February , 2013 Political Class Insanity, Part 4: Trading Principles For Oil, Identity Theft Courtesy Of The IRS, And More

Okay, I thought I could keep the February political class insanity to three posts. However, by the time I finished writing the third post, more insanity had poured in and needed to be documented for this month. So, hopefully the following acts of lunacy will finally complete the political class insanity for February, 2013:

1) According to news reports, New York-based designer Thom Browne designed the dress that Michelle Obama wore during her husband’s second inauguration ceremonies, a dress that was estimated to cost at least $10,000. The average American household would probably have to work 3-4 months to afford such a dress. As we have reported previously, the entire inauguration event likely cost American taxpayers around $150 million. During the Christmas season, the White House was decorated with 54 Christmas trees.

There are tens of millions of Americans that need food stamps to survive. 23 million Americans are unemployed or under employed. Tens of millions of Americans do not have health care insurance.

Does anyone really think that Washington is in tune with the rest of America? Disgraceful

2) A January 21, 2013 article in the New York Post discussed the contents of meeting notes from the Federal Reserve from 2007. The article lays out its case that then Vice Chairman of the Fed, Tim Geithner, who would soon become Secretary of the Treasury, probably provided insider trading information, relative to the Fed’s plans for the economy, to his friends in the major banks.

The article contains the transcript words of a telephone conversation between Geithner and another member of the Fed, Jeffery Lacker, where Lacker discusses the fact that the head of Bank Of America already knew what the Fed intended to do to the Fed’s discount rate before it was made public on August 17, 2007. Suspiciously, the stock values of financial stocks moved substantially higher on August 16, the day before the announcement on the discount rate was to be made.

Let’s review: ordinary American citizen deals insider information, ordinary American goes to jail. Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board deals insider information, Vice Chairman becomes Secretary of the Treasury.

3) Freedom House is a Washington, DC-based think tank that conducts research on democracy, liberty, freedom, and human rights. It recently published its latest report on the state of freedom around the world. The report is entitled, "Freedom in the World 2013," and the seven nations with the lowest possible rankings for both political rights and civil liberties included North Korea, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Sudan, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea and Saudi Arabia.

And here’s the kicker to this dubious list for freedom anemic countries: the United States provides substantial economic, military and/or diplomatic support to four of them. So much for being a beacon of hope and freedom to the rest of the world. We cannot claim that high ground when we are supporting the corrupt governments in Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan, Equatorial Guinea, and Turkmenistan.

Freedom atrocities that occur in these four countries, as researched and identified by Freedom House, include torture, denial of legal counsel, non-existent women’s rights, public lashings and death for such offenses as homosexuality, adultery, prostitution, and renouncing Islam, horrific prison conditions, rigged elections or no elections at all, etc.

Why does the U.S. government and political class support such wretched regimes? Could it be that all of them are major sources of oil and natural gas? Could it be that one of the gangs we talked about in early January,

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-selling-and-buying-of-america-part_14.html

Big Oil, and their collusion with the Washington political class, has something to do with our not standing for freedom, liberty, and equality? Insanity.

4) In the February, 2013 issue of Reason magazine we find out that someone in the U.S. Justice Department decided to issue a Federal order/regulation that decided in 2011 the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) requires hotels, restaurants, and airlines to accommodate “pygmy ponies” as service animals. Really, pygmy ponies? Ask yourself a couple of questions:

• How many people in the world with disabilities do we think that this regulation would effect? Two people, three people?
• How much will this regulation unnecessarily cost American businesses and our economy as they have to educate their employees about pygmy ponies and the ADA?
• Is that the right use of taxpayer money for high priced lawyers, to determine that pygmy ponies is a pressing issue?
• Did these lawyers have nothing better to do in light of a $16.4 TRILLION national debt due to decades of wasteful government spending?

Ridiculous priorities.

5) Walter Jones used to be a member of the House of Representatives. He had his fifteen minutes of fame when he inanely championed the cause for Congressional cafeterias to rename their French fries to Freedom fries when the French did not support the Bush misadventure into Iraq.

However, ten years later, as quoted in the recent issue of Reason magazine, he has become a big advocate for minimizing foreign military involvement in faraway places such as Iraq. Relative to Afghanistan, he thinks that it has been a mistake, is a mistake, and will continue to be a mistake. It wastes American lives, runs up spending for no conceivable positive end, and worst of all, he observes that we have been funneling money and training resources into the country with little discernible benefit: “No one’s changed Afghanistan [through history] and no one’s going to change it. If you are just waiting to train the Afghans to be policemen and the military, it’s taken 11 years already. You can train a monkey to ride a bicycle in less time.”

