December, 2014 Part 2, Political Class Insanity: Federal Workers Never Get Fired, Politicians Take Shortcuts, and The Pentagon Continues To Waste

It’s the beginning of another month which means it is time again to review the latest political class insanity from America’s politicians. Whether it is wasteful spending, inane quotes, faulty government operations, or insulting the American public, there is always new material spewing forth from these people, usually enough to fill up half a dozen or so posts every month. Given what we know today, this month should be no different as the insanity seems to be expanding exponentially from those in office today.

1) Before we get into the first piece of insanity today, let’s review the mess that the Washington political class and the Federal bureaucracy has gotten us into:

• The Federal deficit is bouncing around $18 TRILLION.
•  Medicare and Medicaid lose upwards of $100 billion a year to criminal fraud and waste.
• Social Security loses about $100 billion a year to criminal fraud and waste.
• Other government programs for food assistance, housing, welfare, etc. lose tens of billions of dollars a year due to criminal fraud and waste.
• The IRS readily admits that it fails to collect almost $400 billion a year from owed taxes while spending millions of dollars stifling the First Amendment rights of millions of Americans.
• Veterans are unnecessarily dying every day because of incompetence within the Veterans Administration.
• The Federal government spent over one billion dollars to build a relatively simple Obama Care website that failed to work properly for almost a year.
• The Defense Department is so screwed up that even the government auditors said their operation was not possible to audit by trained analysts.

We could gone on for days but you get the idea. If the government was a private company, we would never put up with the waste, ineffectiveness, and incompetence we experience. We would fire them and move on.

But that reality does not exist within the Federal government, according to a recent Washington Examiner article. No matter how poorly the Federal government bureaucracy operates, it seems that no one ever gets fired for ineptness:

• Federal government entities have fired fewer incompetent government employees each year since President Obama took office.
• According to the Office of Personnel Management, less than 4,900 career civil servants were fired in 2013 out of 1.4 million.
• This comes out to one employee for every 300 employees, far less than one half of one percent.
• The number of fired Federal employees declined from 5,700 in 2010 to 5,500 in 2011 to 5,200 in 2012. 
• Early 2014 estimates predict that only 4,800 will be let go in 2014, as the declining trend continues.
• It is even worse for upper management employees in the Federal government bureaucracy since while there are about 7,700 senior executives in the Federal government, only five were fired in 2012, seven in 2013 and none in the first half of 2014.
• The article claims that it can take from six months to twelve months to fire a poorly performing Federal employee, a time frame unheard of in the real world.

I would not mind if no one got fired from a Federal job if the Federal government actually worked. But I dare anyone to name one Federal entity that delivers a competent level of service at a reasonable cost. 

The article reviews the real life example of Susan M. Taylor, formerly of the Veterans Administration, who was on track to begin a new job at the Department of Energy despite a inspector general's report that found she exhibited "complete disregard for the laws, regulations, and VA policies.” Screw up in one part of the government, just get a job in another part. Fortunately, the job offer went away once the Washington Examiner did a simple Internet search and notified the Department of Energy of the situation.

Such incompetence at such a high price, a situation we would never stand for in any other aspect of our lives but we tolerate in government work. Insane.

2) The Heritage Foundation recently did a story on how both Democrats and Republicans in Washington conspired to fund their favored programs at potentially the expense of Americans’ health. Apparently, Congress and the Obama administration wanted billions of dollars a few years ago to offset the costs of a legal settlement with black farmers and American Indians, to increase education aid to the states and to develop a vaccine for swine flu.

Rather than go through the proper channels to write legislation and pass a law, all parties involved decided to raid an existing pot of Federal money, Project BioShield. Project BioShield, was funded with $5.6 billion which was supposed to be used to prepare America for a bioterrorist attack and develop treatments and vaccines for deadly viruses such as Ebola.

But government documents show that Congress and the Obama administration have taken or tried to take millions from Project BioShield to pay for their own selfish priorities that had absolutely nothing to do with defending the nation from bioterrorism. They did this despite the fact that in 2006 the Department of Homeland Security deemed Ebola a significant threat to the country.

Project BioShield was originally championed by Vice President Dick Cheney and his concern after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that the United States would not have the proper defenses in the event of acts of bioterrorism. To help the country prepare, BioShield was born and became law in 2004.

Despite this foresight, a June report from the Congressional Research Service determined that Congress terminated or transferred 40% of the original advance funding, $2.3 billion of $5.6 billion. The diverted funds were used for swine flu, basic research for allergies and infectious diseases, and other unrelated purposes such as using the money to settle a lawsuit settlement for black farmers.. As result, a Senate investigation gave the government an “F” in preparedness to respond to a biological attack.

Maybe this is why despite allocating billions of dollars to prepare the country for threats such as Ebola, today we still have no viable medicines or vaccines even though the threat was recognized a decade ago. More incompetence and political shenanigans from politicians that seem to have little integrity or honor when it comes to spending our money for our own good.

Another article from the Heritage Foundation, written by James Carafano on November 22, 2014, discussed the reality that the Pentagon has spent $46 billion over the years to develop different weapons systems, all of which failed to materialize into reality. Viewed another way, every American household sent a check for about $400 to the Pentagon and got nothing in return.

An analysis by the Center For Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a defense think tank, found that during the decade following 9/11, the Pentagon spent about $46 billion to develop a dozen weapons systems that it wound up not deploying. Another study by the Defense Acquisition University found that if the Pentagon followed all current regulations and normal procedures, it would take about two years to produce a major contract—to buy nothing. Such ineptness makes you wonder how we ever are able to deploy any armed forces anywhere.

So what did we learn from today’s political class insanity:

1. Politicians can do whatever they like with our taxpayer money as long as they all agree with how they are going to misuse the money even if it opens up Americans to danger from threats such as Ebola.
2. The Pentagon is so out of control that they can waste $46 billion and have no one be held accountable for the wasteful spending.
3. And finally, no matter how poorly the Washington bureaucracy performs, virtually no one ever gets fired for being incompetent or inadequate in their jobs.

More insanity tomorrow.

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