September, 2015, Political Class Insanity, Part 5: Food Assistance and Housing Fraud and a Vice Presidential Gaffe Parade

It is the start of another month which means it is time for our monthly review of the latest political class insanity that continually spews forth from America’s politicians. Their actions, words, quotes, incompetency, and general ineptness continue to reinforce our theory that we are currently being served by the worst set of politicians in the history of the nation.

As you read about the latest shenanigans and ineptness of the political class, keep in mind what should be their priorities in these difficult times and compare this list to what they are actually working on:

• NBC recently reported that ISIS forces are getting larger and stronger despite the Obama administration spending billions of dollars on a failed air campaign and military strategy.
• The stock market is in free fall.
• Job creation is barely keeping up with population growth.
• Wage growth is anemic, growing just .2% in the second quarter, the lowest quarterly growth since 1982.
• The labor participation rate is at the lowest level in decades because the Obama economy cannot generate enough jobs.
• Thousands of veterans are still not getting the medical care they were promised by the Federal government.
• 46 million Americans are still receiving monthly Federal food assistance.
• Our borders still leak and thousands of illegal immigrant criminals continue to walk our streets.
• A record number of police officers have been assassinated in the past week.
• Major programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security are hurtling towards insolvency and lose hundreds of billions of dollars every year to fraud and mismanagement.
• Our kids are still getting lousy public educations at most public schools.
• The IRS and other government functions seem to be getting their computer systems hacked on a regular basis, exposing tens of millions of Americans to identity theft potential.
• Obama Care is a failure along so many dimensions as health care costs continue to soar despite the Obama promise that they would decrease.
• Annual Federal deficits, while down, are still about half a TRILLION a year meaning that even though the Federal government is collecting more in taxes than ever before, it still cannot run a balanced budget.

Again, keep these real crises in mind as you read what our politicians are actually doing.

1) Dozens of times we have pointed out that one of the reasons why the Federal government runs massive budget deficits every year is that the programs it operates such as welfare, food stamps, Medicare, etc., are subject to massive criminal fraud every day. Estimates put the annual loss of taxpayer wealth just to fraud in Federal government programs at well over $200 billion a year.

A recent example of such fraud was uncovered in the state of Michigan:

• Three Muslim brothers who operated the Middle Eastern Market in Grand Rapids, Michigan have pled guilty to a food stamp scam.
• They pled out in order to have two other brothers not being prosecuted.
• Their scam ripped off taxpayers to the tune of almost $1.3 million in food assistance dollars.
• The scam had been going on for nine years, indicating what a lousy job that the Washington political class and government bureaucrats do in protecting American taxpayer wealth.

Given that the number of people receiving food stamps has ballooned to over 46 million under the Obama regime, you can be sure that this Grand Rapids criminal operation is not the only food assistance scam going on today.

2) If you thought the previous insanity was bad, consider the housing subsidy insanity that came to light in a recent Housing and Urban Development (HUD) report. Theoretically, HUD provides taxpayer funded subsidies and housing welfare to low income families to help them keep a roof over their families’ heads. But as always with the Federal government, theoretical usually gets massively screwed up in reality:

