The Failed Presidency of Barack Obama, Part 7: Previously Identified 61 Examples of Failure

Over the past week or so we have been reviewing the many ways and perspectives on how the Obama Presidency has been an abject failure:

• We reviewed the many, many lies and deceptions of this administration and this President, from cutting the annual budget deficit in half to promising that you could keep your doctors under Obama Care to many others.
• We reviewed the many high ranking Obama administration officials that have illegally and immorally conducted government business, and likely government shenanigans, using personal, unofficial computers and email accounts, undermining the spirit and letter of the Freedom of Information Act, other laws, and Obama's own promise to operate the most transparent administration ever
• We reviewed the many instances where this administration has either allowed government functions and departments to continue to overspend but under deliver or allowed them to get even worse than when he took office.
• We also reviewed some past posts that we had done previously that laid out numerous reasons and actions that should have already led to the impeachment of this Presidency, based on violations of existing law, judicial rulings, and the Constitution.

Despite all of these analyses across different aspect of being President, we are still nowhere close to being done. Over the next two days we will review some previous posts from January, 2014 where we laid out over 60 reasons why this Presidency is a failure.

While these are not necessarily grounds for impeachment, they certainly are grounds for failure, with many of these failures using Obama’s own words to show how far short his administration has fallen of being even somewhat effective. Afterwards, we will update that original list with many other examples of failure that have occurred since that early 2014 analysis.

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TUESDAY, JANUARY 28, 2014

Part 1: The First Twenty Failures of The Obama Administration That Are NOT Grounds For Impeachment and Removal From OfficeLet’s face it, the country is not in great shape these days. We have a government that cannot even develop a website despite spending well over $600 million to do so. We have a political class that is more concerned with their own welfare and perpetual reelection than the general welfare of Americans. We have a skyrocketing national debt that will burden Americans for generations to come. We have anemic economic growth. We have a President who claims he has no knowledge of the multitude of scandals erupting around him. Major safety nets such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are lunging towards insolvency. We have lost the war on drugs. The list seems endless some days.

In these desperate times, a person typically wants to find a culprit and make them accountable. The most obvious culprit is the leader of the country, President Obama. Unfortunately, there is a difference between incompetence vs. high crimes and misdemeanors that would allow the country to impeach and remove a sitting President from office.

Having stupid policies and programs, and mismanaging them to boot, is not grounds for removal from office. Maybe it should be, it would save the country a lot of suffering, but that is not allowed under our current legal system. The voting booth is supposed to be for that purpose. In order to remove someone from office, they must violate any of the tenets of the Constitution and Bill of Rights or existing laws under which they should have been operating.

We will try to make the distinction over the next few days. While many of us feel that the Obama administration has been the worse one in the history of our country, sinking even below the disaster that was the Carter administration, there are a load of failures that cannot be used for impeachment and removal from office. We will cover those failures and disasters in the next few days.

After we go through the myriad of reasons that can not be used for impeachment and removal from office, we will go through a still substantial list of reasons while President Obama should be removed from office for high crimes and misdemeanors. Consider that list to be the list of charges that would be read at a potential lawbreaker’s arraignment. 

That list of charges would then go to a grand jury, i.e. the House of Representatives, where they would decide which charges, i.e. indictments, if any, would be brought forth. Those indictments would then be debated and voted on for conviction or non-conviction in the Senate. 

That is the process: arraignment based on likely criminal charges, grand jury-like action in the House to lock down substantial and provable violations of the law, Constitution, and Bill of Rights, leading to a formal indictment, and then onto the Senate for trial, based on the House indictments. 

But first, lets go through the many disasters and failures that cannot be put on the list of charges that are reviewed for indictments that are then part of a Senate impeachment proceeding. Keep in mind that you cannot remove a President from office:

• For having ineffective and/or stupid policies. 
• For being ineffective in executing his duties of office. 
• For being arrogant, narcissistic, and pompous.
• For waging class warfare and dividing the nation into voting blocs.
• For lying about his past or his promises.

That is the reason that the following failures are not grounds for impeachment and removal from office, they may be despicable, they may be embarrassing, they may be wasteful, they may be outright deceptions, but they are not grounds for removal under the Constitution.

[Note: associated with many of the failures listed we have attached notable quotes from the President and other reputable sources to show how far and how quickly his promises and assertions degenerated into lies, deceptions, and failures]

In no particular order, President Obama cannot be impeached and removed from office because…

1) He promised to quickly shut down the oppressive detention center at Guantanamo Bay shortly after being elected but failed to do. This has resulted in the American taxpayer paying out almost half a billion dollars a year to keep the detention facility up and running.

Relevant Obama quote: "We will close the detention camp in Guantanamo Bay, the location of so many of the worst constitutional abuses in recent years." 

2) He promised to cut the annual deficit in half but instead ran up record setting TRILLION dollar deficits for four years in a row.

Relevant Obama quote: “What my budget does is…by the middle of this decade our annual spending will match our annual revenues. We will not be adding more to the national debt.”

Relevant Obama quote: “When George Bush came into office, our debt—national debt—was around $5 trillion. It’s now over $10 trillion. We’ve almost doubled it… But actually I’m cutting more than I’m spending, so it will be a net spending cut.” 

3) He promised that if his economic stimulus program was not implemented, unemployment could go as high as 8%. The program was implemented and unemployment skyrocketed well beyond 8% and stayed there for a record number of consecutive months.

4) He promised that economic programs such as Cash For Clunkers would stimulate the economy but subsequent analysis has shown that all those programs did was waste billions of dollars for no economic benefit. The latest analysis by the Brookings Institute shows conclusively that Cash For Clunkers involved about 380,000 vehicles, none of which were incremental, economic stimulating sales, they were sales that would have happened anyway but without taxpayer support.

Relevant Obama quote: “Now, more American consumers will have the chance to purchase newer, more fuel efficient cars and the American economy will continue to get a much-needed boost."

5) He has abused and disrespected our armed forces’ veterans by allowing veterans’ benefits requests turnaround time to skyrocket to over a year, coldly and unnecessarily shutting down veteran memorials during the sequester, and legislation that reduces veterans’ benefits.