And you can train that monkey and have somehting to show for your efforts for probably far less money than what the failure in Afghanistan will end up costing us.

6) Another example that proves when Washington and the politicians that inhabit it try to do the right thing, they still almost always get it wrong. The IRS has spent a lot of time and effort to make it simple for Americans to file their tax returns and efficient for the IRS to process those returns via electronic filing. Simple and efficient, two words that anyone would want their government to be.

However, a Wall Street Journal report, of which a summary appeared in the January 25, 2103 issue of The Week magazine, describes how the Treasury Department has found out that as a result of electronic filing, the government has made identity theft so much easier and lucrative from a crime perspective.

In 2011, IRS had to deal with more than 1.1 million cases of tax return identify theft. In 2008, just three years prior to 2011 and prior to widespread use of electronic filing, there were only 51,700 cases of tax-related identity theft.

Thus, within three short years the Federal government was able to increase the frequency of identify theft crime in this area by 20 fold. And this “efficiency” came at a cost of the government paying out more than $5 billion in bogus tax refunds, money that is likely never to be seen again. It would all be so funny if it was not so tragic.

That should do it for this month. Four posts of Keystone Kop like performances from our elected officials and the bloated and inefficient government it operates.

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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

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

February, 2013 Political Class Insanity, Part 3 - Google's Tax Dodge, Getting Rich In D.C., Food Stamp Fraud In Ohio, And More

This is the third post for the political class insanity of February, 2013. Over the past two days we have seen numerous charges and allegations of political bribery and corruption, political cronyism, a politician wanting to use government resources and operations to persecute those citizens with a different opinion than her, government officials and politicians that cannot develop and live by a simple budget, and other acts of lunacy. Fortunately, the insanity ends with the following:

1) We have a national debt of over $16 TRILLION. According to a January 17, 2013 Associated Press report, there are hundreds and hundreds of deficient and dangerously flawed levees across the country that are at risk of collapsing at any minute and endangering the lives and properties of millions of Americans in at least 37 states. Hurricane Sandy victims are still waiting for relief. Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are rapidly approaching insolvency.

Despite all of these dire financial situations, what did the Federal government recently spend $100,000 on: “The National Endowment for the Arts is funding the Spelman College of Atlanta, Ga.’s multi-episode game called “HERadventure.” In the grant announcement made last year, the NEA said the story “focuses on a young female superhero sent to Earth to save her own planet from devastation because of climate changes caused by social issues impacting women and girls.”

Now, $100,000 is not going to fix any of the problems listed above. However, before you can start saving millions of dollars in wasted spending, you have to start saving thousands. And before you can start saving billions, you have to start saving millions, etc. Wasting $100,000 on an inane game would have been a great start on the road to fixing what ails this country in a meaningful way as opposed to idiotic, wasteful, useless programs like this.

2) In late December, 2012, the Wall Street Journal reported that General Motors workers will each receive an annual bonus of between $5,500 and $7,000 a piece. This past week it was reported that the Treasury Department is about to unload the last of the millions of GM shares it still owns. If that sale of shares comes to past, the American taxpayer would stand to lose about $12 billion on the direct bailout of General Motors.

Such a deal, the American taxpayer theoretically contributes just over $100 per household to a bankrupt company that in turn gives bonuses to its workers of up to $7,000. Doesn’t seem fair, does it? And this is just the result of the direct GM bailout. The forgiving of back taxes and the failed bailouts of other former GM corporate components is not included in this scam.

3) The Dayton Daily news reported in late December, 2012 that A Federal judge had sentenced a local resident, Al-Idu Al-Gaheem to one year and one day in prison for his leadership in a scheme that bilked $3.8 million from the Federal food stamp program.

Al-Gaheem had faced as many as four years in prison after he pleaded guilty in August to charges of conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to commit wire fraud, food stamp trafficking and structuring transactions to avoid reporting requirements. The scheme involved Al-Gaheem and his co-conspirators illegally paying customers 50 cents in cash for every $1 in food stamp benefits they redeemed.

