June, 2017, Part 9, Political Class Insanity: Congressional Crimes and Insanity and More

As we do every month, we review the latest idiocy, lunacy, ineptness, and general insanity from the American political class. We are getting started as little late this month since we needed to review the latest global warming.climate change insanity from the likes of Al Gore, culminating in our review of the 26 reasons why it was appropriate and necessary for Trump to pull us out of the Paris Climate Agreement:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2017/06/june-2017-part-4-i-am-global-warming.html

But let’s quickly get into this month’s political class insanity because over the past month or so there has been a lot of it was Washington implodes into a useless pile of incompetence:

1) If Nancy Pelosi is the best source of political class insanity for this blog, Sheila Jackson Lee, a Congresswoman from Texas, might be a close runner up. This is a member of Congress who erroneously thinks that the Constitution is about 400 years old, who thinks that South Vietnam and North Vietnam STILL exist as separate countries, and who wondered out loud if a Mars on surface vehicle would be driving anywhere near where Neil Armstrong walked on the moon.

Joe Schoffstall, writing for the Washington Free Beacon on May 30, 2017, brings up to date with the latest political class insanity from Congresswoman Lee:

• According to research by the Washington Free Beacon, Lee allegedly and illegally used campaign funds to purchase tickets to the Super Bowl.
• She then posted pictures of herself partying at the Super Bowl on her website.
• The pictures were subsequently taken down once the Beacon report came out.
• The report found that almost $10,000 of campaign funds were allegedly used to purchase Super Bowl tickets: “Three days before the event, Jackson Lee's campaign disbursed $4,900 to 21st Century Fox for Super Bowl tickets. A second transaction was made days after the game when Jackson Lee's campaign reimbursed Gerald Womack, her campaign manager, $4,900 for tickets.”
• On the day of the Super Bowl, Lee posted a picture of herself at the stadium on her Instagram account:

• The photo was taken down soon after the Beacon went public with the campaign fund allegations.
• Since members of Congress are strictly prohibited from using campaign funds for personal use, the Congresswoman has some explaining to do.

Just another politician likely using and abusing the system and taxpayer wealth for their own greedy, unethical, and possibly illegal purposes.

2) Uncountable times we have pointed out how massive Federal government programs like Medicare and Social Security are so inept and infested with criminal fraud that untold trillions of dollars have likely been paid out incorrectly or criminally over the years. As a result, the programs are currently in fiscal distress and face massive problems in the coming years.

Unfortunately, it does not look like the politicians in Washington are getting the problem under control according to as recent report coming out of the Social Security Administration:

• A recent audit found that the Social Security Administration (SSA) erroneously paid out over $1 billion in benefits to people that did not have Social Security numbers.
• These are people that should not be able to get any kind of SSA benefits at all but instead the Federal bureaucracy gave them over $1 billion.
• According to the SSA inspector general: “[U]nless it [SSA] takes corrective action, we estimate SSA will pay about $182.5 million in benefits, annually, to representative payees who do not have an SSN or paper application supporting their selection.”
• Since 2004, the SSA has paid out $853.1 million to these so-called representative payees that had been terminated by the SSA.

Just another day and another couple of hundred billion taxpayer dollars down the drain due to political and bureaucratic bungling in D.C.

3) One last piece of political class insanity for today and for this month, I cannot take any more. This piece of insanity comes to us from the I Have The Truth website in an article written by Kay Francis on June 1, 2017:

• Although Alcee Hastings is only one of six Federal judges to ever be removed from his post by Congress, he is somehow currently a U.S. Congressman from Florida.
• His removal was the result of being busted for asking for a bribe of $150,000 in exchange for favorable treatment in a racketeering case that was before him in court.
• The House of Representatives voted 413 to 3 to have him removed from his judge position, kind of an overwhelming indictment of his guilt.
• Did I mention that even after this crime and removal from the bench he got elected to Congress?!
• He is again in trouble for shady dealings in that he has been giving his girlfriend the maximum allowed taxpayer funded salary for five years to “work” in his field office.
• Oh yeah, to work in is field office she received over $168,000 a year, three times the median household income.
• Oh yeah, he was also sued by Judicial Watch in their support of a former employee who accused him of repeated sexual harassment.
• Despite his despicable behavior over time, he had the nerve to accuse fellow Congressmen of being “nasty to the poor.”
• Hastings also employs the wife of a former staff person who has been convicted for money laundering.