Relevant Obama quote: “When you take off the uniform, we will serve you as well as you've served us - because no one who fights for this country should have to fight for a job, or a roof over their head, or the care that they need when they come home.”

6) He has presided over economic polices that has seen about a 50% increase in the number of Americans that are receiving government food assistance, a total of about 47 million Americans.

7) He has presided over economic polices that have left well over 20 million Americans either unemployed or under employed.

Relevant Obama quote (Associated Press, July, 2013): "Four out of 5 U.S. adults struggle with joblessness, near poverty or reliance on welfare for at least parts of their lives, a sign of deteriorating economic security and an elusive American dream." 

8) He has presided over economic policies that have resulted in large numbers of college graduates unable to land a job in their preferred profession, assuming they can find a job at all.

9) He presided over economic polices that have kept minority unemployment levels substantially higher than the overall unemployment rates in America.

10) He has presided over an $833 billion economic stimulus program that was so inefficient that it conservatively cost over $300,000 per job created or saved, an unsustainable and failed economic policy.

11) He has failed to rein in wasteful spending in the Medicare program which loses about $70-90 billion a year through waste, inefficiencies, and outright criminal fraud.

Relevant Obama quote: “It's time to fundamentally change the way that we do business in Washington. To help build a new foundation for the 21st century, we need to reform our government so that it is more efficient, more transparent, and more creative. That will demand new thinking and a new sense of responsibility for every dollar that is spent.”

12) He has failed to rein in wasteful spending in the Medicaid program which loses about $30-40 billion a year through waste, inefficiencies, and outright criminal fraud.

13) He has failed to rein wasteful spending in the Social Security program which loses over $100 billion a year through waste, inefficiencies, and outright criminal fraud.

14) He has failed to eliminate the tens of billions of dollars lost every year via unemployment insurance, disability programs, food assistance programs, Obama phones, and government housing programs to waste, inefficiencies, and outright criminal fraud.

15) He has failed to operate an efficient IRS process, an organization which readily admits that it fails to collect over $380 billion a year from tax evaders.

16) His health care reform legislation has proven to be nothing more than a Rube Goldberg-like insurance scheme that is causing millions of Americans to lose their current health care insurance coverage, to lose access to their preferred doctors, to spend much money more for both their insurance premiums and deductibles, is adding substantially to the national debt, is causing a doctor shortage as more and more doctors retire early to avoid the trauma and nonsense of the legislation, and never addressed the real root causes of escalating health care costs, dooming his approach to failure.

Relevant Obama quote: “And that means that no matter how we reform health care, we will keep this promise to the American people: If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor, period. If you like your health care plan, you'll be able to keep your health care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what.”

17) He has taken extravagant and expensive vacations around the world, spending hundreds of millions of dollars, while Americans sit by and watch as their chances for a good job and good future go unrealized.

18) He has played more golf and attended more campaign fund raisers than any other President, time that might have been better spent fixing the problems facing the country and its citizens.

19) He has done nothing to improve the scholastic performance of American kids who badly trail many other countries along all measurements of educational excellence and who spend far less per student than the Federal government and the Obama administration do.

20) Despite promising to operate the most transparent Presidential administration ever, he has decided that White House visitor logs will no longer be made public, breaking a long tradition of allowing Americans to know who is visiting the White House.

Relevant Obama quote: "For a long time now, there’s been too much secrecy in this city. Information will not be withheld just because I say so. It will be withheld because a separate authority believes it is well-grounded in the Constitution." 

These are the first 20 reasons that regardless of how bad the performance was, no matter how badly these actions did not resolve a national issue, no matter how much taxpayer wealth was wasted, none of these reasons probably is sufficient to become an indictable offense and impeachable offense.

And despite how bad and embarrassing and expensive these failures are, there are still more failures to come tomorrow.

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 29, 2014

Part 2: The Next Twenty Failures Of The Obama Administration That Are NOT Grounds For Impeachment and Removal From Office

21) He has done nothing to develop and implement a long term and strategic energy policy for the country, instead wasting tens of billions of dollars given away to his political contacts’ and cronies’ failed alternative energy programs and shutting down the coal industry with no viable energy replacement source to fill the gap.

22) He presided over economic polices that have seen median U.S. household income decline for five years in a row.

Relevant Obama quote: “I'm a warrior for the middle class.”

23) He intruded into the auto industry bailouts that still resulted in the city of Detroit having to file for bankruptcy and for General Motors to probably never pay back the $9.7 billion still owed to the American taxpayer, contrary to the President’s reelection campaign themes.

24) His failed foreign policies have allowed North Korea to get five years closer to having substantial nuclear weapon and delivery capability.

25) His failed foreign policies have allowed Iran to get five years closer to having substantial nuclear weapon and delivery capability.

26) His failed foreign policies have caused a significant loss of prestige and honor relative to the U.S. in both our allies and enemies’ eyes. A loss compounded by the unfathomable spying on the governments and leaders of our allies.

27) He has presided over economic polices that have seen the average price of gas go up about 70% since the day he took office.

28) He has remained silent and allowed political allies to call his political opponents and ordinary citizens all types of slanderous and foul names despite his promise to unite the country. Those slurs include but are not limited to, a__h____s, terrorists, barbarians, Taliban, racists, Ku Klux Klan members, knuckle dragging Neanderthals, sluts, whores, among others.

Relevant Obama quote: “There's not a liberal America and a conservative America - there's the United States of America.”

Relevant Obama quote: “We want everybody to act like adults, quit playing games, realize that it's not just my way or the highway."

Relevant Obama quote: “It's not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

29) He has failed to improve the tense situation in the Middle East, specifically the ongoing conflicts between Israel and the Palestinians.

30) He had no plan and not a lot of interest in quickly resolving the Gulf Coast/BP oil spill, given the number of rounds of golf, the number of vacations and the number of political fund raisers he attended as the crisis was destroying nature and jobs along the Gulf coats.

31) He has no plan for fixing the mess that is Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, who together have already gobbled up almost $200 billion in taxpayer bailout dollars, and he has no plan for the latest government housing entity in need of an almost $2 billion taxpayer bailout, the Federal Housing Authority (FHA).