The $3.8 million they stole from the American taxpayer was allegedly spent on themselves and their businesses. Although the court order requires them to pay back the $3.8 million, the article concludes that this will likely never happen since the money has all been spent.

You really have to be kidding me, only one year in jail for stealing almost $4 million? Doesn’t seem fair or just, maybe that is the reason that Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid lose over $200 billion a year to waste and criminal fraud. The penalties for getting caught are just not steep enough to scare off the criminals.

4) As you begin to get your tax documentation together in order to prepare your Federal income tax return, consider a short article that was published in the December 21, 2012 issue of The Week magazine. The article, originally from Bloomberg, reported that Google avoided paying about $2 billion in taxes in 2011 by transferring $9.8 billion in revenue to a Bermuda holding company.

The amount transferred to Bermuda, where there is no income tax, represents about 80% of Google’s pretax profits. Thus, while many American small business owners saw their taxes go up when the fiscal cliff deal was signed, apparently Google can continue to shield billions in tax liabilities offshore.

I believe that everyone’s taxes on average should be reduced, given the trillions of dollars the Federal government has wasted over the years. However, for someone that is always yapping about paying one’s fair share of taxes, Obama and the Democrats really seem to be taking their time dealing with atrocities like this while the successful local pizzeria owner might have just seen his tax burden go up.

5) Let’s stay with the income tax theme. How high is your household income that you will be taxes on in April?

According to the AARP Bulletin magazine from December, the estimated median income of each state and the District Of Columbia ranges from a low of $36,919 in Mississippi to a high, almost 100% higher, of $70,004 in Maryland. (Source: U.S. Census Bureau). Since the average household income across the entire country is just below $50,000, we also see that Maryland residents make about 40% more than the average U.S. household.

But who lives in Maryland? A large portion of those high income households are high paying jobs that depend on the Federal government and your tax dollars. In fact, the fourth highest median household income are those households living in the District Of Columbia, $63,124, about 26% higher than the average U.S. Household.

As always, the political class, and the lobbyists, contractors, and industries that depend on extensive large Federal spending, are certainly taking care of themselves financially. In fact, we have previously reported that seven of the top ten richest counties in the country are in the greater D.C. area.

Thus, another example of the evolving elitist ruling class in this country, a class that pays themselves better than the people that make their salaries possible, a class that needs private bathrooms worth over $200,000 a class that readily excepts bribes while in office, etc. Insanity and insults, a monthly affair that never ends.

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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

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

February, 2013 Political Class Insanity, Part 2 - A Mayor Gets Indicted, Nazi Thinking In New Hampshire, A Crooked Judge In MIchigan, Alternative Energy Cronyism and More

Yesterday, we started our review of the latest monthly insanity from the American political class. We reviewed an opulent Federal bathroom for one government executive that cost taxpayers over $200,000, we reviewed how the Obama administration is likely the worst Presidential administration when it comes to meeting its legally mandated budget deadlines, how Congress keeps spending money even when a government entity (the Defense Department) actually says it does not need any more money, and more.

But as has been the case for the past six months or so, we could not confine the insanity to one post. More insanity prevails today:

1) Although the lawsuit has just been filed and no verdicts or trials have occurred, it would not be a surprise if this was a legitimate lawsuit with a good chance of succeeding, based on the crony politics we have discussed many times before relative to alternative energy and vehicle programs.

The details below come from a Bloomberg article from earlier in January, 2013:

• XP Vehicles and Limnia recently filed complaints against the U.S. and the Energy Department in Federal courts in Washington, contending that the Obama administration’s Energy Department took care of political friends of the administration when it came to handing out taxpayer money and loans for alternative energy projects.
• Specifically, they are seeking damages for alleged abuses of the $25 billion Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing loan program.
• The two companies are seeking $450 million in damages, specifically: “Defendants used the ATVM loan program as nothing more than a veil to steer hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to government cronies.”
• XP Vehicles, said it wanted a $40 million loan in 2009 to mass produce an SUV-style electronic vehicle with doors and other parts made from foam.
• XP Vehicles was led to understand that review of its application would take “a matter of weeks.” but XPV claims if found out that two of its competitors, Tesla Motors and Fisker Automotive, were getting special assistance from Energy Department staff with their loan application process.
• At that time, a member of Tesla’s board of director was Steven Westly, a campaign contribution bundler for Obama.
• The complaint also claims Fisker’s investors included Obama donors.
• Tesla got their taxpayer backed loan of $465 million loan in June 2009 with an interest rate of only 1.6%, according to the complaint.
• Fisker received their taxpayer backed $528.7 million loan but in May 2011 the Energy Department blocked Fisker from receiving the rest of the loan when the company didn’t meet its developmental milestones.
• The Energy Department did not comment specifically on these lawsuits, per their policy, but did state that all protocols and guidelines for being fair were followed in all cases.

