December, 2016, Part 8, Political Class Insanity: 100 of The Worst Uses Of Taxpayer Money

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:

In late November, 2016, Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma published his second annual “Federal Fumbles” report which pointed out the “100 ways the government dropped the ball” over the past year when it came to wasting taxpayer money on stupid efforts and programs. As you read some of the disgusting wastes of money below that he uncovered, keep in mind that these are some of the reasons why we currently have about a $20 TRILLION national debt and that nowhere in the Constitution does it say these are legitimate uses of taxpayer wealth:

-The NIH funded a $2 million, multi-year study about how kids don’t like to eat food that’s been sneezed on.

-The USDA proposed a regulation to require gas stations and convenience stores to sell items like tofu, shrimp, and almond milk if they want to continue accepting food stamps.

-The NSF funded grants, totaling nearly $500K, to find the connection between religion, politics, and cemeteries in 12th-century Iceland.

- The FWS offered a $180,000 grant for an outside group to develop an effective way to count and tag sea ducks.

- The NSF gave almost $200,000 to study 500-year-old fish bones in a Tanzanian city to determine the connection between food and social status.

- The NSF paid more than $2 million to find out whether climate change has impacted China’s giant panda population.

- The OPM continues to process retirement benefits for federal employees on paper.

- The NIH spent more than $1 million on a campaign to tell mothers to prevent their teenage daughters from tanning.

- Three federal agencies have combined to spend $495,000 to support a temporary exhibit to share the best of medieval smells.

- The Medicaid has made $142.7 billion in improper payments since 2009.

- The NEA provided a $60,000 grant to a group in Los Angeles to record the family history of immigrants to post online and air on public radio.

- The NIH provided nearly $500,000 for a program to send text messages to discourage chewing tobacco.

- The NEA provided a $35,000 grant to the City of San Francisco to assist with public housing option for artists.

- GSA awarded an almost $1 million contract to provide one photograph to be cut into six pieces and hung in a new federal courthouse in California.

- The State Department entered into an almost $800 million contract for the construction of two buildings in Afghanistan with deadly electrical wiring.

- The Air Force contracted to construct a new Ministry of Defense office building for the Afghan government, a project that took five years and more than $100 million more than originally agreed to.

- The NIH provided more than $10 million for a series of studies to learn that stress plays a role in illegal drug use.

- The federal government currently operates more than 100 separate mental health programs.

- The NSF invested more than $412,000 in research on a paper arguing that glaciers are best studied using feminist theories.

- Since 2008, DEA and DOD have invested almost $100 million to purchase and modify an airplane that may never fly.

- The NEA provided $90,000 in grants to help spark a debate on gender identity and roles in American society.

- Over the last 5 years, USDA made more than $300 billion in improper payments from 18 high-risk programs.

- The US Embassy in London offered $75,000 to bring 10 people to the US to show them how Americans volunteer and give back to their communities.

- The DHS began to update IT programs in 2003 and has made little progress despite already spending $180 million.

- NSF invested almost $200,000 in a study to find out how people respond to failure.

- Duplicating research from the private sector and the Department of Education, NSF provided almost $250,000 to find the best way to use technology to educate children.

- Since 2008 NIH has awarded $3 million in grant funding for the development of a 12-episode soap opera to encourage smarter decisions to prevent HIV/AIDS.

- The DOJ authorized $70 million-twice the amount necessary-to construct Tribal prisons in Arizona.

- The USAID has invested or committed to invest over $1 billion in projects for the Palestinian government, some of which are either unusable or the local government cannot maintain.

- The ATF spent more than $500,000 for 6 unmanned aerial vehicles that were ultimately unsuitable for ATF’s purposes.

- USAID created a $24 million, multi-year program to fund the creation of energy regulations in other countries.

- BOP contracts outside medical care for its prisoners sometimes at 385 percent higher cost than other federal departments.

- The NEH spent $250,000 for a traveling classroom on prison life.

- A recent JG audit of just three Air Force contracts at one base revealed contractors are likely paid tens of millions more than they earned for work they did not do.

- The IRS operates nine separate, overlapping, uncoordinated tax fraud prevention programs.

- The BLM announced a $750,000 funding opportunity to assess the impact of fire-prevention efforts in a single Idaho county.

- The OHS has taken 11 years and more than $3 billion to overhaul how Immigration Services processes applications from foreigners seeking to live in the US, yet the JG says, “little progress has been made.”

- Congress requires DOD to operate a completely duplicative health-care plan that costs more than $1 billion a year.