32) He promised to run the most transparent administration of all time and ended up running the most opaque and paranoid administration since at least the Nixon administration, implementing executive privilege too often, hiding witnesses called to testify in front of Congress, persecuting more government whistle blowers than all previous Presidential administrations combined, hunting down legitimate whistle blowers and dodging legal Freedom of Information Act requests.

Relevant Obama quote: "My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government. We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government." 

Relevant Obama quote: "Often the best source about waste, fraud and abuse in government is an existing government employee committed to public integrity and willing to speak out. Such acts of courage and patriotism . . . should be encouraged rather than stifled." 

33) He has failed to fix the massively expensive and stupid redundancy in the Federal government: 

• The Federal government has 15 different agencies overseeing food safety laws
• More than 20 independent Federal programs help the homeless
• 80 different Federal programs to help economic development
• 82 different government agencies work on improving teacher quality
• 47 different government agencies work on job training
• 18 different programs working on food and nutrition assistance

34) He takes all the credit but never the blame, placing blame on his failed policies and programs on everyone and everything from Bush to ATMs to the Japanese tsunami to Bush to the European fiscal crisis to Bush to Republicans to Bush, etc.

35) He has ignored the fighting going on Afghanistan and has not implemented a strategy that will withstand the withdrawal of Western troops in 2014, likely resulting in the Taliban taking over again and negating the blood and money the country has spent there over the past decade or so.

36) He has angered civilians all over the Arab world with his drone attacks on terrorist suspects that have ended up killing hundreds, if no thousands of civilians, including hundreds of innocent children. These drone attacks have not slowed down the growth of Al Qaeda and other terror groups while it has embittered civilian populations from Yemen to Pakistan.

Relevant Obama quote (from Pew research): "At the end of his first term, the level of confidence those nations [Middle Eastern countries‘ citizens] feel for Obama fell from 33% to 24%. When it comes to Obama’s policies, as opposed to his personality, the drop is even greater, falling from a high of 34% to a dismal low of 15%."

37) He has constantly reinforced his masculinity by staging dozens of photo ops with professional and college athletic teams but has had minimal photo ops with outstanding teachers, heroic soldiers, or other outstanding American citizens.

38) He embarrassed the country and his administration by not sending a high level representative to represent the country at Margaret Thatcher’s state funeral, just another in a long line of snubs against our allies around the world.

39) His failure to come up with a sane and compassionate drug program, continuing the long failing war on drugs, has lead to the continued enlargement and enrichment of foreign drug cartels who have now established themselves firmly throughout the country, peddling their drugs and getting richer.

40) His failure to live up to his campaign promise of not having high powered lobbyists in positions of power in his administration, a campaign promise that he promptly broke when he placed many high level lobbyists in his administration.

Relevant Obama quote (Anthony Holm): “More than forty former lobbyists work in senior positions in the Obama administration, including three cabinet secretaries and the CIA director.” 

Over the past two days we have come up with forty instances of Presidential neglect, corruption, lying, and wasteful spending, none of which are likely grounds for impeachment. They are only likely grounds for one of the worst Presidencies of all time. And the bad news: we are not done yet. We have another 21 despicable embarrassments from the Obama administration for you tomorrow, none of which are grounds for impeachment.

However, after that, we will lay out the actual grounds for impeachment and removal from office, where this President knowingly violated actual laws and the tenets of the Constitution.

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The final twenty one reasons from last year will be listed 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

Day 1: Seven Days of Logic and Sanity That Prove Raising Taxes On Any American Is Just Plain Stupid

As many of you know, the nation is about to go over the so-called fiscal cliff on January 1, 2013. This cliff will involve cutbacks in government spending (a good thing) and the raising of taxes on just about every American (a bad thing). Why is it a bad thing? Because, as we have proven so many times in this blog, no American, rich or poor, should have to pay another penny in taxes, given how wasteful and inefficient the Federal government is.

Unfortunately, our President continues his class warfare rhetoric and divisiveness by insisting that higher earning Americans pay more in taxes. These Americans already account for the great bulk of taxes paid to run an inefficient Federal government. It has been our position that it is the political class, starting with the President, that needs to actually start doing their jobs and fixing the spending monstrosity that is the Federal government.

Thus, as a public service to a President that would rather divide the country than make sure the executive branch of the Federal government stopped wasting hundreds of billions of dollars a year, for the next week or so we will be rerunning, and updating, some of the blog posts that prove conclusively that we have an overwhelming government spending problem, not an inadequate taxation problem. We will also use other information from nonpartisan sources that show how bad and irrational government spending has morphed into.

Before we educate the President, let’s review some of the major wasteful spending activities our Federal government indulges in, at the expense of our wealth every day:

1. Medicare misspends and loses between $70 and $90 billion a year through inefficiencies, waste, and criminal fraud.
2. Medicaid misspends and loses between $40 and $60 billion a year through inefficiencies, waste, and criminal fraud.
3. Social Security misspends and loses over $100 billion a year through inefficiencies, waste, and criminal fraud.
4. Just one Federal government unemployment program misspends and loses about $17 billion through inefficiencies, waste, and criminal fraud.
5. The Federal government food stamp program loses billions of dollars a year through inefficiencies, waste, and criminal fraud.
6. The IRS has readily admitted that it cannot collect over $380 billion a year in taxes owed under the current tax code.,

Just these six government programs lose about $630 billion a year, every year. Over a ten year planning span, this comes out to a whopping $6.3 TRILLION.

These six examples are what we call systemic waste in that it occurs every year. There is also a continuing train of what we call random, one time wastes of taxpayer wealth as shown by the following examples:

• The Navy relatively recently decided to spend $10 million to turn two of its ships into scrap iron. No unusual, unless you find out that the two ships, which had been made at the cost of $300 million, were almost build out to completion and then scrapped after never being used by the Navy.
• The State Department abandoned a never used $80 million consulate building, that was built in northern Afghanistan, AFTER it determined that it could not be defended from a terrorist attack. The sad thing about this loss/waste of $80 million is that if the State Department had only followed its own guidelines for construction and security, no money would have ever been spent and wasted.
• The Transportation Security Administration spent almost $200 million on airport security equipment that it will never use. The equipment is now sitting in a TSA warehouse, still in its original packaging.
• The National Science Foundation spent more than half a million dollars when it paid for someone to develop a computer simulation of “Prom Week.”

