Sunday, January 21, 2024

January, 2024, Part 5, Political Class Insanity: Washington Continues to Waste Billions, Portland Goes Third World, Housing In The Dumps and More

Every month we devote posts to just general political class insanity that is running rampant through the country. The members of the American political class continue to show that they are incapable of operating any level of government in this country. 

Even their best efforts are almost always inefficient and ineffective at resolving any problem facing Americans. They spend a great amount of time not trying to improve the lives of their citizens but continually ensuring their reelection and enriching themselves, their families, and their friends in the process, all at taxpayer expense.


1)Keep in mind the following realities in  America today:


  • There are about 600,000 homeless Americans as we speak.

  • 17 million Americans are facing a daily food crisis as Biden’s failed economic policies drive up the cost of food.

  • Well over 100,000 Americans are likely to die from drug overdoses this year as Biden’s failed border policies allow cheap and deadly drugs like fentanyl to flood into the  country.

  • Over 20 million Americans cannot afford health insurance and health care.


And imagine how much good $1 billion could do to house, feed, and treat these suffering American  citizens. And yet:


  • A recent Pentagon report found that over $1 billion in military aid that Biden sent to the Ukrainians cannot be accounted for.

  • The report found significant failures in monitoring and tracking essential  weapons systems that should have gone to the Ukranians fighting the Russians.

  • The missing equipment includes advanced shoulder fired missiles, kamikaze drones, and state of the  art night vision devices.

  • The report found: “Although ODC‑Ukraine and Ukrainian Armed Forces personnel conducted some required inventories, as of June 2, 2023, serial number inventories for more than $1.005 billion of the total $1.699 billion (59 percent of the total value) of EEUM‑designated defense articles remained delinquent.”

  • Thus, in this audit, well over 50% of the equipment that should have been found was not.

  • Obviously this is just a small  portion of the over $100 billion of taxpayer wealth that Biden has sent to the Ukrainians so lord know how many other weapons have gone missing.

  • To add insult to injury,  last July, Senate Democrats opposed an attempt to establish a new audit office in the Pentagon to better track and control military aid going to the Ukrainians.


So, we know there is corruption and bad auditing and yet Congress does not want to stop it. We know that many of these weapons likely ended up on the black market and quite possibly are in the hands of terror groups around the world, all courtesy of the American taxpayer. In the meantime, millions of Americans are homeless, hungry, and in need of medical  attention.  Horrible priorities of the Washington political class.


2)Biden’s failed economic problems have  caused many, many problems for Americans. Higher and higher gas, food, and other expenses. Higher and higher deficit spending and adding to the obscene national  debt. And his policies have also had a detrimental effect on the American dream  of owning a home:


  • December home sales were down 6.3% over the same time in December, 2022.

  • 2023 home sales  came in at about 4.09 million units, the worst performance of the housing market since 1995, 29 years ago.

  • Sales were lower in 2023 vs. 2022 in every region of the country.

  • First time home buyers made up just 29% of December,  2023 home sales as compared to the long term average of 40%.


Everything Biden has touched, and what Washington has touched, has resulted in higher prices including the housing market, placing the dream of home ownership, especially among younger Americans, further and further out of financial reach.


3)Politicians across the country have instituted social policies and programs that have  failed miserably and which have  resulted in an ever growing homelessness problem. Be they law enforcement policies, housing policies, judicial  policies, drug addiction  and enforcement policies, whatever, these failed policies have  resulted in a growing and more dangerous homeless population.


In the  richest country in the history of the world, hundreds of thousands of Americans are living on the streets and no politician in most cities in this country have a clue on how to fix the problem. As a result, drug addiction, crime, and public defecation,, urination, and drug usage has resulted in a serious drop in the quality of life for all living in some major U.S. cities.


Consider  the  newest homelessness threat that has hit the once beautiful city of Portland:


  • Like many Democratically run cities, Portland’s politicians and their actions have resulted in a massive homeless problem.

  • This has led to homeless encampments around the city and the resultant public urination and defecation problems.

  • These actions have led to an outbreak of the bacteria infection, Shigella.

  • Shigella is spread via fecal matter and can  cause severe fever, stomach cramps, vomiting, and diarrhea.

  • Public health officials told a local TV station:  “Shigella spreads when one person’s infected poop gets into another person’s mouth through food or water, from objects or surfaces with shigella bacteria on them, or during sex. Shigella spreads very easily. Even a very small amount is enough to make someone sick.”


Great, again in the richest country in the history of the world we are seeing disease outbreaks that one would expect to see in a third world country. Thanks to the politicians that have created a political and human climate of disease.


4)We have talked hundreds of times in this blog about how the Washington political class and the Federal government bureaucracy it oversees is a haven of corruption and incompetence, allowing untold billions of taxpayer dollars to be wasted and lost every year. And now we have an estimate of how big this problem of inefficiency is:


  • According to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), across all Federal functions about $236 BILLION of taxpayer money was wasted via what it calls “improper payments” in  fiscal year 2023.

  • This is more than double what was wasted annually back in 2013 which was also a disgrace.

  • Since 2003, the GAO estimated that the government has made a staggering $2.4 TRILLION in improper payments.

  • The GAO observed that these improper payments have  "consistently been a government-wide issue despite efforts to identify their root causes and reduce them. In fact, the government still doesn’t fully understand the size of Federal improper payments, partly because it doesn’t have complete, reliable, or accurate estimates."

  • In fiscal year 2022, the government made $247 billion in improper payments.

  • The biggest culprits in this scandal of waste are Medicare, Medicaid, the Earned Income Tax Credit and Social Security.

  • At least one Washington politician is disgusted by this waste, Congressman Bob Good stated: "This is just more evidence that Washington is broken and too many career politicians and bureaucrats don't care about how they waste taxpayer dollars. We are $34 trillion in debt and will be over $36 trillion in debt before the current debt limit deal ends next January. We cannot afford to wait any longer to stop the runaway spending train and get our fiscal house in order."

  • Over 13 years ago, Obama signed the ‘Improper Payments Elimination and Recovery Act”  which had the goal of reducing these bad payments by about 50% in a couple of years.

  • Nice try but another Washington failure since the amount of improper payments at that time was $110 billion so that not only did the law not reduce the current amount of bad payments by 50%, it allowed the amount of bad payments to more than double in about 13 years.

  • And it is not like this waste is concentrated in hundreds of different government agencies since the Congressional Budget Office says that at least 85% of the improper payments are in a very small sub-segment of government agencies, indicating that it should be easy to  focus on the corruption in just a few of the major culprits.


What a disgrace and insult to hardworking, taxpaying Americans. That $236 billion could be used so much more effectively if not for the corruption, criminal fraud, and waste:


  • Every Federal income taxpayer would theoretically get a $1,500 reduction in their annual income tax return, additional money they could spend on themselves,  their families, their health, and  stimulate the economy.

  • The 17 million Americans that are facing a hunger crisis would theoretically get almost $14,000 a year to feed their families or about $1,200 a month.

  • The 600,000 homeless Americans could easily be given adequate and safe shelter until they could get back on their feet and self sufficient, see Portland problem above.


Given this clearly defined problem, given the number of Americans in need, the Biden administration would rather hire 80,000 IRS agents to  go  after American taxpayers rather than hire 80,000 agents to go after the $236 billion that the government wastes every year. Talk about bad priorities.


Enough political class insanity for today: Washington continues to waste hundreds of billions of dollars every year, Portland goes third world, Ukraine corruption and waste continues, and Biden’s economic failures decimate the housing industry.


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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:


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