June, 2015, Part 6, Political Class Insanity: Govenrment Computers Infested With Hackers, More TSA Ineptness, and More insanity

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 sixth update to the insanity for this month:

1) Let’s start off today’s insanity with another travesty from the TSA. Remember that yesterday we discussed the reality that a test of TSA security at airports resulting in the TSA screeners intercepting only 4% of the fake weapons and explosives that were passed through their stations. A 4% success rate, pathetic.

Well, if that was not enough to scare you off of the nation’s airplanes, consider this TSA disgrace:

• TSA security badges that allow TSA employees to access secure areas of airports have gone missing along with TSA uniforms and other devices used to control entry to secure airport areas.
• Judicial Watch, under a Freedom Of Information Act request, obtained government records which show that hundreds of lost, stolen or missing badges are now out of the control of the TSA.
• 139 security badges went missing in 2012, 131 went missing in 2013 and in 2014, 123 badges went missing.
• From a missing TSA uniform perspective, O’Hare International in Chicago was among the biggest consistent offenders with 336 lost uniform items in both 2013 and 2014.
• Washington Dulles International lost 343 uniform items last year and Philadelphia International 253. 
• Houston Intercontinental was the leader with 220 lost items in 2012.
• Other news reports show that the situation is far worse than what Judicial Watch reported since those news reports claim that more than 1,400 TSA badges that allow employees to access secure areas like runways and boarding gates went missing at one airport alone, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International, over approximately two years and that 270 badges went missing at San Diego International Airport in the last two years. 
• To really scare you, some of the security badges weren’t reported missing for months, meaning they weren’t deactivated and could still be used to enter restricted areas.

Unbelievable, you cannot make this stuff up, no one would believe that a fourteen year old organization that has been funded to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars can perform this poorly and this dangerously. Insane. Really tough to figure out what government agency is more inept, the TSA or the IRS.

2) Judicial Watch has also been active following up on another piece of government insanity and waste. They obtained government records that show the U.S. Secret Service agents were secretly redeployed from their security duties at the White House compound to protect a close friend of the agency’s director during a dispute with a neighbor.

Lisa Chopey was the administrative assistant to former Secret Service Director Mark Sullivan. She found herself in the middle of a dispute in her hometown in rural Maryland with a neighbor. According to government documents, Chopey requested that the Secret Service formally open a Federal invesitgation into the neighbor, Mike Mulligan. The Secret Service then secretly sent agents assigned to guard the White House to protect her.

What was at the center of the dispute? Did it have anything to do with national security? Was Ms. Chopey concerned about violence against her and her family from Mr. Mulligan? Not even close. Chopey accused Mulligan of “disturbing the peace” by riding noisy “four wheelers” around the neighborhood, according to the records obtained by Judicial Watch under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

But it gets better. As a result of the noisy four wheelers, The Secret Service reportedly conducted undercover surveillance on Mulligan and his live-in girlfriend, harassed them, and ran database checks on their past and present activities. And this operation was not a short term deal. Documents show that these Secret Service agents were pulled off of White House security duty for at least two months to drive up to rural Maryland to harass Mulligan.

Again, unbelievable that taxpayer funded resources would be used in such a trivial and inane manner. And it is not as if the White House has been a secure location that can afford to give up any security resources. There have been White House fence jumpers, an actual intrusion of the building when a man with a knife was able to get far into the White House before being apprehended, White House windows have been shot out, etc. 

Maybe we should allow the Secret Service into the race for the most incompetent government entity along with the TSA and IRS.

3) A few days ago we reviewed an incident where Russian hackers hacked into the IRS’s computer systems and stole the vital and perosnal informaiotn of about 100,000 American taxpayers. These taxpayers now have to worry about the really strong possibility that they will soon be dealing with an identity theft issue as a result of IRS incompetence.

Almost more frustrating than the hack and steal was the inane comment from the IRS commissioner who stated that the stealing of the personal information of 100,000 Americans was not a security breach. I am sure those 100,000 people would disagree.

However, I wonder what he would call another breach of government computer systems, a breach that stole the personal and private information of almost 4 MILLION Federal workers? According to recent writing by the Washington Post, Chinese hackers allegedly breached the government computers within the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) late last year. This allowed the hackers to gain access to personal information of up to 4 million current and former Federal employees.

The OPM recently verified that indeed the data breach had taken place, that it will notify 4 million federal employees whose information may have been compromised. Kind of late for that, don’t you think, given that the breach happened six months ago, giving the Chinese hackers a big head start on abusing those files and the information within those files. Given how many personnel records were stolen, a government official recently stated that every Federal government entity was likely affected.