These random acts of waste occur once but their brethren occur thousands and thousands of times every year.

These are just a few of the reasons why no American should pay a penny more in taxes to the Federal government. There is so much wasteful spending going on today that until Obama, and the rest of the political class stop the waste, no one should pay a penny more.

This sets the stage for the next week or so of posts. We will review how really bad, disgraceful, and wasteful government spending is in this country today. Our final post in this series will show our politicians how relatively easy it is to 1) not raise taxes, 2) to reduce our national debt by $9 TRILLION over the next decade or so, and 3) have minimal impact on most average Americans.

Stupid is as stupid does and raising taxes without reducing wasteful and criminal government spending is just that: stupid.

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Thursday, May 24, 2012

Wasteful Government Spending Week - A Historical Perspective

This week we have diligently been going through all types of government waste from all corners of the Federal bureaucracy. We discussed the $80 million wasted on an unused State Department consulate in Afghanistan, $184 million of wasted airport security equipment purchases that are likely to never be used, over $3 billion wasted on failed green energy companies, etc.

Today, we will take a more historical perspective. The following Federal government spending instances go back over the past three decades or so. They come to us today courtesy of the website, www.boycottliberalism.com. I do not know if all of this information is correct but since I recognize many of these unnecessary expenses from other research I have done, it would not surprise me that these are actual, and unneeded, previous random wasteful spending examples.

After the examples from http://www.boycottliberalism.com/ listed below I have included more examples of unneeded spending by the political class at our website, http://www.loathemygovernment.com/. You can actually visit that website and vote on whether the forty or so expenditures were worthwhile use of taxpayer dollars. So far, those that have voted have overwhelmingly rejected the notion that these are worthy of taxpayer wealth.

The very sad part about today's waste is that it comes out to over $1.2 TRILLION worth of misused taxpayer wealth. Over a roughly thirty year period, this waste averages out to about $60 billion a year, or about $348 a year for every current American household. Imagine how much more robust our economy would be if every household had an extra $348 or so each year to spend, rather than have it wasted on the idiotic expenditures listed below.

The cumulative running total of government waste as identified by the website:


$1,230,956,867,592.00:

The National Institutes of Health spent more than $400,000 in taxpayer money by paying researchers to cruise six bars in Buenos Aires to find out why gay men engage in risky sexual behavior while drunk -- and just what can be done about it.

The U.S. government spent $2.6 million to make sure prostitutes in China consume less alcohol while working. As part of the five-year study that the National Institutes of Health bankrolled, researchers are visiting more than 100 houses of prostitution to monitor their employees, designated as FSWs, or female sex workers.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is funding a study on the use of ecstasy, LSD and other “party drugs” in Porto Alegre, Brazil. To do this, U.S. taxpayers will invest $117,876 for the three-year study, conducted by researchers from the University of Delaware, who will work in collaboration with researchers from Brazil's Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul.

Federal employees wasted at least $146 million over a one-year period in business- or first-class airline tickets bought in violation of travel policies, Congressional investigators say.

It looks like Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., is going to get his wish – $2 million in taxpayer funding for a library commemorating his 37 years in the House of Representatives. The Charles B. Rangel Center for Public service will serve as a repository for his "papers," and the Congressman will have his own office in the Harlem complex.

The earned income tax credit (EITC) provides $31 billion in refundable tax credits to 19 million low-income families. The IRS estimates that $8.5 billion to $9.9 billion of this amount—nearly one-third—is wasted in overpayments.

A recent audit revealed that between 1997 and 2003, the Defense Department purchased and then left unused approximately 270,000 commercial airline tickets at a total cost of $100 million.

Since World War II, the U.S. has spent $1.2 trillion on foreign aid to 70 countries – and all are worse off than they were in 1980, according to the U.N.

For the Department of Commerce for giving the City and County of Honolulu $28,600 in 1981 to study how they could spend another $250,000 for a good surfing beach.

For the Health Care Financing Administration for Medicaid payments to psychiatrists for unscheduled, coincidental meetings with patients who were attending basketball games, sitting on stoops, etc. -- the cost of which was between $40 and $80 million from 1981 to 1984.

The National Endowment for the Humanities for a $25,000 grant in 1977 to study why people cheat, lie and act rudely on local Virginia tennis courts.

The Office of Education for spending $219,592 in 1978 to develop a curriculum to teach college students how to watch television.

The Environmental Protection Agency for spending an extra $1 million to $1.2 million in 1980 to preserve a Trenton, NJ sewer as a historical monument.

In 2005 - $469,000 for the National Wildlife Turkey Federation in South Carolina.

In 2005 - $100,000 for the Punxsatawny Weather Discovery Center Museum.

In 2005 - $350,000 for the Inner Harmony Foundation and Wellness Center in Scranton, Penn.

In 2005 - $1,430,000 for various Halls of Fame, including $250,000 for the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville, Tenn., and $70,000 for the Paper Industry International Hall of Fame in Appleton, Wis.

Medicare, the U.S. health-insurance program for the elderly and disabled, erroneously paid out $19.9 billion during fiscal 2004, up from $19.6 billion a year earlier, because of mistakes, waste and fraud, a government report said. In most cases, hospitals and doctors billed for medically unnecessary services or didn't provide proper documentation to support the fees for services.

The GAO estimated that between 1997 and 2003, the Defense Department spent an estimated $100 million for airline tickets that were not used over a six-year period and failed to seek refunds even though the tickets were reimbursable.

While Andrew Cuomo was HUD Secretary under Bill Clinton, the agency set up a "Creative Wellness" program that spent $1,100,000 million taxpayer dollars on “gem” bags and taught public tenants to burn incense.

The study, titled "Status/Dominance and Motivational Effects on Nonverbal Sensitivity and Smiling," attempts to find out if it's really true that women smile more than men, and if people of higher status smile less. Judith Hall, a highly respected researcher at Northeastern University in Boston, is conducting the smile study — and it is not her first. Since 1993, she has been awarded more than $500,000.

A National Science Foundation study looking at whether White House reporters have become more adversarial sounds a bit strange to reporters and critics. Even more surprising: the study cost taxpayers $180,000.