• The HUD report found that a family of four in New York City with an annual income of $497,911 a year pays $1,574 a month to live in public housing in a three-bedroom apartment that is subsidized by taxpayers.
• In Los Angeles, a family of five that’s lived in public housing since 1974 made $204,784 last year but paid only $1,091 for a four-bedroom apartment, with the remaining costs picked up by taxpayer money via HUD.
• And a renter with personal assets worth $1.6 million, which include stocks, real estate and retirement accounts, in 2014 paid only $300 out of their pocket for a one-bedroom apartment in public housing in Oxford, Nebraska.
• The report tabulated over 25,000 families that earned more income than allowed under HUD’s low income levels for being subsidized. 
• The HUD auditors found that while that New York City family who earned almost $500,000 a year were getting Federal housing subsidies and an apartment to live in, there more than 300,000 NYC families that were truly low income who could not find subsidized housing in the city.
• Given this atrocious abuse of government income level requirements, HUD has no intention of booting them out of their current subsidized housing or terminating their Federal subsidies, according to a HUD inspector general finding: “Since regulations and policies did not require housing authorities to evict over income families or require them to find housing in the unassisted market, [they] continued to reside in public housing units,” investigators for Inspector General David Montoya wrote.
• Of the 25,000 or so families that exceeding HUD’s low income thresholds, 45% of them earned $10,000 to $70,000 above the thresholds. 
• Over a thousand of these over income families unfairly getting Federal housing subsidies have been doing so for over nine years and 18,000 of these over income families have been getting subsidies for over a year.
• Similar to New York City, there are 1184 over income families in Boston who are getting subsidized housing from HUD but there are almost 118,000 families on the Boston HUD waiting list.
• The HUD inspector general did not hold out much hope that HUD executives would right this egregious wrong: “Although 25,226 over income families is a small percentage of the approximate 1.1 million families receiving public housing assistance, we did not find that HUD and public housing authorities had taken or planned to take sufficient steps to reduce at least the egregious examples of over income families in public housing. Therefore, it is reasonable to expect the number of over income families participating in the program to increase over time.”
• The inspector general expects over $100 million to be paid via housing subsidies to high income families.

Just another busted Federal government program where the intentions are never consistent with the real results. How can anyone justify, as HUD does, allowing that NYC HUD subsidy recipient get Federal taxpayer support when that family is earning almost three times what a member of Congress earns and almost ten times what the average American household earns each year? Insanity.

And even worse than giving high income Americans Federal subsidies is the reality that these high earners are blocking low income Americans from taking part in the program. Not only insane but also sad.

3) If you think that the current set of Washington politicians can fix this severely broken Federal government, consider the following quotes and gaffes by Vice President Joe Biden. Biden has been in elected Federal office for 42 years so he is an old time Federal politician that is responsible for a dysfunctional Federal bureaucracy that pays rich people housing subsidies and allows two bit criminals to rip off the American taxpayer of hundreds of billions of dollars every year.

Mr. Biden is seriously considering running for President. After reading the following quotes and screw ups from a recent Washington Examiner article, ask yourself: do I really think that this buffoon can fix what he helped break, along with other long time Washington politicians?

On September. 9, 2008: During a campaign stop in Missouri, Biden once told a handicapped, wheel chair bound state senator to stand up. "I'm told Chuck Graham, state senator, is here. Stand up Chuck, let 'em see you. Oh, God love you. What am I talking about. I'll tell you what, you're making everybody else stand up, though, pal.”

On March 23, 2010: During the signing ceremony for Obama Care, Biden followed his introduction of President Obama by embracing him and telling him "This is a big f------- deal." Then White House press secretary Robert Gibbs quickly affirmed the vice president's barely off-mic comments via Twitter saying, "And yes, Mr. Vice President, you're right…”

On March 17, 2010: Just days before the Biden had his BFD moment, he asked God to bless the late mother of Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen. The only problem: Cowen's mother was very much alive and it was his father that had passed. "His mom lived in Long Island for 10 years or so. God rest her soul. And, although, she's, wait, your mom's still, your mom's still alive. Your dad passed. God bless her soul."

On April 26, 2012: During a campaign event at New York University Biden channeled Teddy Roosevelt, promising "the President has a big stick."

On June 17, 2006: Biden uttered a statement that liberals would have called racist if a republican had stated them: "In Delaware, the largest growth of population is Indian-Americans, moving from India. You cannot go to a 7-11 or a Dunkin' Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent. I'm not joking.”

On Aug. 23, 1987: Allegations that Biden lifted passages and even gestures from a speech by Neil Kinnock without giving credit to the leader of the British Labour Party helped ruin his presidential bid. Two weeks later, C-SPAN footage surfaced revealing Biden inflating his law school academic record. Biden claimed he had finished in the top half of his class at Syracuse Law School, but he graduated 76th of 85. He later called the plagiarism allegations "much ado about nothing," but eventually dropped out of the race on Sept. 23: "I started thinking as I was coming over here, Why is it that Joe Biden is the first in his family ever to go to a university?

