Nancy Pelosi: Political Class Insanity Quote Machine

We very well could have included this post in the last series of posts we did which covered the latest lunacy, idiocy, and insanity of the American political class. However, since today’s post is dedicated to the world and alternative reality of Nancy Pelosi, I felt that she should get her own dedicated space.

The basis for today’s discussion was a research piece recently published by the Independent Journal Review that nominated the eight best, or worse, quotes from former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. The most kind word I can say about her quotes and political actions and perceptions is that she and I live in two completely different worlds, two different realities. 

In my opinion, she must be in a different world, given her following quotes and outlooks on life, outlooks that are totally in conflict with reality, the numbers, and common sense of today‘s America:

1. No Spending Problem Here

"It is almost a false argument to say we have a spending problem. We have a budget deficit problem that we have to address."

Comments: No spending problem? Consider the following realities:

• The Federal government spends about $10 billion a day, 365 days a year. For comparison, if you had spent $1,000 a day since the day Christ was born, you would still not have spent a billion dollars. The Federal government spends ten times more than that in one day.
• It spends about $410 million an hour.
• It spends about $7 million a minute.
• On average, every U.S. household would have to pay about $31,000 a year to cover the $3.6 TRILLION annual Federal budget. 
• Since the U.S. median household income is about $50,000, about 60% of what an average U.S. household makes, pre-tax, each year would theoretically go to funding the Federal government.
• Excessive spending by the Federal government over the years has burdened current and future American generations with $17 TRILLION worth of national debt burden. 
• That national debt burden has gone up by a whopping $5 TRILLION just since Obama took office.
• This $17 TRILLION national debt is over $50,000 for every U.S. citizen, from the youngest baby to the oldest senior citizen.
• If you could somehow liquidate the total wealth, not income, of Bill Gates, you could fund about only one week of Federal government spending, having no impact at all on the already $17 TRILLION of national debt. 
• More generally, even if you confiscated the total wealth of the “richest” Americans, you probably could not fund even one year’s worth of Federal spending or have any impact on reducing the national debt with that total wealth confiscation.
• The Federal government spending over the past few years has been used to fund research to find out when dogs became man’s best friend, built a robotic squirrel to see how poisonous snakes would react to it, built an underwater treadmill to see if shrimp could run, studied the sex lives of a New Zealand snail species, built two Navy ships for $300 million that were immediately turned into scrap metal without every being used in service, built an $80 million State Department consulate in Afghanistan and THEN realized it was not defensible against terror attacks, etc., etc. etc. The volume and originality of how Washington politicians waste taxpayer wealth is endless.

There is only an excessive spending problem in Washington since regardless of how much you raise taxes, up to and including total wealth confiscation of rich Americans, you could never balance the current Federal spending budget or pay down the debt by increasing taxes. At least in my reality.

2. Unemployment Creates Jobs

"[Unemployment benefits] creates jobs faster than almost any other initiative you can name." Pelosi also said it has the "double benefit" of helping those who lost their jobs and acting as a "job creator" on the side.

Comments: So in her world, it would be best to create more unemployment since that is the best way to create jobs. I am sure that the chronically unemployed, the 23 million Americans are so who are unemployed or under employed, would disagree with this conclusion. 

The Federal government and state governments have probably paid out more in unemployment benefits over the past five years than in any other five year period in our history. And all it has done is make over 20 million American unemployed/under employed and resulted in a record number of consecutive months where the unemployment rate has been stuck well above 7%. No, Ms. Pelosi, unemployment benefits are not a job creating program in this world.

3. Health Independence?

“This week marks one year since the Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act. It captures the spirit of our founders. The spirit they wrote in the Declaration of Independence."

Comments: The spirit of the Declaration of Independence in my world, is one of liberty, freedom, free choice, minimal government interference in my life. In her world, as it pertains to Obama Care, the spirit of independence must mean:

• The government can force you to buy a product that you may or may not want or may or may not be able to afford.
• Failure to adhere to the government dictates, will result in fines and criminal record.
• The government can force you to go to doctors and hospitals, and other medical options that they want you to go to, not what you want to choose.
• The government can force insurance companies to drop the health care insurance policy that you were perfectly happy with since it fit your needs, not the needs of the Federal bureaucracy, forcing you to purchase a replacement policy that is likely more expensive with fewer benefits.
• The government can force you through a website process that endangers your personal identify protection and security simply because they are incapable of building a secure website.
• Politicians can call ordinary Americans who disagree with the tenets of the Obama Care legislation racists, members of the KKK, obstructionists, and any other number of personal slurs.
• The government can force this legislation down our throats even though the majority of Americans dislike it and want it substantially changed, fixed or repealed.