In 2001 more than $600,000 in tax money was spent on researching the sex lives of South African ground squirrels.

The head of the IRS sent out a notice to every person advising them that they would be receiving a tax refund in 2001 - the estimated cost $30,000,000.

In 1998 more than $800,000 was approved for a coal library in Pennsylvania. Defenders stated that it would provide historical insight into a very important part of Pennsylvania and history.

In 2001 the U.S.. Government gave $5,000,000 to the University of Alaska, North Pacific University, and the Alaska Fisheries Development Foundation to fund the "stellar sea lion recovery plan."

In the year 2001, Congress appropriated $340,000,000 in federal tax dollars to PBS (Public Broadcasting Services).

In 1999 the U.S. government spent $500,000 for a Mississippi research project on "manure handling and disposal".

In 1999 the U.S. government spent $1,500,000 million to promote silk production in Laos.

In 1999 the U.S. government spent $1 ,000,000 for the "eradication of Brown Tree Snakes" (Hawaii).

In 1999 the U.S. government spent $1,000,000 to "develop and train Alaska natives for employment in the petroleum industry."

In 1999 the U.S. government spent $500,000 for water taxis in Savannah (Georgia).

In 1999 the U.S. government spent $200,000 for a transit center for the Toledo Mud Hens minor league baseball team.

In 1999 $1,200,000 million to subsidize a park on the Galapagos Islands.

In 2000 the U.S. government spent $100,000 to study the causes of sediment buildup at a Santa Cruz, New Mexico dam.

In 2002 the U.S. government spent $50,000 for a tattoo removal program in San Luis Obispo, California.

In 2002 the U.S. government spent $400,000 for the Montana Sheep Institute to improve the profitability of the state's sheep industry.

In 2002 the U.S. government spent $273,000 for the Blue Springs (Missouri) Youth Orchestra Outreach Unit for educational training to combat Goth culture.

In 2003 the U.S. government spent $1,000,000 appropriation for the Center for Public Service and the Common Good (a think tank) at the University of San Francisco.

In 2002 the U.S. government spent $400,000 for manure management research at the National Swine Research Center.

In 2002 the U.S. government spent $1,100,000 for the Mountain Made Foundation in Thomas, West Virginia for business development and the education of artists and craftspeople.

In 2002 the U.S. government spent $4,000,000 to implement the forest and fish report of the Washington State.

In 2002 the U.S. government spent $500,000 for exhibits on the Sullivan brothers at the Grout Museum in Waterloo, Iowa.

In 2002 the U.S. government spent $61,000 for the State Historical Society to archive the history of Iowa workers.

In 2002 the U.S. government spent $1,200,000 for the Ohio Arts Council to expand international programs.

In 2002 the U.S. government spent $2,900,000 for the Mountaineer Doctor Television program at West Virginia University.

In 2002 the U.S. government spent $2,000,000 for an educational mall at the Raleigh County Commission in Beckley.

In 2002 the U.S. government spent $2,000,000 for West Virginia University to establish a Center on Obesity.

In 2002 the U.S. government spent $260,000 for asparagus technology in the state of Washington.

In 2002 the U.S. government spent $1,200,000 for music education at the GRAMMY Foundation.

In 2000 the U.S. government spent $50,000 for the development of a Welcome Center Facility City for Enumclaw, Washington.

In 1997 - $4,000,000 for the Gambling Impact Study Commission.

In 1997 - $330,000 for Stellar Sea Lion research of the North Pacific Universities Marine Mammal Consortium.

In 1997 - $785,000 for bluefish/striped bass research by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

In 1997 - $2,700,000 added by the Senate for the Animal Resource Wing at South Dakota State University.

In 1997 - $4,000,000 added in conference for the Discovery Center of Science and Technology.

In 1997 - $19,600,000 added by the House for the International Fund for Ireland, a program that tries to aid the peace process in Ireland by paying for golf videos, pony trekking centers, and sweater exports.

In 1997 - $16,369,000 added by the Senate for public library construction.

In 1997 - $9,469,000 added in conference for Migrant Education programs including: $7,441,000 for the High School Equivalency Program; and $2,028,000 for the College Assistance Migrant Program.

In 1997 - $3,100,000 added by the Senate for the National Writing Project.

In 1997 - $8,200,000 for a new classroom building at the Rowley Secret Service Training Center in Beltsville, Maryland, which is the district of House Treasury, Postal Service and General Government Appropriations subcommittee member Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) and the state of Senate appropriator Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.).

In 1998 - $220,000 added by the Senate for lowbush blueberry research in Maine.

In 1994 - $221,000 for lowbush blueberry research at the University of Maine in the state of Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell (D-ME).

In 1998 - $150,000 added by the House for the National Center for Peanut Competitiveness.

In 1998 - $127,000 added by the Senate for global marketing support services in the state of Senate appropriator Dale Bumpers (D-Ark.). According to testimony, the goal of this research is to identify “potential foreign markets for Arkansas products….”

In 1998 - $32,000 added by the Senate for the Center for Rural Studies in the state of Senate appropriator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.). A portion of this grant money is used for analytical reports to guide the development of Vermont retail shopping areas.

In 1998 - $500,000 added by the House in the district of House appropriator Richard Durbin (D-IL) for the construction at the Lincoln Home National Historic Site, Illinois, of Charles Corneau’s house, a neighbor and friend of Abraham Lincoln.

In 1998 - $10,912,000 added by the Senate for foreign language assistance.

In 1994 - $200,000 for locoweed research at New Mexico State University in the state of House appropriator Joe Skeen (R-NM). Since 1992, $716,000 has been appropriated, and there is no expected completion date for this research.

In 1994 - $1,000,000 added in the Senate for the Multispecies Aquaculture Center in the state of Senate appropriator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ).

In 1994 - $19,600,000 added in the House for the International Fund for Ireland. The conference report “restores language stricken by the Senate and appropriates up to $19,600,000 for the International Fund for Ireland.” In the past, this program has used American taxpayer dollars for a golf video and pony trekking centers.

In 1993 - $19,704,000 for the International Fund for Ireland requested, according to committee sources, by House Speaker Thomas Foley (D-WA).

In 1993 - $9,170,000 added in conference for the Southwestern Pennsylvania Heritage Preservation Commission in the district of House appropriator John Murtha (D-PA).

In 1992 - $2,000,000 added in conference by Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) for a New York Bight Center for undersea research.

$1.2 TRILLION spent with very little societal benefit to show for it except the ability of incumbent politicians to use taxpayer money to fund their continual reelection.

What a shameful waste. A few observations and suggestions come to mind:

• When the Statue of Liberty was badly in need of refurbishment back in the 1970s, no taxpayer money was used to fix it up. It was all financed by citizen and corporate donations. Going forward, the political class should not be able to allocate any money for local projects like the dozens listed above unless that project was more important than the Statue Of Liberty, one of the shining examples of liberty of our country. Thus, if this rule was in place, no Federal taxpayer money would ever be wasted on bike trails, repurposed cabooses, etc. since none of those projects are more worthy of government financing than the Statue of Liberty.
• Step 44 from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" should also be deployed to eliminate the trillion dollars of wasteful spending highlighted above. Step 44 would not allow any Federal money to be used on any project unless that project had a substantial impact on a significant number of citizens from at least five states. For example, Federal money would continue to be used to support Amtrak since that affects many states and many states' citizens across the country, However, under Step 44's criteria, no Federal dollars would ever be used again to build a local river trail, build a local farmers' market, etc., since these types of projects should all be handled with instate tax dollars.
• And our favorite step from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" also comes into play here. Step 39 would impose term limits on all Federal politicians, "one and done," Many of the above examples of wasteful spending are done by incumbent politicians to show the back home voters how they can get Federal dollars flowing back to their states and Congressional districts, no matter how stupid the projects being funded are. If incumbents knew that they had no chance of being reelected due to term limits, the need to funnel money back home to support their reelection chances goes away.

Most Americans recognize the insanity of wasting their tax dollars on these types of programs and projects. It makes you wonder why the political class does not see it the same way.

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

President Obama's Checklist Of Accomplishments To Date - Making Jimmy Carter Proud

About a week ago, a Facebook friend posted a short Facebook blurb that listed out the accomplishments of the Obama administration. It was meant to be complimentary of the administration but it had two major faults. First, it was not a very long list, comprising only about a half dozen points or accomplishments. Second, while this Facebook friend listed some of this administration's actions as successes, many Americans would consider these same activities as failures.

For example, this short list of successes included the passage of Obama Care. However, we would view this is an abject failure rather than a success to be proud of since:

1. Obama Care will likely cause tens of millions of Americans to lose their company health care insurance coverage since the legislation was written so poorly that it made it less expensive for companies to pay a relatively small Obama Care fine than continue health care insurance for their employees and retirees, the exact opposite of what the law was supposed to do.
2. Obama Care will add numerous new taxes to the economy, further depressing the economic recovery from the Great Recession.
3. Obama Care will implement almost 2,000 new Federal government guidelines and restrictions on Americans, further reducing our already shrinking freedoms and liberty.
4. The head actuary for Medicare and Medicaid has recently estimated that Obama Care will add over $300 billion to our already disgusting national debt over the next ten years, the exact opposite it was supposed to do.
5. The legislation will never solve the problem of ever escalating health care costs because it never took the time to understand the root causes of the increasing costs.
6. The legislation will have major, difficult, and unnecessary impacts on Americans' life choices including retirement, marriage, and careers.

One person's perception of accomplishment is another's perception of complete failure. Interesting political times we live in. 

Thus, as a rebuttal to my friend's meager six or so Obama administration accomplishments, and to expand on the above list of six Obama Care failures, allow me to present a much longer checklist of administration failures, a list so long it evokes the sour and failure memories of the Carter administration:

• Implement the largest failed economic stimulus program in the history of the country, costing over $800 billion and delivering very little economic growth. Check.
• Implement a series of failed economic tactics including Cash For Clunkers, Cash For Appliances, and Cash for Caulkers. Check.
• Campaign on a promise to close the terrorist prison at Guantanamo and then fail to actually close the facility. Check.
• Campaign on a promise to not place former lobbyists in high positions in this administration and then proceed to install former lobbyists in high level positions in this administration. Check.
• Campaign on a promise to significantly reduce the number of earmarks in the Federal government and then proceed to allow billions of dollars a year to be diverted into political earmarks. Check.
• Randomly blame bush. Check.
• Promise to quickly extract U.S. troops out of Iraq and then proceed to use the extended Bush exit plan. Check.
• Renew the freedom destroying Patriot Act with virtually no changes from the Bush administration version and continue not to staff the civil liberty oversight panel required by the law. Check.
• Randomly blame Bush. Check.
• Oversee an incredibly botched and illegal gun running sting operation called Fast and Furious that allowed thousands of military grade weapons to fall into the hands of violent Mexican drug cartels, weapons that have led to the death of an American immigration agent and dozens of innocent Mexicans, weapons that have further destabilized the central Mexican government, and weapons whose sale violated both U.S. law and international treaties. Check.
• Fail to have an effective contingency plan and operations plan in place, reminiscent of Hurricane Katrina, when the Gulf of Mexico oil rig accident happened, resulting in widespread ecological damage and economic damage. Check.
• While oil leaked into the Gulf waters from the leaking oil rig, embark on at least two vacations, take two cross country trips for political fund raising, and play numerous rounds of golf. Check.
• Oversee the average cost of a gallon of gasoline go from $1.79 at inauguration to $3.40 in January, a 90% increase (Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics). Check.
• Establish a record for average February gasoline prices at $3.53 a gallon. Experts quoted in an Associated Press article forecast the average price will hit $4.50 by April. Check. 
• Oversee the average price of a gallon of fuel oil go from $2.51 a gallon at inauguration to $3.70 in January, a 47% increase. Check.
• Oversee the cost of a pound of ground beef go from $2.97 at inauguration to $3.29 in January, an 11% increase. Check.
• Preside over the first ever downgrade of the United States government credit rating. Check.
• Add TRILLIONS of dollars to the national debt, more than every other President from Washington through Clinton added COMBINED. Check.
• Randomly blame Bush. Check.
• Give out hundreds of millions of dollars to political friends' alternative energy endeavors (Solyndra, Ener1, Beacon, Evergreen, Spectra) and watch them all go bankrupt, taking taxpayer wealth down the drain with them. Check.
• Set records for the most Americans ever on food stamp rolls. Check.
• Endorse and sign legislation to reform the financial services industry, legislation that promptly fell on its face by not foreseeing the 8th largest bankruptcy in U.S. history, the collapse of financial services firm MF Global and the possible criminal destruction of over $1 billion in client assets, the exact type of behavior the legislation was supposed to prevent. Check.
• Break the oath of the Presidency taken at inauguration by not enforcing the laws of the land such as DOMA. Check.
• Break the oath of the Presidency taken at inauguration by blatantly ignoring judicial rulings such as the Gulf oil moratorium judicial ruling. Check.
• Randomly blame Bush.
• Break a campaign oath by trampling on the checks and balances tenets of the Constitution by making high level government appointments without Congressional oversight and approval. Check.
• Trample on freedom of speech and freedom of religion rights by forcing religious organizations to forego their religious beliefs in light of secular government mandates. Check.
• Support the repeal of the military's Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy only after a national Republican organization successfully fought for the repeal through the court system. Check.
• Randomly blame Bush.
• Preside over the worse economic recovery from a recession since the Depression. Check.
• Allow Iran to get three years closer to having nuclear weapons. Check.
• Allow North Korea to get three years closer to having nuclear weapons. Check.
• Fail to foresee or be prepared for the Arab spring and the opportunities and risks inherent in the movement for freedom in the Middle East. Check.
• Trample on the Constitution and the War Powers Act by illegally  involving the U.S. in military in significant military action in Libya without Congressional approval. Check.
• Hold dozens of photo ops with professional and amateur athletic teams, including the Texas Christian University rifle team, but hold few, if any photo ops with inspirational teachers, brave policemen and women, or heroic war veterans. Check.
• Do not develop a workable and coherent national energy policy and strategy that helps the economy and reduces our dependence on foreign energy sources. Check.
• Do not develop a workable and coherent education reform strategy and policy so that we can start educating our kids as well as the rest of the world educates theirs. Check.
• Do not develop a workable, coherent, and compassionate illegal immigration policy that protects and seals our borders and fairly  leverages the contributions of existing illegal immigrants within the country. Check.
• Do not develop a workable and compassionate alternative to our lost war on drugs, threatening to shut down existing marijuana clinics that provide pain relief to untold number of Americans suffering from highly painful diseases and maladies. Check.
• Remain silent and do not try to unite a divided country when political allies slander ordinary Americans having a difference of opinion, allowing these American citizens to be called racists, Ku Klux Klan members, knuckle dragging Neanderthals, a__h___s, terrorists, barbarians, gerbils, and un-American. Check.
• Randomly blame Bush, the Japanese tsunami, ATM machines, and a host of other factors for many of the above failures. Check.
• Manipulate the calculation of the unemployment rate to falsely make it look like the unemployment situation is improving. Check.
• Allow over $500 billion of taxpayer wealth a year to continue to be lost annually to waste, inefficiencies ands criminal activity in major and minor government programs including, but not limited to, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, and unemployment insurance. Check.
• Wage class warfare of rich Americans against poorer Americans by falsely implying that Warren Buffet's Federal income tax rate is typical of those Americans earning over $100,000 a year. Check.
• Ignore the pending financial meltdown of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid in order to not alienate a few voters in November. Check.
• Fail to write the regulations and guidelines needed to implement legislation that was passed in 2008 that cracked down on food stamp fraud.
• Fail to come up with a reorganization plan or termination plan for the dysfunctional and expensive Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and FHA entities. Check.
• Approve the first ever, government sanctioned assassination of an American citizen without due process and institute an official government committee to review and recommend subsequent assassinations of Americans without due process.

I may be wrong but I do not remember Carter coming anywhere close to this number of failures during his entire four years as President. I do not think he set anywhere near the number of records that the Obama administration has set as far as the weakest economic recovery ever, the most failed economic programs, the most Americans ever on food stamps, etc.

I do not think Carter had nearly as many firsts as Obama such as the first government sanctioned American citizen assassination, the first ever U.S. credit downgrade, the first ever TRILLION dollar annual government deficit, etc.

I do not think Carter had nearly as much disdain for individual Constitutional rights, Constitutional tenets. or the rule of law. 

So, no disrespect to my Facebook friend who thinks that her list of a half dozen Obama accomplishments is noteworthy. My above list of over four dozen reasons why the Obama accomplishment checklist of failure trumps that list in my mind. When a President's accomplishment checklist falls below the accomplishment checklist of Jimmy Carter, it is about time to try another President.

“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” Albert Einstein
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 or 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 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

The Big Lie - Obama's Class Warfare Political Deception Regarding Taxing The Rich

Before delving into today's topic, a few disclaimers from me:

• I am not Warren Buffet wealthy or anywhere close to it.
• I drive an eight year car and my wife drives a five year old car.
• We live in a typical, middle class, 2,000 square foot house and have no luxurious secondary homes in Arizona (like Warren Buffet's secretary has), in Aspen, in Europe, in the Caribbean, or any other exotic location.
• Up until the November, 2011 elections, I had never voted for a Republican for national office in my life (I am 57 years old).
• My wife and I are semi-retired living on a semi-fixed income and last year paid Federal income taxes at the 15% income bracket.
• I have an advanced degree in statistics so I think I know my way around a spreadsheet and a set of numbers.
• I am disgusted when politicians, or anyone else, misuses facts, data, and statistics. It is an affront to my discipline and the integrity of the numbers and assumes that myself and other Americans are too stupid to understand the lies that the political class puts forth.

Thus, I really have no financial stake in President Obama's desire to raise taxes on the wealthy in this country.

