December, 2017, Part 2, Political Class INsanity: Urban Violence and Wasteful Spending

It is the beginning of another month which means it is again time to review the latest political class insanity from Washington and around the world. Political class insanity takes many forms including the wasting of taxpayer wealth, criminal fraud within government programs, inane and stupid political quotes and actions, the inability to create and implement effective and efficient government programs, stupid and ill performing economic policies and strategies, and other forms of insanity that continue to evolve and surprise and shock us.

1) Former US Senator Tom Coburn used to publish an annual list of the 100 most stupid Federal spending programs that waste taxpayer wealth. Coburn is no longer in Congress but current Senator James Lankford has continued the annual waste listings and he recently published the latest 100 Federal programs and how stupid and wasteful they are. Some examples of the waste include the following:

• In 2016, over 25,000 American families received Federal housing assistance even though they made too much money to qualify for such assistance, with one family getting Federal taxpayer housing money even though they had an annual income of $479,911.
• The National Education Agency (NEA) spent $30,000 on the production of a play called “Doggie Hamlet.”
• The National Institutes of Health (NIH) annually spends $2.5 million to care for 139 apes that were formerly used for research which comes out to a rate of $18,700 per animal per year, not very efficient.
• In Iraq, the Department of Defense somehow lost over $1 billion worth of taxpayer funded military equipment.
• Going back to NIH waste, that government agency spent $2.3 million to verify that people who exercise often lose weight.
• The NIH also spent research money confirming the reality, surprise, surprise, that men prefer dating younger, thinner women.
• Another reality that the Federal Government affirmed, is that, surprise, surprise, a $2 million study confirmed that children don’t like to eat food that’s been sneezed on.
• The EPA spent money to "immerse artists in a multi-scale investigation of transportation systems, community, and governance related to the impacts of climate change." 
• Our favorite waster of money, the National Science Foundation (NSF), spent $475,142 on a plant naming program.
• The Federal grazing program charges ranchers to allow their cattle to roam and graze on Federal land but the program is so inefficient that the Federal government pays $77.1 million more to operate the program than it collects from the ranchers getting the benefit of their grazing their cattle on Federal land.
• The Feds spent almost half a million dollars researching the sights, sounds, and smells of the medieval period, a project I cannot even begin to imagine has any societal benefit.
• The NSF spent $315,000 to research how court rulings make people feel.
• And despite the ever increasing health care costs in this country, the lack of available health care to certain geographic and income segments of Americans and our crumbling infrastructure, the Federal government spent $1 billion on hospitals and infrastructure in Palestine.

With a $20 TRILLION national debt load, a load that comes out to over $165,000 for every man, woman, and child in this country, it makes no sense to waste money on such nonsense as identified by Senator Lankford. And even if we did want to spend this money, it should not be on such stupid, non-useful projects like those listed above. Go into any bar in America at happy hour and you could prove that men like younger, thinner women, you do not need the NSF for that. Go to any school cafeteria at lunchtime and you would easily find out that kids do not like food that has been sneezed on.

Spend this wasted money to house the homeless, feed the hungry, treat the drug addicted. Research real issues that affect many Americans such as curing cancer or Alzheimer's, not funding “Doggie Hamlet” plays. Total, total insanity and insults to American taxpayers everywhere.

2) This following piece of insanity mystifies me but also makes me respect Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO of Amazon, even more. Consider what he somehow convinced the politicians in Chicago to do. According to a recent article in the Seattle Times: “Chicago has offered to let Amazon pocket $1.32 billion in income taxes paid by its own workers. This is truly perverse. Called a personal income-tax diversion, the workers must still pay the full taxes, but instead of the state getting the money to use for schools, roads or whatever, Amazon would get to keep it all instead. The result is that workers are, in effect, paying taxes to their boss,” says a report on the practice from Good Jobs First, a think tank critical of many corporate subsidies.””

I am assuming that this has something to do with the reality that Amazon is going to establish a huge second headquarters location somewhere in the country and cities and counties are falling over themselves to be the location of that second headquarters location. But really, letting Amazon keep the tax money that its employees should be paying to the state and local government, kudos to Bezos, shame on the Illinois politicians who prostituted themselves out to a single company.

3) Unfortunately, we often have to check in to Chicago to see how the out of control gun violence and death rate is doing. Chicago is a city with some of the most stringent gun control laws in the country and one of the highest rates of violent crime. The politicians would prefer to continue to erode the Second Amendment rights of citizens to defend themselves vs. actually fixing the root causes of the violence that is so rampant, probably because they have no idea how to fix those root causes to the violence.

During a recent week in late November in Chicago:

• The city experienced its second most violence Thanksgiving day in recent years.
• There were 44 shootings in the city that holiday weekend.
• Eight of those shot ended up dying.
• In the month of November in Chicago, 33 citizens were shot and killed.
• Year to date in Chicago, 3,326 have been shot and 580 of those shot have died in Chicago.
• Almost 78% of those who died in Chicago this year from gun violence were African Americans but police were involved in only 1% of those shootings, killing the Black Lives Matter and liberal tripe that police officers are out of control and killing African Americans at unacceptable levels.

Horrific violence and no end in sight as politicians and liberals dicker over false statistics and no plans are ever developed to eliminate the root cause for violence.

That will do it for our second political class insanity post. No solutions for our urban woes which is becoming more and more fatal for urban residents and Washington is still wasting our taxpayer money on useless and senseless activities. More insanity to come.

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