Cash For Clunkers - Real Estate Style

We have discussed the much maligned Federal government program, Cash For Clunkers, last year. The basic premise of the program is the government, using taxpayer money, gave new car buyers thousands of dollars in a tax credit rebate if the purchased a new car late last summer. The hope is that this would incent consumers to rush out and buy a new car and spark the economy.

Unfortunately, none of the program's objectives were met. As we look back on the historical monthly sales rate, it becomes apparent that new car sales actually did spike upwards the last month of the rebate program, Unfortunately, as soon as the incentive ended, sales plunged when measured on a seasonally adjusted basis. The obvious conclusion is that many of the sales were not incremental, the program just pulled forward sales that would have happened anyway. All it did was give away billions of dollars to car buyers, most of whom would have spent their own money anyway. Other problems, that we will not rehash today, included the fact, that contrary to the program's intent, many of the vehicles sold were not fuel efficient ones that were hoped for and that the used cars that were turned in were destroyed, drying up the used car market, and driving up prices for those Americans that could not afford a new car.

Given that failure, one would have hoped that the political class would not launch another such program. Unfortunately, that hope was dashed when in 2008, the government launched a rebate program for first time home buyers, hoping to spark a rebound from low home sales volumes. The program eventually evolved so that first time home buyers would get an $8,000 tax credit and repeat buyers would get $6,500. The only criteria is that buyers had to enter into a contract for a home by April 30, 2010 and close on the house by June 30, 2010.

You can only guess what happened. In an Associated Press article by Alan Zibel on June 22, 2010, the National Association of Realtors reported that sales of existing homes fell 2.2% in May, contrary to the recent trend and far below what many housing experts expected. The article reported that many of these experts now think that sales will continue to trend down as the new home owners rebate program ends later this month. Thus, we will likely see the same results as Cash For Clunkers, many of the home sales for the past few months, leading to that upward trend, were nothing more than people moving their purchase plans forward to grab the $8,000 and $6,500 rebates. It is highly likely that existing housing sales were continue to drop in the next few months since the sales that would have happened, already have under the program.

And now today, Mr. Zibel wrote another housing article where he reports that the sales of new homes in May were down a whopping 33% on a seasonally adjusted basis, the lowest level since tracking began in 1963. According to the article, "analysts were startled by the depth of the sales drop." If they had tracked the Cash For Clunkers program, they would not have been surprised. The government incentives ended and thus, the market did not pull forward any more sales. I expect that you will continue to see a very low level of sales of new homes since many of them had already been pulled forward, much like Cash For Clunkers.

Thus, the government and the political class continue to learn nothing from their experiences in providing incentives. These programs rarely work in that they do not generate a substantial amount of incremental sales, the basically give away taxpayer money to people that would have eventually used their own money for the car or house purchase, and the administration of such programs is usually sloppy, inefficient and worse, subject to fraud. According to recent news reports, based on an analysis by the Treasury Department's Inspector General Russell George, the investigators found the following instances of fraud just from 2008, when the home rebate program began:

• The IRS paid out $9.1 million to just under 1,300 people who were in jail at the time they said they bought a home. This computes out to about $7,000 per prisoner
• 241 of those prisoners were in for life terms, making it highly unlikely they had bought a home or would ever buy a home.
• $17.6 million were paid out to 2,555 people who purchased their home before the program started but who still received their tax credit.
• Over 10,000 people got a tax credit rebate for a home that also was used by another taxpayer to claim the credit. In one case, 67 different people claimed, and received, the tax credit for the same address. Can you say "organized crime?"
• Eighty seven IRS agents themselves filed fraudulent claims for homes that did not qualify for under the program.
• In a late 2009 Bloomberg report, some of the early claimants for the tax credit were made by kids under the age of 18 with one of the more infamous cases involving a four year old who filed for the tax credit.

