Tuesday, February 3, 2026

Never Ending Government Corruption, Part Three - USAID, PPP, Obama Care, and Medicaid

 Sadly, the wasting of taxpayer wealth and tax dollars seems to be a never ending  saga, as the following instances of waste reinforce the reality that Washington politicians either do not care that you hard earned tax dollars are wasted or they are not smart enough to stop it:

1)We have done a number of posts on how the USAID Federal government organization has wasted billions of taxpayer dollars on absolutely stupid, unneeded, wasteful and money laundering projects over the past few years. I came across another list of wasted dollars on stupidity that are listed below along with  some favorites we have previously discussed:

  • $7.9 million to teach Sri Lankan journalists how to avoid using “binary gendered language.”

  • $20 million for a Sesame Street play in  Iraq.

  • Over $4.5 million to “combat misinformation" in Kazakhstan.

  • $2 million for sex change operations  and “LGBT” activism in  Guatemala.

  • $2.1 million to help the BBC  "value the diversity of Libyan  society.”

  • $10 million worth of USAID funded meals went to the al Qaeda terror group.

  • $25 million for Deloitte to  promote "green transportation" in the country of Georgia.

  • $2.5 million to  promote “inclusion” in  Vietnam.

  • $5 million to the EcoHealth Alliance, one of the NGOs that funded the Chinese lab where the Covid virus research was developed.

  • $1.1 million  to  an Armenian “LGBT group.”

  • $1.2 million to the African Methodist Episcopal Church Service and Development Agency to build a “state of the art 440 seat auditorium" in DC.

  • $1.5 million  to promote “LGBT advocacy”  in Jamaica.

  • $500k to solve sectarian  violence in Israel

  • $2 million  to promote “LGBT  equality through entrepreneurship”  in  Latin America.

  • $2.3  million for “artisanal and small scale gold  mining” in the Amazon.

  • $3.9 million for “LGBT causes” in the western  Balkans.

  • $5.5 million of LGBT activism in Uganda.

  • $6 million for advancing LGBT  issues in “priority countries around the world.”

  • $8.3 million of “USAID Education: Equity and  Inclusion.”

Keep in  mind that while  the Federal government and  the Biden  administration were spending these  millions of dollars around the world:

  • 770,000 Americans were homeless.

  • Millions of Americans were  having trouble feeding their families.

  • Over 20 million  Americans still do not have  health  insurance.

  • Thousands of Americans die every month  from drug overdoses  because they do not get the addiction help they need.


Thus, if you think that spending $20 million in Iraq for a Sesame Street play is  more important than sheltering homeless Americans, then you and I have a radically different set of human priorities. If you think that spending millions of dollars around the world on  LGBT mythical issues is more important than helping to feed America’s  hungry, then you and  I have a radically different set of human  priorities.  If you think that spending $25 million on green  transportation halfway around the world in Georgia is more important than helping Americans get addiction help before they die, then you and I have a radically different  set of human priorities.


Also, ask yourself, how much of  this funding do you think  actually gets to where it is supposed to be going and being used for the stated purpose?  Government  NGOs have to first skim off their expenses, costs, and profits. Then once in the country, crooked native politicians and others have to get their cut/kickback in order to cooperate with the NGOs. And finally the NGOs probably have to have a slush fund to kick back to the politicians that made the expenditure happen in the first place, a process called money laundering. 


Do you really think it takes $20 million to put on a Sesame Street play in Iraq? The cost to produce a Broadway play costs about a fourth of $20 million. The difference goes for kickbacks  and  other corruption.


2)We have often discussed the reality that the programs that the Federal government  put in place during Covid to help out struggling Americans and businesses was one of the most corrupt and  criminally infested government programs ever produced. The fraud and stealing of taxpayer wealth allocated to the Covid programs was  monumental. And recently another criminal fraud operation that stole millions of dollars was uncovered:


  • One of the most criminally infested Covid programs was the Paycheck  Protection Program (PPP).

  • As a result, the Department  of Justice recently reached a settlement with three Chinese owned real estate companies that will  require them to return $7.3 million from the PPP that they stole.

  • In exchange for the repayment, criminal charges will  not be pressed.

  • This fraud is part of the estimated overall $1.4 billion that was stolen from the PPP.

  • There have been over 100 other settlements regarding their fraud infested program.


Another example where a Federal  government program has been implemented with barely any audit or crime prevention processes in place. As a result, criminals around the world feasted on American taxpayer wealth.


3)But it is not only criminals that waste and  steal  taxpayer dollars, the Federal  government itself is  often the source of taxpayer dollar waste  as we see now relative to Obama Care processes and failures:


  • Audits have found  that at least 160,000 Obama Care  applications were altered without government authorization by health insurance brokers and agents, allowing  eligible people  to get Obama Care subsidies.