On September 10, 2008: After being named as President Obama's VP, Biden suggested he may not have been the best pick during a campaign stop in Nashua, N.H.: "Hillary Clinton is as qualified or more qualified than I am to be Vice President of the United States of America. Let's get that straight. She's a truly close personal friend. She is qualified to be President of the United States of America. She's easily qualified to be Vice President of the United States of America. Quite frankly, it might have been a better pick than me. But she's first rate."

On August 14, 2012: While addressing a predominately black audience in Danville, Va., Biden criticized Republicans for wanting to deregulate big banks using an unfortunate racial reference: "Romney wants to, he said in the first 100 days, he's going to let the big banks again write their own rules, unchain Wall Street. They're going to put y'all back in chains."

Not included in the Examiner article was the biggest historical idiocy he stated in the run up to the 2008 Presidential election in an interview with Katie Couric. He stated that that when the Great Depression hit, President FDR went on TV on to calm and reassure the country that all would be okay. Two problems here: the Depression hit three full years before FDR became President and there was no such thing as TV when FDR came into office, all mass communications were done via radio and newsreels in movie houses. How can such an educated person, and American politician, be so ignorant of basic American history?

Seriously, Joe Biden for President? Do you really think that this guy has any chance of fixing what is so broken within the Federal government bureaucracy? 

The original video quotes of Biden’s screw ups can be accessed at:

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/vote-now-bidens-best-hits/article/2571543

That will do it for today's political class insanity. Two examples of a government bureaucracy that literally gives away taxpayer wealth with no controls in place and no ramifications for doing so and a politician who after 42 years of not fixing Washington thinks he should be President. Insane. 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.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

September, 2015, Political Class Insanity, Part 4: VA Gutting Whistleblowers, Cartels Taking Over Phoenix Area, and Americans Fed Up With the Status Qupo

It is the start of another month which means it is time for our monthly review of the latest political class insanity that continually spews forth from America’s politicians. Their actions, words, quotes, incompetency, and general ineptness continue to reinforce our theory that we are currently being served by the worst set of politicians in the history of the nation.

As you read about the latest shenanigans and ineptness of the political class, keep in mind what should be their priorities in these difficult times and compare this list to what they are actually working on:

• NBC recently reported that ISIS forces are getting larger and stronger despite the Obama administration spending billions of dollars on a failed air campaign and military strategy.
• The stock market is in free fall.
• Job creation is barely keeping up with population growth.
• Wage growth is anemic, growing just .2% in the second quarter, the lowest quarterly growth since 1982.
• The labor participation rate is at the lowest level in decades because the Obama economy cannot generate enough jobs.
• Thousands of veterans are still not getting the medical care they were promised by the Federal government.
• 45 million Americans are still receiving monthly Federal food assistance.
• Our borders still leak and thousands of illegal immigrant criminals continue to walk our streets
• A record number of police officers have been assassinated in the past week.
• Major programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security are hurtling towards insolvency and lose hundreds of billions of dollars every year to fraud and mismanagement.
• Our kids are still getting lousy public educations at most public schools.
• The IRS and other government functions seem to be getting their computer systems hacked on a regular basis, exposing tens of millions of Americans to identity theft potential.
• Obama Care is a failure along so many dimensions as health care costs continue to soar despite the Obama promise that they would decrease.
• Annual Federal deficits, while down, are still about half a TRILLION a year meaning that even though the Federal government is collecting more in taxes than ever before, it still cannot run a balanced budget.

Again, keep these real crises in mind as you read what our politicians are actually doing.

1) Apparently all of the crises and problems we listed above are not figments of our imagination. According to a recent opinion poll by Quinnipiac University, that was reviewed in the September 11, 2015 issue of The Week magazine, 71% of American voters are dissatisfied with the ways things are going in the country today. Even worse, 41% are “very dissatisfied” with the way things are going in the country.

Thus, we should not be surprised that people like Donald Trump, Ben Carson, Carly Fiorini, and other non-politicians are doing well in the early Presidential running. People are tired with the current members of the American political class who have done nothing as far as making live better and more secure for most Americans.

