July, 2014 Political Class Insanity, Part 5: Solar Panels Vs. Veterans Health, California's Failed Cash For Clunkers Programs, "We're Number 19" and More

This is our fifth, and probably not our last, post this month in our monthly series on political class insanity. Every month we try to keep up with the latest lunacy, idiocy, ineptness, wasteful spending, and outright corruption of the American political class. 

It is not an easy thing to do since we are apparently living through the worse set of politicians that this country has ever had to endure. As a result, we never seem to get a major issue resolved but are constantly bombarded with incompetence from every aspect of government and politics.

Today’s examples in no way dispute this assertion:

1) Two facts set up the first piece of insanity for today. First, many video clips of President Obama speaking about how he was going to make sure that our veterans got top notch care are available online. He made it a big campaign promise back in 2008 and afterwards, continuing to brag and promise about how well his administration would take care of veterans.

Second, the outgoing Bush administration warned the incoming Obama administration that there were serious problems within the Veterans Administration. Given our discussion yesterday and in previous posts on this topic, this is obviously a true depiction of what was going on when Obama came into office.

Bottom line: the Obama administration knew that there were problems taking care of our veterans’ medical issues and promised to give it the highest attention. But rather than devote all of the necessary resources to addressing the deficient medical care our veterans are receiving, what did Obama do? 

The Washington Free Beacon recently reported on some Veterans Administration expenses that had nothing to do with medical care and everything to do with political public relations:

• An analysis of more than $1 billion dollars in spending by the Department of Veterans Affairs on “professional services” over the past few years found several instances of questionable spending on items and efforts that had nothing to do with the medical care of our veterans.
• For example, millions of dollars were spent on a national ad campaign.
• Many millions more were spent on alternative energy programs to make VA facilities environmentally greener despite the fact that this expenses and investments would have nothing to do with fixing the inadequate care our veterans were and are receiving.
• This unnecessary behavior was driven by an executive order signed by Obama in October 2009, the VA was required to make its facilities more energy efficient and sustainable.
• A whopping total of 183 green energy projects were instituted for VA facilities across the country. 
• One single contract was for a Washington D.C.-based VA facility for nearly $1 million.
• And in the most inane use of taxpayer funds, in Buffalo, New York, one of the U.S. cities with the lowest number of sunny days annually, the Buffalo VA Medical Center installed a solar energy power unit. 
• Other sun starved cities, such as Albany, New York and Cleveland, Ohio also installed solar systems in their facilities. 

Talk about insanity. Veterans are dying by the hundreds, if not thousands, because of inadequate care from the VA while the VA is busy installing unneeded solar panels on VA facilities around the country. I am all for alternative energy but shouldn’t we fix what is broken within the VA before we go wild spending money on solar panels? 

How many veterans’ lives could have been saved if that million dollars in DC had been used for hiring more medical staff vs. solar panels? On a nationwide basis, how many lives could have been saved if solar panel money went into medical care first and solar panels some where in the future once the VA stopped letting veterans die? 

And the saddest part of all is that Obama knew about the VA problems before he issued the executive order and said he cared. Obviously, he doesn’t get it even when fully informed. Pathetic.

2) Insanity is not restricted to just Federal politicians, state level politicians are often just as inane and out of touch. Consider a state version of “Cash For Clunkers” that the political class in California has implemented. That state was paying drivers to get their air-polluting cars off the road. As an incentive, the state government was paying out cash to get state residents to buy a newer, more fuel-efficient model.

Sounds like a good idea but as almost always with political class ideas, it is failing miserably. During its first year, only 21 Californians in the entire state actually purchased a new vehicle under this program. The state mailed out more than 12,000 letters notifying people they were eligible for a portion of $3 million set aside for vehicle replacement. But with only 21 people taking advantage of the program, the mailing response rate was a very meager .2% of the mailing. 

Given these pathetic results, the program has been suspended but may reappear next year. Which raises the question: why bother? Given that the incentive was about $2,000 and the program was budgeted for $3 million, even if the entire budget was used up the net result would be about 1,500 new cars on the road in the entire state. Given that there are over 20 million cars on the road today in California, 1,500 cars was going to make hardly any kind of dent in air pollution at all under this program. 

Plus, as the Obama administration found out when it ran a Cash For Clunkers program, very few of the sales in this type of program are incremental. All it does is delay or pull up a purchase of a new car, a purchase that likely would have happened in the absence of free money anyway. This further reduces the incremental impact of the program.

