Love My Country, Loathe My Government

Sunday, October 6, 2013

October, 2013 Political Class Insanity, Part 5: Hookah Research, Social Security Fraud, Energy Department Waste and More

Please note: Nancy Pelosi recently made the outrageous comment that there was no waste to be cut in the Federal govnerment, i.e. EVERY dollar the Washington political class spends is essential to our country. Keep this insanity in mind as we go through this month's polticial class insanity, you will quickly see that she is very much out of touch with the reality of today's wasteful federal government.

This is the fifth but not last installment, at least for this month, of political class insanity. Every month we track and discuss the latest insanity, lunacy, and wasteful spending habits of politicians in Washington, around the country, and around the world. Wealth gets wasted, issues never get resolved, and we are stuck listening to the worst set of politicians ever to hold office in the history of our nation.

This is not the last installment for this month because you can never tell, by the hour, how much insanity will pop up from Washington. Also, the most recent insanity has had to do with the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care, insanity which we now have to cover every month in a separate set of posts. Today, we will focus on just the regular run-of-the-mill insanity.

1) Just since this past January, the Social Security Administration (SSA) has mailed out disability insurance (SSDI) checks worth $1.29 billion to an estimated 36,000 people who were still on the job and thus ineligible for benefits. This was the conclusion of a recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) investigation: “Some work activity indicates beneficiaries are not disabled and therefore not entitled to [SS]DI benefits,” the report stated.

A doctor, who had been earning $22,000 a month, was also collecting $2,500 in monthly SSDI benefits during a three-year period, for a total overpayment of about $90,000, the GAO reported. Another man with “personality disorders” began working just one day after his disability benefits were approved in 2006.

After reviewing this case in 2011, SSA suspended his monthly cash benefits “and subsequently assessed an overpayment of more than $57,000 due to his work activity” during the five years he was receiving disability checks. Five years he was cheating the American taxpayer before the government actually did their enforcement job. Disgraceful.

Rather than throw this guy into jail for fraud, he is now required to pay back the fraud amount in increments of $75 a month. At this rate, it will take him 63 years to pay off the fraud, at which point he will be way past 100 years old. In other words, Americans can kiss a lot of that $57,000 good bye because the government did not do its job again.

This is the just fraud that the GAO found, you can be pretty sure there is a lot more than $1.29 billion going out the door that should not. Like the lady the other day who got only three years in jail for defrauding the American taxpayer of over $6 million, this type of behavior will go on until the government does its job and some people start getting some longer, real jail sentences as disincentives to others.

2) We have always lamented that one of the biggest issues that has not been resolved by the Washington political class for the past 40 years is their inability or unwillingness to develop and implement a coherent and effective national energy strategy and policy. We proposed a process to do such a thing in “Love My Country, Loathe My Government” but that approach appears to be beyond the ability to execute such an approach in Washington.

This lack of success in the energy field was driven home by a recent report from AAA. Last week saw the 1000th consecutive day of average gas prices in the U.S. over $3 a gallon. The national average for regular gas is now $3.52 a gallon, up from about $1.89 when Obama took office. According to an analyst from Cameron Hanover, for every penny the price of gasoline increases, it costs American consumers an additional $4 million per day. That equals $1.4 billion over an entire year.

That is $1.4 billion that cannot be spent in restaurants, expanding businesses, taking vacations, etc., expenditures that would help expand the economy and create jobs, something this economy sorely needs. Even worse, a lot of that $1.4 billion heads overseas since the political class, after 40 years, has not been able to make us energy independent so that our energy costs stay domestic. Just another gross failure of the people in Washington that we end up paying for every day of our lives.

3) Two weeks ago the White House was supposed to have been the scene of a Hispanic movie concert event but it was postponed because of the shootings at the Navy Yard in D.C. This was not going to be a low key event since major music stars, Gloria Estefan, Ricky Martin, Raul Malo, Prince Royce, Natalie Cole, Lila Downs, Arturo Sandoval, Romeo Santos, Alejandro Sanz and Marco Antonio Solis, were scheduled to perform.

Which raises an interesting question: the budget sequester in March required that the White House be closed to tours for ordinary Americans. But the White House and Federal government somehow found enough taxpayer money to hold a private concert for the President and his friends, family and associates?

This was to have been the third concert in a series of high profile concerts, the first two having been a Memphis soul music concert in April and a tribute to Carole King in May.

But there is not enough money because of the sequester for White House tours by ordinary Americans.

Also, the White House is currently going through a whopping $376 million renovation but there is not enough money because of the sequester for White House tours by ordinary Americans.

