March, 2014 Political Class Insanity, Part 1: Defense Budgets Out of Control, Government Real Estate Out of Control and Government Partying Out Of Control

It’s the beginning of the month which means it is time for another dose of political class insanity, idiocy, screw ups, and wasteful spending. Every month we need to take a week or so of posts to cover all of the many inane acts that politicians all over the country impose on ordinary Americans, acts that almost always cost us money or freedom. Previous discussions of political class insanity can be accessed by looking at the early posts of previous months from the list of dates on the right side of this screen.

Unfortunately, when we started doing this feature four years ago, we could usually cover a month’s worth of insanity in a day or so. Over the years, we have needed more and more time each month to get our insanity reviews done, indicating that our political class decision making and actions are getting worse over time. There is little doubt that the trend will continue this month also.

1) We have often discussed the reality that the U.S. continues to needlessly deploy over a hundred thousand troops just in South Korea, Japan, Europe, and other parts of the world, at a cost of billions and billions of dollars a year. These deployments may have served a purpose at one point in our history but now are unnecessary relics from our military past. 

More recently, the current Presidential administration has involved U.S. military resources in an illegal and ill fated military conflict in Libya, has stationed 2,500 U.S. Marines in Australia, and now has placed U.S. troops, or “advisors,” in upwards of a half dozen African nations. In addition, in the past six months, the President has threatened to militarily intervene in Syria and his Secretary of State has floated the idea of having U.S. troops serve as peacekeepers in the Israeli and Palestinian conflict.

All of this costs money, as the following chart shows, U.S. military spending vs. major all countries around the world (double click on graph for a larger view):



As you see:

• The U.S. spends almost $600 billion a year on defense, a cost that is equivalent to well over $5,000 a year per U.S. household.
• This is four times more than what China spends on defense despite China having orders of magnitude more people than us.
• This is about eight times what Russia spends on defense.
• In fact, the U.S. probably spends more than most of the nations on this chart COMBINED.

This chart proves that we really need to find a way to rein in the insane defense spending by substantially cutting the deployment of U.S. military resources around the world along with reducing other other excessive and wasteful defense spending. We simply cannot afford the cost of what the political class is spending in this budget item, getting very little in return. 

2) Let’s look at another chart, a chart which partly explains why the military industrial complex in this country spends almost $600 billion dollars a year:

This chart comes from a recent Cato analysis and report which counted up the number of physical buildings that the Federal government currently owns. Cato and the chart point out:

• The top three occupants of Federal buildings are the Army, Air Force, and Navy who in total occupy at least a whopping 180,000 buildings.
• This comes out to an almost incomprehensible 3,600 defense related buildings in every state on average. Another possible reason for an annual defense budget of almost $600 billion a year?
• In total, the Feds own over 300,000 buildings.
• But it gets worse. The government also leases 55,000 buildings, for a total of 361,000 buildings.
• But there is still more insanity. In addition to the hundreds of thousands of buildings that it owns AND leases, the Federal government owns and leases another remarkable 486,00 pieces of real estate such as parking lots. 
• The General Services Administration reports that the annual operating costs for all the buildings and structures is $33 billion. 
• Although the current market value of the buildings is unknown, a government report estimated the replacement value in 2007 at $1.5 trillion.
• The Federal government even admits that at least 77,000 of the assets are under used or unneeded.
• Some of them have been ignored for so long that they are in what Cato calls an “alarming state of deterioration.”

Obviously the Federal government needs to do a good spring cleaning of its real estate holdings. Selling these assets to private investors would 1) put them to better use than the non use they are receiving today, 2) would save American taxpayers billions of dollars a year in annual maintenance, administrative, security, and repair costs, 3) would reduce Federal government energy costs in keeping these facilities with power, and 4) would not contribute to our already outlandish national debt in the long run.

One problem is that the government does not know exactly what it owns, what condition those assets are in, and what real estate assets are excessive or unused. The GAO says that the government has a “lack of accurate and useful data to support decision making” on its vast property holdings. 

How insane is that, the Federal government has gotten so large and unwieldy that it does not even know what it owns? If a private business ran itself like that, not knowing what assets it owned or where those assets were located, it would soon be out of business. When government does it, the problem goes unattended for decades and the taxpayer gets stuck with the bill for the political and bureaucratic incompetence.

Nevertheless, it is time for Washington to clean up this mess that it has been causing for decades, spring clean and bank the savings regardless of how unglamorous the clean up is. Anything else is just plain insane.