Again, only accusations, nothing proven one way or the other. But it would not surprise me if this was the actual biased process used. It would be consistent with how the Washington political class functions, political friends and cronies taken care of first, taxpayer money and wealth wasted in the process

2) If there was a tyranny of the month award, I am pretty sure this New Hampshire state legislator would be in the running.

New Hampshire State Representative Democrat Cynthia Chase encouraged her fellow legislators to use their elected positions to make New Hampshire less welcoming to any conservative or libertarian planning on moving to her state, including those already there.

A potential reason for her paranoia is a project underway in New Hampshire. The project’s aim is to encourage that Americans of conservative tenets to move to New Hampshire, run for office, and work to drive the state toward libertarianism and conservatism. It is called the "Free State Project" and supporters are called "Free Staters." These Free Staters want to make the state motto, “Live Free or Die,” a reality. Seems reasonable, given the motto has been around for hundreds of years.

Writing a web post for a blog on December 21 post, Ms. Chase wrote that, "Free Staters are the single biggest threat the state is facing today. In the opinion of this Democrat, Free Staters are the single biggest threat the state is facing today. There is, legally, nothing we can do to prevent them from moving here to take over the state, which is their openly stated goal.

In this country you can move anywhere you choose and they have that same right. What we can do is to make the environment here so unwelcoming that some will choose not to come, and some may actually leave. One way is to pass measures that will restrict the 'freedoms' that they think they will find here. Another is to shine the bright light of publicity on who they are and why they are coming."

It is tough to imagine an elected American official wanting to restrict freedom of only those that disagree with her political positions or who wants to pass punitive measures, again for just a subset of citizens, that would make their life more miserable. Unbelievable.

The Constitution guarantees equal treatment under the law and by government policies and officials. This fundamental principle is obviously lost on this politician.

I do not like to throw around comparisons to Nazi Germany, it is an insult that is rarely accurate and is often used more as a hate barb than an accurate description of the situation. However, if I change the words “Free Staters” above to “Jewish Citizens” and leave everything else the same, I think you will see how closely Ms. Chase’s words would line up with the Nazi manifesto in Nazi Germany in the 1930s.

Discrimination against only certain citizens and laws to make their lives miserable and “shine the light of publicity on who they are.” Think back to your history class and remember how Jewish citizens were forced to wear yellow Star Of David signs on themselves when out in public and you will better see my point. Again, unbelievable that our political dialog has come to using the power of the government to force others of a different political position to change their lives.

3) A January 18, 2013 Associated Press reviewed how that more than ten years ago, Ray Nagin was elected mayor of New Orleans on a promise to end corruption in a city infested by decades of it. On January 18, 2013 Nagin was indicted on charges he accepted bribe money, payoffs and other payments while the relatively poor city struggled to recover from Hurricane Katrina.

The Federal investigation alleges that city contractors paid Nagin more than $200,000 in bribes and subsidized his trips to Hawaii, Jamaica and other places. In return, they were awarded Nagin’s help securing millions of contract dollars in work for the city.

The charges against Nagin are a result of a municipal corruption investigation that has already garnered guilty pleas by two former city officials and two businessmen and a prison sentence for a former city vendor. Imagine, an American politician using his office for personal enrichment and greed. Who would have thought? This is especially distressing, given how difficult the recovery has been from Katrina and the personal, emotional, and financial suffering that came with it.

4) The Salt Lake Tribune had a very interesting article on January 11, 2013. Before reviewing it, be clear that the following information is just an accusation at this point in time but the FBI and Federal Trade Commission are deeply involved in the investigation of everything going on around the accusations of illegally buying political influence.