Which makes visiting the term limits website, 

www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com

all the more important since really, how much worse could it get if we replaced every Washington politician with a new person today? At least 71% of Americans would probably support such a move.

2) We have previously reported on how inept the Veterans Administration (VA) is. A recent study showed that almost 300,000 military veterans died while waiting for treatment. At the same time, high ranking VA executives were getting large bonuses for being such screw-ups.

Turns out these these executives are also pretty vindictive. According to an article that was in the August, 2015 issue of Reason magazine:

• VA employees that complained and blew the whistle on VA incompetence have been the target of retaliation by VA executives.
• In some cases, the medical records of alleged whistleblowers were accessed and information on those records were used to try to discredit the whistleblowers.
• One of those whistleblowers, Brandon Coleman, was placed on administrative leave after he publicly complained that veterans were receiving dangerously poor medical treatment.
• He presented evidence to both Senator John McCain and the head of the VA that his medical records had been accessed illegally prior to being forced onto leave.

So much for a transparent Presidential administration, as promised by Obama. Do the right thing and point out government incompetence and then get your private medical records thrown in your face in retaliation and to protect those that are not doing their jobs.

3) Brandon Coleman was only placed on leave for doing the right thing in his VA job. VA whistleblower and Army veteran Vanessa Lech claims she lost her job when her superior retaliated against her when she called attention to safety issues and sexual harassment at a New Mexico VA facility.

Within a month of being hired in October, 2014 she filed a grievance through her union for being retaliated against by her harassing supervisor. She also publicly pointed out the many safety issues at the facility where she worked including lack of security and VA autos that were dangerously maintained. While an investigation of her complaints substantiated many of her allegations, she still lost her job as a result of speaking up.
According to Ms. Lech: “A culture of fear, retaliation and toxic leadership plagues Veterans Affairs, an organization, which is supposed to consistently provide high quality services for our military Veterans. VA management is more focused on bonus money, bad press and doubling down on the status quo instead of being concerned about the well being of Veterans and VA employees.”

Besides the sad stories of brave people like Mr. Coleman and Ms. Lech is that the Obama administration has been aware of the incompetence and scandal of the VA over the years. But it has still been unsuccessful in providing the promised medical care to veterans and protecting those whistleblowers that would actually help Obama clean up the mess and disgrace that is the VA. Pathetic.

4) Let’s stay in the southwest U.S. for the next piece of insanity but move over to the state of Arizona. According to Pinal County, Arizona Sheriff Paul Babeu, Mexican drug cartels who are armed with AK-47 automatic weapons “control many areas on American soil” in areas that are only 30 miles from the Phoenix metro area.

The Sheriff stated on TV: “This is literally an unsecured border. We have cartels that think they own the place. They control many areas on American soil and this how they freely move billions of dollars of drugs and hundreds of thousands of illegals into our country.” 

“They control many areas on American soil.” This is scary stuff if true. This is just one other reason why the Obama administration has been just a total failure relative to immigration policy and reality, we have an unsecured border that is now controlled by foreign interests. And these foreign interests are violent, organized crime types that apparently are operating without danger of being arrested or stopped.

That will do it for today’s insanity, all very depressing. We have drug cartels taking over U.S. territory, we have a VA that has not changed its ways of ineptness despite being aware of the problems for years, we have an Obama administration that is not protecting whistleblowers despite its vow to have all time high transparency, and we have proof that American citizens are fed up with those that are in political office today. Insanity across the board.

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

September, 2015, Political Class Insanity, Part 3: Presidential Failures and Live Anthrax For Sale

It is the start of another month which means it is time for our monthly review of the latest political class insanity that continually spews forth from America’s politicians. Their actions, words, quotes, incompetency, and general ineptness continue to reinforce our theory that we are currently being served by the worst set of politicians in the history of the nation.