3) The political class spends and wastes our money is so many ways, not the least of which is how politicians and government bureaucrats party. Consider some of the party expenditures the Washington political class has treated themselves to over the past few years using our tax money:

• The White House staff currently has five chefs on staff at a cost of over $550,000 a year. Why five chefs, do they all prepare one part of every meal? Too excessive even for the President, especially when over 20 million Americans are unemployed or under employed, almost fifty million Americans receive food assistance, and our national debt is now over $17 TRILLION. Cut it down to two chefs and show at least a little empathy for the rest of America.
• In 2013, Joe Biden went to Europe for just two days where he and his staff rang up two nights of hotel expenses that exceeded $1 million. $1 million just in hotel expenses. I would not expect the Vice President to stay in a Motel 6 but I also do not think that $1 million for just two nights of lodging is respectful of taxpayers either.
• In the past few years the IRS has spent about $50 million on its conferences, often held in very nice surroundings outside of DC. A 2013 conference in Anaheim, California cost the American taxpayer $4 million and included some hotel rooms that went for $1,500 a night. Expenses also included $17,000 just for conference speakers one of which spoke about “Leadership In Art,” a topic that has nothing to do with tax collection and tax law.

Other such nonsense and cases of taxpayer wealth can be seen at:

http://www.theminorityreportblog.com/2014/02/22/video-party-time-on-the-taxpayer-dime/

That will do it for today, just day one of this month’s political class insanity. A defense budget out of control, government real estate out of control, and politicians and bureaucrats partying out of control. All paid for by the American taxpayer who gets virtually nothing in return for these expenditures.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

November, 2013 Political Class Insanity, Part 2: Delusional Politicians, Economically Illiterate Politicians, and Wasteful Spending Politicians

This is the second in what promises to be a long series in our monthly political class insanity update. Every month we try to keep up with the insanity, idiocy, lies, and wasteful spending that the American political class continues to come up with. Unfortunately, since we started tracking the insanity a few short years ago, it appears that the volume and lunacy levels have increased exponentially.

1) Let’s start this discussion off with a quote from one of my favorite Washington politicians, from a lunacy perspective, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Along with Nancy Pelosi, I often wonder what color the sky is in their worlds and their realities, especially after Mr. Reid utters  a quote like this recent one: “The only people who feel there shouldn’t be more coming in to the federal government from the rich people are the Republicans in the Congress. Everybody else, including the rich people, are willing to pay more. They want to pay more.”

Everybody else in America is willing to pay more in taxes to the most inefficient, corrupt, and ineffective set of politicians and government bureaucracies in the history of this country? I don’t think so. As always, he cites no sources, no public opinion polls, no research, just his view and reality that everybody wants to send Washington more in taxes. 

What is truly pathetic is I don’t know if he is doing this for political theater or he actually believes this nonsense. One way to check your theory, Mr. Reid, would be to make all income tax payments truly voluntary. That certainly would be the only way to verify your “everybody” claim…and also shut down the Federal government over night. What color is the sky where he dwells?

2) Staying with the concept of different worlds and realities, California Congressman Henry Waxman recently stated that “ACA [Obama Care] is an enormous success with one important exception: It has a poorly designed website.” Huh? 

I guess if you define of millions of Americans losing access to their current insurance plans a success, if you define thousands upon thousands of Americans losing access to their family doctors a success, if you define a multiple fold increases in monthly insurance premiums a success, if you define multiple fold increases in deductibles a success, if you define a program whose cost has more than tripled in a few years a success, if you define mass number of doctors retiring early a success, if you define millions of Americans losing their work hours a success, etc., then he is right. 

Otherwise, he is either delusional or of a different reality. The number of signups has been atrociously small, there is no way he can call this fiasco a success based on minimal signups and maximum economic and health insurance destruction for millions of Americans. The Harry Reid school of foot in mouth disease.

3) Yesterday, we discussed the research and analysis that showed the typical American man working full time in the U.S. workforce are earning less today, in inflation adjusted terms, than the typical man working in the U.S. was making forty years ago, i.e. economic progress for those workers stopped four decades ago. 

In previous posts we have reported on government data that showed the median household income has decreased by about $4,000 or about 8% SINCE THE RECESSION ENDED.

It is quite clear that for decades and up to the present, the Washington political class has had no clue on how to encourage economic growth for ALL Americans. That point was driven home by a recent opinion poll that was conducted by Harris Interactive for Wells Fargo Bank:

• Many middle-class Americans aren't expecting to live their golden years in leisurely retirement since a full 34% of them think they will work until at least the age of 80, because they haven't saved enough for retirement.
• That high level of pessimism is  from 25% in 2011 and 30% in 2012.
• Again, this is four years after the recession ended, when economic times were supposed to be improving.
• Even more depressing, 37% say they'll never retire and will work until they are too sick or die.
• 42% say saving for retirement and paying bills concurrently is impossible.
• 48% don't have confidence that they will be able to save enough for a comfortable retirement.

Very, very depressing. A complete economic screw up by both parties over the past decades that has forced hard working, middle class families into economic slavery well into their senior years.

4) The country annually spends over $600 billion on its armed forces. It is by far the largest expenditure in the Federal budget, costing, on average, every American household just under $6,000 a year. For that type of investment every year, one would expect to have the most modern, most prepared military in the world, or the history of the world.

Not the case, according to Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno. In recent public remarks he said his greatest fear is to receive an order to deploy thousands of troops. Why?

The Army has only TWO combat-ready brigades right now, he said. Two brigades ready and equipped to handle a national security emergency but we still spend over $600 billion a year. 

Something is drastically wrong if for that amount of money we dare to put our troops in danger while unprepared. Pathetic management of the government bureaucracy and the setting of priorities. Those that serve on armed forces committees in Congress need to be removed from those posts, as demanded by Step 34 in “Love My Country, Loathe My Government,” for dereliction of duty and for endangering our troops. We are not getting anywhere close to value for our money in this government area.

5) Getting back to economic stagnation, the latest job statistics from the Federal government were again a monthly disappointment:

• The economy added a net 148,000 jobs, a meager showing even against the low anticipated/forecasted numb er of 180,000.
• While the unemployment rate dropped to 7.2%, the lowest rate since November 2008, that also was not good news since the number of Americans not in the labor force rose from 90.473 million in August to 90.609 million in September, an increase of 136,000 people and an all time record, which probably explains the decrease in the unemployment rate, given how it is calculated.
• Since the economy needs around 150,000 jobs added each much just to keep up with population growth, 148,000 newly created jobs last month is actually a small step backwards from an economic progress perspective. 
• In fact, if the economy added 148,000 per month, the United States wouldn’t return to pre-recession levels until 2022, nine years from now. And that assumes no recessions occur in those nine months that actually cause the workforce to contract, not expand meagerly.
• The only good news is, at least for one month, is a shift back toward full-time hiring. 

Overall, very bad news and just another confirmation that Washington’s economic wherewithal continues to be pathetic.

6) About a year ago this time, our monthly insanity posts were full of Obama administration investments of taxpayer wealth in failed and failing alternative energy companies and efforts. Every week it seemed like some alternative energy company was going out of business, providing no societal benefit, and destroying millions and millions of taxpayer dollars in the process.

I had assumed they all had vanished down the drain of bankruptcy but I was wrong. Judicial Watch, writing in its Corruption Chronicles on September 24, 2013, reminded us that there are still companies going bankrupt after receiving ill-advised and substantial amounts of taxpayer wealth:

• ECOtality was a company that made public charging stations for electric cars. 
• Unfortunately, its business model and plans did not pan out and it recently collapsed, taking almost $100 million of taxpayer money with it.
• Fisker Automotive received nearly $200 million in taxpayer funding to develop a wheelchair-accessible “green” van. 
• In addition, this startup had been heavily boosted  by the Obama administration as an innovator that would develop two lines of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles that could run up to 300 miles on a rechargeable Lithium-ion battery. 
• The Obama administration planned to give Fisker $528 million but stopped that cash flow once the company laid off three quarters of its employees and announced it was on the verge of bankruptcy.
• Vehicle Production Group (VPG) recently died off after losing $50 million in taxpayer funds.
• VPG was supposed to create special vans for the disabled that ran on compressed natural gas. 
• The Obama administration justified funding this company’s effort using taxpayer dollars with the following gibberish: “This project invests in a socially and environmentally responsible product that will create new jobs, promote the use of alternative fuels, and help the U.S. maintain its competitive edge in the automotive industry.”  Missed every single one of those noble thoughts once the company went belly up.

So let’s summarize: politicians that live in a different reality or who are purely delusional, a government and political class that wastes hundreds of billions of dollars a year, and a political class whose economic prowess is pitiful. More of the same tomorrow if you dare.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now:http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w