Unbelievable that there is such bad data security everywhere within the Federal government. The Russians recently hacked the IRS, unknown people have hacked Pentagon and White House computers in the past year or so, and now the Chinese have hacked the government’s human resources organization to the tune of a whopping four million records.

As we have asserted many times before in this blog, the Federal government has grown so big and is now so out of control and dysfunctional that it is basically useless, and in many cases, dangerous to the taxpayers that pay for such lousy service.

4) One last piece of insanity today. We have seen many examples over the years in the political class insanity discussion where politicians or Federal bureaucrats would have been fired and maybe sent to jail if they had committed the same acts and actions as private citizens. But because they are affiliated with the Washington political class, they rarely face any consequences.

Which means that recently resigned Commerce Department inspector general must have really done some really bad stuff. Todd Zinser recently resigned as the Department’s inspector general amid a growing scandal that has all kinds of angles to it:

• A recent Congressional report says it found new examples of whistleblower retaliation by Zinser.
• One of the new accusations is that Zinser had improperly placed a long time Federal employee on leave after he found out she had been talking to Congressional investigators.
• Current and former members of his staff told Congressional investigators that he “had created a culture of retaliation in his office by isolating employees who resisted his agenda before stripping of them of their responsibilities.”
• Zinser also had allegedly spent a quarter of a million dollars of taxpayer wealth to hire an outside law firm to defend himself in a wrongful termination case.
• In 2010, Zinser allegedly hired a woman who was later revealed to be his girlfriend. The woman had had “significant conduct problems” in another division in the Commerce Department and was on the brink of being removed from eligibility for the Senior Executive Service program, a designation that would place her at the highest executive level in the federal civil service. 
• Five weeks later, Zinser promoted his girlfriend to a senior position in his office, one that afforded her a $150,000 salary, and approved three SES performance bonuses for her totaling more than $28,000 by October 2012.
• Zinser and his deputy inspector general allegedly collected and saved the emails of three senior staff he regarded as enemies, including his former deputy. The two then allegedly sifted through the messages to find "anything he might uncover in his former deputy's emails that Mr. Zinser might be able to use against him," according to testimony to a Congressional committee in March, 2015. Ironically, retaining official emails without alerting the office's chief information officer violated a policy Zinser himself established in 2012.
• Apparently, Zinser has a long history of problems dealing with whistleblowers since he had been named in a whistleblower complaint to the Office of Special Counsel way back in 1996.

What a sweetheart this guy is. Spying on co-workers, trying to silence whistleblowers, helping out his girlfriend to a lucrative career move, etc. Again, you know it is bad when he actually has to leave government service, something that rarely happens no matter how bad the infraction.

Another day, another four examples of outrageous and insane political class insanity. Bullies in the Commerce Department, hackers everywhere, deploying government resources to hassle a noisy neighbor, and not unexpectedly, more ineptness and danger from the TSA. Six days into the insanity and we still have a long way to go down the rabbit hole of Washington craziness.

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

December, 2014, Part 1, Political Class Insanity: Lying To Americans Again, $2 Million For Fossils, Voodoo Spousal Anger, And More

It’s the beginning of another month which means it is time again to review the latest political class insanity from America’s politicians. Whether it is wasteful spending, inane quotes, faulty government operations, or insulting the American public, there is always new material spewing forth from these people, usually enough to fill up half a dozen or so posts every month. Given what we know today, this month should be no different as the insanity seems to be expanding exponentially from those in office today.

1) Senator Tom Coburn issues what he calls the Wastebook every year where he and his staff document the 100 most idiotic uses of taxpayer money. We have already reviewed some of his latest wasteful spending boondoggles in last month’s insanity series but since then we have come across another set of stupid spending from Washington:

1. $331,000 was spent by the Federal government to study “angry” spouses stabbing voodoo dolls. Might help curb divorce lawyer costs but should not be financed by the American taxpayer.

2. $16 Million to revitalize a “ghost mall” in Fresno, CA. I am assuming a ghost mall is a mall that has been abandoned because it could not compete with other shopping options in the Fresno area. So why should the taxpayer sink that much money into a proven losing proposition?

3. $70,000 for a Bruce Lee play. For what purpose?

4. $5.2 million for Columbia University to develop an interactive game designed to combat climate change, and that includes voicemails from the future warning of a post- apocalyptic world. Seriously?

5. $15,000 for NASA to hunt for the lost tomb of Genghis Khan. Because that is the kind of work NASA was established to do.

6. $3 million for the State Department to tweet at terrorists. These are the same people that think nothing of beheading other humans, do we really think that State Department tweets are going to intimidate them? 

Ridiculous wastes of taxpayer wealth especially when you consider that millions of Americans need drug addiction treatment help, millions of Americans are homeless and hungry, veterans cannot get the medical care they were promised and need, etc.

2) The fabulous website, Crony Capitalism, recently ran an earth shattering article relative to the city of Detroit. You remember Detroit. Once one of the largest and richest cities in the country. 

But in the course of fifty years, through horrendously corrupt local politicians whose corruption was exceeded only by their greed and incompetence, Detroit was turned into a hell hole on earth and became the largest American city to ever declare bankruptcy. Substandard or non-existent government services, population flight, thousands of abandoned houses, and a whole host of every other type of urban problem.

It has gotten so bad that the Detroit police department recently declared that Detroit was too dangerous of a city to enter. That is how bad it has gotten, even the police say do not come. This is the American political class at its finest, running a rich vibrant city literally into the ground. Pitiful and sad.

But the Crony Capitalism website had an interesting and radical approach to resurrecting the city. They proposed turning Detroit into an economic “free-zone.” No taxes, private everything (e.g. schools, police, garbage, everything), and see how it does. If excessive government and politicians' actions killed the city, maybe minimal or no government and politicians' control and create a new city. Because really, just like term limits, how much worse could it be than what is going on now, now that even the local police are saying to stay away? 

3) The U.S. Export-Import Bank gives out taxpayer back loans to foreign entities to encourage them to buy American made goods. Over the years, it has turned into a corporate boondoggle with American taxpayers funding private corporations’ costs that should be paid by the shareholders of those companies.

The fact that Boeing uses well over 50% of the Export-Import Bank’s budget over the years, with other such large companies also getting free taxpayer support, stands in contrast to politicians who support the Bank who claim that the majority of the Bank’s resources are to help smaller and medium size U.S. businesses.

Well, that claim may have just turned into another lie from the political class. According to a recent Reuters report: “The U.S. Export-Import Bank has mischaracterized potentially hundreds of large companies and units of multinational conglomerates as small businesses, a flaw in its record keeping that could undermine the export lender's survival strategy. A Reuters analysis showed companies owned by billionaires such as Warren Buffet and Mexico's Carlos Slim, as well by Japanese and European conglomerates, were listed as small businesses and Ex-Im acknowledged errors in its data in response to those findings.”

Another government screw up or were we just being “grubered” by our politicians to keep the taxpayer spigot open for these large companies, who are likely contributors to politicians’ election campaigns in a quid pro quo? Warren Buffet has not been involved in a ‘Small Business’ in decades so I go with the quid pro quo option. This is just another way for Washington politicians to keep their campaign finance money flowing at the expense of the American taxpayer.

4) As Nixon found out and most other humans find out sometime in their life, sometimes the crime, the error, or the screw up is not as bad as the lies and botched cover ups that happen afterwards. Recently, the Federal Weather Service had what it caused “technical glitches” in its data systems and Internet operations. Fine, could happen to any data systems operation.

However, that turned out to be a lie since we now know from Scott Smullen, a spokesman for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration it was not common technical glitches that caused the problem but computer hackers based in China that caused the mischief: “The intrusion occurred in late September but officials gave no indication that they had a problem until Oct. 20, according to three people familiar with the hack and the subsequent reaction by the NOAA, which includes the National Weather Service.”

Representative Frank Wolf (R-VA) was quoted by the Washington Post: “NOAA told me it was a hack and it was China.” He believes the agency was “deliberately misleading the American public in its replies. They had an obligation to tell the truth. They covered it up.”

The cover up is worse than the crime since now Commerce Department Inspector General Todd Zinser is investigating the matter, specifically demanding why law enforcement was not informed of the incident. Fortunately, no one was injured as a result of the Chinese hacking but it could have been worse if had it occurred during a high-impact weather event and the weather satellites were fouled up. 

Lying and incompetence, potential national security breaches and cover ups, this is the distressing level of incompetence our $3 TRILLION in taxes pays for every year.

5) One more piece of insanity for today, plenty more to come in the upcoming days. Before we go into this wasteful spending experience, again keep in mind there are millions of Americans who need help treating their drug addictions, there are millions of Americans who are homeless and hungry every day, there are probably millions of veterans who may not be getting the medical care they need and deserve, and there are millions of Americans who are unemployed or under employed.

Now, how much suffering do you think could be relieved in any or all of these categories of need we just discussed? Well, a certain $2 million pocket of taxpayer wealth will not go to alleviating any of this suffering. As reported by Watchdog.com and the Heritage Foundation, the Federal government and Washington political class allocated that amount to…wait for it… have the University of Florida build a new online telecommunications network that would allow amateur fossil enthusiasts to more easily communicate with each other online. 