A review from previous documented posts in this blog:

• Estimated annual taxpayer wealth lost to waste and fraud in the Medicare program: $60 - $90 billion
• Estimated annual taxpayer wealth lost to waste and fraud in the Medicaid program: $40 - $60 billion
• Estimated annual taxpayer wealth lost to waste and fraud in the Social Security program: $70 billion
• Estimated annual taxpayer wealth lost to waste and fraud in one Federal government unemployment program: $19 billion
• Estimated annual taxpayer wealth lost to waste and fraud in one Federal food stamp program: $2 - $3 billion
• Estimated annual uncollected Federal income taxes from U.S. citizen tax evaders that is due to the Federal government: $325 billion
• Estimated annual taxpayer wealth lost to just the above Federal programs: $517 - $567 billion

Okay, now that the preliminaries are out of the way, let's look at what I consider one of the biggest lies, hoaxes, and political class deceptions I have ever come across. President Obama and other politicians in Washington would have you believe that the vast majority of higher income American earners pay a smaller percentage of their earnings in Federal income taxes than the average middle class American.

He implied such in his state of the union speech and it has been his political stump mantra over the past few months. On a local Tampa Bay morning newscast yesterday, Democratic Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who is also the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, repeated the deception by stating that the President will campaign for reelection to fix this supposed tax inequity.

Which raises a question in my mind: do these people really believe this myth and are too busy or incapable of verifying it is a valid reality? Or are they being deliberately deceptive to incite more class warfare in this country for the benefit of their political goals? In either case, incapable of doing some simple research and math or deliberately lying, they are not someone I would trust for public office.

The reason for my view is that their false assertion can be easily checked using online, official IRS data that compiles the tax returns of every American in excruciating detail. The data is available in EXCEL spreadsheets at the following link for anyone that wants to do the math themselves:

http://www.irs.gov/taxstats/indtaxstats/article/0,,id=96981,00.html#_grp1

So let's see if Obama, Wasserman Schultz, and other Democrats are accurate in their assertion that most higher earning people in this country pay less as a percentage of their earnings than middle class earners based on real data from history and the IRS:

• As you will see at the website, the latest year that taxpayer information is available is 2009 so lets base our analysis on this most recent data:
• In the 2009 spreadsheet you will see that the IRS tells us how many American tax returns out of the 140 million filed fell into each Adjusted Gross Earnings (AGI) earnings bracket, starting at $0 and going up to over $10 million earned.
• The spreadsheets also show what the total earnings were in each bracket and how much was paid in taxes in each bracket by the earners within each bracket.
• If we do the simple math calculation of dividing the total number of tax dollars paid by the amount earned in each earnings bracket, we come up with the following chart (you can double click on the graph to get a larger, more detailed picture):

• What do we learn from this simple math calculation based on official IRS data? The more you earn in AGI, the higher percentage of those earnings you pay in Federal income taxes. This seems to be in direct conflict with Obama's assertion and mimicked by others in his party that this is not the reality.
• In fact, the vast majority of Americans earning up to $100,000 a year, on an overall average perspective, pay less than 5% a year of their earnings in Federal income taxes while the vast majority of Americans earning over $100,000 a year in total pay over 20% of their earnings in Federal income taxes, four times as much on a percentage basis.
• Hardly unfair when you now consider that the wealthier earners in this country pay far more in both absolute tax dollars and four times higher on a percentage of earnings basis.
• If you do a little more math and look at those that earned over a million dollars in 2009 vs. those that earned less than a million dollars, you find that the over $1,000,000 paid on average paid about 24.4% of their earnings in Federal income taxes while those earning under $1,000,000 paid less than 10% in Federal income taxes.
• 87.6% of the 140,000,000 million tax returns filed had income under $100,000 and all of them, on average, paid less than 10% of their income in Federal income taxes.
• Those that earned over $500,000 paid about 24% of their earnings in Federal income taxes, on average.
• Those earning over a million dollars a year in AGI comprise (about 240,000 out of 140 million 2009 tax returns) only .17% of all U.S. earners in the 2009 IRS tax tables. Theoretically, if Obama got his way and taxed these earners at a full 30%, it would only add another $40.6 billion annually to the Federal government tax stream.
• To put this $40.6 billion in perspective, if it was somehow equally distributed to every American tax filer who earned less than $1,000,000 a year, each filer would get back the equivalent of $.79 a day.
• The $40.6 billion would cover only about 2.5% of the national debt that the Obama administration rang up in 2011. It would be only about 1% of the overall Federal budget in 2011.
• The amount of taxpayer wealth lost to waste and fraud in the Federal government programs listed above is about 13 to 14 times larger than the $40.6 billion that would be generated by Obama's 30% tax the rich target. Thus, if Obama and the rest of the political class were doing their jobs, they could easily recover much more than the 30% figure for their programs vs. taxing any American more.

But that is the point. If Obama was actually doing some of the mundane parts of his job, e.g. protecting taxpayer wealth and being frugal with our tax dollars, he would have a less effective political talking point. Better to divide Americans and fire up his base even if the political position he is putting forth is bogus from a math, statistical, and reality perspective.

Remember, the above numbers are not from the Republican Party, the Tea Party, Fox News, or any other adversarial political force to Obama. They are the actual, official IRS numbers from 2009. I doubt that the 2010 and 2011 numbers are any different.

In fact, if you look at the number of Americans who earned over a $1,000,000 in AGI over the past few years you will see that the number is actually going down, from just under 400,000 in 2007 to under 240,000 in 2009. Thus, the case against the President for taxing the rich is likely more viable now than when the 2009 tax numbers were compiled since there are 40% fewer millionaire earners to tax in 2009 vs. 2007.

Hey, if you think the rich should pay more in Federal income taxes in this country, that is your right and I respect that position. But please do it for the right reasons and not the fact that you believe the deceptions and lies spewing forth from the Democrats in Washington. Warren Buffet is the exception. His secretary, who reportedly earns well over $100,000 a year, is the exception.

Failing to educate yourself and blindly jumping on the Obama class warfare bandwagon contributes to the divisions within this country. Taxing the rich in this way will not solve your personal financial situation and challenges, it will not resolve our dire national debt crisis (as we see from the above analysis, we have a national debt crisis that can only be solved by drastically reducing Federal spending and not raising taxes on the rich), and it will divert attention from solving the disgrace of the Federal government wasting over half a TRILLION dollars a year.

Do not have money envy, it is an ugly trait. Most of the high earners in this country earned their money legally and ethically. They deserve to be treated fairly according to the reality of the situation and the numbers above, especially since taxing them more will not solve any crisis or issue facing the nation today. They do not deserve to be demeaned and slandered by pandering, class warfare politicians.



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 or 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 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/