As with Cash For Clunkers, this was an ineffective program from a sales incentive program, it did not generate many incremental short term sales or increase the long term trend and worse of all, it was riddled with fraud, wasting millions, if not billions, of taxpayer money. This report covered only 2008, according to the the Inspector General, and did not cover the 2009 and 2010 activities. Thus, the fraud numbers could go up even higher if the IRS did not get things under control. And the numbers will probably go higher since news reports indicate that the IRS wrote a letter to prison officials today, asking for their help in the prison fraud area. This letter happens as the program is about to end, what good will that do? Finally, this is the fraud they uncovered, how big is the fraud that they did not identify but still paid out on? Pathetic.

But lets not stop here with government/political class incompetence in the housing market. According to bloomberg.com as reported in The Week magazine on June 25, 2010, the two government mortgage giants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, will need $389 billion in taxpayer subsidies between now and 2019. This is in addition to the $145 billion they have already received. Thus, these two government operations will cost every American household about $4,600 on average to pay off ($534 billion divided by about 117 million U.S. households). Such a deal.

These are just a few examples of the economic ignorance of the political class. The home buyer tax credit/rebate credit was supposed to prop up housing prices, according to it supporters. However, just the opposite is needed. Prices need to fall to the level where people are willing to use their own money to buy a home. By artificially propping up housing prices through the tax credit program, it just delayed the time when the housing market will turn around, i.e. when prices are in line with income levels. Until that happens, no short term incentive program is going to turn around a massive segment of the economy. All it does is needlessly give away taxpayer money to people who likely had enough money to purchase a house anyway.

Both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac need to be eliminated as soon ass possible in an organized systematic way. They control (i.e., politicians control) far too much of the economy and have proven that they cannot operate their respective operations unless taxpayers give them a half a TRILLION dollars, money that could be better spent remaining in the wallets of taxpayers. Too much control means lack of freedom, too much incompetence means too much of a financial burden.

Several steps from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" would address these issues. Step 36 would require all government employees including members of Congress and the Presidential administration to take and pass a course in basic economics so that we no longer see these wasteful rebate and tax credit programs that never work. Step 1 would start an immediate downsizing of government since most of it does not work effectively or efficiently. The half a TRILLION in savings form shuttering Fannie and Freddie would be a great way to start reducing our national debt. Step 39 would institute term limits so that we could get rid of these tired, economic illiterate politicians who have been in office for decades but who still insist on rolling out ineffective government economic programs (Cash For Clunkers) and ineffective government bureaucracies (Fannie and Freddie).

All of this bad news on bad government programs and we did not even address the Cash For Caulkers and Cash For Appliances failures....



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/

Screwed Up Government Priorities, Case #3 - Odds And Ends Of Bad Priorities From Around The Country

For the past two days we have looked at two major examples of where the Federal government has really irrational and screwed up priorities. Two days ago we analyzed how the Federal political class spends about seven times more taxpayer payer dollars on their pet projects/earmarks, projects that are primarily used to gather re-election funds and donations, than they spend on cancer research which kills thousands of Americans every year. Yesterday we examined how the political class in Washington is more interested in leveraging the Gulf oil spill to their political advantage rather than first stopping the leak and the damage it causes.

Today, we will look at a hodgepodge of screwed up government priorities from around the country, proving that the political class in Washington DC does not have a monopoly when it comes to irrational priorities. Many of the following examples come from the past two editions of Reason magazine (www.reason.com) and one comes from an Associated Press article. Since several of the following examples come from the state of California, keep in mind that the state government in California is facing about a $20 billion budget shortfall for the next budget cycle. This shortfall will likely result in draconian cuts to the number of state employees and state services. One would think that the political class in California would be focusing on streamlining their budget in order to make the budget cuts as painless as possible but...