I swear, you cannot make this garbage up. The project’s name is: Fostering Opportunities for Synergistic STEM in Informal Learners, or FOSSIL, (STEM is an acronym for Science Technology Engineering and Math). The project consists of a user-friendly website, social media outreach and event get-togethers. 

It is no surprise that the National Science Foundation is behind this idiotic program. This is the same federal entity that spent hundreds of thousands of dollars building a video game program that simulated prom week and which funded an effort to estimate when dog became man’s best friend.

So many problems with this effort:

• Why fossil collectors? Why not spend another $2 million on stamp collectors, $2 million on coin collectors, etc.? Don’t they have the same needs and desires as fossil collectors?
• Who is going to program this effort, the same hacks who programmed Obama Care’s online exchanges? I may not be a technical person but I am pretty sure you do not need $2 million to create a relatively simple website that allows for “a user-friendly website, social media outreach and event get-togethers.” A high school kid could probably put this together in his bedroom in a few weeks.
• And even if you think this is a good use of taxpayer money, is it a better use than helping the homeless, addicted, veterans, and hungry in this country? I think not, that is how screwed up the priorities of the Washington political class has become. Fossils that have been dead for thousands of years are more important than suffering, very alive Americans today.

That will do it for today’s insanity. More wasteful spending on such nonsense as fossil collectors, a Bruce Lee movie, and voodoo dolls, more lies and cover ups from Washington, the death of a great American city, and more. And we have just barely scratched the surface on this month’s political class insanity. More to come in the following days.

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

July, 2013 Political Class Insanity, Part 3: Chinese Hackers, Gay Meth Texting, More Losses In The War On Drugs And More

This is the third in a our monthly series on political class insanity. Every month we devote a few days to the insanity, lunacy, corruption, and wasteful spending of the American political class. Unfortunately for us and the country, every month seems to bring a heavier and heavier load of the misdeeds from Washington and elsewhere, requiring more and more days of coverage just to keep up.

The first two posts on this month’s insanity can be accessed at:

http://www.loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/07/july-2013-political-class-insanity-part_2.html

http://www.loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/07/july-2013-political-class-insanity-part_3.html

We continue with the idiocy today:

1) Earlier this year, a Federally-funded study began to send “gay lingo” text messages to methamphetamine addicts to try to get them to use fewer drugs and more condoms. The cost to taxpayers for this program? $509,840!

Leading the project is Dr. Cathy Reback of the Friends Research Institute, Inc., in Baltimore. She and her team hope that, by sending these “gay lingo” text messages out for the next four years, methamphetamine users will clean up their act. The details of the study include the following parameters:

• The 285 study participants will be divided into three groups of gay meth users.
• All participants will report on their progress using self-evaluation forms.
• The first group will be able to communicate back and forth with the researchers.
• The second group will get text messages, but no two-way communication.
• The last group will be the control group and won’t get any messages at all.
• Thus, the program breaks down as follows: five text messages a day, for four years, to 285 study participants who will then report back every week, all for a cost to taxpayers of $509,840, or $1,789 per gay, methamphetamine-addicted man who engages in high risk sexual behaviors.

In a different reality, this might be a worthwhile project. But we are running annual trillion dollar deficits, we have a national debt load of almost $17 TRILLION, and there are far more other medical research needs that could better use another $500,000 of research money. Plus, there appears to be some serious flaws in this study:

• The sample size is very small, less than one hundred subjects per group, making extrapolation to a general population very dicey. Given the higher death rate of drug abusers, the sample saize will probably get even smaller over time.
• The study relies on self-evaluation forms. Drug abusers are probably not the most reliable people when it comes to non-drug related activities like filling out forms. I doubt the study leaders will get cogent, timely, and reliable data from a self evaluation form process.
• And even the sample size is extrapolatable and the forms are filled out correctly and in a timely manner, who cares? The population of gay men meth users who MAY benefit from a text program is miniscule compared to the number of Americans who die every year from breast cancer, lung cancer, colon cancers, dementia, and drunk driving.

Better to take limited resources and apply those resources to the bigger health issues of our time and actually solve some major issue challenges for the country than to spend money on every possible health issue and resolve nothing.

Side note: According to a blurb in the April 19, 2013 issue of The Week magazine, according to a study by the Rand group, in 2010 the nation spent a whopping $109 billion to treat dementia in the U.S. We also spent $102 billion to treat heart disease and $72 billion to fight cancer. It is my opinion that limited health care and research resources should be spent fighting these major national health issues and not on a questionable study on a very small segment of the population.