Did I mention that he is currently serving in Congress despite the above infractions and crimes? Only in America.

That will do it for today and this month. More insanity sure to come the same time next month.

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

April, 2017, Part 9, Political Class Insanity: Corruption and Economic Ignorance

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. 

Today and for all of the insanity 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) We have often pointed out how politicians are usually idiots when it comes to economic affairs. Their economic policies are usually useless, dangerous, and/or ignorant of economic theory and common sense. Such is the case in the state of New York that recently celebrated the raising the state’s minimum wage to $15 an hour.

But like every other location that raised the minimum wage to $15 an hour, the politicians involved never anticipated the consequences of their actions. If you raise a company’s wage expense budget line, then that company has to find other ways to compensate by lowering expenses and costs in other parts of their operations since they usually cannot make up the difference in expenses by increasing their revenues. The increasing of the minimum wage does nothing to increase demand and revenue.

And for most companies, the easiest place to reduce costs to offset increased wage rates is in the personnel area of their budget, i.e. fire workers. In this case, the good news is that if you had a job you would be making at least $15 an hour. The bad news, and reality, is that because the political class raised the minimum wage, you do not have any job at $15 an hour.

Such was the case in a recent NBC News report which reported on a New York college cafeteria operation that fired ALL of its employees because of the increase in the minimum wage. Instead, the cafeteria has installed “food-dispensing” machines that will take the place of the entire cafeteria staff at that college. Great, a raise in the minimum wage caused unemployment to go up, go figure.

Well, we have figured that any number of times in this blog. From Los Angeles to parts of the state of Washington, the raising of the minimum wage always results in higher unemployment as businesses, trying to stay profitable and in business, end up investing in technology that does not have to be paid a higher minimum wage. Always happens, but politicians are always too stupid to understand this basic economic principle. As a result, more people are now paid $0 an hour since they have been fired because of a higher minimum wage. Insane.

2) But it is not just in New York state where there is this economic insanity as it relates to the minimum wage. According to a recent article by Breitbart:

• An analysis of the San Diego restaurant industry has shown that just in that one California city, restaurant jobs have gone down by a whopping 4,000 position in the just the past year since the city raised the minimum wage.
• And San Diego raised the minimum to only $11.50 an hour, not the $15 an hour that other places have done, e.g. New York state.
• As always, raise the minimum wage and you end up raising the unemployment rate at the same time.
• “If job growth in the restaurant sector had just kept pace with the state’s performance … the industry could have created 5,200 jobs instead of the 1,300 that took place,” Lynn Reaser, chief economist of the Fermanian Business & Economic Institute at Point Loma Nazarene University.
• Forbes Tim Worstall’s article about what happened in Seattle was referenced in the Breitbart article, where that city also raised the minimum wage which also resulted in lost jobs, jobs that would have normally been staffed by less wealthy citizens, giving them no job and no wages at all.

When will politicians learn to stay out of economic affairs and let the market handle everything? Whenever politicians think they are economic geniuses they hurt the most vulnerable in the world, denying them jobs when their ill fated policies restrict economic growth. Idiots.

3) Alright, let’s get out of the economic realm and get back into just plain old political corruption. Consider some ethics and corruption problems that the American Outlook website reported on relative to a sitting Congressman:

• Congressmen Luis Gutierrez from Illinois is an open advocate of illegal immigration into America and it appears that there might be other illegal acts that he is into.
• According to a recent report from the Washington Free Beacon, Gutierrez paid both his wife and daughters hundreds of thousands of dollars from his election campaign funds over the past five or six years.
• While this is not strictly illegal, it is illegal for the candidate to personally gain from funds raised for an election campaign, meaning if not illegal, it is certainly unethical.
• His wife pulled down over $44,000 in his 2010 campaign, making her the top recipient of cash from that campaign, and then duplicated that feat in the 2012 campaign when she pocketed $93,000.
• Her $93,000 was a full 25% of what his campaign committee disbursed for the whole campaign.
• In his next two campaigns his wife pocketed $175,000.
• His daughters also got paid during these campaigns.

Must be nice to take money from people under one pretense and then give it out to family members. Outside of Congress I believe this is a felony. Must be good to be a member of the protected political class.

4) But Gutierrez is not the only unethical person in Congress. According to reporting by the Constitution website:

• Congressman Alcee Hasting recently got exposed when it came to light that he had given his long time girlfriend over $2.5 million over the past 20 years, keeping her on his payroll as his highest paid employee even though she was not anywhere close to being his most important staffer.
• But he and Gutierrez are not alone in this type of unethical behavior since the Washington Free Beacon recently reported that Congresswoman Maxine Walters has paid her daughter over $600,000 since 2006 from campaign funds.
• Her daughter served as employee on her mother’s campaign committees.
• But this is not the first time she has dabbled in unethical and/or illegal activities since in 2010 Waters was brought up on three separate charges by her peers in the House, even after Congressman Barney Frank told her not to get involved in advocating for a bank in which she had financial interest, breaking an important ethics rule that requires Congressional “members to behave in a way that reflects creditably on the chamber.”
• The bank she advocated for, OneUnited, was in financial trouble and Walters' husband owned a sizable amount of OneUnited stock that would have been worthless if the bank went bankrupt.
• Waters also violated a House rule prohibiting lawmakers from using their positions for financial gain, as well as a government ethics statute banning the dispensing of “special favors.”
• But again, we should not be surprised since various government watchdog groups have often cited her as one of the most corrupt politicians in Washington.

Just another set of examples where the concept of term limits becomes more and more attractive every day and with every unethical and corrupt act of the American political class.

That will do it for today’s and this month’s political class insanity review. Today we see that existing members of the political class in Washington know nothing about economic and everything about enriching themselves. Insanity. More of the same next month, guaranteed.

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

July, 2016, Part 1, Political Class Insanity: Arming The Bureaucracy, Overstating A Congressman's Value, and More

It is the beginning of another month which means it is time again to review the latest political class insanity from the American political class. Each month it takes us multiple posts to cover the wasteful spending, incompetent government organizations and employees, government programs that usually make a problem worse than resolving it, inane and idiotic politician comments, etc. In fact, last month we set a record, needing ten full posts to cover it all.

To review past posts on this insanity and idiocy, just click on the first few posts in each month listed to the right of this page. After reviewing just a handful of these insanity posts we think you will agree that we are currently being served by the worst set of American politicians ever to hold office in our entire history.

It looks like our politicians have been especially insane over the past month or so let’s get started with the latest insanity from today’s American politicians one day earlier than we usually do:

1) According to a recent report from the Washington Post, that was summarized in the June 24, 2016 issue of The Week magazine, in 2013, 99% of ALL Federal government workers received a performance rating of at or above fully successful. This was based on a compilation of performance reviews. The Government Accountability Office looked at 1.2 million Federal civil servants ratings and found that less than 1% of these Federal employees were rated “minimally successful” or “unacceptable” at their jobs.

Where to start with this insanity? No human endeavor EVER had such good staffs that 99% of that staff was so outstanding in the performance of their work. No one has a human based group where nearly everyone in that group is so near perfect. Given how poorly the Federal government performs, I would contend that these numbers are reversed, maybe, maybe 1% of Federal employees do their job in an outstanding manner. 

This is just another example of where politicians and the Federal government employees they oversee have no accountability in their their jobs. No matter how poorly they perform their jobs, whether sitting in Congress, the White House, or a government bureaucracy, you will get paid and paid well and never experience any accountability in how good or how poor their job performance is.

2) According to a recent article by Time.com, American total wealth has now reached a record high $88.1 TRILLION. While this would seem like good news, consider the reality that when Obama leaves office, he would have doubled the national debt to about $20 TRILLION. That means to pay off the national debt, every American family on average would have to give up about 22% of their TOTAL wealth to pay off that debt. 22%, more than one fifth. 

And since the debt is growing faster than the economy, you can be sure that the 22% figure will rise substantially in the coming years. This is the sad legacy that we are leaving our kids and grandkids, a sad legacy that was doubled under Obama. 

3) One would expect certain parts of the Federal government to allow some of their employees to carry weapons and be trained in the use of guns. The DEA, the FBI, the Secret Service, U.S. Marshals, and maybe a few others can rationally be expected to possibly need firearms in the execution of their duties. No big deal.

But a recent report from Philip Hodges on June 24, 2016 tells us that there are some other parts of the Federal government that somehow think they need to use taxpayer money to arm their employees also:

- According to the report, some unexpected Federal bureaucracies possess more weapons than the U.S.Marines.

- Apparently, the IRS, the Social Security Administration, the EPA, the Department of Education (DOE), and even the United States Postal Service (USPS) has armed some of its employees.

- The Washington Free Beacon, reporting on the results of a study by the watchdog group, Open The Books, found the following atrocities:

• Civilian agencies of the Federal government has spent an amazing $1.48 BILLION on weapons, ammo, and military style equipment between 2006 and 2014.
• As an example of the insanity, the IRS has outfitted some of its agents with AR-15 rifles and EPA employees have access to camouflage outfits.
• The Food and Drug administration has 183 armed “special Agents,” 50% more than what it had ten years ago.
• Some Health and Human Services inspector general employees have been trained with very sophisticated weapons by the same consultants that train the Pentagon’s special forces troops.
• Open The Books’ analysis determined that the Federal government now has 200,000 non-military officers with arrest and gun authority, a number that is larger than the current size of the U.S. Marine Corps which has 182,100 Marines in its ranks.
• The IRS has purchased such weapons as pump-action and semi-automatic shotguns, semi-automatic Smith & Wesson M&P15s, and Heckler & Koch H&K 416 rifles, which can be loaded with 30-round magazines.
• The EPA spent $3.1 million on guns, ammo, and equipment, including drones, night vision, “camouflage and other deceptive equipment,” and body armor.

Unbelievable. As many in Congress and the political class are trying to shred the Second Amendment and disarm Americans at the same time they are taking taxpayer money to provide weapons to civilian Federal employees. Why does a Department of Education need armed employees to collect on delinquent student loans? Why does the Social Security Administration need armed employees to go after 80 year old retirees for some reason? Does the IRS need agents armed with 30 round magazines to go after someone who did not pay their taxes on time? 

I am sure that occasionally these outfits my need some protection in the executing of their jobs. But we do not need 200,000 Federal employees armed to the teeth. It is amazing that civilians have not been accidentally killed with 200,000 armed Federal employees wandering around. On the surface, this is a tremendous and huge waste of taxpayer money. 

Deeper down, this has the potential for creating a national police force under the control of Washington bureaucrats, people who have seldom had our best interests and freedoms at the top of their priorities. The word Gestapo comes to mind but that is probably just an overblown paranoid concern. But I bet a lot of Germans thought the same thing at one point in time when they were being disarmed while a national police force was being formed. More insane things have come out of the American political class.

4) Most Americans, as measured by opinion polls, usually have a pessimistic view of where the country is today and what the trends into the future are:

• Real unemployment is still close to 10%. 
• The national debt has almost doubled since Obama came into office.
• Wages and household income levels have been stagnant or negative six years after the recession ended.
• 45 million Americans still need Federal food assistance every month.
• Taxes are still high with little benefit in return.
• Domestic terrorist attacks have been trending upwards over the past 18 months or so.
• Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are hurtling towards insolvency.
• Our kids are still being under educated vs, kids in most other countries despite the high cost of education in this country.
• Our borders still leak and are insecure.
• The war on drugs is still being lost.
• The country’s infrastructure is collapsing despite high levels of taxation.

We could go on and on but you get the idea. The country is being run by inept politicians and bureaucrats, the results speak for themselves.

Which makes the recent demand from a Florida Congressman so insane. According to Natalie Johnson, writing for the Washington Free Beacon on June 9, 2016, Congressman Alcee Hastings recently complained that members of Congress deserve a pay raise, despite their dismal performance as outlined above. The Congressman complained that he has to pay high rent to live in Washington D.C. and that should be reason enough for him and his peers to get a pay raise. 

Keep in mind that an average salary for a Congressman is about $174,000, which is about three and half times the average American household income level. While I have no doubt that it is expensive to live in Washington D.C., I doubt it is three and half times more expensive to live in D.C. than in an average American location. And yet, the Congressman still thinks that he deserves a pay increase: “[Congressional] Members deserve to be paid, staff deserves to be paid and the cost of living here is causing serious problems for people who are not wealthy to serve in this institution,” he said during a Rules Committee hearing on the upcoming appropriations bill. “We aren’t being paid properly.”

Excuse Mr. Hastings, based on your performance and the overall performance of your peers, you are lucky you are getting paid at all. There is no aspect of the Federal government and bureaucracy that is operating efficiently, effectively, and creating value for taxpayers. In the real world, outside of government jobs, you would have been fired for incompetence and non-productivity, based on the list above.

That’s a good start for this month’s insanity. A Congressman who vastly overstates his value, a dangerously armed Federal bureaucracy, a dangerously growing national debt level, and overrating just about every Federal employee. 

And this is just the start of the insanity.

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

June, 2015, Part 8, Political Class Insanity: Money For Nothing In South Carolina, TSA Gropers, and More

It is the start of another month which means it is time to review the latest political class insanity that the American political class has dropped on our heads in the past month or so. We do this review every month in order to continually prove our view that we are currently being served by the worst set of politicians in the history of our country. Their inane quotes, their failed programs and laws, their wasteful spending, their ineptness, and continued focus on their own careers and self enrichment at the expense of taxpayers is constant and disgraceful.

This month could be one of the worst ever, given the backlog that needs to be discussed. The insanity will cover a full range of areas where today’s politicians continue to disappoint and fail us. As always, the new ways they find to screw up is never ending and always creative.

Today is the eighth update to the insanity for this month:

1) Let’s be honest, it is good to be a Washington politician. They earn over $170,000 a year, more than three times the median American household annual income.They have incredible health and retirement benefits. They get to lease expensive cars on the taxpayers’ dime. In total, the number of hours they work every year probably would classify them as part time workers since they get numerous vacations throughout the year. And most of them leave Washington far wealthier than when they came to Washington.

And it does not matter how well or how poorly they perform their jobs. They still get all of these perks. And let’s face it, given their poor performance and the sad state of the country, they have not done a good job at doing their jobs.

But apparently all of this is not enough for Congressman Alcee Hastings. He recently made headlines when he stated that members of Congress and their $174,000 salaries need a raise since it costs a lot of money to live in Washington D.C.: “Members deserve to be paid, staff deserves to be paid and the cost of living here is causing serious problems for people who are not wealthy to serve in this institution.”

Congressman, if you are making three times the median annual household income you are already being paid quite well. And based on performance, you do not deserve anywhere near that amount of money based on results.

But according to a recent article in the Washington Free Beacon, Congressman Hastings might have an ulterior motive for wanting a pay raise since allegedly he has a few bills from when he was investigated on corruption charges:

• Robert Catz, $500,000 – $1 million debt incurred from 1981 to 1985
• Terrance Anderson, $1 million – $5 million debt incurred from 1981 to 1989
• Patricia Williams, $500,000 – $1 million debt incurred from 1981 to 1989
• Karr and McClain, $100,000 – $250,000 debt incurred from 1983 to 1989
• Mark McDonald, $15,000 – $50,000 debt incurred from 1981 to 1983
• Lewis Meyers, $15,000 – $50,000 debt incurred from 1981 to 1983
• Bright Star (Mortgage), $100,000 – $250,000 debt incurred from 2009
• In total, Congressman Hastings is more than $7.5 million in debt. And that should be his problem,not the taxpayer’s problem.

2) According to a recent Gallup poll, U.S. economic confidence suffered a sharp decline, the "lowest weekly score since December" and "the largest week-to-week drop since July."