• The San Francisco city council recently passed an ordinance, as reported by an Associated Press article today, requiring cell phone vendors and retailers to publicly post a sign in their store that documents the amount of radiation that is given off by each of the phone models they sell. They are requiring this signage even though the industry trade association and a recently completed and major United Nations study both concluded that there is no radiation danger from using cell phones. So, the state is awash in red ink, many teachers, firefighters, and police in San Francisco and elsewhere in the state are likely to lose their jobs shortly across and the city council is actively working an issue that is likely not an issue. The pathetic thing about this ordinance is that 1) most people coming into the stores will probably not even notice the radiation sign (a phenomenon that occurred when NYC required restaurants to post the nutritional value of the meals served, most people in a follow up survey did not recall even seeing the sign, 2) those that see the sign will likely not read it (source: same restaurant study in NYC) and 3) people will still buy the phone they want based on price, features, style, and availability. The only losers in this scenario are the customers who somehow will end up paying for the unneeded radiation signs the stores are required to post but which will have no impact.
• Staying in California, a car wash owner in Sacramento, Aaron Zeff, claimed that he was paid a visit by two, not one, IRS agents recently because he owed back taxes. The amount owed turned out to be $.04 from 2006. Zeff also claimed that this was the first time that the IRS told him of the shortfall, with my assumption being that he would have paid the back taxes if the IRS had sent him a letter rather than wasting hundreds if not thousands of dollars in salaries of two physical agents being dispatched to the field for a $.04 tax shortfall. Bernie Madoff gets away with the biggest Ponzi scheme for over a decade and the Federal government misses that one for so long but is right on top of delinquent car wash owners who owe $.04. (Source: Reason Magazine)
• Lets stay in California, the home of the $20 billion budget gap. The Santa Clara county Board of Supervisors has worked on and passed a law that bans toys from being given away with any meal with over 485 calories. It also bans restaurants from giving away a toy with any meal that has more than 600 milligrams of salt. Shouldn't parents be the determining factor of what and where and what toys their kids get? As with San Francisco, I would have hope the Santa Clara county government would be working on ways to minimize the budget deficit impact on their citizens rather than playing dietitian to the population. If the state and county go bankrupt, who cares what the kids are eating, at least in the short term? (Source: Reason magazine)
• In New Mexico, if state police troopers fail to write at least 100 tickets and make three DWI arrests each month, they face possible sanctions. The chief called it a "minimum performance standard" and not a quota. Shouldn't the New Mexico state police, or any police force, be more concerned with catching criminals, wherever they appear, rather than hunting down people to fill their "minimum performance standard?" Do New Mexico state police ignore other crimes towards the end of the month in order to fill their quota? One would think that the job of any police force is to stop crime wherever it occurs and not go looking for only certain types of criminals. (Source: Reason magazine)
• Back to the Federal wing of the political class. In 2006, the U.S. government passed a law that basically made it unlawful to manage or run an online Internet betting process such as online poker. For four years no one had been arrested. This law made the U.S. the only major country in the world that outlawed the business of online gambling. Recently, a major operator of online gambling from Australia was arrested on a visit to Las Vegas and is charged with violating the anti-gambling law. Given that the Christmas Day underwear bomber almost blew up a plane over Detroit last December and the Times Square bomber almost blew up a bomb in New York recently, one would have hoped that the U.S. Attorney Generals and law enforcement across the nation would be working on those types of problems and not one of Internet gambling. Americans love to gamble and should be allowed to do it wherever they want, making the law itself a misplaced priority to begin with. To use law enforcement resources to execute the law when there are so many other dangers facing the country is just another example of a screwed up priority. (Source: Reason magazine)
• The Utah state legislature is hard at work on a piece of legislation that will decriminalize the collection of rain water. Yes, it is a crime in Utah to collect the rain as it falls from the sky. The proposed new law would allow citizens to collect rainwater in underground tanks and barrels but... they would have to register their collection activities with the state and tell it how much water they collected. You cannot make this stuff up when it comes to screwed up government programs. (Source: Reason magazine)