As you read about the latest shenanigans and ineptness of the political class, keep in mind what should be their priorities in these difficult times and compare this list to what they are actually working on:

• NBC recently reported that ISIS forces are getting larger and stronger despite the Obama administration spending billions of dollars on a failed air campaign and military strategy.
• The stock market is in free fall.
• Job creation is barely keeping up with population growth.
• Wage growth is anemic, growing just .2% in the second quarter, the lowest quarterly growth since 1982.
• The labor participation rate is at the lowest level in decades because the Obama economy cannot generate enough jobs.
• Thousands of veterans are still not getting the medical care they were promised by the Federal government.
• 45 million Americans are still receiving monthly Federal food assistance.
• Our borders still leak and thousands of illegal immigrant criminals continue to walk our streets.
• A record number of police officers have been assassinated in the past week.
• Major programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security are hurtling towards insolvency and lose hundreds of billions of dollars every year to fraud and mismanagement.
• Our kids are still getting lousy public educations at most public schools.
• The IRS and other government functions seem to be getting their computer systems hacked on a regular basis, exposing tens of millions of Americans to identity theft potential.
• Obama Care is a failure along so many dimensions as health care costs continue to soar despite the Obama promise that they would decrease.
• Annual Federal deficits, while down, are still about half a TRILLION a year meaning that even though the Federal government is collecting more in taxes than ever before, it still cannot run a balanced budget.

Again, keep these real crises in mind as you read what our politicians are actually doing.

1) A September 3, 2015 article in the Washington Examiner by Jacqueline Klimas reported that an investigation at an Army laboratory found that live anthrax was found outside of the proper containment area. This finding comes on the heels of another revelation that Defense Department personnel have accidentally shipped live anthrax specimens around the world after safety procedures at the Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah failed to neutralize and kill the anthrax spores, resulting in live anthrax being shipped.

And we are not talking a few shipments. Live anthrax shipments were sent to almost 200 locations and labs in all 59 states, the District of Coliumbia, Guam, Puerto Rico, the U.S.Virgin Islands, Japan, Britain, South Korea, Australia, Canada, Italy, and Germany. Defense Undersecretary Bob Work said that the accidental shipment of live spores was due to "institutional and procedural failures." Ya think?

Besides the incompetence of the Army personnel and procedures involved in this potentially deadly mishap, I think the question needs to be asked is why are we shipping anthrax all over the world to begin with? This stuff is easily transformable into a terrorist weapon, especially when we have incompetent handling procedures that result in live anthrax being shipped everywhere. Again, you cannot make this stuff up, it is that unbelievable.

2) Yesterday, we discussed the reality that the air attack component of Obama’s war on ISIS has been a failure since although billions and billions of dollars have been spent on bombing ISIS positions, ISIS is stronger, bigger, and covers more geography than prior to the air campaign. And it now appears that another component of Obama’s anti-ISIS strategy is also an abject failure.

That component was supposed to take and train Syrian citizens to fight ISIS forces inside Syria. However, according to an article in the August 14, 2015 issue of The Week magazine, the Obama administration has already spent $36 million to train its recruits, which total a grand total of …. 54 people. Yes, for $36 million we have trained 54 individuals to fight the 30,000 person strong ISIS force. 

This comes out to about $670,000 to train one Syrian recruit. Pathetic waste and abuse of taxpayer wealth. Why bother if your results are so pathetic? How many needy veterans could have had their medical needs addressed for $36 million instead of flushing it away on futile training effort half a world away?

Another failed Obama foreign policy and strategy effort.

3) Sometimes you see a politician do something and you just wonder why someone on their staff did not speak up and stop them from embarrassing themselves. Such was the case when President Obama gave a speech in Kotzebue, Alaska. Which is certainly not a problem except that he was north of the Arctic Circle and hyping how those Americans living there should make better use of wind and solar energy options. 

Which is certainly a safe topic and noble goal if you are talking about solar energy in New Mexico or wind energy on a Colorado mountain top. But you are north of the Arctic Circle where:

• Kotzebue gets less than six hours of sunlight for 34 days from early December through early January, assuming that clouds do not block out the sun during that time. For other months prior to and after that time period there are limited hours of sun, making solar energy not an optimal energy source for many months in Kotzebue.
• It gets very, very cold north of the Arctic Circle, so cold that petroleum products can start turning into solids which makes oil in cars and lubricants used in wind turbines useless.

Right message, certainly far from the right location.

