There is a lot going on in the world: Obama and Russiagate findings, Middle East powder keg, the Russian/Ukrainian war, etc. But through all this, the American political class continues to constantly deliver its own special brand of insanity, stupidity, wasteful taxpayer spending, and ineffective government programs.
1)One of the success stories early in Trump’s current term is cleaning up wasteful government spending and the criminal element that often goes with it,as witnessed by the latest busting of a criminal fraud scheme:
The Department of Justice recently announced that it had busted a massive Medicare scam.
The scam involved the swindling of $14.6 BILLION out of Medicare and private health insurance programs.
It was the largest bust in government history.
The following announcement came from the Department of Justice: “These criminals didn’t just steal someone else’s money. They stole from you. Every fraudulent claim, every fake billing, every kickback scheme represents money taken directly from the pockets of American taxpayers who fund these essential programs through their hard work and sacrifice. When criminals defraud these programs, they’re not just committing theft. They’re driving up our national deficit and threatening the long-term viability of healthcare for seniors, disabled Americans, and our most vulnerable citizens.”
The criminals got government id numbers and then billed the Federal government with falsified records.
Some of these criminals were operating out of other countries including Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates.
No matter what little you think of Trump he is getting results in cleaning up sloppy government programs and saving the taxpayers’ wealth in the process. But lord knows how many other criminal gangs continue to steal billions of dollars every year because the Federal government cannot effectively manage its programs and budgets.
2)Homeland Security Secretary, Kristi Noem, is also finding and eliminating wasteful government spending in her realm of responsibility:
$10.7 million budgeted for public safety announcements.
$3.3 million for employee marketing, not taxpayer marketing, marketing to employees.
$1.6 million for only two workshops, $800,000 for each workshop.
Over $1.2 million for a “conference center concierge,” whatever that is.
She is also looking to overhaul FEMA, an organization that apparently has been dysfunctional for many, many decades, as summarized by a FEMA spokesperson: “Any American who opened the books at FEMA and saw their lackluster spending controls and policies would be horrified.” Noem wants to streamline the FEMA bureaucracy to give states more power, reduce bureaucracy processing emergency resources, and improve search and rescue functions.
Recently, Noem criticized inefficiencies in Federal disaster relief over the past 15-20 years. In a FEMA Review Council meeting, she advocated for reforms to expedite Federal support and give states more control over long-term recovery, with the priority being to curtail bureaucratic delays in delivering resources such as emergency aid and search-and-rescue services.
These inefficiencies are evident regarding hurricanes Maria and Irma several years ago when FEMA lost track of almost 40% of its rescue supply shipments to Puerto Rico worth about $257 million. FEMA also awarded $156 million in meal contracts for emergencies to a one woman company that delivered 50,000 meals out of the 30 million that were contracted for.
Between FEMA ineptness, Medicare fraud, and probably dozens and dozens of other government functions it is no surprise that the national debt is now over $37 trillion dollars.
3)But government incompetence and wasting of taxpayer wealth is not restricted to the Federal government, as witnessed by the disaster that has unfolded at the city government level in Portland, Oregon:
The city of Portland last year spent over $720 million to clean up and remedy the massive homelessness problem the city has allowed to grow out of control.
Unfortunately, it does not appear that money was well spent, given a recent mass emailing from the mayor.
The mayor asked citizens to contribute their time, their money and any other pertinent resources to cleaning up the homeless problem.
“Yes, we spent $720 million of your tax money to fix the homeless problem and failed miserably so please give us more money and your time and other resources to fix what we cannot” is basically the message.
The mayor’s email was accompanied by a nine page Powerpoint presentation that listed out how citizens could help the city government fix the homeless problem.
Within 24 hours of the email, the city had gotten 50 donations, hardly enough to fix the problem.
There is no problem asking citizens to help out their fellow human beings who are down on their luck. The problem is who says that any contributed funds or other volunteer services will be effective if led by the same city politicians and bureaucrats who failed miserably with a $720 million budget? When in a ditch, stop digging. The mayor apparently did not make it clear how this effort would be successful if past efforts led by him and others like him failed.
4)Let’s have fun with numbers to close out today. Many, many Democrats and liberals in this country think they can solve all of the nation’s problems by taxing wealthy Americans much more than what they are taxed today. Never mind that the vast majority of the taxes are already being paid by wealthy Americans with nearly 50% of Americans paying nothing in Federal income taxes but these folks think the rich should pay even more.
We have given many simple math examples in the past where we have shown how stupid this concept is, given the amount of wasteful spending the Federal government and the politicians that operate it already spend. But let’s add to those examples today:
The Wall Street Journal recently ran a short article where they claimed that the richest 100 billionaires in the country have a net worth of $3.86 trillion.
If we could magically steal (i.e. tax) 100% of the wealth of these 100 Americans and apply it to paying down the Federal government’s debt, their 100% wealth would pay down only about 10% of the $37 trillion national debt, not a whole lot.
And confiscating 100% of their wealth seems a little draconian and impossible, so let’s say a more reasonable confiscation was 10% tax on wealth.
Then that level of wealth taxation would only pay down 1% of the national debt.
If that $3.86 trillion was taxed at 100% and magically and evenly distributed to every one of about 340 million Americans, then each American would receive a one time gift of $1135.
This one time windfall comes out to about $22 a week or just over $3.00 a day.
If we only confiscate 10% of the billionaires’ wealth and distribute it to every American then each American would get about $113, about $2.20 a week or $.30 a day.
Obviously, taxing the rich is not the answer since there are not that many wealthy people in the country relative to the total population. The answer is not to tax any American more, the answer is to find a way to make every level of government smaller, more efficient, more effective, and criminal enterprise free.
Unfortunately, American politicians have no idea how to do that and revert to the same old, tired, and ridiculous class warfare rhetoric, rhetoric that divides the country and resolves not a single problem.
Enough insanity for today: taxing the wealthy is not the answer (again), Portland fails to resolve its homeless problem despite spending over $700 million in one year, and the Trump administration continues to ferret out waste and criminal fraud in Federal government programs.
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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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