- The USDA spent $2 million to fund organic farming-a $43 billion industry.

- The NSF funded multiple grants to study fairness in our court system and to determine how rulings make people feel.

- Despite a Joint Chiefs order requiring military procurements of commercial satellites through a centralized DOD Agency, individual military services spend hundreds of millions to enter into their own contracts.

- TSA spent $47,400 to create a randomizing app to direct airline passengers to either enter the left or right line at the airport.

- Over the last five years, NIH has invested more than $1.5 million to conduct a study on the different health impacts of exercise and healthy eating on immigrants in Minnesota.

- The NEA spent $35,000 to fund an exhibit to show changes in Iranian art over the last 30 years.

- The Smithsonian announced a 3-year position for a historian to help the Institute document the impact of beer on American history.

Now ask yourself these questions in light of what the Washington political class are spending your tax money on:

• Would the $2 million the NIH spent on studying snot on kids meals have been better used if it had been returned to taxpayers?
• Would the almost $100 million spent by the DOD and DEA to purchase and modify an airplane that may never fly have been better spent to treat the millions of drug addicted Americans every year of which tens of thousands die from their addictions?
• Would the $495,000 spent to support a temporary exhibit to share the best of medieval smells have been better spent to house the hundreds of thousands of Americans that are homeless at any one time in this country?
• Would the almost $500k the NSF spent to find the connection between religion, politics, and cemeteries in 12th-century Iceland have been better spent to increase research for cures for such important diseases as cancer and dementia-type diseases, diseases that place massive cost burdens on the country and its citizens?
• Would the almost $200,000 the NSF spent to study 500-year-old fish bones in a Tanzanian city to determine the connection between food and social status have been better spent for job training for the millions of Americans that are in need of updated skills in the rapidly evolving economy of today?

You get the idea. We are taxed so heavily in this country and so many suffer in this country and yet the political class always finds a way to waste our tax money and not help those in need. Obama promised that once elected he would go through the Federal budget “line by line” to ferret out wasteful spending. It is pretty obvious from the above list that this was just another broken promise or outright lie since studying why kids do not like food that has been sneezed on should have never happened in this reality if he had actually done what he promised.

That will do it for this month’s political class insanity. More to come next month for sure.

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

October, 2016, Bonus Post, Political Class Insanity - Foreign Mosques Get Fixed While Our Vets Commit Suicide, Fourth Amednment Shredding By Yahoo amd More

Note: we started this month with a series of political class insanity posts, like we do every month. We then stopped the insanity posts for a week while we concentrated on the the hundreds of failures and disappointments of the Obama Presidency as it it hit the last 100 days of its existence. Today is a return to one last insanity post for this month to cover the political class insanity that has arisen over the past week while we were reviewing all of Obama’s failures.

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.

The current monthly record for the number of posts that were needed to cover one month's worth of insanity is ten. We equaled that record last month when we needed ten days to cover one month’s worth of political class insanity. There is a very good chance that the ten day record could fall this month since as we get closer and closer to the election, the volume of ineptness grows almost exponentially. 

But today and for all of the posts this month, let’s start off with a welcome piece of honest political dialog. It comes from a State Department spokesperson. Mark Toner, who is about to start the daily State Department press briefing. In a joking matter, he makes the following quote: "Welcome to the State Department. I think we have some interns in the back. Welcome. Good to see you in this exercise in transparency and democracy." 

He then burst out laughing at his own quote, indicating he also knew what a joke the Obama administration has been, especially Mr. Toner’s State Department, when it comes to cover ups, lack of transparency, denial of Freedom of Information Act requests, the prosecution of whistle blowers, etc. But at least it was a little refreshing to finally hear some actual honesty out of Washington as we see from the actual clip of the news conference:

http://www.againstcronycapitalism.org/2016/08/when-even-the-state-department-spokesperson-cant-keep-a-straight-face-about-things-anymore-video/

With that context of honesty, let’s see what other insanity has been going down:

1) The Patriots Update website recently reported on how Yahoo had helped the Federal government seriously abuse the Fourth Amendment. Apparently, Yahoo scanned hundreds of millions of Yahoo Mail accounts at the request of the NSA or the FBI, according to four current and former Yahoo employees. This was likely done without court orders, search warrants, or any other legal or justified reason.

This is obviously a direct contradiction and violation of the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution, the protection from unreasonable searches. According to the article: “Some surveillance experts said this represents the first case to surface of a U.S. Internet company agreeing to an intelligence agency’s request by searching all arriving messages, as opposed to examining stored messages or scanning a small number of accounts in real time.”