Gallup offered some suggestion on the spike in economic pessimism: “Though stocks rebounded by last Friday, the previous week had been fraught with market losses in the Dow Jones industrial average and Standard & Poor's 500 market indexes. Meanwhile, the prices Americans were paying for gas increased in the latter half of April, with the U.S. Energy Information Administration reporting an increase of 17 cents per gallon over two weeks. Gallup has found that Americans' confidence in the economy is related to how much they pay at the pump. Additionally, the recent report that the nation's GDP grew a lackluster 0.2% in the first quarter—a disappointing figure compared with previous quarterly growth—may have dampened consumers' economic hopes.”

So, despite an $800 billion economic stimulus program, an energy revolution that created high paying jobs and reduced energy costs, and a Federal Reserve that printed trillions of dollars to stimulate the economy, Washington still has not figured out how to implement and live by viable economic policies and strategies.

3) The previous posts in this month’s political class insanity series has been infested with scandal after scandal involving the TSA. Today’s post is no exception. Judicial Watch obtained and made public 58 pages of government documents that showed TSA agents allegedly sexually assaulted American airline passengers at three major U.S. airports. 

According to the documents:

• Airline victims of the sexual assault allegations said they were “shocked,” “violated,” and “humiliated,” documents show.
• One woman said a female TSA agent “placed both palms against my breasts and I was shocked, humiliated, alarmed and assaulted and said ‘Stop!'"
• She reported the October 2013 incident at the Los Angeles Airport to a supervisor, according to documents. She was told the supervisor would look at the video, but that she was not allowed to know what actions were taken against the officer. She was also told that she couldn’t look at the video herself.
• A second female TSA officer groped a passenger’s breasts at the O’Hare Airport in 2013. Two other officers watching and “even the supervisor … began to roar with laughter,” according to the documents.
• Shortly after, also at O’Hare Airport, a woman claimed that her mother, a breast cancer survivor, felt her pat down was akin to rape and that she would “never travel again” because of her treatment.
• Another passenger “was struck very hard in the groin area” during a pat down at Denver International Airport on April 7, 2013.
• Two TSA officials at Denver International were fired after manipulating screenings to allow a male agent to “fondle the genital areas of attractive male passengers,” CBS4 in Denver reported last month.

So sad that we have allowed the Federal government and its bureaucrats to abuse our physical bodies in such public way. And then to add insult to injury, the TSA was so resistant to releasing these documents that Judicial Watch had to sue in court to obtain these embarrassing records of Americans being abused.

4) According to a recent Washington Times article, the House of Representatives recently approved over $300 million for the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility in South Carolina. Impressive name but why does it need $300 million?

Well, according to some critics, not only does it not deserve $300 million, the entire operation should be shut down:

• The program is part of the United States’ strategy to get rid of excess plutonium-based nuclear weapons by converting the weapons-grade plutonium into mixed-oxide fuel to sell to U.S. commercial nuclear reactors.
• Originally, the program was supposed to cost $1.6 billion and construction completed by 2007.
• But eight years later, in typical government fashion taxpayers have already sunk $4 billion into the project, it is only 67% complete, and the only customer the project had, Duke Energy, bailed out as the sole customer in 2008, leaving the project today with absolutely no customers.
• Which is why government watchdogs are saying that Washington politicians are throwing money out the window just to keep some unnecessary jobs around in South Carolina.
• “The funding is just to keep the project alive and keep it on standby. It really requires almost $200 million more a year to move forward, so Congress is really just throwing money in a hole,” said Lydia Dennett, an investigator with the Project on Government Oversight (POGO).
• Autumn Hanna, a senior program director at Taxpayers for Common Sense, said that the entire effort has “become one of those pet projects for members and senators that are pushing for their home states and are unwilling to look at other options because there is so much money coming in to their state.”
• For signing off on another expensive year of funding for a questionable nuclear proliferation project at the taxpayers’ expense, the House Appropriations Committee wins the Golden Hammer, a weekly distinction awarded by The Washington Times highlighting examples of wasteful federal spending.

Wasteful spending on a project that has no end in sight which eats up hundreds of millions of dollars every year and which has no customer for its output if and when it ever gets completed.Sounds about right for a Washington effort.

Another day, another set of nonsense from the American political class. An expensive project that serves no purpose, TSA gropers, more economic sadness from Washington, and a selfish and out of touch greedy politician. Still not done, more insanity 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:

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