Retro 7, Part 7, The Obama Presidency, The End Of An Error - Miscellaneous Failures and Disappointments

We originally ran this post back in October at around the 100 day mark of the final days of the Obama Presidency. We ended up running about seven blog posts which did a deep dive into the activities, acomplishmentsand failures of this Presidency. We found very little in the way of accomplishments but dozens and dozens of cases of falures and disasters, from the economy to foreign affairs to the basic concept of integrity. We are going to rerun those post over the next week or so as we close in on an end of an error, the Obama Presidency.

Part 7, The Obama Presidency, The End Of An Error - Miscellaneous Failures and Disappointments

As we near the end of the Obama Presidency, I thought it would be a good idea at the 100 day mark to review what he has done to and for this country over the past eight years. Before we do that, though, let me repeat my previous background statements on my past political actions:

• I have never voted for a Republican Presidential candidate in my life and I have been voting since the the Nixon era.
• Until 2010, I have never voted for a Republican for national office in my life.
• I am not affiliated with nor do I associate myself with the Republican Party, conservatives or people like Donald Trump.

Okay, now that we understand where I am coming from, let me just say that in my opinion Barack Obama has been the most inept, most divisive, most narcissist and worst diplomat in my lifetime to reside in the White House. From the economy, to race relations, to the national debt, to foreign relations to government operations, to blatant disregard for existing laws and the Constitution, in just about any measure we are far worse off as a nation than prior to him coming into office.

We will breaking down the failures and disappointments of this administration into some broad categories that will take us a number of days to cover as we analyze “The Obama Presidency - The End Of An Error.” Over the past week we have touched on a number of broad categories of Obama’s failures:

Broken Promises and Lies: http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2016/10/part-1-obama-presidency-end-of-error.html

Broken Laws and Constitution Violations: http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2016/10/part-2-obama-presidency-end-of-error.html

Once a Community Organizer, Still A Conmmunity Organizer:  http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2016/10/part-3-obama-presidency-end-of-error.html

Foreign Affairs and Diplomatic Disasters: http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2016/10/part-4-obama-presidency-end-of-error.html

The Unimpressive Set Of Obama "Firsts:" http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2016/10/part-5-obama-presidency-end-of-error.html

Gross Economic Management: http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2016/10/part-6-obama-presidency-end-of-error.html

Today, will be our last review of the many, many failures of the Obama administration and we will focus on a bunch of miscellaneous failures and other stuff that I have found trivial, repugnant, and embarrassing from this administration over the past eight years. These topics are in addition to the failures we have already discussed over the past six posts including Obama Care failures, foreign affairs failures, economic failures, and the scores of broken promises and lies from this President.

Miscellaneous Failures and Other Stuff 

When Obama spoke at the funeral of the Hawaiian Senator Daniel Inouye, a decorated World War II soldier and long time Senator, Obama's ego and narcissism was so large that he mentioned himself far more times than he mentioned the Senator. 

When Neil Armstrong died, Obama’s ego and narcissism was so large that he sent out a picture of himself looking up at the sky with no visual of Armstrong at all:

When Rosa Parks’s bus rebellion was being celebrated, Obama’s ego and narcissism was so large that he posted a picture of himself sitting in the bus seat where Rosa Parks sat but with no visual of Rosa Parks at all:

When Muhammad Ali died, Obama’s ego and narcissism was so large that he published a picture of himself underneath an Ali picture:

While on the Tonight Show, Obama joked that his bowling talents were the equivalent of a Special Olympics kid: “It's like -- it was like Special Olympics, or something."Class act, not.

Obama exchanged an Army deserter, Bowe Bergdahl, for five high value and dangerous terrorists who were imprisoned at the Guantanamo terrorist prison, endangering the lives of innocents all over the Middle East and the world.

He then turned around and invited the deserter’s parents to a White House press event and a private meeting with himself while ignoring the families and soldiers who were wounded and killed when they went out to rescue the deserter Bergdahl.

When a Ferguson, Missouri African American young man assaulted a store owner, stole from the store owner’s store, and tried to assault a police officer, actions that resulted in his fatal shooting by the police officer, Obama sent three members of his administration to the funeral. But when a young, Caucasian woman in San Francisco was killed while walking down an American street by an illegal immigrant, who had been arrested multiple times and deported multiple times but allowed to roam the streets by the Obama administration, the Obama White House was silent and sent no members of his administration to her funeral.

While over two dozen Americans were fighting for their lives in Benghazi, the President went to bed and then rose early to fly to a political fundraiser in Las Vegas.

His administration cooked up a lie about the cause of the Benghazi attacks in order to protect a campaign talking point and then lied to the world and the country via a United Nations speech.