2) Interesting statistic from the June, 2013 issue of Reason magazine. When Nixon started the so-called war on drugs in 1971, nonviolent drug offenders constituted less than 10% of all prisoners in all U.S. jails. Today, nonviolent drug offenders constitute more than 25% of all prisoners in all jails. And this 25% is of a much larger prison population.

Thus, we are locking up more people on both an absolute and percentage basis for nonviolent drug usage and the drug problem in this country is nowhere close to being curtailed, the original hope of Nixon back over forty years ago. Isn’t it about time we stop the insanity and exit the war on drugs, let people do to their bodies what they want to do as long as they are no endangering others, break the monetary back of the drug cartels, and save the money of trials, imprisonment, and enforcement related to a program that has failed for forty years?

3) Speaking of wasting money on idiotic wars, consider a New York Times article that was summarized in the May 10, 2013 issue of The Week magazine. According to the reporting, on a monthly basis for years, the United States has been sending suitcases, backpacks, and even plastic shopping bags filled with U.S. cash directly to the President of Afghanistan, President Karzai, in a vain attmept to influence events in the country.

Unfortunately, much of that cash, according to the Times, has ended up fueling corruption and in the hands of drug warlords and the Taliban, our sworn enemy in this ill-fated conflict. The article quotes one involved U.S. official with the following insight: “The biggest source of corruption in Afghanistan is the United States.” Well said, sad but true.

Members of Congress belatedly became outraged when they learned of this mess, with Congressman Jason Chaffetz stating: “I thought we were trying to clean up the waste, fraud, and abuse in Afghanistan.” Two things Congressman: First, while I applaud your outrage, why weren’t you and your Congressional peers doing your job and identifying this waste, fraud, and abuse years ago before we probably wasted billions of dollars?

Second, you and your peers have not been able to clean up the waste, fraud, and abuse in Washington’s programs and government entities, what makes you think you are capable of doing the same thing half way around the world?

4) Politicians and others have been making a big deal of the fact that many recent college graduates are leaving school with a diploma, a good thing, and massive student loan debt, a bad thing. This is especially trying for the many recent graduates who cannot find a good starting job because the mismanagement of the economy by the political class. They end up with low paying jobs but still have to pay off student loans.

No one seems to have come up with a good solution other than improving the ability of the economy to generate new job growth that allow recent graduates to find a good pay job to more easily pay off their debt. However, that does not appear to be an ability of the Federal government to execute to any degree.

Plus, according to a recent story by the Huffington Post that was summarized in the May 31, 2013 issue of The Week magazine, the government may not be in a hurry to fix any aspect of the student loan program. Why? According to Huffington, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the Federal Department of Education will make about $51 billion in profit from the student loan program in 2013.

Disgraceful, that the Federal government would use the student loan industry and processes to generate profits for itself. Where in any part of the Constitution, Bill of Rights, or our history does it say that the Federal government should be a profit generating entity, especially on the back of our kids?

To put this into perspective, the article points out that the Federal government’s profits in this endeavor is greater than the profits of Apple and Exxon and is larger than the COMBINED annual profits of the country’s four largest banks. Profits all on the backs of our kids graduating from college.

5) Edward Snowden is being condemned by many in the political class and Federal government as a traitor for telling the country that Washington, the Obama administration specifically, was abusing and shredding the Fourth Amendment with its massive electronics spying. I prefer to see him as a heroic figure who gave up the good life, his freedom as an American, and his high salary to protect the Constitution.

Nevertheless, if many view him as a traitor for giving up government secretes, what would you call those in the Federal government who were responsible for the top, top secret defense plans that the Chinese government recently hacked? According to an article in the June 7, 2013 issue of The Week, Chinese hackers stole the designs of some of America’s most sensitive and advanced weapons systems:

• The advanced Patriot missile system.
• Two ballistic missile systems that are the backbone of all our defense systems.
• The design for the F-35 fighter jet that the American taxpayer has already paid $14 TRILLION for without much success.
• Two dozen other defense weapons systems designs.

If Snowden is a traitor for divulging non-military, non-top secret, non-defense information and material, what should happen to those in Washington whose incompetence allowed the Chinese to steal our major defense plans that the American taxpayer paid TRILLIONS of dollars to develop? Insanity and incompetence combined together is never pretty.

That wraps up our third day of review relative to political class and government insanity. Every day, every month, those in Washington, the government, Congress, and the White House find new ways to astound us, to disappoint us, and to outrage us. And that astonishment, disappointment, and outrage will continue at least through tomorrow’s post

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