Obviously, to at least this administration, the Constitution has become more a set of suggestions than the law of the land. 

2) In most industries in the world, if you have a bad year financially, you are stuck with those results. You just suck it up, make changes and improvements and try better next year. 

Unless, of course, you are an American farmer. In that case, if you have a bad year the Federal government will take taxpayer dollars and make it better. According to Rob Williams, writing for Newsmax on October 4, 2016, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) will pay U.S. farmers over $7 billion this year to compensate them for low crop prices in 2016. Market conditions have been so favorable for growing crops around the world this year that there is an over supply issue which has driven down crop prices for U.S. farmers by about 11% vs. 2015.

Why the U.S.government should put billions of American taxpayer dollars at risk to help a particular industry is beyond me. Just about every other industry often faces reduced prices, oversupply, and a shrinking market size and the U.S. government does nothing to bail them out. I might be able to see protecting the small, classic American farmer who may not be able to stand a temporary fluctuation in prices. But the majority of farming in this country these days is done by huge agriculture conglomerates who should be able to manage their business and absorb market and pricing setbacks.

However, the Washington political class has seen it fit to throw taxpayer money at these huge companies when things get a little rough. You can be sure that these companies are very generous when it comes to election time to ensure that incumbent politicians will stay elected to protect this taxpayer funded revenue stream.

3) We have already reported in a previous insanity post on how Harry Reid, in order to make a trivial, ego-driven point, single handedly held up legislation that had unanimous House and Senate support to make it a felony to distribute any recorded material that depicted the torture and killing of animals. As a dog and animal lover, I found this pathetic attempt at attention to be despicable.

But according to Alice B. Lloyd, Harry Reid blocked the enactment of a law that would have provided emergency support to a veterans suicide hotline program that is sorely needed. The Government Accountability Office recently concluded research that found the Department of Veterans Affairs crisis hotline failed to answer the phone between 20 and 30% of the time from veterans that needed counseling and support. 

The “No Veterans Crisis Line Call Should Go Unanswered Act” was unanimously passed in the House of Representatives and a similar companion bill was moving quickly through the Senate. The plan was to use the unanimous consent function of the Senate, a procedure that is used when unobjectionable bipartisan legislation has widespread appeal within the Senate. In this case, if no Senator objected, the bill is passed. But obviously at least one Democratic Senator did object, since every Republican Senator was on board with this critical piece of legislation, and it appears that the objecting Senator was Reid. 

Thus, Congress has recessed and veterans in severe need of counseling and support will continue to be under served, all because of a very small minded Senator who would rather score political points than save the lives of veterans and animals. Pathetically insane.

4) In a great piece of irony, a Hispanic activist that actively objected to what he considered the racism of Donald Trump relative to when Trump was calling some illegal immigrants rapists, has himself been arrested and charged with, you guessed it, rape. According to the Salt Lake Tribune, Latino Tony Yapias has been charged with rape in an assault of a former girl friend.

Yapias once was the director of Utah’s Hispanic Affairs Office and works on immigration and other Hispanic issues. Despite pleas that he stay away from her, Yapias went to his former girl friend’s home, forced himself in and allegedly raped her, for which he has been arrested. Somewhere Donald Trump is smiling.

5) Last piece of insanity for this month. This is a story that was published in a September, 2016 website article on the Truth Feed website but it actually covers an investigative report by CBS News out of Atlanta in 2015. That report found that the Obama administration had spent an amazing $770 million overseas to refurbish and repair Muslim mosques around the world. The State Department defended this wasteful spending by claiming it was a “good will effort” in Muslim countries and that they are “fighting Islamic extremism by building relationships with Islamic leaders.”

Two things grossly wrong with this insanity:

1. Tens of millions of Americans need Federal food assistance every month, upwards of a million Americans are homeless at at any time during the year, tens of thousands of Americans are dying from drug addiction every year, and untold thousands of American veterans cannot get the medical attention they deserve and were promised. Would not that $770 million be better spent taking care of needy Americans first since I see no benefit of giving that ridiculous amount of money away to fix buildings halfway around the world?
2. The second issue with such nonsense is a carry over from the last phrase in the previous paragraph - what benefit, if any, have we seen by spending such money around the world? The link below that has the CBS story also has an interview with a former Muslim where she explains how this type of program relative to the Muslim psyche is a joke and a total waste of money which, unfortunately, is pretty much the status quo on most Federal government programs.