He belittled and taunted millions of common American citizens that have legitimate scientific concerns and doubts about the whole global warming/climate change myth.

He played over 300 rounds of golf, attended a record number of political fundraising events, and went on many, many lavish vacations, after promising to have no personal life during his first Presidential campaign.

He took time off from work, despite the wide amount of issues and problems facing Americans today, to waste vast amounts of time to annually go on ESPN to discuss his college basketball March Madness picks, film an TV advertisement for a comedy show, he allowed himself to be interviewed by a lady who once filmed herself taking a milk bath filled with Fruit Loops, and wasted vast amounts of other Presidential time to go on many other TV shows.

Although he constantly promised to fix the broken processes and procedures at the dysfuncitonal Veterans Affairs Agency (VA), years later the VA was still totally dysfunctional with veterans not getting the medical help they need and were pronmised ansdmany dying as a result of this incompetence.

He enjoyed multiple vacations, rounds of golf, and political fundraisers while millions of Americans near the Gulf Of Mexico were fighting for their livelihoods and homes as a result of a massive oil platform disaster.

When American James Foley was gruesomely beheaded in the Middle East by ISIS terrorists, Obama treated this event as an inconvenience that was interfering with his golf tee time, throwing together a half ass press conference after which he immediately headed to the course, never consoling Mr. Foley’s family like he did for Army deserter Bergdahl.

Whenever someone says something negative about Islamic terrorism, Obama gets vocal and offended but as Islamic terrorists practice genocide against religious minorities across the Middle East he is silent.

Whenever someone says something negative about Islamic terrorism, Obama gets vocal and offended but as Islamic terrorists enslave and torture religious minority women across the Middle East he is silent.

He conducted secret nuclear weapons negotiations with the terrorist Iranian regime that resulted in secret side deals in addition to a horrible public nuclear arms treaty.

He paid a $400 million cash ransom for the release of four Americans being illegally held by the Iranian regime, simultaneously violating the current and long standing U.S. policy of paying ransom to terrorists and likely giving a cash infusion into Iranian terrorist activities around the Middle East.

He allowed his Secretary of State to operate a crime syndicate that traded U.S. interests and assets for massive personal financial gain of that Secretary of State.

His administration interfered with several ongoing FBI criminal investigations to ensure that his former Secretary of State never went to jail or was held accountable for her crimes and transgressions.

After declining steadily for decades, the national level of violent crime has reversed this long term trend and may be starting to rise again.

He allowed several members of his cabinet to use secret email accounts and processes in direct violation of government regulations and laws.

Over six years since the Dodd-Frank legislation was passed, whose intent was to ensure that the conditions that caused the Great Recession never occurred again, his administration has still not completed the necessary government regulations and rules to implement that legislation, rendering it useless.

The following failures of the Obama administration are also common to recent Presidential administrations. However, just because other, recent administrations were not successful in these areas does not mean that the Obama Presidency was also not a failure. Keep in mind that these failures occurred despite the Obama administration spending about $30 TRILLION during its tenure, in other words, about $25 TRILLION spent and we have only the following failures to show for it:

• We are still under educating our kids relative to the kids around the world.
• We still have no effective and overarching energy strategy to wean us off of foreign energy sources.
• We still have no fair, comprehensive, and effective immigration policy.
• Our borders are still not secure allowing illegal drugs, foreign criminals, and quite probably terrorists to enter the country, endangering the lives of Americans.
• We are still losing the “War on Drugs.”
• Government operations are still inefficient, ineffective, wasteful, criminally infested, and expensive.
• Our country’s infrastructure is still falling apart.
• Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are still rushing towards financial insolvency with no plans proposed or in place to prevent their financial collapse.
• The possibility of peace in the Middle East has never been further out of reach.
• Health care costs are still rising dramatically despite Obama Care with no solution to this debacle proposed or likely.

Now, please do not come back to me and say Obama cannot be blamed for these failures because Republicans impeded him at all times. This is a bogus argument for three reasons:

1. In the first two years of his term, his political allies controlled both houses of Congress and he still was unable to get any of the above issues resolved except for passing the failed Obama Care legislation and the still incomplete Dodd-Frank regulations.
2. He has not proposed any solutions to the impending failure of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, he has not proposed any comprehensive plans to bring peace to the Middle East, he has not proposed any solutions for our failing public schools, etc., so the Republicans could not have blocked any of his plans and solutions since he never developed and presented them inthe first place.
3. Did I mention that his administration spent over $25 TRILLION and still could not resolve any of the above issues?