Specifically, accusations of political kickbacks related to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid are just that, unproven accusations. But the following highlights from the article are certainly interesting and could result in a Nagin-like situation for state and Federal politicians:

• A Utah businessman, Jeremy Johnson, claims that recently elected Utah Attorney General John Swallow helped arrange a deal in 2010 in which Johnson thought he was to pay Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid $600,000 to make a Federal investigation into Johnson’s company go away.
• Johnson said Swallow at first wanted $2 million to enlist Reid’s help but when he claimed did not have that kind of money they eventually agreed on $300,000 upfront and $300,000 later, according to Johnson‘s version of events.
• But when the Federal government still filed a lawsuit against the company for shady marketing tactics, a lawsuit Johnson thought he had paid to go away, he demanded Swallow return some of the $250,000 initial bribe payment.
• When he did not get the bribe money back, just days before the Nov. 6 election, Johnson engaged in a frantic effort to get Swallow to drop out of the race, saying information of the arrangement with Reid would come out and force the Swallow’s resignation from office if he became attorney general.
• According to the article, Federal agents, including the FBI, have been interviewing Johnson and others related to the situation.
• However, as proof of the scheme, Johnson has produced emails and other documents indicating that Swallow intended to put Johnson in touch with another businessman, Richard Rawle, who allegedly had connections in with Reid in Reid’s home state of Nevada, according to Johnson
• In a subsequent article, Reid's office denied any involvement in the alleged bribery scheme: "Senator Reid has no knowledge or involvement regarding Mr. Johnson’s case," his spokeswoman, Kristen Orthman, said in a statement. "These unsubstantiated allegations implying Senator Reid’s involvement are nothing more than innuendo and simply not true."

Whatever the case and whatever the Federal investigators come up with, there are some smoking guns, and smoking emails, that indicate that government favors are for sale, either at the state level, the Federal level, or just as a fraud cover to get money with no bribery involved. But that should not surprise any of us, most of us know that politicians’ priorities start and end with their career and personal financial enrichment.

The original article with the extensive details of bribery and secret meetings can be found at:

http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/home3/55598812-200/johnson-swallow-rawle-attorney.html.csp

6) But it is not just political figures in elected office that are out only for their personal enrichment. Consider a short story that appeared in the January 20, 2013 issue of the Tampa Bay Times. Apparently, Federal authorities have filed a felony fraud charge against Michigan Supreme Court Justice Diane Hathaway in a case involving the sale of an upscale Detroit area home in a short sale arrangement.

The charge contends that Ms. Hathaway hid the ownership of a Florida property in order to get a short sale approved on her Detroit area home. The fraud allowed her and her husband to illegally get out from under a $600,000 debt. The article states a plea deal on the crime has already been reached and she will shortly no longer be a state Supreme Court Justice.

7) Our final political class insanity today comes from France, where it appears that politicians the world over are the same when it comes to their own financial enrichment and greed. According to a January 10, 2013 Associated Press article, the French bureaucrat leading the fight against France’s tax and fiscal fraud problem is now one of those being investigated for such fraud.

French Budget Minister Jerome Cahuzac has spent months seeking out and prosecuting corporate multinational tax dodgers, citizens who live abroad to avoid taxes and those within France who stash money in overseas accounts. Now, he is the target in just the sort of investigation he thought would help turn France's finances around, as prosecutors investigate an online journal's allegations that he transferred money from a Swiss account into one in Singapore, avoiding taxes in the process.

He has, of course, denied the allegations from the online news source, Mediapart, and as of now, these are not proven facts, just allegations. More to come but again, who would be surprised if a politician acted holier than thou in public while secretly arranging for his financial gain behind the scenes, in France, in the U.S., or anywhere where government is run by a political class?

That should do it for today, one last dose of political class insanity tomorrow to wrap up this month’s insults to our intelligence and pocketbooks.

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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

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

Political Class Insanity, Part 1, February, 2013: Politicians That Cannot Budget Or Save, Luxurious Government Bathrooms and More

At the beginning of every month we review the insanity, idiocy, and follies that the political class has dumped on us over the previous month of so. Last month seems like the whole month of posts was dedicated to political class insanity as we did extensive reviews of the idiocy of Obama Care and the fumbling, grandstanding, and politicizing of the tragic school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.

However, today and for a few days after today, we will be reviewing just plain old, simple incompetence of the political class, the never ending stream of insults and wasting of taxpayer wealth that we get hit with every month from our current set of politicians.