  • Over 1.5 million households earning  over the 400% of the Federal Poverty Level, making them not qualified for the Obama Care policies, received taxpayer subsidies.

  • The audit checks in the Obama Care world were so bad that people earning  over $600,000 a year were somehow able to get taxpayer subsidies for their health insurance coverage.


What a mess and what a failure. Remember ,Obama claimed that 1) if you like your doctor you can keep your doctor, 2) if you like your insurance policy you can keep your policy, and 3) every American will get health insurance coverage under Obama Care. Everyone of those promises failed miserably once the legislation took effect. Millions of people lost access to their doctor, millions lost access to their preferred insurance policy, and over 20 million Americans still do  not have health insurance coverage.


All  of these Obama  Care failures came at a cost of over $1.3 TRILLION, a tremendous waste of epic proportions.


4)One last episode of government fraud and  the stealing of taxpayer dollars:


  • Ten years ago, the Judicial Watch organization reported that one state had sent $26 million of Medicaid benefits for dead people.

  • Unfortunately, nothing came of their fraud finding since Judicial Watch recently uncovered the reality that Medicaid currently still  sends hundreds of millions of dollars a year to “deceased enrollees.”

  • 18 audits of the Medicaid program identified about $289 million in payments to dead people.

  • These payments are dressed up and called  “unallowable payments” which sounds better than  fraud and incompetence.

  • But these are just a small portion of the Medicaid  fraud that goes on since it was recently uncovered that the state of Illinois had sent over $9.5 million of Medicaid benefits to inmates in prison.

  • In total,  the General Accountability Office found that Medicaid had made a whopping total of $31.1 BILLION in  total improper payments in  one year, 2024.


What a mess, a mess that has been  recognized for at least ten years and which never got resolved. If anything, the improper payments of taxpayer wealth got worse over time.


So any wasted dollars and  so many different ways to waste it: Medicaid, PPP, Obama Care, and USAID.  No wonder the national debt is quickly approaching $40 TRILLION while millions of Americans suffer so many hardships.


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If you agree that we need to deseat every member of Congress for their lack of success and accomplishment, then please consider going to the following petition link to help the cause:


https://www.change.org/p/deseat-congress-reset-freedom



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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:


Tuesday, January 27, 2026

January, 2026, Part 4, Political Class Insanity: Mountains Of Government Debt at the State and Local Level, Virginia Raises Taxes, and Congress Members Shower Money on Their Alma Matters

 It’s been a little while so let’s check in with the American political class and review the latest political class insanity in several  different areas.


1)We have  often talked,  reviewed and  fretted  about the sad reality that the American political class segment in  Washington has run  up a national  debt that is fast approaching an incomprehensible level of $40,000,000,000,000. Mathematically, to pay off this debt,  every American would have to pay almost $120,000 each or almost half a  million dollars for a family of  four.


But the debt problem does not end in Washington:


  • According to an analysis by Reason  magazine, as of the end of 2023, state and local  government entities had a total state, county, and local debt level of about $6,100,000,000,000 or six trillion dollars.

  • It would cost each American  over $18,000 each to pay off this debt load in  addition to the debt load of the Federal government.

  • California’s government  entities have the  largest debt  load of about $1 trillion.

  • Other states with very high debt  levels include New York (almost $800 billion), Texas ($550 billion), Illinois (just over $400 billion), and New Jersey (just over $300 billion).

  • Note that four of the top five debt burdened states, California, New York,  Illinois, and  New Jersey, are the top four states that we believe are in a race to become the first state government to go bankrupt.

  • Eleven states have a debt  load over $100 billion.

  • On a per resident basis, New York gets the top spot with a debt  burden of $39,491 per person, New Jersey is third with a debt level of $33,338 per person, Illinois is fourth with a debt level of $31,873 per person,  and California is seventh with a debt level of $27,362 per person.


The real disgrace  of all of  this debt at every level of government,  is that politicians at every level of government have misspent, wasted, and abused the money they were entrusted with: Social Security is heading towards insolvency,  Medicare is headed towards insolvency our infrastructure is falling apart, our education efforts generally fail to educate, our electric grid is old and vulnerable, etc. We basically have nothing positive to show for the debt that politicians have run up. 


And yet across many states (New York, New Jersey,  Illinois, California), the top candidates we feel are leading the race to state government  bankruptcy, the politicians continue to raise taxes  and  incur debt when they have  proven they are poor stewards of the tax money they already get.