That will do it for our summary of the many, many failures of the Obama administration. They touched on just about any imaginable topic and area, from lies and lack of integrity to the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care to a completely failed foreign relations and diplomatic effort, etc., etc., This is the most ineffective, wasteful, and dysfunctional Presidency of my lifetime.

As we said previously in this series, eight years ago a community organizer with little international and Washington experience became President. Eight years later we have a soon to be ex-President who never matured into an effective leader, leaving office as the same small minded community organizer of eight years ago.

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:


http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

October, 2016, Part 2, Political Class Insanity - Polticians With Bad Priorities, Politicans With Massive Conflicts of Interest, and a President With a Large Narcissism Problem

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.

The current monthly record for the number of posts that were needed to cover one month's worth of insanity is ten. We equaled that record last month when we needed ten days to cover one month’s worth of political class insanity. There is a very good chance that the ten day record could fall this month since as we get closer and closer to the election, the volume of ineptness grows almost exponentially.

But today and for all of the posts this month, let’s start off with a welcome piece of honest political dialog. It comes from a State Department spokesperson. Mark Toner, who is about to start the daily State Department press briefing. In a joking matter, he makes the following quote: "Welcome to the State Department. I think we have some interns in the back. Welcome. Good to see you in this exercise in transparency and democracy."

He then burst out laughing at his own quote, indicating he also knew what a joke the Obama administration has been, especially Mr. Toner’s State Department, when it comes to cover ups, lack of transparency, denial of Freedom of Information Act requests, the prosecution of whistleblowers, etc. But at least it was a little refreshing to finally hear some actual honesty out of Washington as we see from the actual clip of the news conference:

http://www.againstcronycapitalism.org/2016/08/when-even-the-state-department-spokesperson-cant-keep-a-straight-face-about-things-anymore-video/

With that context of honesty, let’s see what other insanity has been going down:

1) Obama has been more or less obsessed with a small handful of issues facing the country over the past year, most notably gun control and global warming. But are these the issues Americans are most concerned about, are they the issues that Obama should have been focusing on if he was truly concerned about what Americans wanted him to focus on?

The answer to that question is an unequivocal “no” if you believe a recent survey that was done by Chapman University that surveyed 1,541 American adults. The survey asked the respondents to tell them what they feared most and then rank ordered the things or potential events that Americans are most concerned about and are most afraid of. The top answers to that survey, as reported in a recent issue of Businessweek magazine, are:

1. Corruption- 78% think the two main parties are corrupt
2. Cyberterrorism
3. Personal data tracking corporate
4. Terrorist attacks
5. Personal data tracking government
6. Biowarfare
7. Identity theft
8. Economic collapse
9. Running out of money - one of three have no savings
10. Credit card fraud

As you can see, the top concerns of Americans, the things that Obama should be focused on, fall into three general categories:

• Economic situation - Identity theft, economic collapse, running out of money, and credit card fraud. 
• Safety - cyberterrorism, terrorist attacks, biowarfare 
• Dysfunctional government - Corruption, government tracking of personal data

Instead, Obama has been focused on gun control, which finished 13th on the list, not cracking the top ten of what Americans are most afraid of and global warming, which was way down the list at 21, not even cracking the top 20 of Americans’ concerns and fears. In fact, more Americans are afraid of reptiles, which I assume includes being attacked and killed by an alligator or crocodile (17th on the list) than global warming.

So rather than focusing on cleaning up the corruption in government and politics and protecting the Fourth Amendment by restricting government access to our data, he worries about gun control. Rather than working on improving what has been a historically anemic economic recovery after the last recession, he focuses on global warming. Rather than focusing on protecting us from terrorism and other physical threats, he focuses on his golf game.

Not a terribly effective President when he focuses on an issue made doubly worse because he focuses on the wrong issues relative to the people he is theoretically supposed to be taking his orders from.

2) I have never been a fan of John Kerry. He is a terrible negotiator on the international stage when it comes to being Secretary of State and he has uttered some of the most inane quotes of any politician we have come across over the past several years. And now it looks like we can add corruption to that list of faults.