The link to the story and the interview can be accessed at:

http://rightwingnews.com/barack-obama/outrage-obama-spends-770m-dollars-tax-payer-money-renovate-mosques-seas-video/

The Washington political class is willing to spend $770 million to fix leaky pipes in a mosque in Cairo but cannot pass a simple piece of legislation that would provide the needed suicide prevention support for our veterans. So pathetic.

That will do it for today’s and this month’s political class insanity: spending millions overseas to fix buildings while veterans cannot get suicide prevention help, an anti-Trump racists feels some cruel irony, helping rich farming conglomerates stay rich with taxpayer money, and shredding the Fourth Amendment...again. More insanity next month.

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

November, 2014, Part 3, Will The Center Hold: More School Lunch Horrors, Starving The Homeless, and Protecting The Second Amendment

We are going to spend a few days visiting an occasional and recurring topic in this blog, namely whether or not the country can hang together, given the growing resistance around the nation to an overreaching and increasingly repressive Federal government. Previous discussions on this topic can be accessed by typing in the phrase, “will the center hold” in the search box above.

The growing grass roots resistance against the Federal government covers a wide range of topics including gun control, Obama Care, Common Core, warrantless spying on citizens, and other topics important to the American people. The resistance ranges from individual citizens to state legislations and really raises a basic question: what happens to the country if Washington issues a decree or law and the rest of the country simply ignores it or aggressively resists it? Will the center hold?

This is our third update to this topic this week. The latest resistance efforts start below:

1) This week and in previous installments in this series we have shown how the new Federal government school lunch guidelines, driven by Michelle Obama, have been an utter failure. Unappetizing and insufficient food offerings have resulted in kids not eating anything, teachers noticing that learning is suffering from inadequate eating, and school budgets getting killed by falling lunch revenues.

This last point was recently driven home when the School Nutrition Association (SNA) reported that the new, stricter school lunch standards and regulations have caused lunch program costs to explode, tripling in some cases, as compared to last year’s costs:
“The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) estimates that the new school meal standards will force local school districts and states to absorb $1.22 billion in new food, labor and administrative costs in Fiscal Year 2015 alone, up from $362 million in additional costs in FY 2014,” the association notes.

To put this number in perspective, the additional school budget costs from the food requirements could have resulted in hiring an additional 23,000 high school teachers, a scenario that would have certainly improved our dismal public education results. The increased costs is driven by a combination of more expensive food supplies, fewer students buying lunches, and increased waste from unwanted fruits and vegetables being thrown away.

These increased costs are adding about 10 cents to every lunch, and nearly 27 cents for breakfasts. Unfortunately, school districts are only being reimbursed about 6 cents per meal by the Federal lunch program.

The SNA is not only pushing back against this Washington decree and calling for Congress to take action, they are also offering a few common sense ideas to relieve the crisis but also make school lunches more nutritious:

* Maintain the 2012 requirement that half of grains offered be whole grain rich, instead of requiring that all grains be whole grain rich.

* Maintain Target 1 sodium levels, and suspend further reductions until scientific research supports them.

* To avoid food waste, offer, but do not require students to take a fruit or vegetable.

* Allow healthy items permitted on the meal line to be sold a la carte as well.

Another failed Federal program in the real world outside of the Beltway. Kids are eating less, food is being wasted more, and the costs for this non-progress is staggering.

2) But citizens are not just fighting back against Federal politicians' insanity but are also fighting back against local and state politicians’ insanity. The clearest and most inane situation of this type is taking place in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Recently, in that city, 90 year old Arnold Abbott was arrested for the heinous crime of….feeding the homeless. He ran afoul of a recent Fort Lauderdale town ordinance which requires people or organizations to obtain permission from the city in order to feed others. If the city agrees to the request, those preparing the food would have to provide a portable toilet, hand washing stations and meet local food safety requirements.

Such requirements, while possibly well intentioned, inhibit good people like Mr. Abbott from serving those in the community that are struggling just to get a meal. If enforced, people would go hungry as a result of politicians' actions, something that should be contrary to any government’s intentions. Mr. Abbott and others like him that just want to do good by their fellow human beings, face fines and up to 60 days in jail for simply feeding the hungry and homeless.

However, local people are fighting back. The Libertarian Party of Palm Beach county have stepped up and are joining Mr. Abbott in his crusade to help those that are less fortunate than most of us. They will be joining him in feeding the poor in defiance of the ordinance and seeing what the local political class will do about it. Doing the right thing does not always mean doing the legal, government ordered thing.