A judge recently ruled that the Obama administration did not have to tell the American people what visitors, lobbyists, corporate executives, friends, etc. are visiting the White House but ordinary Americans are not allowed into the White House for a simple tour.

Somebody has very, very screwed up priorities since it is the ordinary Americans in this country that finance concerts, finance renovations, and get stuck with the bill from corporate cronyism and lobbyists, the likes of which we no longer get to know, thanks to this ill conceived ruling by a judge. Insanity.

4) The Heritage Foundation reported on September 8, 2013 that the Department of Energy had award $45 million in research grants and contracts to different companies, universities, and other entities to do research in advanced transportation fields. On the surface this sounds like a good thing, findings ways to use energy more efficiently.

However, there are two things wrong with this kind of thinking. Since the Department of Energy was created four decades ago, I assume that this type of dispersion of taxpayer money has been going on since its inception with no discernible, societal benefits in return. Try to name just one major innovation or breakthrough in energy that the Department of Energy is responsible for, I bet you can’t. So what makes anyone think that throwing another $45 million up in the wind will be any different?

Second, some of the major recipients of this free taxpayer money included $1.5 million to Caterpillar, $1.75 million to General Electric, $3 million to 3M Company, and $350,000 to Ford Motor Company. So almost 14% of the total went to just four huge companies, companies that make billions and billions of dollars every year in sales and profits.

If these companies saw a fruitful research project that involved advanced transportation opportunities, don’t you think they would spend some of their own wealth to explore and develop that opportunity? Why does the American taxpayer have to fund what the American shareholders in Ford, 3M, etc. should be funding? Makes no sense, especially given the Department of Energy’s nonexistent track record of success.

5) One last piece of insanity for today, we will need to continue with more insanity tomorrow, but this last piece of lunacy definitely comes form the “you cannot make this stuff up” category. According to the wonderful website Spendopia, in the summer 2009, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) granted over $60,000 of taxpayer wealth to the Virginia Commonwealth University's Department of Psychology to study the effects of hookah smoking in Jordanian university students.

The study was titled "Waterpipe Tobacco Smoking: Trends, Toxicants, and Capacity Building in Jordan." The study was conducted in order to see the effects smoking waterpipes (hookah or shisha) had on the body and to see how and if that was associated with the 4.9 million smoking related deaths that are recorded each year.

A few major problems and observations here:

Who Cares?
Why are we studying health issues in Jordan, wouldn’t this money be better spent studying health issues in this country, given our ever escalating health care costs?
You do not need a $60,000 study to figure out that smoking, in any form, causes death.
Who cares?

Ridiculous waste of money on a very, very small segment of people that are not even in this country. How insane is that.

More insanity tomorrow.

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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

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

Thursday, October 3, 2013

October, 2013 PoliticalClass Insanity, Part 4: Scamming Food Stamps, Scamming the Army, and Scamming The American Taxpayer

Although only 30 defense contractors were criminally convicted of fraud over a recent three-year period, 11 of those 30 contractors have been paid a total of $354 million FOLLOWING their convictions,
This conclusion comes from a 2011 report by the Pentagon's Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics.
The Department debarred, or banned, 164 companies but paid $15 million to a dozen of these same companies afterwards.
The Department also reached settlements with 120 other companies and THEN paid $46 million for additional work to nine.
Apparently, misbehavior settlements do not prohibit companies from receiving future Department of Defense work.

Nice work if you can get it. Get a lucrative Defense Department contract and if you screw up, either with illegal or unethical behavior, you can still come back to the taxpayer trough for more anyway.

Despite being in business for a few hundred years, the Defense Department has gotten so large that its different systems and coding and company identification processes do not make it possible for one part of the Department to learn from the mistakes of another part of the Department. As a result, billions and billions of taxpayer dollars have probably been wasted over the years by incompetent or unscrupulous contractors.

And even when they try to fix the situation, their incompetence rises to the surface again. In 2008, Congress approved the creation of a “Panel on Contracting Integrity,” led by the Pentagon's Inspector General and which focused on this type of contractor fraud. That effort came up lame and short, with only the following pathetic “accomplishments” to discuss five years later:

The panel created a Defense Acquisition University training module of Procurement Fraud Indicators.
It updated a handbook
It created a web site to "increase awareness of procurement fraud"
It hosted a conference
It created a podcast about fraud
It published an article.

Nowhere do they acknowledge that the panel actually identified the root causes of the problem, e.g. too many different systems with too many different codings, and how they remedied those root causes. Pathetic.