1) Our first example this month actually happened in 2007 but has just come to light. ABC News Reported the following story and facts on January 16, 2013:

• In 2007, the personal bathroom used by the Secretary of the Interior, Dirk Kempthorne, was remodeled.
• The renovation cost an amazing $222,000. One bathroom, one Cabinet level Secretary. I would bet that the average cost of an American home on the market today costs less than $222,000.
• The renovated bathroom has a $3,500 sub-zero refrigerator. Yes, the need for a high end refrigerator in one’s bathroom cannot be underestimated.
• According to the story, one faucet cost $689, which implies there were more than one faucet and more than one sink in the Secretary’s personal bathroom.
• The toilet paper holder cost “only” $65.
• It took the ABC News affiliate in Atlanta four full years to get the details of a single bathroom remodeling costs under a Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) request. Four years, one bathroom, talk about government inefficiency or more likely, a cover up due to the embarrassment of spending so much on a single bathroom remodel.
• This disgraceful waste of taxpayer wealth was uncovered by an audit done by the General Accounting Administration who appears to have a gift for the understatement: “A number of the items incorporated into the renovation project call into question the need for luxurious materials.”

You think? $222,000 to remodel a single, personal bathroom with faucets that cost over $600 each and a $65 toilet paper holder? It really is looking like we have an elitist set of people working and living in the D.C. area who think they deserve this kind of special treatment at our expense. A real “let them eat cake” moment from the Washington political class.

2) There are many, many reasons why the nation and its citizens are facing a massive $16.4 TRILLION national debt. Government programs are inefficient, ineffective, redundant, and many infested with massive criminal fraud. Old programs never die, they just get refunded every year even if their purpose for existing is no longer needed. The Democratically controlled Senate has not passed a formal budget since April, 2009, making coherent and rational spending decisions and tradeoffs next to impossible.

To this lurid mix of incompetence we can add in the inability of the Obama administration to hit the legal and required budget deadlines that every President before him has been able to meet:

• Obama’s current budget proposal to Congress might not be passed over to Congress until March, a full month past the legal deadline of the first Monday in February (February 4 this year).
• This extends an abysmal track record of Obama’s fourth late budget submission in five years.
• He is now the first President to present three consecutive late budgets.
• Obama already is the first President to deliver three of his budgets late in just one term and the first to submit budgets late two years in a row.
• He also holds the record for the latest delayed budget submission: 98 days.
• According to the House Budget Committee, since enactment of the 1921 Budget and Accounting Act, which created the formal executive budget process: “All Presidents from Harding to Reagan’s first term met the statutory budget submission deadline in every year.”
• Even during World War II and the Korean war, the President’s budget reached Congress on time.
• With the Obama administration, meeting fiscal deadlines is an anomaly.
• Obama has also never submitted a Mid-Session Review by July 16, as required by law.

When laws get broken by ordinary citizens there are consequences. When laws get broken by Presidential administrations there are no ramifications, except for the fact that without timely and effective budgets, government spending goes wild and current and future generations are faced with incredibly burdensome national debt loads. Dereliction of Presidential duties is too mild a term for this atrocity.

3) CBS News in Detroit reported on November 28, 2013 that a Michigan state senator has proposed that an option for the future of Detroit might be dissolving the city outright and letting neighboring communities pick up parts of the Detroit real estate and govern it as if it was their own. The financial and governing environment has gotten so bad that some people actually think killing off the city is the best solution. And they may be right.

Think about the magnitude of this position, a position that is not so far fetched. Detroit was once one of the largest cities in the U.S. It had a thriving economy and a large middle class population, mostly as a result of the auto industry. It was a major, major manufacturing center for the country.

Now, it is a vast wasteland with abandoned homes, whole neighborhoods that were abandoned and their structures razed to hinder the crime that the empty buildings harbored. There is effectively no middle class left in the city. The city government and the officials/politicians that have operated it either did a bad job, went to jail for crimes committed while in office, or both. And no political person, political party, or political solution has been able to resurrect what was once a thriving metro area.

The only political solution that might make sense is to just dissolve the city and make it go away, as if it never happened. So sad, another disgraceful performance from a political class that can spend and waste but cannot budget and grow the benefits for ordinary citizens.

4) The Americans For Prosperity website had a post on January 9, 2013 that documented just SOME of the special spending tidbits that our gutless political class had embedded in the fiscal cliff deal that was signed on January 2, 2013. This deal increased the tax burden on almost 80% of Americans starting immediately.