The local government does have an obligation to protect its citizens. But sending police officers out to publicly arrest a 90 year old good Samaritan and depriving hungry people of a well prepared and good meal is government overreach and stupidity of the first degree. Local politicians should have found a peaceful, negotiated way that would have leveraged Mr. Abbott’s kind heart and giving attitude for the betterment of all, not the arrest and hunger of some.

3) Gun control is one of the many major areas that local and state governments are pushing back on the Federal government’s overreach on gun control. The state of Texas moved to the front of that push back with the recent introduction of legislation that would prevent the enforcement of virtually all federal gun control measures within the state’s borders: “With this bill, Texas could help lead the country forward,” said Scott Landreth, campaign lead for ShallNot.org, a project of the Tenth Amendment Center that advocates for states to protect their citizens from federal overreach. “Passage would have serious impact on the federal government’s ability to carry out its unconstitutional gun control measures already on the books.”

Texas State Representative Tim Kleinschmidt introduced Texas House Bill 176 which declares all Federal restrictions on the right to keep and bear arms to be “invalid” and “not enforceable” within the state of Texas: A federal law, including a statute, an executive, administrative, or court order, or a rule, that infringes on a law-abiding citizen’s right to keep and bear arms under the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution or Section 23, Article I, Texas Constitution, is invalid and not enforceable in this state.

If passed into law, what would it look like in the real world? Basically, all Texas government agencies and employees within Texas would be banned from enforcing any Federal law in violation of the act. The prohibition on enforcement specifically includes any Federal legislation that:

(1) imposes a tax, fee, or stamp on a firearm, firearm accessory, or firearm ammunition that is not common to all other goods and services and may be reasonably expected to create a chilling effect on the purchase or ownership of those items by a law-abiding citizen;

(2) requires the registration or tracking of a firearm, firearm accessory, or firearm ammunition or the owners of those items that may be reasonably expected to create a chilling effect on the purchase or ownership of those items by a law-abiding citizen;

(3) prohibits the possession, ownership, use, or transfer of a firearm, firearm accessory, or firearm ammunition by a law-abiding citizen;

(4) orders the confiscation of a firearm, firearm accessory, or firearm ammunition from a law-abiding citizen.

State employees who knowingly violate the act would risk a suit for damages for assisting the Federal government violate an individual’s right to keep and bear arms in Texas.

Such civil disobedience was recognized and condoned by Founding Father James Madison who, writing in Federalist #46, proclaimed that state “legislative devices” and a “refusal to cooperate with officers of the Union” as a valid and moral strategy to push back against Federal government overreaching, unConstitutional actions, or merely unpopular federal acts. More recent Supreme Court rulings put this type of state action on solid Constitutional grounds.

Which gets us back again to our core question in this matter: if a large number of majority of states follow the this Texas example, assuming the proposed legislation becomes law, what would the Federal government do? Arrest state government officials? Invade states to force their will upon citizens who voted for the legislation to resist the federal government? Interesting times.

4) The state of Alabama moved forward with similar actions in the recent elections, according to the Washington Post. By an overwhelming majority of 72% to 28%, the citizens of Alabama strengthened their already defiant state constitution wording against the Federal government’s intent to impose more and more gun control bonds on citizens. The new wording goes as follows:

(a) Every citizen has a fundamental right to bear arms in defense of himself or herself and the state. Any restriction on this right shall be subject to strict scrutiny.

(b) No citizen shall be compelled by any international treaty or international law to take an action that prohibits, limits, or otherwise interferes with his or her fundamental right to keep and bear arms in defense of himself or herself and the state, if such treaty or law, or its adoption, violates the United States Constitution.

The original, weaker wording read as follows: “that every citizen has a right to bear arms in defense of himself and the state.” More push back on gun control, protecting the Second Amendment in the process.

That will do it for today. Pushing back against Washington politicians is getting more and more widespread on more and more topics and issues. From protecting the Second Amendment in Texas and Alabama to common sense vs. Washington sense on school lunches, people are getting tired of what to do, how to do it, and getting no benefit as a result of bossy politicians.

Which gets us back to our basic question of what happens if the Federal government, or government at any level (see Fort Lauderdale screw up above), passes a law or ordinance and the rest of the country simply says no thanks and ignores what the political class has wrought? Will the center hold? One more post tomorrow to sum up the rebellion against an overreaching Federal government and American political class.

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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

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

January, 2014 Political Class Insanity, Part 4: Blowing Up Animal Carcasses, Blowing Up The Budget, Door Knobs Criminalized, and More

This is the fourth, but not last, installment for this month’s review of political class insanity. The first post in this month’s series can be accessed at:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2014/01/january-2014-political-class-insanity_5.html

Unfortunately, a series that started as one post a month has grown into a series that needs 5-6 posts each month to capture the idiocy, wasteful spending, and ineffective government programs that our political class rules over. The ineptness of today’s politicians would be funny if their actions did not have such a detrimental effect on our wealth, our families, our health, and our freedom.

1) A December 23, 2013 article from the Washington Post had a very depressing view of what is likely to happen in Afghanistan after most of the international troops leave the country in 2014. The basis of the conclusions shared in the article come from the National Intelligence Estimate which included input from 16 different intelligence agencies within the Federal government.

Their main conclusion: after more than ten years of U.S. armed forces presence during which we probably spent billions of dollars and lost thousands of brave soldiers to fighting, our main enemy in the country, the Taliban, and other power brokers, will become increasingly influential and that the country will likely and quickly descend into chaos.

Another monumental waste of U.S. wealth and life for no discernible, long term benefit. Par for the course for our political class.

2) According to a New York Times article that was summarized in the December 20, 2013 issue of The Week magazine, about 440,000 Americans die as a result of preventable errors in U.S. hospitals every year. Viewed another way, one out of every six deaths in this country is caused by preventable hospital mistakes, making this form of death the third leading cause of death in the country every year. 

The third leading cause of death and the Obama Care legislation does virtually nothing to prevent this type of preventable health disaster, Instead, the legislation spends billions and billions of dollars on a Rube Goldberg like health insurance operation that has no chance of success. Insanity and certainly a bad case of priorities: the good news is that you now have health insurance via Obama care but have am excellent chance of dying when you go into a hospital to execute that health insurance option.

3) If it is any consolation, political class idiocy and uselessness is not confined to only American politicians. The Canadian city of Vancouver recently enacted new building codes that require that all new building construction have levers rather than door knobs on the doors within that new construction. Apparently, the politicians in the city had nothing better to do than debate, write and pass door knob vs. door lever legislation.

Rather than talk about fixing roads, improving schools, reducing the crime rate, and other important issues that are likely facing the good citizens of Vancouver, the city politicians are worried about door knobs. More bad priorities by a set of politicians that probably do not know how to solve the real problems facing their citizens and settle on making up and fixing fake crises and problems.

4) How out of control is government spending? We have often mentioned the fact that our Federal government national debt is a mind boggling $17 TRILLION. This is an individual debt burden of well over $50,000 for every man, woman, and child in the United States.

But consider another measure of how out of control government spending is, courtesy of a Washington Times article from late 2013. The writer went to the latest IRS tax return data publicly available, 2010, and added up the total income of those Americans who earned over $69,000 that year. This cutoff number obviously includes a lot of America’s middle class and all of the upper classes relative to income levels.

The total income of those earning more than $69,000 in 2010 was an impressive $5.1 TRILLION. Impressive until you realize that the annual Federal government budget is about $3.5 TRILLION. Thus, if you would have to tax the over $69,000 earning Americans at a whopping 68.6% just to fund one year of Federal government spending.

If you factor in state and local government spending, you would probably have to tax these citizens at an 80-90% rate just to cover one year’s worth of U.S. government spending. And even this high level of taxation would do nothing to start reducing the $17 TRILLION in national debt burden.

Despite these onerous facts and statistics, the Washington political class has no clue or inclination to reduce unneeded and wasteful spending. We are fast approaching a point of no return where there is no tax level high enough or wide enough that will be able to fund an ever growing government spending addiction and the resultant obesity of national debt. 68.6% tax levels and 80-90% tax levels are not taxation, they are repression and slavery.

5) The Hill’s website reported on October 4, 2013 that through unanimous consent agreements Friday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid passed resolutions, including Senate Resolution 266, which designates Oct. 7-13 National Chess Week. Yes, forget the $17 TRILLION deficit, the government shutdown, over 20 million Americans unemployed or underemployed, the crumbling infrastructure, our failing public schools. Let’s take up 100 Senators’ time and pass a resolution for the game of chess.

When asked about the resolution, Reid said that the Chess Resolution is important because, “The game is known to…enhance critical thinking and problem-solving skills.” Maybe the Senate should actually play a few games of chess because collectively it certainly lacks “critical thinking and problem solving skills."

6) The following piece of political class and government insanity comes to us from the 1990s but apparently is still part of a government publication  today. In case you never got around to disposing of dead animal carcasses last year, do not fret. The U.S. government has developed and published a step by step guide for doing just that. 