4) Let’s stay with the Department of Defense for a bit since they are so good at finding different ways to waste taxpayer wealth. According to an Associated Press article from September 28, 2013, a recent audit that was done on the Army revealed that the it had paid out $16 million over a two and one half year period to soldiers who were either AWOL or were actual deserters.

Good work if you can get it. Run away from the Army for no good reason but still get paid. And this audit apparently was only for the Army, it does not include any similar, additional payment errors in the Air Force, Navy, or Marines.

The really sad part of this incompetence, besides the fact that the Army wasted $16 million that could have funded public White House tours for over 16 years, is that the Army was told a similar accounting mistake was done back in a 2006 audit. That audit found at least 68 soldiers, who were officially considered deserters, were wrongly paid a total of $684,000 AFTER they were designated deserters. Apparently, the Army learned nothing from this earlier wasteful spending.

Pathetic, and Nancy Pelosi seems to think that not one dollar should be cut from Federal government spending. Here is almost $17 million that could have been cut from the budget if only Congress and government bureaucrats were doing their jobs.

5) A few pieces of lunacy from the failed war on drugs. According to a National Review article that was summarized in the September 13, 2013 issue of The Week magazine, U.S. prisons hold about 100,000 American citizens who were arrested and convicted for using marijuana on a small scale. Not dealing, not growing, small scale usage.

This costs the American taxpayer about $15 billion a year to lock up people for getting a little high in their life without doing anything to anyone else. $15 billion.

6) A similar article appeared in the Briefing section of The Week magazine on September 20, 2013. According to the article, since mandatory jail sentencing was introduced back in the 1970s, the U.S. jail population has quadrupled in size to 2.4 million citizens. We now hold the dubious honor of jailing a higher percentage of our citizens than every other country in the world including the dictatorships in China and Iran.

The cost of this prison population comes out to $80 billion a year of taxpayer wealth. I am not saying that evil and bad people should not be locked up forever. However, at a cost of $80 billion a year and having the highest incarceration rate in the world, maybe we should force the political class to reconsider some of the laws that it has put on the books at such a high cost, both financially and humanely.

7) Several months ago President Obama okayed the shipment of a about a billion dollars worth of taxpayer wealth in the form of F-16 jet fighters and many, many Abrams tanks to the government of Egypt. Many of us found this expense to be atrocious, why do we need to arm the Egyptian armed forces with a billion dollars worth of goods when there was such an economic mess in this country?

We were told at that time by the political class that we needed to send this billion dollars worth of arms to continue to have “leverage” over present and future Egyptian leaders. What makes that strategy so stupid is the news that appeared in the September 6, 2013 issue of The Week magazine. The current leader of Egypt had recently accepted a $12 billon aid package from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates.

Thus, who believes that we will have any leverage in Egypt in crunch time when others have given them twelve times as much in financial support? Another billion dollars wasted for no leverage, no benefit, and not loyalty in return. Are you listening, Nancy Pelosi, another billion dollars wasted.

The waste and ineptness rolls on. More tomorrow and probably another day or so afterwards is required to get it all in.

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

Wednesday, October 2, 2013

October, 2013 Political Class Insanity, Part 3: An Underpaid/Delusional Congressman, Banks Still Rule, and More

While trying to get its out-of-control budget tamed, between 2003 and 2012 the city of Chicago eliminated more than 8,000 city jobs, about 20% of its workforce.
However, according to a recent analysis from the Illinois Policy Institute, the cost of health care for the remaining employees’ jumped 29% in 2012.
Additionally, from 2003 to 2012 the annual cost of a city employee on the city payroll jumped from $58,299 per employee to $96,082.
Thus, with 20% fewer employees compared to 2003, the city is paying out $700 million more a year for 20% fewer employees vs. 2003.
Far fewer employees and far more costs, you cannot make this stuff up.
But it gets worse since on the current budget trend, the city must find a way to increase its annual contributions to the employee pensions fund by almost three fold, from $476 million a year to $1.2 billion a year by 2015.

Needless to say, unless some drastic cuts are taking soon, the city is going pull a “Detroit” in the next few years despite cutting a fifth of its workforce. This is the poster child for out-of-control government spending when you slash staff but increase your staffing budget.

5) I get a little sense of relief when I find out that at least our politicians are no different when it comes to politicians around the world in wasting taxpayer money. The latest issue of Business Week has some information on how the Chinese government has gone overboard building infrastructure in China and has allowed loose credit policies (are you listening, Federal Reserve board) to result in the building of new towns and special zones that have gone unused and unoccupied because while the government said to build and encouraged building. The immutable forces of the market said there was no need or demand for the build outs.