Simple math that escapes our simple minded politicians. Handing out free money to the tune of $3 million to affect a minimal amount of cars in a state as huge as California a just plain dumb. Just do the math.

3) Consider some local political class insanity as a result of meddling Federal bureaucrats at Salem High School in Plymouth, Michigan. This was reported in the July, 2014 issue of Reason magazine, a great place to see how the political class systematically screws up our democracy and wealth every day.

In this case, the high school was forced to take down new bleachers and a scoreboard that was built by parents for the school’s baseball team. However, in the new world of political correctness, the Federal Department of Education found that the school was in violation of Federal laws because as a result of the parents' efforts, the boys’ baseball field was superior to the girls’ softball field.

The school had not budget to upgrade the girls field so in order to not violate the Federal law, they had to destroy what the parents had built at the baseball field. How insane has our country become when well meaning citizens, taking an active interest in their sons’ lives, can be viewed as criminals by the Federal government? 

When a country starts to destroy workable, positive assets in local communities in order to satisfy unnecessary Federal bureaucrats far away, we have definitely fallen down the rabbit hole. True insanity.

4) A recent cnn.com article that was summarized in the June 20, 2014 issue of The Week magazine found that according to an analysis by Credit Suisse, Americans’ median net worth is just $44,900 per adult despite us being many years away from the official ending of the last recession. Even more disappointing, this places us in 19th place relative to the rest of the world, with countries such as Japan, Canada, Australia and most of western Europe having higher median net worth. 

Many times in this blog we have asserted that the economic policy and planning skills of our politicians are worse than non-existent, they are dangerously bad. This latest statistic is just more proof that despite an energy revolution, record low interest rates for a record length of time, and the fact that we have had a number of years of non-recession economic times, these people in Washington still could not come up with an economic environment that would help us grow our personal wealth and improve our lives. 

We are no longer number in the world when it comes to wealth, we are a startling and disappointing 19th, courtesy of the Washington political class.

5) A www.newsday.com article that was summarized in the March 21, 2014 issue of The Week magazine discussed the reality that more than half a million Americans die each year as a result of Alzheimer’s disease. This makes the disease the third largest cause of American deaths, behind only heart disease and cancer.

Do you think that the Obama administration might have had a much bigger payoff if they had attacked this disease with all of the vim and vigor they used to get someone a half baked, expensive Bronze Plan via Obama Care? 

If they had focused on only reducing these three diseases and the astronomical costs associated with heart disease, cancer, and Alzheimer’s, they would have dramatically reduced health care costs which would have dramatically reduced health insurance costs, which would have created an economic boon for the country. 

Instead, the Washington political class created a 2,500 page monster piece of legislation that is increasing health care costs without reducing these three major drivers of health care costs. Insane.

That will do it for today relative to political class insanity. We have a Veterans Administration that continues to fail our veterans in so many ways, we have California politicians who do not know how to do simple math, we have a Federal bureaucracy destroying a perfectly good baseball facility, we have a falling standard of living vs. the rest of the world, and we are dying from preventable diseases while the Federal government bungles its way through a failed health care law that all but ignores the preventable fatalities.

Sounds about right for one day’s worth of political class insanity. We will finish up this series for this month tomorrow but rest assured we will revisit it again early next month. Politicians and the every growing bureaucracies they manage never rest and never fail to under whelm us with their ineptness and idiocy.

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.robertringer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

Political Class Insanity - July, 2012 Edition, Part 2: Harry Reid and Junk Mail, Subsidizing Big Banks, The Ice Cream Melted, and More

Yesterday we covered the first part of this month's political class insanity, courtesy of the American political class. We learned that although Harry Reid and the Senate have not passed a formal budget in over three years, Mr. Reid has recently introduced some nonsensical legislation to regulate the sport of boxing.

We learned that the Federal Housing Authority gave financial assistance to thousands of American families despite the fact that those same families owed the Federal government and the IRS millions of tax evaded dollars.

We learned that the Obama administration, in just a handful of ill fated alternative energy escapades, created just over 5,000 jobs at a cost of about $1.6 million PER JOB.

We learned that the American taxpayer is annually paying about $140 million a year to maintain an unneeded prison facility at Guantanamo to hold only 169 prisoners, a prison Obama promised to close in 2008.

I can hardly wait to see what today's insanity brings:

- Let's stay with Harry Reid for a while, he can sometimes be as funny as Nancy Pelois when he speaks. Consider a quote from The Hill he made on April 18, as reported in the August, 2012 issue of Reason magazine: "Seniors love getting junk mail. Sometimes it is their only way of communicating or feeling they're part of the real world. Elderly Americans, more than anyone in America, rely on the United States Postal Service."

Come on, Harry, are you kidding me:

• Is there actual research that shows that senior citizens actually LIKE getting junk mail? If so, they can have all of mine.
• By the tone of the statement, it appears he thinks MOST senior citizens like to get junk mail. I highly doubt it.
• Anyway, is that any reason to keep a failing government enterprise intact as it experiences declining revenue, revenue which is never coming back, and high fix costs, a combination that will require tens of billions of dollars from the taxpayers in the coming years unless the entire process is reformed? Just to maintain a junk mail stream? There is a reason they call it "junk."

No wonder he has not been able to develop a formal Senate budget in the past three years, given this view of reality.

- According to the same issue of Reason magazine, Juliet Pries wanted to open a simple ice cream store in a San Francisco neighborhood. No toxic chemicals. No pornography. No medical marijuana outlets. Just a simple ice cream store.

Unfortunately, the local political class is so inept that she claims it took her over two years and thousands of dollars just to get all of the permits she needed for the simple ice cream store and to complete the necessary paperwork required by multiple government entities and bureaucracies.

Could this be a simple example of why businesses and citizens are leaving the state in droves, resulting in a toxic business environment and the billions of dollars the state government is facing as a budget deficit? Why go through this type of hassle to start a business when you can get that business up and running much quicker, much cheaper, and much more hassle-free elsewhere?

- You know you are in trouble when your local political class has screwed up your city so badly that it has to reduce the number of functioning street lights in your city by almost half in order to skimp on electricity and replacement light bulb costs. This situation is actually unfolding in Detroit.

The city's financials are so bad that they are reducing the amount of street lights from about 88,000 to about 46,000. The local politicians actually hope that going dark in some neighborhoods will encourage people to move in order reduce the city's physical footprint. Talk about desperation, using blackouts to force people to move out of their homes.

- According to the June 18, 2012 issue of Business Week, the median net worth of the typical American family, which had been rising since the early 1990s, has quickly and dramatically dropped back to 1989 levels as a result of the Great Recession. Net worth peaked in 2007 and started dropping drastically since then. (By the way, 2007 was the first year that Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid operated and controlled Congress.)

Thus, Obama's recent statement that the private sector of the economy is doing just fine and the recent comments of his Department of Agriculture Secretary that the economy has turned the corner would probably ring hollow on most American families who have seen over 20 years of household wealth wiped out in just five years.

- According to a recent article by David Rhode in the TheAtlantic.com, and summarized in the May 25, 2012 issue of The Week magazine: "Since 2008 when the biggest banks caused a crisis that decimated the middle class, these banks have actually gotten bigger, with just five banks controlling $8.5 TRILLION in assets - equal to 56% of the nation's economy. These banks remained too big to fail."

Guess that whole 2,500 page Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation missed the mark on this little problem, a problem that the legislation was supposed to fix. Would any politician dare to bail out any of these banks again? I guess it depends on how much those banks and bankers have donated to that politician's election campaign. Speaking of which...

- There was a fascinating article  by Bloomberg on June 18, 2012 that outlined how the American taxpayer, and taxpayers around the world, subsidize their countries' major banks, encouraging risky banker behavior that always seem to lead to bank bailouts. The details of the article can be read at:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-18/dear-mr-dimon-is-your-bank-getting-corporate-welfare-.html

I am not an expert on banking by any stretch but the following excerpt summarizes the insanity quite nicely:

JPMorgan receives a government subsidy worth about $14 billion a year, according to research published by the International Monetary Fund and our own analysis of bank balance sheets. The money helps the bank pay big salaries and bonuses. More important, it distorts markets, fueling crises such as the recent subprime-lending disaster and the sovereign-debt debacle that is now threatening to destroy the euro and sink the global economy.



The article goes on to state that:

• The U.S. taxpayer ends up paying the major U.S. banks about $76 billion a year in similar subsidies.
• This $76 billion is more than what the Federal government spends on education of our kids every year.
• This subsidy estimate is about equal to the annual total profits of these 18 banks, i.e. without the subsidies over the past twelve months, these banks would be a breakeven proposition from a profitability perspective.
• The article states it is difficult to get rid of this taxpayer burden since the banking industry has already made over $285 million in campaign donations in the 2012 election cycle, a cycle that is no where close to ending.

The article proposes a series of logical, easy to understand steps that would fix the situation, noting that: "Like all subsidies, the taxpayer largess distorts supply. If the government supports corn farmers, you get too much corn. If the government subsidizes banks, you get too much credit." And in hindsight, it is now obvious that too much credit created too many easy mortgages which led to the housing bubble which led to the Great Recession.

$76 billion a year in taxpayer wealth down the drain to support bankers who take needless risks while greasing the reelection wheels of incumbent politicians. Insanity.

- A May 27, 2012 report from MSNBC reported that the chief of the National Weather Service had to resign since his organization misappropriated millions of dollars of government money. Apparently $44 million was misused or misallocated so we are not talking about trivial amounts of taxpayer wealth.

The report cited numerous conclusions from government investigators regarding lax financial controls and lax management oversight along with bad accounting practices. It is also possible that come of the activities violated the law. What a mess and likely waste and loss of millions of taxpayer dollars.

- According to a Washington Post report that was summarized in the July 4, 2012 issue of The Week magazine, about 130 Congressional members or their families traded stocks in companies that were lobbying on bills before the 130 lawmakers' committees between 2007 and 2010. 34 members of Congress "recast their financial portfolios during the financial crisis" AFTER secret meetings with top government officials.

As if $170,000 a year in salary and the best benefit packages in the world is not enough for these people. They get to improve their personal wealth without worrying about conflicts of interest or even being successful in their jobs.

That should do it for this month, the insanity is making me crazy. We somehow have to get Step 39 from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" implemented. Step 39 would impose term limits on all Federal politicians, one and done. That way, maybe we can clean up the whole campaign funding reelection scandal since no one would ever be getting reelected, Harry Reid could go home and wait for his junk mail to arrive, and maybe, just maybe, we could get some people into office who actually cared more about the country than their stock portfolios.

We invite all readers of this blog to visit our new website, "The United States Of Purple," at:

http://www.unitedstatesofpurple.com/

The United States of Purple is a new grass roots approach to filling the office of President of The United States by focusing on the restoration of freedom in the United States, focusing on problem solving skills and results vs. personal political enrichment, and imposing term limits on all future Federal politicians. No more red states, no more blue states, just one United States Of America under the banner of Purple.

The United States Of Purple's website also provides you the formal opportunity to sign a petition to begin the process of implementing a Constitutional amendment to impose fixed term limits on all Federally elected politicians. Only by turning out the existing political class can we have a chance of addressing and finally resolving the major issues of our times.

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 http://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.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment/

Ancient, Current, and Illegal U.S. Military Wasteful Spending

Please note: the following post is not meant in any way to be a criticism of our armed forces men and women bravely serving to defend our country today, I have the utmost respect for their dedication, courage, and sense of duty. I thank them for all of the sacrifices they make on a daily basis.

Several news articles caught my eye lately which reminded me  how out of control our military spending has become. Depending on how you count, we spend anywhere from $600 billion to $700 billion a year on our military infrastructure. This comes out to more than a quarter  of what the Federal government brings in via taxes and fees every year. It will account for nearly half of the Federal government's 2011 budget deficit. We are spending a lot of money on our military and Defense Department but are we getting at least equal value in return?

Highly doubtful if you look at how out of control this spending is. The waste really falls into three categories:

- Ancient Military Spending - this category includes all of the money we have long been spending in military areas that do not to be maintained any more, such as ancient and now unnecessary foreign deployments of U.S troops.
- Current Military Spending - this category includes all of the money we spend today in non-essential military operations and Defense Department bureaucracy.
- Illegal Military Spending - this category includes all of the money we spend on illegal military operations today.

Ancient Wasteful Spending

Maybe at some time, decades ago, during the Cold War it made sense to station over 80,000 U.S. troops in Europe to support our western Europe allies and guard against Communist forces coming across the Iron Curtain. However, the Iron Curtain came down twenty years ago, Communism no longer exists as a threat to Europe, and many of the nations where we stationed troops to guard against their invading armies are now our allies and are actually part of NATO, our European military alliance.

There is no longer a need to station more than a bare skeleton crew of military liaison people in Europe, no fighting personnel at all should continue to be deployed. Bring them home, reduce the military recruiting expense, and save the deployment cost.

The same goes for troops we have stationed in the Far East. South Korean has one of the strongest economies in the world. They have mandatory military service requirements for all of its citizens. They are strong enough to fight off any North Korean military moves whether or not we continue to station 30,000 or so troops in South Korea. If North Korean comes over the border, 30,000 U.S. troops are not going to make much of a difference in the fighting so why put them in danger? Bring them home and tell South Korea that they need to assume full accountability and responsibility for their defense, using their economic resources, not the economic resources of the United States taxpayer.

Same argument goes for Japan. The 25,000 or so troops we have there will make no difference in any future China military activity.  Japan is unlikely to attack the United States and has the third largest economy in the world. As with South Korea, let the Japanese deal with any military matters using their own economic resources.

These three examples are typical government bureaucracy fallacies. At one point in time they may have made some logical sense, (i.e. protecting against Communist aggression, protecting a weak South Korean democracy, etc.) but those are ancient needs that no longer exist. Unfortunately, like many ancient government bureaucracies, they have taken on a life of their own and continue to annually drain taxpayer resources for no reason.

Bring the troops home, reduce your military recruiting expense, given the influx of newly available military resources, and save the deployment costs. We can no longer garrison the world with U.S. troops that no longer serve any purpose. Imagine how much money we could save if we no longer had to support the foreign deployment of 130,000 or so of these U.S. troops overseas. It easily could be in the tens of billions of dollars every year.

Current Wasteful Spending

Current military costs appear seemingly easy to reduce if you think logically and with a little common sense. For example, according to a joint study from the U.S. Public Interest Research Group and the National Taxpayers Union that was released earlier this year, the Defense Department could greatly reduce its expenditures for useless military equipment in the following areas:

• According to the GAO, the Pentagon could save $184.5 billion by 2015 if they stopped buying military parts and equipment that are never used or are obsolete if they made some simple enhancements to their purchasing processes.
• The V-22 Osprey aircraft is way over budget, way behind schedule, and falling way short of the benefits it was supposed to deliver. Cancelling it and stopping the wasteful money drain would save over $6 billion by 2015.
• The Space Tracking Surveillance System satellite system has failed to deliver on its promises, is behind schedule, and suffers significant cost overruns. More importantly, its job can be handled by much less expensive, proven technology, according to an internal Defense Department analysis. Canceling this program would save about $5 billion by 2015.
• The same logic applies to the Expeditionary Force Fighting Vehicle which is 14 YEARS behind schedule and is viewed in its current state as "highly unreliable." Cancel this program and save over $16 billion by 2015.

The study goes on and on with other outdated, unreliable, over cost, behind schedule, unneeded military programs that could be cancelled without harming our military's ability to protect the country. All told, the study meticulously documents almost $300 billion of unnecessary military expenditures that could be saved by 2015.

However, as stated above, these are common sense and logical cuts to be made. However, common sense goes out the window when any government bureaucracy gets bloated and out of control. The more bloat there is the more embedded interests fight to protect their turf and bloat, no matter how insane or wasteful that turf is. Consider a report from Fareed Zakaria, who described this bloated bureaucracy known as the Defense Department about a year ago in a Newsweek article:

• While the private sector of the economy has stripped away levels of management to become more efficient and responsive, the Pentagon management levels have grown considerably, from seventeen layers a decade ago to about thirty levels of redundant management today.
• We now have almost 1,000 general and admirals in our armed forces, up 13% in the past 15 years, even though the number of people in our armed forces has shrunk over the time period.
• Every management layer at the Pentagon is larger than it was during the height of the Cold War. As an example, the article cites a study from Professor Paul Light of NYU where he estimated that there were 78 deputy assistant secretaries of defense in 1960 and there are 530 today.
• There are more military musicians in the military's marching bands than there are members in the State Department's Foreign Service.
• The Pentagon has ten times as many accountants than the State Department has Foreign Service officers.
• Defense Department Secretary Gates has publicly questioned whether or not we need to spend the money for an additional 100 fighter jets when we already have over three thousand such aircraft. Do we really need to build more multi-billion dollar Navy ships when we already have a navy that is larger than the next 13 navies combined, 11 of which are navies of our allies, and do we need to build more billion dollar stealth fighters when by 2020 we will still have 20 times as many such fighters as China.

Now consider an article by Boston Globe writer Peter Canellos, that was summarized in The Week magazine in the August 27, 2010 edition:

• Our current defense budget of $700 billion is six times larger than our nearest competitor.
• Our current defense budget is more than the next 18 largest defense budgets of other nations.
• More than $130 million of lobbyist money is spent ever year in an attempt to maintain and grow the country's spending on military hardware and other expenses, much of it unnecessary.

Much of this excess bureaucracy is unneeded to keep us safe but remains in place to only self sustain itself, wasting untold billions of dollars in the process. Why does a failed military program like the Expeditionary Force Fighting Vehicle hang around for 14 years despite its horrendous track record? Somebody in the bloated bureaucracy needs it to stay alive to sustain their job.

Thus, common sense makes no sense if you are defending your job. Until we streamline and shrink the military bureaucracy, the silly and wasteful military programs will continue.

Another current military waste that exists outside of the above discussion is the continued deployment of military personnel in Iraq. President Obama campaigned on the promise that he would get our forces out of Iraq quickly. He has failed miserably on that promise, with almost 50,000 troops still in country with discussions underway with the Iraqi government to extend their deployment. Not good, not good. Bring them home and save the tens of billions of dollars it costs us to deploy them in Iraq.

Which brings us to the first news article I recently came across. According to a CBSnews.com report that was summarized in the July 15, 2011 issue of The Week magazine, the final taxpayer bills for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a Brown University study, will come out to between $3.7 and $4.4 TRILLION. This estimate takes into account the so-called nation building efforts, ongoing medical care and benefits for our veterans and interest on what the U.S. borrowed to fund the warfare. To make that number real, that estimated cost of $3.7 TRILLION comes out to over $32,000 for every American household. Disgraceful expense for virtually nothing in return.

Illegal Wasteful Spending

For the life of me, I still do not understand how the military operations going on in the Mediterranean against Libya are not illegal, both from a Constitution perspective and a War Powers Act perspective. The Obama administration tries to spin this illegality as a non-war since we are only, theoretically, "supporting" the actual fighting NATO forces.

But we reported on news reports back in the spring that at that time the U.S. had already expended about $700 million in military costs on that operation. A recent article in the July 15, 2011 issue of The Week magazine reported that the Air Force Times estimates that the U.S. role in the conflict is not minimal, as Obama would have us believe. The U.S. military itself has flown nearly Air Force 3,500 missions over Libya since March 19 and over 800 of them were strike sorties, which I assume to be actual live firing missions.

So, how can this not be a war if we are flying thousands of Air Force sorties and being involved in live firing? Libya holds no strategic interest for us, we get very little, if any of our oil from it, and up until the spring, Libya was not viewed as a terrorist threat to us. Seems like not only a wasteful and unnecessary war, with probably over a billion dollars having been spent by this time by the American taxpayer, but also an illegal war.

Let's see: ancient, current, and illegal warfare that gets us nothing in return but wastes unholy amounts of taxpayer money every year. Does not sound like a good deal. But it illustrates how large and wasteful our government has become. Cutting Defense Department spending can be be done judiciously, safely, and quickly. The three categories of waste cited above would save hundreds of billions of dollars in just the next few years. 

Rather than cutting a measly $400 billion over the next 14 years like the Obama administration has proposed, cuts can be made that could save many multiples of that. $400 billion over 14 years comes out to less than $30 billion a year, less than 5% of the current military budget. That will not cut it. We can no longer deploy in Europe, Iraq, South Korea, and Japan, we can no longer support a bloated Pentagon bureaucracy, we can no longer fiddle around with doomed military hardware processes and programs, and we can no longer allow the political class to arbitrarily involve us in wars.

But most importantly, we need to force the political class to look beyond their own self interest, and the companies and lobbyists that feed politicians re-election campaign coffers, and make the right strategic cuts that are necessary to make our military more efficient and effective. Hitting the panic button at the mere mention of cutting our military budget is not a mature, intelligent, and effective way to cut unnecessary government costs.

We can no longer afford the bloat and the historical waste. The military industrial complex in this nation is not so efficient that a mature discussion and coherent plan to cut out the inefficiencies cannot and should not occur.



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 http://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.loathemygovernment.com/
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment.com/