“The Government Guide For Exploding Animal Carcasses” was first published back in 1995 by the USDA and Forest Service. It is a how to guide for the obliteration of large, unwanted dead animals. Critical and important selections from the guide include: 

• “It is important to consider location, time of year, and size of the carcass when selecting the quantity and type of explosive to accomplish the obliteration task.”
• “Place 1 pound (1.36 kilograms) of explosives under the carcass in four locations. The carcass then can be rolled onto the explosives if necessary.”
• “Horseshoes should be removed to minimize dangerous flying debris.”
• “Carcasses that have been partially obliterated will generally not show any trace of existence the next day.” 
• “Consult a qualified blaster when explosives are to be used.”

Apparently, the booklet of instructions is illustrated to show you where to put the explosives beneath those pesky carcasses.

Of all the problems the country has faced over the past two decades, why do we think the need for government intervention was required to help citizens blow up dead, large animal carcasses? How many citizens could this instruction booklet possibly affect, ten, twelve, across the country? How many government employees were involved researching, writing, proofreading, approving, and publishing such nonsense? And worse of all, the last instruction is to hire a professional, “qualified blaster” to do this type of thing. Shouldn’t the professional know all of this without the government wasting taxpayer wealth spreading this type of information?

You cannot make this insanity up.

7) Back to the Federal budget before we close out the insanity for today. Consider the following graphic from the Heritage Foundation where they show how every dollar of Federal tax you pay is spent:

Observations:

• About 64% of every tax dollar we pay is shuffled around in the federal bureaucracy and then paid right back out again as checks for retirement, medical care, housing assistance, and food assistance to different types of Americans.
• 19% goes into a black hole called the Defense Department, an organization that government auditors have called so screwed up from an accounting perspective that the organization is incapable of being audited.
• 6% goes into repaying the $17 TRILLION national debt.
• Thus, if you are a younger, healthy, working American, about 89% of what you pay in taxes goes to other people and a near dysfunctional Defense Department accoutning disgrace. 
• That leaves only an 11% chance that you might see some immediate benefit from paying Federal taxes.
• The fact that only 3% of the Federal spending goes towards transportation programs and only 1% goes to education might explain why our transportation infrastructure is crumbling and our kids are severely under educated vs. the rest of the world.

How did we allow ourselves to get so screwed up or allow our politicians to get us so screwed up? The Federal government is now nothing much more than a massive, inefficient redistribution of wealth machine with no added benefit, wasting so much money that a mere pittance goes towards the greater good: sound transportation infrastructure and quality education for our kids.

That’s it for the insanity today but not for the month, more to follow 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.robertringer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

Ten Shut Down Government Functions That Should Stay Shut Down

Over the pasty two days we have been reviewing a lot of the insanity, lunacy, stupidity, and pompousness of the political class relative to the unneeded and embarrassing “government shutdown.” It is unneeded since the Federal government has been putting annual budgets together for over two hundred years, an act that seems beyond the intelligence and ability of the current set of Washington politicians to accomplish.

It is embarrassing since if these people cannot even put together a budget, do we really expect them to have the capacity to solve the war on drugs problem, fix our failing public schools, get our national debt under control, etc.? If this is the best we can do for leadership in Washington, than this is truly an embarrassment for the entire country.

The first look at the Federal government shutdown resulted in the development and proposal of the CABA - The Congressional Adult Behavior Act. This proposal has seven components that tries to put rules and restrictions in place so that Washington politicians start acting liking adults rather than childish, bratty, name calling little kids.

The second look at the shutdown went through the many government agencies and functions that were NOT shutdown, with independent estimates indicating that although the Federal government was supposedly shutdown because it had no budget, about 85% to 90% of the Federal government was still functioning. 

We raised the following issue: since most Americans were unaffected by the 10% to 15% of the government that  was deemed nonessential and was actually shut down, maybe it was time to stop doing those functions altogether and save the taxpayers the expense of paying for some government functions that did not affect them. Doing so would put about $4,000 back into the pockets of EVERY American family EVERY year.

Those two discussions can be accessed at:

http://www.loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/10/caba-congressional-adult-behavior-act.html

http://www.loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/10/only-in-washington-shutdown-that-is-not.html

Today we will look at a sample of ten Federal functions that are not operating and you decide whether or not you can live without them. They were found on the Freedom Works website and I have included some of the sarcastic barbs that Freedom Works attached to some of the unneeded functions. 

