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

Two More Failing Taxpayer Aided Alternative Energy Companies Bound To The Forefront

Just when you think that the financial carnage is done relative to the Obama administration's disastrous waste of taxpayer wealth on failed alternative energy companies, two more fiascoes pop up. We have extensively covered these other failures in previous posts, most recently:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2012/10/obama-energy-disasters-still-abound.html

which used Abound Solar as the lead story on that post. That write-up also included a list of what companies had failed up to that date in time.

But according to a recent Heritage Foundation report, two more taxpayer funded/aided companies are now also facing difficult markets and financial times:

• A pair of foreign-owned solar companies, both of whom received a combined $84 million in Energy Department tax credits, have announced they will lay off U.S. employees.
• Why foreign owned companies were granted U.S. taxpayer money is a question and scandal for another day’s discussion.
• Both companies got their funding under the Energy Department’s Advanced Energy Manufacturing (48C) Tax Credit, a credit which is worth up to 30% of the cost of manufacturing qualifying green energy projects.
• Solar World received an $82 million credit and SunTech received a $2.1 million credit.
• Solar World announced a 47% revenue decline in the third quarter and will potentially execute 37 layoffs at its Oregon plant.
• SunTech said it will likely layoff 50 employees at its Arizona production facilities.

The ironic thing about both companies is that Solar World claimed it had to lay off its employees because the Chinese government is subsidizing the sale of cheap solar panels in the U.S., which the U.S. International Trade Commission is fighting by imposing a 35.95% tariff on each imported Chinese solar panel. Meanwhile, SunTech is claiming it is laying off people because of the 35.95% tariff that is being imposed by the Commission.

Thus, the Federal government’s priorities are so screwed up that is funding two U.S. companies that have diametrically opposed business models relative to Chinese subsidies and U.S. tariffs, one gets hurt and the other gets helped depending on what the Federal government does.

More wasted taxpayer dollars for little benefit in return, in this case fewer jobs despite millions of dollars in aid. But this should not surprise anyone, given that the Federal government has thrown billions of dollars away on alternative energy companies that are either bankrupt and out of business, going bankrupt and will soon be out of business, have laid off a significant number of workers, and businesses that still exist but have failed miserably to attain their business and financial goals (the company names with an asterisk next to them indicate they have filed for or have completed bankruptcy proceedings):

1. Evergreen Solar ($25 million)*
2. SpectraWatt ($500,000)*
3. Solyndra ($535 million)*
4. Beacon Power ($43 million)*
5. Nevada Geothermal ($98.5 million)
6. SunPower ($1.2 billion)
7. First Solar ($1.46 billion)
8. Babcock and Brown ($178 million)
9. EnerDel’s subsidiary Ener1 ($118.5 million)*
10. Amonix ($5.9 million)
11. Fisker Automotive ($529 million)
12. Abound Solar ($400 million)*
13. A123 Systems ($279 million)*
14. Willard and Kelsey Solar Group ($700,981)*
15. Johnson Controls ($299 million)
16. Brightsource ($1.6 billion)
17. ECOtality ($126.2 million)
18. Raser Technologies ($33 million)*
19. Energy Conversion Devices ($13.3 million)*
20. Mountain Plaza, Inc. ($2 million)*
21. Olsen’s Crop Service and Olsen’s Mills Acquisition Company ($10 million)*
22. Range Fuels ($80 million)*
23. Thompson River Power ($6.5 million)*
24. Stirling Energy Systems ($7 million)*
25. Azure Dynamics ($5.4 million)*
26. GreenVolts ($500,000)
27. Vestas ($50 million)
28. LG Chem’s subsidiary Compact Power ($151 million)
29. Nordic Windpower ($16 million)*
30. Navistar ($39 million)
31. Satcon ($3 million)*
32. Konarka Technologies Inc. ($20 million)*
33. Mascoma Corp. ($100 million)

I have never found a list of an Obama-backed alternative energy companies that have been successful. If that list exists, I would be more than happy to publish it.

Billions of dollars down the drain with no discernible taxpayer benefit in return. As we have discussed many times in this blog, the only Americans who made out on these deals are the many Obama administration political cronies who bankrolled many of these companies to begin with and received taxpayer money from this administration and political class in exchange for political financial support. Disgracefully wasteful spending.

As a side note, these billions do no include the additional wasted billions given to other alternative transportation companies and options such as Tesla Motors and the Chevy Volt, both of which either make cars that an average American taxpayer will never be able to afford or who make cars that have proven mostly uncompetitive in the marketplace.

But it gets worse. Not only do we have SunTech and Solar World laying off employees despite burning through government and taxpayer funds, not only to we have these 33 listed companies above providing no benefit back to taxpayers, we also have found out from the Washington Guardian,

http://www.washingtonguardian.com/stimulating-investigation

that there almost 2,000 investigations underway into fraud and criminal activity relative to the huge and fruitless economic stimulus program that was passed in 2009.