According to an article by Ethan Barton on September 12, 2016 that appeared on the Daily Caller website, it appears that John Kerry’s State Department has been funneling taxpayer dollars through the Peace Corps to a non-profit foundation, now called Seed Global Health, what was established and operated by his daughter, Vanessa Kerry. The shenanigans unfolded as follows:

• First, Vanessa Kerry helped establish a Peace Corps program that would send medical resources into poor countries. 
• The State Department decided to fund the program. 
• The Peace Corps then turned around and took that funding and awarded the money, in the absence of competition and competitive bidding, to a non-profit organization, Seed Global Health, that Kerry had turned around and created just for the program she originally created for the Peace Corps. 
• The initial funding of $2 million came when her father was chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations which oversees both the Peace Corps and the State Department. 
• Another $6.4 million was awarded to Ms. Kerry’s little non-profit in September, 2015 when her dad was the head of the State Department. 
• This second grant of millions of dollars was also not competitively bid. 
• Government documents cited in the article show how the various government and non-government parties involved conspired and made sure that there was no competitive bidding for the money and the project so that Ms. Kerry’s organization would control the entire award. 
• Ms. Kerry started drawing a salary via the non-profit in 2014 with tax filings showing she awarded herself an annual salary of $140,000 for which she worked only 30 hours a week. 
• Adding insult to injury, the Peace Corp usually has a time limit of five years on all of its contracts but violated that tenet when the allowed Ms. Kerry to have a seven year contract that included no competitive bidding.

Maybe it is garbage like this that caused 78% of Americans polled in the Chapman University survey cited above to place corruption as the number one issue in their minds relative to what to be afraid of. This is a conflict of interest on so many levels along with the potential wasting of taxpayer wealth. But as always with American politicians today, specifically John Kerry in this case, they have no shame and guilt, they are only in the business for their own self-enrichment. Insane.

3) Through his actions, I have found Barack Obama to be the most self-centered, narcissist President of my lifetime, based on any number of actions:

• When he spoke at the funeral of the Hawaiian Senator Daniel Inouye, a decorated World War II soldier and long time Senator, Obama mentioned himself far more times than he mentioned the Senator. 
• When Neil Armstrong died, Obama sent out a picture of himself looking up at the sky with no visual of Armstrong at all:

• When Rosa Parks’s bus rebellion was being celebrated, Obama posted a picture of himself sitting in the bus seat where Rosa Parks sat but with no visual of Rosa Parks at all:

• When Muhammad Ali died, Obama published a picture of himself underneath an Ali picture:

You get the point with this limited set of examples. And these points and his narcissism was driven home again on the 15th anniversary of the 9-11 attacks. A moment of silence to remember the victims of the 9-11 attack on the Pentagon was scheduled to begin at the exact same moment that the plane hit the building on September 11, 2011, a highly symbolic tribute to those that perished.

But apparently, according to news reports, Obama was restless and ordered that the moment of silence be moved up according to his wishes. A Department of Defense official confirmed to news sources that the decision to move up the moment of silence was on Obama’s order.

In the big picture, this is not a big deal. But it again verifies that American politicians, like Obama, view themselves as the center of the world, that we should pay homage to them and their wishes and whims when in reality they are employed by us. Was it really that much of an imposition on this politician to sit still for a few extra minutes to symbolically honor some brave Americans who died in the worst terror attack in our life times? Apparently it was.

Day Two of the latest political class insanity is in the books with a lot more to come. A good day today, conflict of interest, hubris on the part of the President on very solemn day, and very bad priorities vs. what Americans are worried about. More of the same tomorrow.

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:


http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

The Obama Era, Part 7 - Memories From The Worst Presidency Ever?

Late last year I thought it might be a good time to review everything that I remember about the Obama administration. He has been in office for seven years, seven long years that in my opinion have been horrific in so many ways. This was someone who entered office with approval ratings that were above 70% and who represented the so-called “hope and change” that many Americans were seeking.

This theme unexpectedly took four days to cover, that is how many failures, lies, threats, and narcissism examples we could list out from this President. The first post can be accessed at:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2015/12/the-obama-era-part-1-memories-from.html

Seven years later, hope has become very scarce and change has almost always been for the worst. Now, before someone says that I am just a sour grapes Republican, conservative, or neo-con, understand that I have never voted for a Republican for President in my life (I started voting in the 1970s). Up until 2010, I had never voted for Republican for national office in my life. I fully support gay rights and respect a woman’s legal right to an abortion. Thus, none of what you are about to read over the next few days comes from a Republican sour grapes perspective.

But unless you have had completely had your head in the sand or elsewhere, this has been the worst Presidency that I have experienced in my lifetime. From horrid legislation (e.g. Obama Care) to a failed foreign policy (e.g. Syria) to daily lawlessness on the part of this administration (e.g. use of unsecured email accounts by high ranking administration members), the ineptness and ineffectiveness of this administration is mind boggling.

Today, we will discuss more things that I remember from this Presidency, including the latest Pew Research results, in addition to the horror stories and disasters we already talked about, starting with the link listed above:

- I will remember that the American public rate “gun policy” and “climate change” as the 16th and 17th (out of 18 issues) most important issues in their lives while this President seems to focus only on these two issues most of the time, a bad misalignment with what Americans want him to do.

- I will remember that this President worked hard on a trans pacific trade agreement even though Americans rated that the least important (18th) issue in their lives.

- I will remember that Americans rated the “economy” as the most important issue in their lives even though this Presidential administration has been doing a horrible job at developing and implementing effective economic policy, given that 45 million Americans still receiving monthly Federal food assistance, 14 million Americans who are still unemployed or underemployed, national annual economic growth has never come close to attaining the long term annual average, and household income and wages have been completely stagnant during the life of this Presidency.

- I will remember that dealing with immigration has steadily jumped up over time to become the 11th most important issue to Americans, indicating that they are not happy with Obama’s immigration performance.

- I will remember that as Obama has weakened our military and meddled in military decisions that only experienced military veterans should deal with, Americans desire to “strengthen our military” has grown 8%.

- I will remember how the number of Americans view “protecting the environment” as a top issue has dropped 5% during the Obama Presidency despite the President’s obsession with the potential myth of manmade climate change.

- I will remember how this President promised “hope and change” but 51% of Americans now think that his failures will now outweigh his accomplishments with only 39% thinking his accomplishments will outweigh his failures.

- I will remember how independent voters have a massive 16 point difference between those thinking that his failures will outweigh his accomplishments.

Thus, the Pew results show that America also has a lot of bad memories of this Presidency, that I am not an outlier in my memories of how bad the shortcomings have been of this Presidency.

P.S. One last set of memories, based on the fact that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia recently passed away and the President of the United States did not attend the funeral. The funeral was held Washington DC, not an inconvenience for the President. It was held on a weekend, traditionally not a work day for anyone in Washington. Previous Presidents have attended funerals of Supreme Court justices so there is a precedent. It is not in the heat of an election season.

Thus, I will remember how this President refused to attend the funeral of a very important person in this country but did attend, and speak at, the funeral of others whose importance and contributions to the country was far less important:

• Less than two months before the 2012 Presidential election, Obama took time out of his schedule to attend and speak at the the funeral service of Democratic Senator Daniel Inouye, which much like the Scalia funeral, is being held in D.C.
• The President attended and spoke at the funeral of Democrat and former Ku Klux Klan member Senator Robert Byrd.
• The President attended and spoke at the funeral of Reverend Clementa Pinckney who was one of the nine people killed in a mass shooting in South Carolina in 2015 even though he had never met the reverend.
• Just six months after skipping the funeral of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and in doing so insulted our British allies, Obama attended and spoke at the funeral of former Democratic Speaker of the House Tom Foley. 
• Obama traveled to New York for the memorial service of Walter Cronkite, where he spoke, although he had never met Cronkite. 
• Obama traveled to South Africa to attend the funeral of non-American Nelson Mandela.

But this President cannot travel across town to the funeral of a Supreme Court justice. And this is so typical of what I will remember of this Presidency: if any event, including an important funeral of an important American, did not support an Obama political situation or feed his ego, he reverts back to being the community organizer that he has always been, whether in Chicago or in Washington.

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

How About More Hate Control Before More Gun Control, Part 4 - Protecing Our Kids, Protecting The Second Amendment, No Tax Increases, it Can Be Done

This is the final post in our series on how to protect ourselves and our families from violence and gun play without shredding the Second Amendment in the process. We have discussed how the political class is again not looking for the root causes of the violence that happened in Newtown, Connecticut last month, instead focusing on the “what” of the incident, guns were used to kill innocents, rather than the “why” of the incident, why and how could someone become so irrespective of life and humanity. As a result, we will end up with less freedom via more government control without solving the root causes.

We have discussed several real life examples of how Americans and their legally owned weapons defended themselves, their families, and their assets from violent criminals, an option that some politicians would like to see eliminated via more draconian gun control laws.

We discussed the fact that more stringent gun control laws do not reduce violence. We reviewed examples of where higher legal gun ownership resulted in less crime but lower gun ownership, more restrictive gun control laws resulted in higher rates of violent crime (e.g. Chicago). We reviewed scientific studies that proved this point and other studies that pointed to the legal overmedication of Americans as a high potential cause for mass slayings like Newtown, not the availability of guns.

We concluded from all of this discussion that outlawing or severely restricting the ownership of guns by responsible Americans will result in more violence, will not cause violent criminals to turn in or register their guns, or solve the problems like what happened in Newtown.

But there is a simple, better way to protect our kids without endangering the rest of the population, without shredding the Second Amendment, and without viciously dividing the country again along political lines. On December 24, 2013, we proposed a way to protect our kids in while in school from violence and gun play without raising the taxes on any American:

*******************************************
Thus, the Independent Journal Review’s vote for the worst Federal spending in 2012:

• Tax loopholes for the National Football League (NFL), National Hockey League (NHL) and Professional Golfers’ Association (PGA) – professional sports leagues that generate billions of dollars annually in profits pay nothing in Federal income taxes($91 million worth of taxes)
• Moroccan pottery classes (part of a $27 million grant from U.S. Agency for International Development)
• Efforts to promote caviar consumption and production ($300,000)
• The building of a robotic squirrel named “RoboSquirrel”- part of a $325,000 grant from the National Science Foundation
• Promotion of specialty shampoo and other beauty products for cats and dogs ($505,000)
• Corporate welfare for the world’s largest snack food producer, PepsiCo Inc. ($1.3 million)
• Government-funded study on how golfers might benefit from using their imagination, envisioning the hole is bigger than it actually is ($350,000)
• “Prom Week,” a video game that allows taxpayers to relive prom night ($516,000)
• Oklahoma’s layover boondoggle, a scarcely used airport in Oklahoma receiving nearly half-a-million in taxpayer dollars only to transfer funds elsewhere in the state ($450,000)
• The 2012 Alabama Watermelon Queen tour, paid for in part by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, “to promote the consumption of Alabama’s watermelon through appearances of the Alabama Watermelon Queen at various events and locations” ($25,000)
• Out-of-this-world Martian – $947,000 – NASA is studying what food astronauts could eat on Mars by simulating a Mars outpost at a barren location in Hawaii
• ObamaPhones’ – $1.5 billion. Enrollment in the Lifeline program has skyrocketed as people sign up to get free cell phone for which they qualify if they are on federal tested programs
• Speed reading faces – $30,000. NSF funds used to study whether people can determine a person’s sexual orientation with just a glance.
• Fighting obesity with giant graffiti carrots – $13,000. Anti-obesity funds pay for a giant graffiti mural focused on sustainability.
• Another bridge to nowhere – $520,000. A covered bridge in Ohio that is not used by cars or tied to any walking or bike trail will be rehabilitated with federal funds
• Free bus rides for Super Bowl attendees – $142,419. A Department of Transportation grant paid for free bus rides during the 2012 Super Bowl in Indianapolis. Average prices for Super Bowl tickets are around $3,000
• Movie theater field trip to see “Red Tails” – $57,000. Federal education funds were misused in Texas to send fifth-grade boys to a movie theater to see “Red Tails” (girls were left behind).
• Self-reflection video game using Henry David Thoreau’s 1845 writings – $40,000. National Endowment for the Humanities funding pays for video game simulating Thoreau’s experience at Walden Pond.
• U.S. Iraqi police State Department training program burns through hundreds of millions, crashes in flames – $400.2 million. State Dept’s Iraq police training program has failed miserably, according the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. No objectives were created, and classes did not help Iraqis at all. The State Department will hand over to the Iraqis several building projects that ended up being unnecessary
• The streetcar named No Desire – $35.6 million. Federal transportation money will help build a trolley in St. Louis that has been called the “Streetcar Named No Desire” by one local. It duplicates existing light rail and public transportation, some say.
• Sidewalks to nowhere anger local citizens – $1.1 million. Department of Transportation funds are used for “sidewalks to nowhere” in Florida and Michigan that have local citizens angered. In Florida, the sidewalk was a “safe route to school” that was still unsafe. In Michigan, Federal requirements forced a county to make sidewalk ramps at an intersection without sidewalks.
• Congressional salaries total almost $100 million. Seems like they should be able to get something done for that much money? Especially since these people will work only 13 Fridays in 2012 and worked less than three weeks in the three months leading up to the November elections.

These 22 wasteful spending expenses total $2,160,420,419. Let’s
do some simple math, in light of the Connecticut school shootings:

• According to the Federal government, there 132,183 private and public schools in this country up through high school. (http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=84)
• According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average police officer in this country earns about $55,000 a year.
• If we decided to place an armed, trained police officer in every school in America, the annual cost would be about $7.3 billion a year.
• If we could somehow magically redirect the above wasteful spending away from these trivial expenses to funding protection for our kids in school, we would be able to put a trained, armed police officer in 30% of the nation’s schools. ($7.3 billion in police officer costs divided into the $2.16 billion in spending on the 22 projects/program listed above.)
• Thus, if we could find another 50 or so other, similarly wasteful Federal government spending instances (something that would be extremely easy to do), we could annually put a trained, armed police officer in EVERY U.S. school, without raising taxes on any American.
• Another approach would be to magically redirect the $2.16 billion to protecting 30% of our schools and charge every American household just $.85 a month in taxes to cover the other 70% of schools.
• Still another approach is to consider the fact that the U.S. has needlessly deployed over 130,000 troops in Europe, Japan, and South Korea. Rather than using taxpayer money to defend Seoul, Tokyo, and Paris, maybe it is time to maybe it is time to use that taxpayer money to defend our kids within the confines of this country.