One of the most glaring examples of taxpayer wealth wasted is the building of a new airport in a far flung city in the western Chinese hinterlands in the Xinjiang province. The new airport has four check-in counters and handles a grand total of two flights a DAY. Thus, wasting taxpayer money does not appear to be a uniquely American political talent.

6) On January 21, 2010, President Obama stated: “I’m proposing a simple and common sense [financial] reform, which we’re calling the Volcker Rule, after this tall guy behind me.” The Volcker rule that he proposed was to ensure that banks could not make investment bets and investments that would stick American taxpayers with the bill if the banks ended up failing, much like what happened in the Great Recession.

Simple enough. When the Dodd-Frank financial industry reform legislation was passed, the Volcker rule encompassed 12 pages of the final bill. Three years later, the rule has still not been written into formal, enforceable regulations. The unfinal, unapproved regulations now run 530 pages long and we still do not have an answer of how to do this simple thing.

Deadlines for enforcement continue to be missed and you can be sure that many lawsuits will ensue since translating 12 pages of law into well over 500 pages of regulations is going to tick off some people regarding the intent of the original 12 pages and the effect of over 500 pages.

Whenever something can be done simply, you can be sure that our political class will make longer, more difficult and less effective.

7) Speaking of financial matters and the Great Recession, a graphic from a recent issue of Business Week showed how much taxpayer money that the Federal government gave to bail out the firm AIG actually passed through AIG and directly into the hands of foreign banks:

Canadian banks got $1.4 billion of American taxpayer wealth
French banks got $20.8 billion
British banks got $2.6 billion
German banks got $10.8 billion
Swiss banks got $3.8 billion
Netherlands banks got $.6 billion
Total = $40 billion of American taxpayer wealth ended in the vaults of foreign banks.

Which obviously raises the question of why were foreign banks relieved of the responsibility for their stupid decisions in the marketplace? And why were American taxpayers forced to pay for their stupid decisions?

That $40 billion could have been used to:

Give every American household a $350 tax rebate.
Could have kept the White House tours operating for 40,000 years.
Could have put a trained, armed police professional in every U.S. school for about five years to prevent future Newtown like shootings.

Never underestimate the ability of the American political class to take care of bankers and itself from a financial backer and donor perspective. And now they have expanded to take care of overseas bankers also.

Enough insanity for today but tomorrow brings another day and another batch of lunacy from our politicians.

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

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

October, 2013 Political Class Insanity, Part 2: Politicians Get Rich, Fraudsters Get Rich, Bridges Collapse, And More

While in office he has been paid over $1.3 million for giving speeches.
While being mayor AND giving speeches AND launching his drive for a Senate seat, he also found time to start up a new business for which he named a 15 year old son of a CNN executive to the board or directors while also granting the kid stock options.
But he still found time, according to his latest tax returns, to work over 500 hours last year for his former law firm which resulted in him getting paid $689,900 by that law firm.
Oh, by the way, that law firm was granted almost $2 million in business from city government agencies overseen by the mayor.

The sad part about this type of behavior, e.g. conflict of interest with a former employer, a potential quid pro quo of salary in exchange for city contracts, blatantly bribing a news industry executive by naming the executive’s kid to the board of directors, personal enrichment, is that he will probably win the Senate seat election. Tell me that the political class has not rigged our election rules and laws and processes to keep their type in power and riches with little regard for the people they are supposed to be serving.

2) As most informed people know, the number of Americans receiving food assistance, “food stamps,” has grown significantly since President Obama took office. And, like any other historical government program, mismanagement, outright criminal fraud, and the wasting of taxpayer wealth has followed on the heals of this increase in food assistance.

One aspect of this mismanagement comes from a recent government inspector general report. Apparently, retailers who have been banned by the Federal Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) for food stamp trafficking are still redeeming more than $65 million in benefits from the program. This finding is according to a new analysis and report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture inspector general (IG). In other words, even when the government does its job and identifies the fraud creators, they cannot get the fraud and criminals out of the system. Insane.

The report sheds light on fraud within the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), with the following scathing conclusion on government incompetence: “The Office of Inspector General (OIG) found that the Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) does not have clear procedures and guidance to carry out key oversight and enforcement activities to address SNAP retailer fraud, or adequate authority to prevent multiple instances of fraud—either by a particular owner or within a particular location.”

“As a result, the integrity of SNAP is at risk because FNS does not consistently provide deterrents for trafficking.” SNAP “trafficking” means exchanging food stamp benefits for cash.