While reviewing these functions, keep in mind that Nancy Pelosi has recently asserted that there is no unnecessary spending being done by the Federal government, that not a single dollar can be pared from the Federal government’s bloated spending. We think that many, if not all, of these following ten government functions dispel that theory, a theory that we absolutely kill every month when we do our monthly political class insanity posts. The first insanity post from this month can be accessed at:

http://www.loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/09/october-2013-part-1-political-class.html

**************************************************

The Ten Nonessential Government Functions That Maybe We Can ALWAYS Do Without, Courtesy Of Freedom Works

1. The Bureau of Land Management has halted donkey adoptions.

Because, as it turns out, most of that is accomplished online and the website for the Bureau of Land Management is currently down. Though they did put up a website to tell users of their website that they can't access the website. So there.

2. The USDA "Meat and Poultry Hotline" is no longer available to take calls about the safety of that mystery meat that's been sitting in the back of your fridge for a decade.

Now, if you don't know if you might get food poisoning from green chicken, the government is unavailable to help you. And if you have questions about the name of a specific type of bacteria that landed you in the bathroom for 36 hours, you'll just have to use a (privately-funded) resource like WebMD.

3. No one is currently advising the government on matters pertaining to the "fine arts."

And just when it seems that someone might have gotten a photograph of Banksy tagging up an NYC alleyway. Shame.

4. The Broadcasting Board of Governors has been forced to shutter a number of its offices.

Of course, the Broadcasting Board of Governors mostly uses its websites and offices to talk about what people who are not Broadcasting Board of Governors do, but that's beside the point, right?

5. The Post Office is running, but the Citizens Stamp Advisory Committee has been temporarily suspended.

That said, you can still vote on which commemorative stamps you'd like the USPS to issue online, so at least the government has learned about citizen empowerment and free opinions.

6. We will be unlikely to hear from the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugurations. 

Not that there are any planned until 2016. But in case we need an emergency inauguration (which, frankly, we hope doesn't happen) we're out of luck.

7. The US Board of Geographic Names, which is apparently charged with naming US geographic items, doesn't even have its website running.

America, if you can avoid discovering new geographic items that would require names for at least the foreseeable future, they'd appreciate it.

8. The Clinton Presidential Center has closed some of its permanent exhibits.

We'd call this the "Washington Monument Strategy" but something tells me no one is going to be too hurt at being turned away from seeing a collection of Hillary Clinton's White House-era pantsuits.

9. The University of Hawaii has halted its research into rat lungworm disease.

Unfortunately, it's probably hard to convince private donors that it's necessary to figure out why a type of vermin is falling prey to another type of vermin, so it's the government's responsibility. Except not right now.

10. A full third of the speakers for the Illinois River Coordinating Council were forced to delay their trip to scenic Peoria, Illinois.

I believe that the river coordinators could not coordinate a conference call. Also, who cares if they have to miss a trip to Peoria? There's nothing in Peoria.

Now, of course, there are some things that the government does that are very valuable, but when you would never have noticed a few key very important elements of the government (according to the government) are missing, it sort of makes you think about whether we really need it all, especially when it comes out of our pockets.

*********************************************

Again, these ten items and the associated sarcasm comes from Freedom Works. But their sarcasm rings true. Do we really need to fund a standing committee on geographic names, can’t  we find a creative sort already employed by the Interior Department to come up with new names when needed? Do we really need a stamp advisory committee, can’t we find someone already employed in the Post Office to do that job as part of their regular job? 

You get the idea, we fund these functions that seem to last forever and get bigger and more expensive over time for reasons that were not important to begin with. As we have proposed many times, the Federal government needs a good spring cleaning where we go through every nook and cranny of all government entities, and throw out those old toys, clothes, and bad birthday gifts that have been taking up space (and taxpayer wealth) for years for no good reason. Households do it, why shouldn’t Washington do it?

And what better time to do it? These functions, and probably hundreds more like them are already shut down and no one cares or notices that they are no functioning. What better time to keep them dormant until we see a reason and a true need to do what they supposedly do. And if such a need does arise, maybe there is a cheaper and less expensive way to do it.

Ashleigh Brilliant once said: “I either want less corruption, or more chance to participate in it.” Same with me. Either pay me the big bucks to serve on the Stamp Advisory Committee or get rid of it since it serves no purpose in my life or the lives of just about every other American.

As an aside, at our website for our book, www.loathemygovernment.com, you can vote on a variety of government functions and expenses from past years to decide whether or not they would have been important in your life. To date, the vast majority of voters have said these government expenditures were not important enough to have taxpayers pay for them, with the majority of expenses receiving 100% thumbs down on whether they were a worthwhile government expense.

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