4) In the same inane speech the President gave in Alaska, he also made the following statement: “One of the reasons I came up here is to really focus on what is probably the biggest challenge our planet faces. If there’s one thing that threatens opportunity and prosperity for everybody, wherever we live, it’s the threat of a changing climate.” 

Thus, in his view, changing climate, something that has been occurring since the beginning of the planet is the “biggest challenge our planet faces.” This makes the following crises secondary in his mind:

• His potential nuclear arms deal with Iran is likely to result in a nuclear arms race in the Middle East,
• That same deal is going to give the world’s leading terrorist nation over $100 billion to greatly expand their current terror activities.
• China and Russia just finished joint naval exercises off the Alaskan coast.
• A Russian navy ship was recently spotted off the coast of Georgia.
• Much of the North Korean submarine fleet recently left their home ports and are nowhere to be found.
• Russia likely has territorial objectives that extend well beyond parts of the Ukraine.
• ISIS is expanding its terrorism beyond Syria and Iraq, resulting in the persecution of homosexuals, the enslaving of women and its terrorism far beyond its original geography.
• Governments around the world are drowning in debt which is likely to crash the world’s economies and financial systems in the future.

All for a theory, man made activities are ruining the climate, that may or may not be true. (enter the phrase “global warming doubter” in the search box above for dozens of examples that indicate that man made activities are NOT affecting the climate.)

Another day of political class insanity: A President that thinks a shaky scientific theory (climate change) is more important than nuclear arms races, aggressive foreign powers, and the collapse of the world economy, a President who makes the right speech in the wrong location, a President who spends $36 million to train a paltry 54 military recruits, and an Army that sends live anthrax around the world without checking its status beforehand. 

Worst yet, we are still not done with the latest political class insanity for this month.

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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

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

September, 2015, Political Class Insanity, Part 2: The Failing Grades Of Pell Grants, Lying About The Failing ISIS Strategy, and Oreos Go To Mexico

It is the start of another month which means it is time for our monthly review of the latest political class insanity that continually spews forth from America’s politicians. Their actions, words, quotes, incompetency, and general ineptness continue to reinforce our theory that we are currently being served by the worst set of politicians in the history of the nation.

As you read about the latest shenanigans and ineptness of the political class, keep in mind what should be their priorities in these difficult times and compare this list to what they are actually working on:

• NBC recently reported that ISIS forces are getting larger and stronger despite the Obama administration spending billions of dollars on a failed air campaign and military strategy.
• The stock market is in free fall.
• Job creation is barely keeping up with population growth.
• Wage growth is anemic, growing just .2% in the second quarter, the lowest quarterly growth since 1982.
• The labor participation rate is at the lowest level in decades because the Obama economy cannot generate enough jobs.
• Thousands of veterans are still not getting the medical care they were promised by the Federal government.
• 45 million Americans are still receiving monthly Federal food assistance.
• Our borders still leak and thousands of illegal immigrant criminals continue to walk our streets
• A record number of police officers have been assassinated in the past week.
• Major programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security are hurtling towards insolvency and lose hundreds of billions of dollars every year to fraud and mismanagement.
• Our kids are still getting lousy public educations at most public schools.
• The IRS and other government functions seem to be getting their computer systems hacked on a regular basis, exposing tens of millions of Americans to identity theft potential.
• Obama Care is a failure along so many dimensions as health care costs continue to soar despite the Obama promise that they would decrease.
• Annual Federal deficits, while down, are still about half a TRILLION a year, meaning that even though the Federal government is collecting more in taxes than ever before, it still cannot run a balanced budget.

Again, keep these real crises in mind as you read what our politicians are actually doing.

1) The Federal government has run a college student aid program for a long time called Pell grants. These grants, not loans, are aimed at students who theoretically cannot afford to attend college on their own. In theory, a decent idea. In practice, not so much. 

Apparently, the Feds do not keep track of the graduation rates of those students who receive free Pell grants. Thus, the government has no way of determining if the program is actually effective in helping students become college graduates. You would think that any entity, public or private, which dispenses over $31 BILLION a year in a single effort would like to you what it is getting for the billions of dollars spent.