With record numbers of Americans are on food stamps (47,635,297 as of May 2013), the number of authorized retailers has also increased dramatically. A total of 246,565 stores participated in 2012, a 40 percent increase since 2007. With more retailers comes a greater opportunity for fraud since, according to the government’s own inspector general for this area, those in charge of safeguarding taxpayer wealth in this area lack procedures and guidance to do the right thing, i.e. minimize fraud and waste.

3) A recent Associated Press analysis of 607,380 bridges in the most recent Federal National Bridge Inventory showed that 65,605 were classified as “structurally deficient” and 20,808 as “fracture critical.” Many of them, 7,795 were both. Thus, more than 14% of the bridges in this country are in serious danger of collapsing at any time.

But wait a moment, wasn’t this problem addressed by the economic stimulus program from the Obama administration? Didn’t we as a country spend over $800 billion to fix these kinds of problems, wasn’t that the promise? In addition, we have sent Washington trillions of dollars over the decades via taxes to do just such a thing, provide safe motoring for America. I am shocked to think that maybe that money was not spent efficiently. (sarcasm)

In fact, we already know the political class grossly mismanaged these types of programs. Another Associated Press report from several years ago showed that the economic stimulus bridge repair money was handled so poorly that about half of the bridges repaired under that program were not in need of repair, i.e. the Washington political class spent taxpayer wealth on bridges that were not broken, apparently at the expense of over 86,000 bridges that did need repair. Details of this scandal can be found at:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2010/01/2009-year-end-review-good-bad-and-ugly_02.html

But the bigger issue really is the decades worth of taxes that have been sent to D.C. for little in return except a crumbling infrastructure. While almost 50% of the economic stimulus bridge repair money was wasted, the repairs, both needed and unneeded, addressed less than 3,000 bridges. Imagine how much money is still needed to fix over 86,000 defective bridges, all because the political class did not address the problem until it has now become a crisis. My advice: drive fast going over any U.S. bridge.

4) We have always called for a thorough “Spring Cleaning” of all levels of government since over time, stupid laws, unnecessary programs, redundant departments, etc. accumulate in government attics that cost taxpayer slots of money for no reason. A perfect example of that was illustrated in a CBS Pittsburgh story about parking in one’s own driveway in that city.

CBS found that Pittsburgh residents have been receiving tickets and warning letters for parking… in their own driveways. Apparently a local law dictates vehicles must be parked at least 30 away feet from the street, even if your driveway is not 30 feet long.

This inane law originated in the mid-20th Century and is little known among locals. However, residents on two streets in different sections of the city have been recently targeted for violating it. Apparently, you need an “occupancy permit” to legally park in their own driveways now in Pittsburgh. One unlucky family, who did not go to the trouble of getting a permit to park in their own driveway, reportedly paid $2,400 for their parking violations

However, it is still legal to park on city streets. According to the CBS report, at least one resident has decided to park on the streets of a local business district which does not violate any Pittsburgh parking laws. However, while legal, these types of behavior probably restrict the business and economic activity of local businesses since there are now fewer parking spaces for shopper to use. Insanity.

Spring cleaning, good for your home and also good for all levels of government.

4) In a bit of good news from the Federal government, the Washington Examiner reported on August 9, 2013 that Linda Smoot Radeker, 72, of Shelby, N.C., a mental health counselor, oversaw a scheme that defrauded Medicaid of about $6.1 million. But unlike the vast majority of people that rip off the Federal government, she was caught and recently sentenced to three years in prison and required to pay back the money she extorted via her Medicaid scam.

Now the bad news from this story. First, the American taxpayer is unlikely to ever recover anywhere near $6.1 million since according to the article, she admitted she had no particular need for the money, all of which she spent. Second, she knowingly embezzled over $6 million, she operated a network of other thieves who helped her out, she was running a criminal enterprise and she got ONLY three years in jail? Maybe if people like her were getting ten-twenty years in jail for this type of fraud we might see the fraud levels go down at least a bit.

And finally, her fraud was committed over a four year period, averaging about $1.5 million a year. According to government estimates that we have reviewed many times, the estimated annual fraud within Medicaid is about $30-49 billion a year. Even if we use the lower estimate, this fraud was about .01% of the total fraud during an average four year period.

Thus, I am glad she got caught, I am glad she and her accomplices are going to jail, but we need thousands and thousands of more busts and convictions like this to prevent the ongoing waste of taxpayer wealth in this program. As a callout to Nancy Pelosi, this is the kind of waste that needs to be removed despite your outrageous conclusion that nothing can be cut from the Federal budget.

That’s enough insanity for today. Politicians get rich, Medicaid fraudsters get rich, and our bridges are ready to collapse around the country. More insanity tomorrow…if you are up for it.

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