The bottom line is that, as nation, we have the wealth and ability today to more fully protect our kids in their schools without killing any vital Federal program or project, without going through the fruitless and divisive political debate of gun control, and without raising taxes on any American.

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Since this blog post and the solution it proposed, we found out that:

1. President Obama signed legislation that will guarantee that he and his family, along with former Presidents, will have armed, Secret Service protection for life.
2. The school that President Obama’s kids attend is protected by 11 armed guards everyday in addition to the Secret Service detail assigned to protect his kids.

If the President can provide trained, professional armed guards for his kids in their schools, why can’t we do the same for every American kid while in school? The above math indicates it is possible if we just cleaned up wasteful government spending a little bit.

But there is another way to finance such a program, without raising taxes on any American, if we only could force the political class in Washington to stop spending and wasting taxpayer wealth on themselves and start spending it on our KIDS.

In our January 6, 2013 post, we revealed excessive and useless wasting examples of politicians spending our money on themselves. A few examples include the following disgraces:

1. Georgia Senator Isakson - Arranged a $4 million earmark for Northrop Gruman in exchange for a $7,000 donation and arranged a $1.6 million earmark for Scientific Research Corp. in exchange for a $2,900 donation. (Source: Seattle Times)
2. Hawaiian Senator Inouye - Secured a $135 million taxpayer financed bailout after intervening on behalf of a poorly managed, non-qualifying bank. Why? Inouye had most of his net worth invested in that bank. (Source: Hawaii Free Press)
3. Illinois Senator Durbin - Arranged a $1.6 million earmark for Gentex in exchange for a $2,000 donation and arranged another $1.6 million earmark for Epir Technologies in exchange for a $2,700 donation. (Source: Seattle Times)
4. Rep. Corrine Brown (D - Fla.) - Between 2005 and 2010, Brown helped secure $21.9 million for six clients of a lobbying firm where her daughter works.
5. Rep. G.K. Butterfield (D - NC) - Butterfield has helped obtain $817,500 over the past few years toward revitalizing buildings in Wilson, N.C. The lawmaker owns 19 properties within three-quarters of a mile of the project.
6. Rep. Norm Dicks (D - Wash.) - In 2008, Dicks, as an appropriations chairman, secured a $1.82 million earmark for a Washington state environmental agency where his son worked as executive director.

These are just six random examples of politicians wasting our money on their families and their careers, money that could be spent protecting OUR kids. You can visit the dozens and dozens of other examples of similar waste at that January 6th post.

If you did read that post and added up the amount of waste that the political class in Washington dispenses for its own goals every year you would find it sums to $711.6 million. Since, on average, it costs about $55,000 a year to staff a police officer throughout the country, if the political class had used $711.6 million in taxpayer wealth to put an armed police officer in schools rather, than divert the taxpayer money to their financial backers or their friends and family, as outlined in detail in our January 6, 2013 post, we could have armed protection in another 13,000 schools protecting our kids.

Since we have already calculated above that terminating just 22 wasteful government projects would allow us to staff armed officers in about 39,300 schools, this additional savings would put armed police officers in 52,300 schools or about 40% of our schools. No taxes raised, no Second Amendment shredding, just good solid trained protection in over 50,000 schools FOR OUR KIDS! It is that simple.

All it requires is for the Federal government to stop spending over $2 billion a year on stupid, inane, useless projects and programs and stop the political class from using taxpayer money to grease their reelection campaigns and the personal wealth of themselves and their family members. You decide what are the better spending priorities, I know what my answer is.

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:

http://www.reason.com/
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

Why The Political Class Ticks Me Off - Past and Present

A couple of new articles came across the desk today that just set me off again on today's American politicians. They reminded of information we posted in two previous discussions:

Ticking Me Off - Past

• In August we reviewed how Congresswoman Ginny Brown-Waite, who was a member of the House committee responsible for overseeing the banking industry, was making personal bank stock trades in the midst of Congress and the Obama administration offering billion dollar bailouts to the very banks Brown-Waite was investing in. In the real world, this is called insider trading and all of us probably would have went to jail for this kind of behavior. In the political world it is not even called conflict of interest. No investigation, no House reprimand, just a politician trading on their position to the detriment of the rest of us. Ticks me off.
• In a Washington Post article in May, 2007 and discussed in the book,"Love My Country, Loathe My Government", it was reported that while many of the political class were getting on the global warming bandwagon, the United States government continued to sponsor a program, left over from the Depression, that uses billions of dollars in taxpayer funds to subsidize the construction of coal burning power plants throughout the rural parts of the country. In fact, according to the article, the current plan is to spend $35 billion over the next ten years to build conventional coal burning, CO2 spewing power plants. Think about how stupid this is: Obama wants to implement plans to tax power usage of regular Americans for the global warming cabal while funding coal power plants. Ticks me off.

