. The meager efforts of the political class to domestically improve life for Americans have almost always been a failure (e.g. Cash For Clunkers, TARP, etc.). And usually the root cause of these failures is that the meager and ill-thought out programs from our politicians usually have no leverage. Without leverage, plans usually fail miserably.
But that discussion is worthy of another post in the near future but before then, think about some of these recent failures and try to identify what leverage was inherent in the thought process of the programs. I will bet that you will find that there were none. As a result they failed as miserably as the foreign affairs fiascos above.
Our recent book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at www.loathemygovernment.com. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.
Please visit the following sites for freedom:
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
Any number of recent events have reinforced the notion that many in our political class really do not know what they are doing. The world has gotten so complex but their grasp of it's realities is so naive. Unfortunately, every time they screw up it usually costs us in wasted tax dollars, lost freedom, or in the Wikileaks scandal, potentially human lives. In an "Alice In Wonderland" world, we could follow the advice of the Queen of Hearts and chop off their political heads and move on, hopefully filling their position with someone more competent.
However, we do not live in Wonderland. But if we did, wouldn't it be great to chop off the political careers of the following politicians:
- According to Robert Scheer, writing in The Nation, and summarized in the December 20, 2010 issue of The Week magazine, of the $44.4 billion increase in U.S. corporate profits this past quarter, about $33.3 billion of those increased corporate profits went to Wall Street banks and investment houses. Many of these firms are the same ones that were at the center of the financial meltdown with their risky investments and some were saved with taxpayer bailout money. What's more irritating is that these same financial firms, flush with cash and profits, are not making very many loans to businesses and consumers, loans that might finally get the economy moving again.
Why are they not making any loans? According to John Cassidy, writing in The New Yorker, the banks can make more money "exploiting complex security trading, day-to-day movements in the markets and other financial schemes. They do not have to make traditional loans anymore in order to make oodles of money.
Who were the brilliant politicians who worked on the bailout process that saved many big financial firms, firms that were "to big to fail," wasted billions of taxpayers dollars, and apparently included nothing in the financial industry reform legislation to prevent the banks from getting bigger and less responsive to the market? Off with their heads!
-Continuing along in the same industry, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, Ben Bernanke, has this wonderful plan to get the economy jump started. It is called quantitative easing but in layman's terms it means our central bank, the Fed, is going to create $600 billion out of thin air ("print money") and use it to buy back government bonds owned by the same financial firms discussed in the previous point. His hope is that the banks, flush with this new pile of money, will go out and start making loans, getting the economy growing again.
Hey Ben, I may not be an expert on quantitative easing but won't these banks and other financial institutions just take the money and use it the way they have been using their own profits and cash, i.e. play the market rather than grow the market? If they can make a lot of money playing with their tens of billions of dollars, imagine how much money they can make playing the market with the hundreds of billions of dollars you are going to give them, apparently with no stipulation that they loan it out. Off with his head!
- Recent results form an Associated Press/CNBC poll indicated that 59% of those surveyed prefer cutting Federal government budgets and services and about half that many (30%) preferred raising taxes. 85% of those surveyed are worried that our high national debt will be harmful to future generations.
Thus, average Americans understand what our problem is, high national debt is really a government spending problem, not a government revenue problem, and the current trend of deficit spending will be detrimental to future generations of Americans. How does our political class respond? They cannot come to a consensus on the President's Debt Reduction Commission, with only 11 of the 18 members approving the final recommendations of the Commission, three short of the 14 votes that were needed to get put before Congress. Off with their heads, especially the Commission's Democrats who voted against the plan, stating that there were not enough tax increases and there were too many spending cuts in the recommendations. Apparently they did not get the poll results.
- Let's talk about the Wikileaks fiasco. An ordinary U.S. Army private logs onto his government computer and with about $5.00 worth of hardware, a blank CD disc and a portable USB drive, downloads hundreds of thousands of documents that expose many valuable secrets of the U.S. military around the world. These documents identified local contacts in countries such as Afghanistan who were working closely with the U.S. military in fighting the Taliban. The documents placed them and our fighting troops in additional danger.
Apparently no computer security firewalls were breached. No complex, online security measures were hacked and undermined. Just a USB drive and a CD disc. How simple can it get? And to my knowledge no one has been fired for such lax security. Yes, the private has been arrested and is in custody, but someone, whether it is the Secretary of Defense or someone underneath him on the organization chart needs to fall on their sword for this one. We spend hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars a year for the defense Department and is it this simple to expose the entire U.S. military data systems to this soldier's downloads? Off with someone's head.
- Wikileaks, Part II. Let's move over to the State Department where the damage might be even more devastating. Previous State Department documents release by Wikileaks showed how the State Department worked and contained personal references and appraisals by U.S. diplomats of leaders from around the world, often in non-flattering terms. These disclosures have damaged our relationships with world leaders in ways that we have no idea how yet. Why would anyone in a foreign government tell our diplomats anything valuable or personal in the future since the State Department has proven via Wikileaks that we cannot keep a secret from the world?
But it gets worse and the potential damage far more lethal. In a December 6, 2010 Associate Press article, we find that Wikileaks has posted a secret U.S. cable on its website that lists entities worldwide that our government considers critical to our national security. The article quotes U.S. officials fearing that the publication of the cable gives a hit list to terrorists. The cable, "Critical Foreign Dependencies Initiative List," included such things as border crossings, hydroelectric dams, undersea communications lines, food suppliers, shipping lanes, manufacturers of components used in U.S. weapons systems, and vaccine sources.
Here's the sad part. Hillary Clinton deemed the list so important that if these sites were "destroyed, disrupted, or exploited, would likely have an immediate and deleterious effect on the United States." In other words. the Secretary of State knew how important and dangerous this list was and still Wikileaks was able to get their hands on it. What do these people use for computer security if they cannot even protect this most valuable piece of intelligence? Unbelievable.
And apparently Wikileaks is not done. The website apparently held back some disclosures as "insurance." This information was stored and downloaded by multiple people in an encrypted file that can be opened only if the Wikileads head guy, Julian Assange, gives out the password. He claims he kept the really good stuff in that file as insurance for himself. Who knows what other damaging information the State Department has let leak out and now an entire Federal government department is at the mercy of a single man.
As with the defense information leaks, someone, be it Hillary or someone high up at the State department needs to be fired. This breach of security is historic and could be fatal for a lot of people. In real life, outside of politics, people lose their job every day for incompetence. Same thing should apply to government work, especially a screw up this large. If Gates and/or Hillary got fired by Obama for this mess you can bet it would get the attention of a lot of other government bigwigs. I would bet these highly paid folks would immediately would be taking a long hard look at beefing up their own data security procedures, a hard look that hopefully would be to the benefit of all Americans. Off with their heads!
Maybe the Queen of Hearts had it right, off with their heads. As an alternative to this rather drastic approach, Step 34 from "Love My Country, Loathe My government," would be a good start. Step 34 would remove any member of Congress sitting on a Congressional committee or subcommittee if the government functions those committees were overseeing fail at executing their responsibilities. Alternative methods of determining failure are outlined in the book under Step 34.
Thus, this step would remove those Congressional members from any committee responsible for Defense Department and State Department data security. These leaks will cost us in so many ways including additional tax dollars to repair the damage, lost credibility with world leaders, and potentially lost human lives due the the military and other intelligence that is now in the hands of our enemies. Not only should high ranking members of these two Departments pay for the leaks but Congressional members also should absorb some kind of negative hit, short of, of course, "off with their heads."
Our recent book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at www.loathemygovernment.com. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.
Please visit the following sites for freedom:
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
