August, 2015, Part 7, Political Class Insanity: A Dead Lion Gets More Sympathy than 238,000 Dead Veterans, Massive Corruption In Philly, and Gas At $29 A Gallon

At the beginning of each month we take a week or so to review the latest insanity from the American political class. Insanity from them includes a wide range of very depressing actions which can include wasteful spending, idiotic quotes, an inefficient and ineffective government bureaucracy, failed economic policies, etc. Every month we continue to prove that we are being served by the worst set of politicians ever.

And as you will see, this month’s review and discussions do nothing to prove that this thesis is wrong in any way:

1) Despite Obama often promising to fix the broken Veterans Administration (VA) entity, a Federal government agency that paid its executives sky high salaries and bonuses while allowing the medical treatment of veterans to seriously deteriorate, apparently the problem has not gotten any better. According to a recent Huffington Post report:

• A VA report that the Huffington Post got hold of estimated that 238,657 veterans out of 847,822 pending applications for VA medical care have died waiting for medical treatment they never got.
• This is a failure rate of 28%.
• These numbers come from an April, 2015 report called, “Analysis of Death Services.”
• Even worse beyond this high fatality rate is that the VA has no idea what happened to account for the 238,657 deaths since: some of these veterans may have died many years ago but never got purged out of the system, some of these veterans may have gotten treatment via other sources such as Medicare, or never completed the application process since they got well or died. 
• Thus, the VA has a problem that they cannot even define.

A government failure that the government entity cannot even measure, understand, or obviously resolve.

2) Let’s continue with the disgraceful Veterans Administration situation and more failed government priorities. Twenty eight percent of veterans who applied for medical care via the VA may have died before they received that requested medical care.

However, when a single lion called Cecil gets killed in a legal animal hunt halfway around the world in Zimbabwe, Africa, the Obama administration somehow has enough resources to investigate the killing of that lion. That’s right, the death of a single lion gets immediate attention from this administration but 28% of veterans die before they get attention.

The director of the US Fish and Wildlife, Dan Ashe, tweeted out the news last week that his government agency would be investigating the whole shooting incident….of a single lion half way around the world. Now, I understand that many people are upset about the death of Cecil. I was so upset that I actually sent a check to the Wildlife Conservation Network at 209 Mississippi Street in San Francisco, California 94107. 

But it was a single lion, why do we as a nation mourn a single lion killed in a single hunting incident but we ignore the possibly preventable deaths of hundreds of thousands of veterans? That certainly seems to be the case with this administration and the current set of government bureaucrats.

3) Congressman Chaka Fattah is an eleven term Congressman from Philadelphia. He was one of several politicians who, along with Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr., tried to get George W. Bush impeached for what they considered crimes against the country. But according to news reports, guess who is now being accused of committing crimes:

• Fattah was recently indicted on more than a dozen Federal criminal charges.
• In total, he and four associates received 29 Federal indictments including bribery, money laundering, falsifying records, bank fraud and other charges.
• Specifically, Fattah got 16 of those charges including conspiracy, mail fraud, falsifying records, bank fraud, and five other charges which in total could add up to over 100 years in jail.

Although we should consider him innocent until proven guilty, the fact that Fattah is a long term Democrat, he was recently photographed giving a hug to Valerie Jarrett, Obama’s top advisor, and recently traveled with the President on the President’s trip to Philadelphia, all indicate that the Justice Department had such a strong case that even Fattah’s political friends could not prevent him from getting indicted.

Oh, by the way, Fattah’s former cohort in trying to impeach Bush, Jesse Jackson, Jr, is already in jail for his criminal ways. Politicians and criminals, often a very thin line or a blurred line between the two.

4) No one in the Federal government can waste taxpayer wealth like the Department of Defense. In fact, the all time most read post in this blog talked about how the U.S.Navy spent $300 million to build two Navy ships almost to completion only to pay another $10 million to turn them into scrap metal before they were ever used.

Well, according to a recent article in the Washington Free Beacon that reported on a recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) study, the Department is up to its old wasteful ways again, this time relative to alternative fuel purchases. The Department of Defense paid $58.6 million for “alternative fuel” supplies for its operations from 2007 to 2014. This comes out to an obscene per gallon cost of $29 per gallon. Over the same time period, the cost of regular, petroleum based fuel was about one ninth the cost, about $3.35 a gallon.

Now, I understand the need to test different types of fuel for future use. If the flow of petroleum from the Middle East is cut off due to war or other conflicts or at some point in the distant future we actually start running out of petroleum, it is good to have a contingency plan in place. But I am sure you can test the viability of alternative fuels without buying 2 million gallons of the stuff at a rate of $29 a gallon. 

And this money is being wasted at a time when veterans cannot get the medical care they need, armed forces recruiters in country cannot get adequate protection from domestic based terrorists, and the national debt continues to explode.

That will do it for today’s insanity and this month’s insanity from the political class. As always, you often cannot make the many, many ways that today’s politicians screw things up and in the process screw up our lives, our futures, and our financial well being. And unfortunately, at this time next month we will be back with the next thirty days of insanity, ineptness, and idiocy from those that are in office through the country and the world. 

Until then, consider going to the following website and join the movement to at least put term limits on those in office today because really, how much worse could it be if we just replaced every current politician in office with a whole new set of people:

www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com

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