 

2)One of the  drivers of a state spiraling downward into financial insolvency is the high tax burden state politicians place on their residents and businesses. But these people never learned that raising and raising taxes eventually drives businesses and residents to other geographic locations where they can keep their hard earned wealth. 


Obviously, in Virginia, these economic lessons have not been learned:


  • Virginia Democrats have introduced a number of tax burden increasing laws for their citizens and businesses to bear.

  • HB 378 would impose a 3.8% income tax on individuals, trusts, and  estates and  would increase the state’s marginal income tax rate to 9.55%.

  • HB 900 would allow sales tax increases on transportation districts.

  • It would also put a new tax on every retail delivery (think Amazon, Uber Eats, UPS, etc.).

  • HB 919 would place an 11% tax on firearm and ammunition purchases.

  • HB 978 would expand the sales and use tax to  dry cleaning , landscaping and other currently exempt services.

  • The new governor will re-enter Virginia into the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative which will increase state residential and  business utility bills.

  • Meanwhile, neighboring states are reducing the tax burden on  their people.

  • West Virginia is phasing out its state income tax, North Carolina reduced its income tax rate from 4.25% to 3.99%, and is also phasing out its corporate income tax, and Georgia and South Carolina are also looking to phase out their state income tax altogether.

  • According to Grover Norquist of the Americans for Tax Reform: “It’s always a bad time to raise taxes, but it would be particularly foolish for Governor Spanberger and the Democrats who now control Richmond to do so at this time of heightened state tax competition. Governors and lawmakers in other states aren’t just seeking to reduce income taxes and other levies, they’re pursuing full tax elimination in many state capitals. For individuals, families, and employers who wish to avoid the hostile tax policies pursued by Democrats in Richmond, they have plenty of options close by.”

Several years ago we discussed a situation  in Maryland where state politicians raised the state income tax rate on anyone making over a  million dollars a year, expecting to gain over $100 million in increased tax revenue from millionaire earning residents. Several years later, they found that not only were they not getting the additional $100 million in increased tax revenue, but tax revenue from millionaire residents actually fell by over a quarter billion dollars. 

Millionaires are not  stupid: they either found ways to  shield themselves from the tax increase or more  likely,  moved across the border to  another state to protect themselves from  the increased taxes. The same thing is happening in  California, New York,  Illinois, and New Jersey: residents and  businesses are simply picking up and  leaving these high tax states and relocating to lower taxed states like Texas and Florida.

The same basic economic principle will also play out to the dismay of the economically ignorant politicians in Virginia: their residents and  businesses will eventually migrate out of the state, taking their tax base and tax revenue with them and who knows, Virginia might enter the race to bankruptcy court also.

3)And while politicians keep taking our money and wealth, they constantly come up with novel and despicable new ways to waste that wealth. 

The following outlines a wasteful  spending habit of Washington politicians that we had never heard of before:

  • According to the organization, Open The Books, the U.S. taxpayer does not  know that millions of their dollars are funneled to the favorite universities of Washington politicians.

  • Last year, 24 U.S Senators were allowed  to designate $636 million dollars of your tax money to the universities they attended as students.

  • Kentucky Senator Mitch  McConnell  requested $164.9 million for his  alma mater, the University of Kentucky, which follows on his diverting $750,000 of taxpayer money way back  in  2003 so  that the university could build the  Mitch McConnell Center For Distance Learning.

  • West Virginia Senator Jim Justice requested  $57.5 million  of taxpayer money for his alma mater, Marshall University,  including a whopping $1,5  million to “increase grant  writing and project development capacity.”

  • Washington Senator Patty Murray requested $59.9  million of taxpayer money for her alma mater, Washington State.

You get the  idea, we will not go through the entire list of Senators but it  is certainly a novel easy to  waste money  feeding the egos and the alma mater universities of those in the Senate. Meanwhile, millions of Americans are homeless, hungry, in need of medical  care, lack health insurance, and are stretched to the  limit within their budgets, But the priorities of these Senators are their alma  maters, not their constituents.

Oh, by the way,  the above numbers are just for Senators’  alma maters, there is another whole other slush fund the members of the House of Representatives use to reward their personal alma maters and their egos.

That will do it for today: state and local government have also run up untold, and possibly unpayable mountains of debt, but have not fixed any societal problems, Virginia may have just entered the state government race to bankruptcy with their bevy of new taxes, and Congressional members shower millions on their alma maters while their constituents continue to suffer.

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If you agree that we need to deseat every member of Congress for their lack of success and accomplishment, then please consider going to the following petition link to help the cause:


https://www.change.org/p/deseat-congress-reset-freedom



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


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: