More insanity form the American political class:
1)As we have always said, the Federal government and the politicians and bureaucrats that control and operate it rarely get things done on time and on budget. One of Biden’s pet projects proved yet again that this situation hasn't changed:
The Postal Service needed to purchase regular vehicles to deliver the mail like it had been doing for decades.
But Biden insisted that rather than by gas driven vehicles, a proven technology, his administration insisted that billions of taxpayer dollars be spent to purchase electric vehicles.
Instead of delivering 3,000 new Post Office vehicles for the delivery of mail, this Biden program ended up delivering a grand total of 93 vehicles.
This is what taxpayers got out of a $3 billion project.
This is not to be confused with another electric vehicle Biden effort that was supposed to build out 3,000 electric vehicles charging stations but ended up delivering only 7.
Who in the world ever thought that this was going to go smoothly and not waste billions of taxpayer dollars, given the track record of politicians like Biden? The Post office needed thousands of new vehicles to keep the mail flowing and they ended up with 93? No surprise to anyone paying attention.
2)As we mentioned in a previous post, the mainstream media in this country doesn't have a good reputation for honesty and integrity these days. According to Gallup, almost 70% of Americans have little or no trust in the news that they put out. And the following is just a small sample of bogus news they reported over recent years:
The reporting on Russian collusion about Trump’s first campaign was false.
The reporting on the Steele Dossier was false.
The reporting on the Hunter Biden laptop computer was false.
The reporting that the Covid virus arose in a wet market in China was false.
The reporting that the Covid vaccine would prevent someone from getting the virus was false.
The reporting that actor Jussie Smollet was attacked two Trump supporters was false.
And now we know from an established member of the discredited mainstream news media that the reporting of Joe Biden’s cognitive health was also scandalous and false:
Chuck Todd was a member of the NBC news staff for a very long time.
He was part of the cult that tried to protect Biden’s decline from public view.
In a recent interview he admitted that a high ranking member of the Biden staff told him several years ago that Biden was probably not fit to be the long term president of the country, a conversation that Todd never followed up on or reported.
Specifically: “I’m not going to out the cabinet secretary, but I had a cabinet secretary two years ago— okay, two years ago, out of the blue ask me: ‘Do you really think he can—he can’t run again like this.’ And I said, ‘You have more interaction that I do’ and he said, ‘I don’t have a lot of interaction with him.’ This is a pretty senior cabinet secretary and this was two years ago. This is one of those classic open secrets—nonversation, right? It’s the story everybody knows and everybody was afraid to talk about.”
But Todd went on to explain why the mainstream press protected Biden, uncovering the deep bias in the journalism industry today: “But I understand the argument about the collective [media] on that front, The only thing I can chalk it up to is this … fear that some members of the media had sometimes that they would be perceived as helping Trump if they somehow diminished Biden… And I think this has been a fundamental mistake that many members of the traditional press has done.”
Thus, rather than be driven by truth, the mainstream news industry was driven by their own political biases.
Democracy dies when the journalism industry morphs into something like Pravda, the propaganda wing of the Communist party in the USSR vs. being a beacon of truth, honesty, and integrity.
3)We have previously discussed the ridiculous stupid and inane spending of taxpayer dollars on stupid projects around the world: $20 million to put on a children’s play about Sesame Street in Iraq, $6 million to support tourism in Egypt, millions of dollars for gender changing surgery in Guatemala, and hundreds of other stupid expenses and projects.
But you do not have to go around the world to see how the Washington political class and the departments and bureaucrats they oversee waste untold billions of dollars every year just in DC:
A recent Congressional committee recently held hearings on how the Federal government spends billions of dollars every year to pay for excessive and outdated Federal buildings for Federal employees.
According to Congresswoman Marjorie Tayloer Greene: “Here in D.C., [the Government Accountability Office] found in 2023 that the vast majority of federal agency headquarters buildings were less than 25% occupied — some much less. Meanwhile, from 2022 to 2024, the backlog of deferred maintenance on the aging buildings the government owns grew from $216 billion to $370 billion. That’s more than one-third of a trillion dollars it will cost to restore them — if we don’t sell them.”
Since 2003 the GAO has screamed that Federal government property management was a “high risk” area of government wasteful spending.
And yet nothing was done, with the Biden administration contributing to the crisis by spending billions of dollars to not only maintain empty buildings but purchasing furniture to furnish empty spaces.
Greene did mention some success already in getting the problem under control with the canceling of 700 Federal government space leases which totaled almost 8 MILLION square feet of space, space that was not being used, a move that saved the taxpayers about $400 million.
John Hart, CEO of the watchdog group. OpenTheBooks, had the following insights to the problem: “Today’s expansive, excessive and sometimes opulent federal real estate portfolio is both a monument to the administrative state and a mausoleum of lost dreams, opportunity and freedom for American taxpayers. Do federal employees need seven figures worth of abstract modern art to make the government run?”
David Marroni of the GAO echoed Hart’s insights: “The pandemic shined a spotlight on these long-standing problems. The federal government has held on to too much space and has been too slow in shedding underused properties … Progress has been slow. Agencies were in a wait-and-see mode for too long.”
For the first time ever, government organizations now have to begin tracking actual building utilization, a step in the right direction and a step that should have been in place for decades.
And yet, Democrats think that this tightening up of unused space, this saving
of s-wasted taxpayer dollars is a bad thing, at least according to Congresswoman Melanie Stansbury: “I think it’s very clear that part of the agenda here is really about dismantling the administrative state and using real assets of the federal government to do that. The point here is that things are not always as they appear in Washington, D.C., and I think it’s very clear that this is not about the federal taxpayers and the American people. This is about disposing of federal property and a fire sale to make the wealthy more wealthy. Thanks.”
As always with members of Congress, a lot of blather, not much common sense and no evidence to the contrary that this shedding of unused office space is a bad thing.
But the reality is that, according to Congressman Pat Fallon, the GAO found that 17 of the biggest 24 Federal government entities are using less than 25% of the office capacity, i.e. we are paying, as taxpayers we are paying for 75% of unused space.
So there is dead space in D.C that American taxpayers are paying for. Imagine how much better it would be if that space was made available to the market and real estate developers who could create housing, businesses, and jobs for the district, much better use than having the space stay empty and be paid for by the taxpayers of this country.
4)As a follow up, consider, that according to John Hart:
The Federal government spent $4.6 BILLION on government office space furniture since 2021 despite the fact that 75% of Federal buildings are unused and thus, did not need furniture.
$284,000 was spent just on FEMA conference rooms.
$12,000 was spent on leather recliners for the embassy in Islamabad.
The CDC spent $238,000 on solar powered picnic tables despite that its social distancing rules dictated that those solar powered picnic tables “should have sat unoccupied.”
You tax dollars at work.
Enough insanity from your politicians for today: paying for office space that is not used, the death of unbiased journalism in the country, and the Post Office doesn't get their Biden vehicles.
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If you agree that we need to deseat every member of Congress for their lack of success and accomplishment, then please consider going to the following petition link to help the cause:
https://www.change.org/p/deseat-congress-reset-freedom
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