Ticking Me Off - Present

• According to the September/October CATO Policy Report, www.cato.org, Hawaiian Senator Daniel Inouye's staff asked Federal regulators about a bailout of an ailing Hawaiian bank. It seems that Senator Inouye had helped established the bank and had invested the bulk of his personal wealth. To make a long story short, the bank was in the tank and the FDIC had already recommended that it was not worth saving and should not receive a bailout. However, two weeks after the staff's inquiry, the bank received $138 million of taxpayer money from the Treasury Department. As with the Congresswoman above, this is tantamount to insider trading and is definitely a conflict of interest in my eyes. Ticks me off.
• As everyone knows, a major, major cause of the deep recession and housing industry implosion was that many people getting a mortgages over the past years did not have to have any down payment or prove what their real income was. With no down payment, homeowners had less of a vested interest in keeping up their mortgage payments and lenders did not care since many of the mortgages were insured by the Federal government, i.e. taxpayer money. After all of the destruction this type of behavior has cost the country, one would think that this is a mistake we would never make again. But no! According to an article in the September 28, 2009 issue of business week, "USDA Home Loans - Subprime Redux", the Agriculture Department is running a home loan program where applicants can get a home mortgage and not have to put any down payment forward. Think about how stupid this is. We just learned about how no down payment mortgages helped screw up the economy and the government is now doing it again. And, it is being run out of the Department of Agriculture! What's next, is the SEC going to run NASA? Of course, the government guarantees all of the lending so potential homeowners and builders alike love it since their risk is greatly reduced. And the Obama administration supports the program, having just upped its budget to $10.5 billion. Ticks me off.

The Brown-Waite and Inouye examples just prove again that these people in the political class have no pride or loyalty to the American taxpayer. They are only in it for themselves. The coal power plants and USDA examples prove that we have allowed government to get so big that no one is in charge and we very often get programs that are at odds with themselves and reality, which always costs the American taxpayer. Smaller, leaner government and some sense of conflict of interest compliance have to come about or the insanity will never end and I will continue to be ticked off.

Remember When?

Let's get nostalgic today. Were you alive when the following events occurred:

• 1955 - Elvis Presley appears on television for the first time.
• 1959 - Ford discontinues the Edsel.
• 1962 - The Beatles record their first song.
• 1963 - President Kennedy is assassinated.
• 1965 - The second season of the New York World's Fair opens.
• 1968 - McDonalds introduces the Big Mac

These events occurred a long time ago. Prior to the Internet, iPods, cable television, fax machines, email, hybrid cars, personal computers, Google, microwave ovens, cell phones, disco, death of disco (thank heavens), prior to any terrorist attacks, prior to when we knew there were Kurds/Shiite/Sunnis, and prior to Jon and Kate.

Now consider the following, recent office holding politicians:

• John Dingell - first elected to the House in 1955 (54 years ago)
• Robert Byrd - first elected to the Senate in 1959 (50 years ago)
• Ted Kennedy - first elected to the Senate in 1962 (47 years ago)
• Daniel Inouye - first elected to the Senate in 1963 (46 years ago)
• John Conyers - first elected to the House in 1965 (44 years ago)
• Ted Stevens - first elected to the Senate in 1968 (41 years ago)

I am a great believer that if you are not part of the solution then you must be part of the problem. Given how poorly the country has been run over the past 40 years or so, (we still have a drug problem, we still having failing public education, we still have rising health care costs, we still have no national energy program, we still have Social Security and Medicare heading for bankruptcy, etc.) could it be that these folks and others like them that have long tenures in office are part of the problem? They were elected in totally different eras of world history, eras that are long gone.

Thus, one of the most important steps in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" is to limit the length of politicians' tenures in both the Senate and House. This step will ensure that 1) fresh ideas, minds, and viewpoints are constantly passing through both chambers since keeping the same minds in office decade after decade does not seem to be working and 2) it would hopefully remove much of the corrupting money that goes into election campaigns since politicians would only get one term, possibly freeing them up to make the tough decisions that benefit America rather than the short term, selfish reelection campaign financing decisions they make today.