Well, the results of Pell grants are not good, according to a recent analysis by the Hechinger Report:

• The research polled 50 of the country’s largest public and 50 of its largest private universities to provide Pell grant recipients’ six year graduation rates.
• Of the 82 schools that responded to the survey, “more than a third of Pell recipients at those schools hadn’t earned degrees even after six years. Of those schools that did respond, the average six-year graduation rate for all students was 70 percent, higher than the national average of 59 percent. For Pell grant recipients, the graduation rate was 66 percent. The more Pell students an institution enrolls, these statistics show, the lower their likelihood of graduating,” Sarah Butrymowicz, the author of the study, noted.
• Thus, a rough estimate would say that over $10 billion of the annual Pell grant budget is a failure relative fulfilling its objective to get students to graduate college.
• Richard Vedder, the director of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity stated: “There's two scandals here. We have spent over the last decade one quarter of a trillion dollars on Pell grants, and if you ask the federal government what percentage of those kids graduate from college, they can't tell you. The second scandal is as far as we can estimate, that graduation rate is embarrassingly low.”

Embarassingly, well said, but not surprising when discussing today’s politicians and the dysfunctional government agencies it operates.

2) Although this President promised to operate the most transparent administration ever, it has turned out that it is one of the most secretive, opaque one of all time. It has stonewalled Freedom Of Information Act requests, it has spied on journalists, and it has lied and deceived America on a whole slate of issues and problems

And now we can add another scandal to the whole transparency charade. According to the New York Times, the Defense Department’s inspector general is investigating whether or not intelligence reports concerning our airstrike campaign against ISIS in the Middle East have been changed to make it seem like the Obama administration’s strategy is working better than the reality of the war effort.

The investigation centers around reports from a civilian working at the Defense Intelligence agency which accuses Defense Department personnel of rewriting progress assessment reports before they are forwarded to Congressional members. If true, this is a blatant violation of government rules which state that assessments like these “must not be distorted” by a political agendas of any type. The inspector general is looking into what changes were made to the reports and why.

Given that ISIS continues to grow in strength, numbers, and geographic impacts despite the Obama strategy of spending billions of dollars to bomb their positions, many defense and strategy experts both inside and outside of the government doubted that the strategy is working. This conclusion was strengthened when government intelligence sources released their report last month which also concluded that ISIS is no weaker than they were at the beginning of the air campaign.

And now we are seeing this administration possibly stonewalling another assessment of failure. No transparency, no truth, no integrity.

3) A big problem with letting politicians and government bureaucrats do anything is that they usually have no clue of what unintended consequences will occur as a result of their actions. The latest example of their ineptness involves the favorite cookie of all time, Oreos. 

The Federal government has long given favorable treatment to the sugar industry in this country, resulting in Americans paying about twice the amount for sugar than the rest of the world because of Federal sugar tariffs placed on sugar. Obviously, this results in outsized and undeserved profits for the sugar industry players.

Since the largest component of ingredients in Oreos is sugar, this results in a higher than necessary costs for the makers of Oreos cookies. In order to stay competitive and profitable, the makers of Oreos are required by their shareholders to reduce costs as much as possible. 

In this case, they found that they could pay for and build a new factory in Mexico to make Oreos, pay the additional transportation costs to ship Mexican produced Oreos into this country, and be much more profitable. All because the Federal government and the politicians that operate it raised the cost of sugar so much that 600 good paying American manufacturing jobs have now been shipped to Mexico.

But 600 jobs is not the only damage from the government making sugar so expensive for Americans to the benefit of their financial backers and donors. According to a 2006 analysis from the Federal government’s International Trade Administration: “Chicago, one of the largest U.S. cities for confectionery manufacturing, has lost nearly one-third of its SCP manufacturing jobs over the last 13 years. These losses are attributed, in part, to high U.S. sugar prices.”

Unintended consequences from people that have no clue about simple business concepts and economic principles, all for their own selfish political objectives. 

Enough insanity for today. Politicians shipping jobs out of the country, lying about a failed Obama military strategy, and an expensive government program with a one third failure rate. Different areas, different failures and all insanity from today’s politicians. More insanity tomorrow and beyond.

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