Think about that fact when reviewing the additional spending that Washington politicians approved for their crony and political donor friends, at all of our expense:

1. Tax credit for wind farms (Section 407) Cost: $12.2 billion. Description: Extends the wind production tax credit, also offering the credit to those wind farms at the beginning of energy projects instead of at completion.
2. Active financing exception for Wall Street (Section 322) Cost: $9 billion per year. Description: Multinational corporations can use this exception to avoid paying some taxes by creating certain overseas entities, a mechanism known as active financing.
3. New Goldman Sachs offices (Section 328) Cost: $1.5 billion. Description: Initially established to provide tax-exempt financing for rebuilding the World Trade Center area, this provision partially went to fund Goldman Sachs offices. It has been extended.
4. Whirlpool Corporation tax credit (Section 409) Cost: $650 million. Description: For producing energy-efficient appliances, Whirlpool receives an extended $650 million tax credit (not nearly as much as the $1.8 billion extended to financial institutions for investing in “low-income areas”).
5. Extended rum tax (Section 329) Cost: $220 million; $547 million in 2009. Description: Funnels the revenue of the excise tax on rum to Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, subsidizing their rum industries.
6. Incentives for taking public transportation to work (Section 203) Cost: $220 million. Description: As part of an incentive to have people take public transportation, benefits have been set to an equal level with those for driving. Now employers can cover the same amount toward commuting expenses tax-free whether workers take public transit or drive.
7. Railroad repair (Section 306) Cost: $165 million per year. Description: Railroads can claim tax credits for performing maintenance.
8. Hollywood subsidies (Section 317) Cost: $75 million per year. Description: Provides producers with deductions of $15-20 million for filming in the United States, especially in low-income areas.
9. Help grow algae (Section 404) Cost: $59 million. Description: Algae growers receive tax credits in their quest to turn algae into a biofuel source.
10. NASCAR racetracks (Section 312) Cost: $43 million over the past two years. Description: Tax benefits for racetracks in order to supposedly even competition with “other amusement parks.”
11. Mine safety (Section 307 and 316) Cost: $14 million. Description: Encourages implementation of common sense safety measures by mining companies.
12. Electric scooters (Section 403) Cost: $4-7 million. Description: Electric vehicle tax credits extended to include electric motorbikes.
13. Indian coal: alternative energy? (Section 406) Cost: $1 million. More specifically, Section 406 subsidizes by $2 per ton coal produced on Indian lands.

Let’s see: raise taxes on almost 80% of all Americans and turn right around and give tax breaks of over $15 billion right back to your political friends. As we have said many times in the past, these people are shameless.

5) The Washington Guardian posted a Pentagon related article on its website on January 10, 2013 that discussed two interesting situations. First, the U.S. Navy had decided to retire seven of its battle cruisers from service. In the opinion of the Navy’s experts, these ships were no longer needed for national defense and to upgrade them would unnecessarily cost billions and billions of dollars.

Wow, a part of the Federal government actually trying to do the right thing and be efficient, saving taxpayer wealth in the process. Certainly something you do not see everyday. But it turned out to be too good to be true.

Congress stepped in and prohibited the Navy from decommissioning the ships that it said were no longer needed. Congressional members quoted in the article said they felt that losing these seven, almost obsolete ships would endanger our national defense.

This might be true but who would you believe first, the professionals in the Navy who felt the ships were not needed and wanted to save some taxpayer wealth ($259 billion over five years) or the politicians in Congress that want to protect jobs back in their states and districts, even if those jobs were useless, or who wanted to keep their defense contractor political backers happy? I would vote for the admirals every time.

The second situation is of a broader scope but reinforces the notion that politicians do not want to get spending under control or do not know how to get spending under control. According to the Guardian: “The Defense Department requested $613.9 billion for fiscal year 2013 - almost $32 billion less than it received last year. Instead, lawmakers sent the Pentagon roughly $633 billion for 2013, still less than the agency received last year but $20 billion above what Pentagon leaders had requested.”

Who does not think that the additional funding set aside for the Defense Department, money it said it did not need, was purely for earmarks for favored political cronies and backers of the Washington politicians?

By the way, in light of the Newtown school shooting, that additional $20 billion that the Defense Department said it does not need or want could staff a trained and armed police officer in every U.S. school for almost three years. You decide what the better priority is, unneeded military expenditures or protecting our kids.

That’s it for now, the insanity out of Washington just keeps on coming. And more will come over the next few days.

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