These nearly 2,000 investigations and the resultant 600 arrests include many Department of Energy programs that are related to the stimulus funds that were apportioned out to many of the above listed, failed companies. Thus, not only were these bad companies given taxpayer money for no benefit, that money may have also been taken under criminal circumstances.

The Federal government 1) does very, very few things well and 2) it does not employ trained venture capitalists. Both of these facts should have prevented the Federal government bureaucracy from handing out taxpayer money to almost three dozen failed companies, it does not know how to it well. If any of these listed companies had valid market and business plans, trained bankers and venture capitalists would have been more than happy to fund their business endeavors. The Federal government never should have been involved.

An old rule business goes something like the following: If a new product or service fills a market need (right price, right features, right style, right sales channels, etc.), no government support is needed. If a new product or service does not fit a market need, no amount of government support and financing will make it successful.

At least 33 companies had alternative energy products and services that did not fill a current market need. But the Federal government went and funded them anyway, much to the expense and chagrin of the American taxpayer. The only question left is if 33 is the end of the waste or there is more to come. Given that a week ago I had never heard of Solar World and SunTech, I doubt we have heard the end of the “Abounding” number alternative energy failures from the Obama administration.

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

Planes, Trains And Automobiles (And Boats!) - The Continuing Corruption of The Political Class

Definition of corruption - impairment of integrity, virtue, or moral principle

I was moved to find the definition of corruption recently, given the rampant and disgraceful behavior of the American political class in various situations. These situations are so varied, and yet so common to our politicians, that they reminded me of the 1987 movie featuring John Candy and Steven Martin, "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles."

In that movie, Candy and Martin, two completely different personalities end up on a cross country trip of misadventures, both trying to get home to Chicago for the holidays. Their misadventures  include various disasters on planes, trains, and automobiles. Their plight reminds me of the corruption trip of our politicians that also includes plans, trains, and automobiles with an additional misadventure into boats. All of which fulfill my above definition of corruption, the impairment of integrity, virtue, or moral principle.

Planes

I find it hard hard to believe I missed this political crisis of corruption and impairment of integrity from earlier this year but I did. It involves Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri. In late March, 2011, she announced she was selling her private plane and paying the owed back property taxes on it of over $287,000. Apparently in Missouri, an airplane owner has to pay property taxes on any plane that they own, something that the Senator did not do.

But that is not her only potential integrity problem. First, according to Politico articles from earlier this year, she also had to write a check to the Federal government when she billed her Senate expense account for purely political trips she made using the plane.  This cost her to refund over $80,000 to the government.

Second, the plane is registered to a shell company that is registered as an LLC in the state of Delaware, a state that does not charge property taxes on private plans. Was this an attempt to shelter the plane from Missouri property taxes? Given that the Senator lives in Missouri, is a Senator from the state of Missouri, used to work for the state government of Missouri, and keeps the plane in a hangar in Missouri, it certainly gets suspicious when her plane gets registered in Delaware.

Finally, the Senator served as the state of Missouri auditor from 1999 to 2007 so claiming ignorance of the state laws on property taxes is not a viable defense. Makes you wonder how a smart, educated, politically savy individual could forget or neglect to pay over a quarter of a million dollars of property taxes. Corruption or incompetence, neither being a good adjective to describe a U.S. Senator.

In a final bit of irony, earlier in 2011, McCaskill signed on as a co-sponsor of Senate legislation that would fire Federal employees if they are “seriously delinquent” in paying their own Federal taxes. Looks like maybe we can add hypocrite onto the charges of incompetent or corrupt.

Trains

Reuters reported on October 27, 2011 that Federal authorities arrested and charged eleven people in connection with an alleged $1 billion fraud involving hundreds of railroad workers from the Long Island Railroad filing false disability claims. Some of the workers claimed that they were unable to work even though investigators found them playing golf, playing tennis, riding bikes, shoveling snow, and doing other strenuous activities.

Among those arrested were several doctors who participated in the scam. The doctors would write up false medical reports stating that the railroad employees were disabled and when the employees were approved for disability payments and disability retirements, the doctors got a kickback from the newly "disabled" employees.

How does the political class figure into this? Consider the following:

• This fraud has been going on for years and years, even before the New York Times reported on it back in 2008. Why was it not handled sooner by the New York political class? One billion dollars is a lot of money to lose, one would have thought it would have been visible much sooner.
• The Reuters report stated that just about every long time Long Island Railroad employee was on disability, far higher than other railroads. Thus, this should have been another glaring red light for those in charge of protecting taxpayer wealth and assets. If, as the New York Times reported, "almost every longtime LIRR employee was receiving disability payments, resulting in a disability rate sharply higher than other railroads," why was the political class so delinquent in its duties to punish the fraud?
• Finally, in the two examples cited in the Reuters article, both persons were receiving well over $100,000 a year in disability payments. Even if these were legitimate disability cases, why were the payments so high, almost double the average household income level of the average American household.