Given what we have written about the past three days, please do not let anyone tell you that they cannot cut government spending anymore. Screwed up priorities such as the ones we have reviewed, government functions that do not do their jobs but draw a paycheck (e.g., the SEC employees who constantly searched the Internet for pornography during work hours while the economy crashed, the Federal oil rig safety employees that did the same Internet pornography searching while neglecting their safety inspection duties, government product safety employees that allowed lead and cadmium products to be imported into the country for use by kids and also allowed unsafe Toyota products into the market for years, etc.), and politicians that give away our money in return for campaign donations are just a short list of the many screwed up government priorities. When you are worried about having a government process for tracking the collection of rain water, you know we have fallen down the rabbit hole into another world, a world of screwed up priorities.

Again, that is why November is so critical to our nation and our pocket books. The current crop of politicians, at all levels of government, work on programs and projects that are really out of touch with reality and all incumbents that work on these issues need to be kicked out of office. They need to be replaced by new people with their heads screwed on straight in order to cut the waste, downsize government and get the remaining employees and government functions laser focused on real priorities that influence the most Americans lives.

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/

Screwed Up Government Priorities, Case #2 - "Meanwhile, oil continues to spew into the Gulf.."

Yesterday we discussed the first in a series of posts regarding how screwed up our government's priorities are. We saw that while the political class spends almost $16 billion a year in local earmarks for their local states and districts and to generate campaign funds for their re-election, the same political class spends only about $2 billion a year on cancer research, a set of diseases that kill hundreds of thousands of Americans every year. How screwed up is that priority: better to get re-elected then save American lives.

Meanwhile, oil continues to spew into the Gulf...

Today we will look at a second set of screwed up priorities, namely the whole situation with the BP oil spill disaster in the Gulf Of Mexico. As an upfront disclaimer, let me state that I find the actions of BP leading up to, during, and after the explosion on their oil rig to be shortsighted, despicable, and inadequate. They took short cuts and probably violated a number of Federal safety statues and laws. Over 60 days later they still have not plugged the leak and really have no other plan in place to stop it for at least another couple of months. They should be held accountable for the damage and safety violations to the fullest extent of current law.

Meanwhile, oil continues to spew into the Gulf...

Unfortunately, over the past week or so, the political class has gotten itself and their egos involved in the process. A White House meeting was held with Obama and his staff and the Chairman and CEO of BP. CEO Tony Hayward later went over to get beat up at Congressional hearings by Congress people that probably had no idea of what they were talking about except that it made them feel good in front of the cameras. And, there is no doubt that Hayward probably deserved some of the beat down since it is obvious that under his watch, BP was not prepared for what happened. However, rather than beat up the head of the cleanup, could we have not waited a little while to crucify him in public? Would not his time have been better spent working on the problem, the continuing spill, rather than jetting to DC? There is plenty of time to get a pound of flesh after the hole is plugged.

Meanwhile, the oil continues to spew into the Gulf...

Anyway, Mr. Hayward is not the only one who should be crucified because of this disaster. What about Interior Secretary Salazar. I would like to get him on the stand and ask him the following questions:

• Mr. Secretary, the Associated Press has reported that an internal investigation has uncovered at least one of your employees responsible for oil rig safety has admitted that he used crystal meth and may have been under the influence the next day at work and that others have admitted to being users of illegal drugs. Did that have anything to do with safety laxity on your watch?
• Mr. Secretary, the Associated Press has reported that an internal investigation has uncovered numerous occurrences where your employees received hunting and fishing trips and other gifts from the same companies that your department was supposed to be regulating and inspecting. Did that have anything to do with safety laxity on your watch?
• Mr. Secretary, the Associated Press has reported that an internal investigation has uncovered numerous occurrences where your inspectors were actively inspecting oil company sites for safety at the same time they were negotiating for jobs at those very companies. Did that have anything to do with safety laxity on your watch?
• Mr. Secretary, an Associated Press report mentions a 2008 report by the Interior department's inspector general that "decried a culture of ethical failure" and conflicts of interest at the responsible Interior agency. Did this culture have anything to do with the safety laxity on your watch and how have you addressed this problem?
• Mr. Secretary, the Associated Press has reported that an internal investigation found that some local employees in your Lake Charles, La. office had a significant amount of pornography on their government computers. Did that have anything to do with safety laxity on your watch?
• Mr. Secretary, the Associated Press has reported that your department conducted sixteen fewer safety inspections at the BP oil rig than it should have. Did that have anything to do with the safety laxity on your watch?
• Mr.Secretary, the Associated Press has reported that safety regulation of the Gulf wells is so lax that "some key safety aspects on rigs are decided almost entirely by the companies doing the work." Did that have anything to do with the safety laxity on your watch?
• Mr. Secretary, the Associated Press has reported that the overall BP safety plan and the safety plan specifically for the rig that exploded never had a chance of being successful, even on paper, and was riddled with inaccuracies, falsehoods, and inadequate preparation for the disaster. Who is responsible for such a lousy plan and document and will there be repercussions for those responsible?

Meanwhile, oil continues to spew into the Gulf...

Secretary Salazar is not he only person I would want to grill as an American citizen. I would allow Congressman Henry Waxman and Senator Jeff Bingaman, the chairman in Congress who chair committees on energy, to be put on the stand together for the following questions:

• Gentlemen, given the myriad of failures discussed with Mr. Salazar above, how come your committees were so lax in their oversight of the energy safety issues on Gulf drilling rigs?
• Gentlemen, given that your committees are responsible for Gulf drilling rigs, have either of you ever been on an oil rig?
• Gentlemen, given that your committees are responsible for Gulf drilling rigs, are either of you familiar with the Federal safety regulations? I particularly address this to you, Mr. Waxman, since you have already admitted you have not read the entire Cap And Trade legislation even though you are a co-sponsor. Have either of you read the safety regulations of oil rigs?
• Gentlemen, according to a recent Washington Post article that was summarized in the June 25, 2010 issue of The Week magazine, there are currently only 62 inspectors assigned to oversee 4,000 oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, or about one inspector for every 64 wells or so while in 1985 there were 55 inspectors for about 400 oil rigs or about one inspector for every seven or eight rigs. Do you accept some of this responsibility for underfunding the need to have more inspectors?
• Gentlemen, Washington has been abuzz about energy and climate change legislation lately. Wouldn't it be wiser in the short term to worry about the continued leak than to focus on a long term energy/climate bill?

Meanwhile, oil continued to spill into the Gulf...

And finally, I would like to sit with President Obama and ask him a few questions:

• Mr. President, you have proclaimed that you and your administration are on top of the situation but since the spill began it has been reported that you traveled to California three times for political fundraisers, played at least seven rounds of golf, took two vacations, participated in several photo ops with athletic teams, and did not meet with Hayward until about the eighth week of the crisis. Is that your definition of being on top of the situation?
• Mr. President, Tony Hayward has taken a lot of heat this weekend because he took time off to attend a yacht race back in Europe. Should you have taken the same amount of heat for taking time off to go to a baseball game Friday night even though the oil leak continues?
• Mr. President, will you prosecute, fine, fire, or take an disciplinary action against government employees who failed in their assigned duties to oversee and regulate the drilling activities in the Gulf?
• Mr. President, why is it taking so long for local governments to get help and permission to stem the tide of oil that is washing over their shores? Why didn't the Army Corp. of Engineers have a contingency plan ready rather than deny permission for sand berms and other actions until they "studied" the implications? Shouldn't that study have been done prior to the disaster?
• Mr. President, why have you not asked for a waiver of the Jones Act so that willing countries can donate their equipment to help with the clean up? Could it be you want to delay the clean up and prolong the problem in order to get the legislation passed that you want?
• Rather than publicly browbeat the very people technically and logistically responsible for stopping the leak last week, would it have not been a better approach to lay off for just a little while and let them focus on stopping the leak and then bring them to Washington for your photo op and thrashing of BP, after the leak was stopped?

Meanwhile, oil continues to spew into the Gulf...

Let's face, this is a disaster of epic proportions. From BP's shortcuts to save a little money and time and flaunting of standard safety protocols to the inadequate Federal oversight and focus on not stopping the leak the leak at all costs, we have never seen anything so disgusting in our lives. And where are the government's priorities? Congressmen and women anxious to show their indignation on television when it was obvious most of them did not know what they a were talking about. Other politicians trying to get their favorite energy and environmental legislation passed while losing focus on the core problem: stop the darn leak. That should be the only priority right now. The TV grandstanding, the press conferences, the feigned indignation, working for passage of legislation, that can all wait under we stop the leak.

Meanwhile, oil continues to spew into the Gulf...

This is just another reason why term limits (Step 39 in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government") and ousting the incumbents in November is so important. Long time politicians get to comfortable in their positions and allow laxity to enter into their administering and governing. Regulations are passed but not enforced. Employees are hired but no trained or supervised properly. A crisis occurs and the political class looks at a way to leverage the disaster rather than fixing the disaster. Not only should the top management at BP be replaced but Salazar, Waxman, Bingaman, and all politicians sitting on the committees responsible for oversight of the Gulf drilling need to be removed from their committee and subcommittee posts (Step 34). In real life, if you screw up, there are consequences. Should be the same way in government. Allow an epic environmental disaster to occur on your watch, a disaster that was totally preventable, get removed from your committee post.

Meanwhile, oil continues to spew into the Gulf...



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/

Screwed Up Government Priorities, Case #1 - Earmark Spending Vs. Cancer Research Spending

Today will start a series of at least two posts where I make a definitive statements of what I think are really screwed up Federal government priorities. These are not Democrat vs. Republican nuances in policy, these are just plain, stupid wasteful government and political class screw ups.

Let's start today with data from a Washington Post from article February 18, 2010. The article reports on an analysis by the organization, Taxpayers For Common Sense. They issued their annual report showing that in 2010 the Federal government will spend about $15.6 billion on over 10,000 Federal budget earmarks. Recall that earmarks are special funding buckets that sitting politicians can use to direct Federal taxpayer money to their home state or Congressional district for use on projects and initiatives in their state/district or are special buckets of money directed to all types of organizations (companies, non-profits, etc.) that usually, in turn, donate some of the organization's money to the politician's re-election campaign.

What are these buckets of money spent on? Anderson Cooper of CNN recently reported that the following efforts received earmark funding:

• $200,000 for the Arkansas Commercial Driver Training Institute
• $150,000 for educational programs at the Washington DC National Building Museum
• $134,000 for the Montana Trade Center
• $100,000 for the Myrtle Beach International Trade And Conference Center
• $500,000 For exhibits at the National Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium In Iowa
• $200,000 for the Washington (state) Opera
• $150,000 for exhibits at the Teddy Roosevelt Inaugural Site

The website for Citizens Against Government Waste contains the following wasteful spending examples:

• $1,000,000 to renovate the Portsmouth, New Hampshire Music Hall
• $400,000 to renovate the Ritz Theater in New York
• $350,000 to renovate the Uptown Theater in Philadelphia
• $250,000 to construct the Monroe County Farmers' Market in Kentucky
• $100,000 to construct the Santa Ana River Trail in California
• $250,000 to renovate the Murphy Theater in Ohio

According to John McCain, the latest defense budget includes the following earmark buckets:

• $500,000 for the Brown Snake Program (yes, this was in the Defense budget)
• $1.800,000 to renovate the Fort Hamilton Community Club in New York
• $5,000,000 for the Presido heritage in San Francisco
• $1,600,000 for the Center For Space Entrepreneurship
• $18,900,000 for a center :dedicated to educating the general public, students, teachers, new Senators and Senate staff about the role and importance of the Senate."

We could go on and on (about 10,000 more times) but you get the picture. Just these eighteen examples alone cost the American taxpayer almost $32 million, money that should have been spent but the state or local governments or the private sector. National taxpayers should not help finance a farmers' makret in Kentucky or a river trail in California. These are bribes, nothing more, to get voters to pony up money and votes to re-elect incumbents.

But what is really screwed up is the following information that was published in the June 20, 2010 issue of Parade magazine, "Government Research Funding For The Top 10 Cancer Killers in 2009." The following numbers come from the National Cancer Institute (NCI), the biggest Federal government research funder (Note: the article does point out that some other government agencies fund cancer research but the NCI is the largest):

• Lung and Bronchus - $246.9 million funded by the NCI
• Colon and Rectum - $264.2 million
• Breast - $599.5 million
• Pancreas - $89.7 million
• Prostate - $293.9 million
• Leukemia -- $220.6 million
• Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma - $130.9 million
• Liver - $70.3 million
• Ovary - $110,1 million
• Esophagus - $28.8 million
• Total = $2.037 billion

According to the article, 150,000 people are diagnosed with colorectal cancer every year and 50,000 people die from it. According to the American Cancer Society website, about 180,000 Americans are diagnosed with breast cancer every year and about 40,000 die from it. According to the National Cancer institute, about 220,000 new cases of lung cancer are diagnosed every year and about 157,000 Americans die from it.

Thus, if you take all of the above information, you get the following government and political class screw ups:

• How come, as a country, we allow the political class to spend about 59 times more taxpayer money on earmarks and their re-election efforts than we do on colon cancer research ($15.6 BILLION spent on earmarks and $264.2 MILLION on colon cancer research?
• How come, as a country, we allow the political class to spend about 26 times more taxpayer money on earmarks and their re-election efforts than we do on breast cancer research?
• How come, as a country, we allow the political class to spend about 63 times more taxpayer money on earmarks and their re-election efforts than we do on lung cancer research?
• How come, as a country, we allow the political class to spend $15.6 BILLION on earmarks to support their re-election efforts while almost 250,000 Americans die every year from just these three cancers?
• How come, as a country, we allow the political class to spend $32 million on just the eighteen earmarks listed above when $32 million would represent an almost 50% increase in liver cancer research?
• How come, as a country, we allow the political class to spend over seven times the amount of money in earmarks than we spend on the ten cancers listed above?
• Does the political class really think that building a river trail or a farmer's market with Federal tax dollars is a better use of money than helping solve the cancer riddle?
• While just about every family in America will be affected by cancer at some point in time, how many people will shop at the Monroe County Farmer's Market or will walk the Santa Ana River Trail?

This is what a call a prime example of screwed up government priorities. It gets back to the elitist discussion we have had in the past two posts where the politicians in this country put their interests first and whatever is left over is given back to the citizens. The political class sees their right to issue earmarks in the billions of dollars more important than to help many more Americans fight the battle against cancer. Spending billions for their own self good vs. spending millions for the betterment of the citizens is a major screw up in my opinion.

Three steps in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" would address this situation. First, Step 39 would impose term limits on all Congressional seats so that the perceived need to issue earmarks in exchange for re-election donations would go away since there would be no re-election opportunities, one term and out. Step 4 would occur after the first three steps were executed, i.e. the drastic reduction in Federal government expenditures, and would direct some of those savings from reducing the size of government towards focused efforts to substantially reduce the dire cancer statistics facing the country. And finally, Step 44 would not allow any Federal funding on any project or program unless it was beneficial to a significant number of residents in at least five states. This step would eliminate the river trails and farmers market earmarks immediately.

Despite hollow calls for reducing earmarks over the years, the political class has shown they are addicted to them and the campaign donations that follow. If we eliminated all of the earmarks and gave half of the wasted money money back to the taxpayers, we could still increase cancer research funding by more than three fold if we saved the other half for research. That is the intent of Step 4 and should be intent of a benevolent government, not a screwed up government.

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/