Thus, not only were the politicians delinquent and irresponsible in identifying the massive, $1 billion fraud, they were also irresponsible in allowing disability payments to be so out of whack with the reality of life in America.

Definitely impairment here, allowing a disability system to be so corrupt and wasteful of taxpayer wealth.

Automobiles

You have to love the Obama administration's Energy Department and their ability to constantly throw good money after bad when it comes to "green companies." The latest waste comes to us courtesy of ECOtality. ECOtality is another California based green company (why do all of the Obama administration's alternative energy failures seem to be in California?) that received another Federal government backed loan, this one valued at $115 million.

The objective of ECOtality was to install 14,000 plug in charging stations in 18 cities around the country so that consumers with electric vehicles could pull up and juice up their electric car batteries in a convenient, local manner.

However, things have not gone well, even though the company was mentioned in the President's state of the union message and touted by the head of the Energy Department, Steven Chu:

• The SEC has recently opened an investigation into the company related to insider trading.
• In the first six months of 2011, the company lost $12 million, $3 million more than the year before.
• Half of its first quarter income came from the Federal loan, not from operating or sales success, implying the financial losses were worse than $12 million from an operating perspective.
• The installation is behind schedule and the company may be asking for an extension to their original installation timeline.

I find it hard to believe that the company was to install 14,000 charging stations for a market that probably has no where close to 14,000 electric vehicles on the road. The logic escapes me. Even if all 14,000 were installed, how was anyone going to make money off of them?

How corrupt and non virtuous is your thought process for no one in government or the political class to understand how poorly this math works out: build out infrastructure across the country to the tune of 14,000 charging stations to handle a market size that is far less than 14,000 users of the 14,000 charging stations?  The corruption of their thought process makes your head spin.

Boats

Although Candy and Martin did not involve a boat in their travels to Chicago in the movie, the political class, as usual, goes one step further when it comes to corruption and impairment of integrity. We reported on this incident a while ago but it is worthwhile going over it again, given the theme for this post.

John Kerry is a U.S. Senator from the state of Massachusetts. He lives in Massachusetts and serves the state of Massachusetts. The Senator is one of the wealthiest people serving in Congress since he married into the Heinz family fortune, probably easily worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

However, as reported by the Associated Press in July, 2010, the Senator seemed to have had a little integrity and moral impairment back in the time frame when he purchased a new yacht worth about $7 million. Rather than berth it and maintain it in Massachusetts, he took the New Zealand built boat across the way to Rhode Island where he would not have to pay both Massachusetts sales tax and annual Massachusetts excise taxes.

These are not trivial sums. The Associated Press report estimated that the home state of the U.S. Senator was missing out on $437,500 in one time sales taxes and $70,000 a year in excise taxes. I would say this corruption puts him in the same class, using the same cheat-my-home-state out of legally due taxes, as the good Senator from Missouri did with her airplane registration in Delaware misadventure.  Just another instance of political corruption, a major impairment of integrity, virtue or moral principle.

The good thing about the movie is that it was funny and the misadventures were happening to someone else. The unfortunate thing about political class version of "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles (and Boats)," is the the misadventures happen to the taxpayers and the associated waste of taxpayer wealth. There is nothing funny about that.

This type of behavior needs to stop, it is a disgrace to the country and a waste of money that could be used for some many other good purposes. That is why Step 38 and Step 39 from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" are so important.

Step 38 would require every politician to sign off on a shared value statement every year of which integrity would be a prime component. Hopefully, if they at least read and sign off on the promise to remain in integrity, we would have a chance of seeing behavior that does not remind us of  the political misadventures of "Planes, Trains and Automobiles."

Step 39 would impose term limits on every Federal government politician. We have to find a way to reform our political processes so that we get people into elected office that want to serve us, the citizens, rather than how can they improperly use government resources to keep themselves in office or use their position and knowledge of the system to avoid paying the taxes they rightfully owe.

Integrity, virtue and moral principle. Wouldn't that be a nice way to describe our politicians and leaders? It is certainly not the case today and that makes for a very sad movie ending.




Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available, at http://www.loathemygovernment.com .It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.


Please visit the following sites for freedom:


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

Two exmaples cited in the Reuters article stated that the two people involved int he fraud were receiving over $100,000 a year in disability payments. Even if they were legitmate disability claimants, how does the polticial class and the Long Isldan Railraod jsutify such high disability payments, almost twice the average income form an average American household?

In all cases, it is quite apprent that the polticial class has fialed in its fiduciary resonbitilies by not delaing with the fraud sooner and allwoing disapbility payemtns to be so high relative to average hosuehold income in the country.

Automobiles