Obama Care, in this reality, could not be any further from the spirit of the Declaration Of Independence.

4. Obama Care Allows People to Quit Their Day-Jobs

"Think of an economy where people could be an artist or a photographer or, eh, a writer without worrying about keeping their day job in order to have health insurance, or that people could start a business and be entrepreneurial and take risk but not [be] job-locked because a child has asthma or someone in the family is bipolar. You name it. Any condition is job-blocking."

Comment: The problem is that the majority of Americans do not want to quit their day jobs. They want to keep their day jobs and also keep the health insurance coverage their day jobs include. 

That is unlikely to happen with Obama Care since reputable researchers note that tens of millions of Americans are likely to lose their insurance next year when Obama Care causes employers to drop their current health insurance policies and programs.

As far as an artist, photographer or entrepreneurial being able to quit their day job, they can still do that but will still be without health insurance coverage since we now know that insurance coverage under Obama Care is likely to be more expensive for both deductibles and premiums and offer far fewer options for doctors, hospitals, and benefits. Nobody wins in this world.

5. Obama Care is Slashing Deficits

"Many of the initiatives that he passed are what are coming to bear now -- including the Affordable Care Act," Pelosi said. "The Affordable Care Act is bringing the cost of health care in our country down in both the public and private sector, and that is what is largely responsible for the deficit coming down." 

The Affordable Care Act is already three times original cost estimates, now at $2.7 trillion over ten years and will add $6.2 trillion to the long-term debt. That’s how basic math works in this reality, Ms. Pelosi. How does it work in yours? 

Oh, and be the way, according to analyses done of insurance costs listed under Obama Care health exchanges, the cost of insurance will not be coming down as you promise, in either the private or the public sector.

6. Government Fulfills Americans

“To some of us the role of government is about doing things for the American people to help them reach fulfillment."

Comment: I think most Americans agree that if we only could keep the 30% of so of our annual income that we send to Washington and other local politicians, we would find it much easier to reach fulfillment on our own. 

If we did not send so much of our money to the political class to waste in so many ways, we could send our kids to better schools, we could take more vacations, we could start our own businesses, etc., finding individual fulfillment without your help.

Instead, not only to you get to confiscate a large percentage of our wages and earnings, you mismanage the economy so that just finding a job is so difficult, you read our emails, social media posts, and listen to our phone calls without our permission, you slander and demand those of us that do not agree with you positions on the issues, and you waste our wealth. You could not be any further away from helping us reach fulfillment if you tried.

7. Finding Out What's In Obama Care

"It’s going to be very, very exciting. But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it..."

Comment: This has to be her most inane comment ever. If, as Speaker of the House, she has no clue what was in the legislation, than why are we paying her and her 434 peers in Congress? What else do they have to do in Washington but develop legislation, READ legislation, and pass or not pass legislation? 

She and the rest of them in Congress should be giving us a refund on their pay and benefits if they do not even know what they are voting on. An insult to our intelligence and common sense. Absolutely pathetic performance and quote in this reality.

8. Politics Getting in Obama's Way

"I don't think [Obama's] ever done anything for political reasons [...] This has been a president as bipartisan as any that I've seen."

Comment: Second most inane comment. Obama rammed Obama Care through Congress with absolutely no input from Republicans.

He has stood idly by as his political allies have called common citizens racists, homophobes, terrorists, knuckle dragging Neanderthals, a__h___s, whores, sluts, and other slanderous names simply for having a different opinion than him through the past few years. 

When a Congressional member of his party said that a group of concerned citizens could just go to hell, he was silent. 

He has directed the IRS to hassle, hinder, and abuse First Amendment rights of citizens who wanted to become actively politically. 

He has ordered IRS audits on individuals who publicly condemned any of his policies.

Everything this President does is for political reasons, he is from the Chicago school of thug politics. If this is being bipartisan, I would truly hate to see him being partisan.

Different realities and perceptions of reality between Ms. Pelosi and myself. I would be laughing at her view of reality if it was not so destructive to the economy, the freedoms, and wealth in the reality that I and most Americans live in. To think that this individual was just two spots away from running the country is frightening to me. 

For other memorable, out of this world quotes from Ms. Pelosi, please access the following ink, a link where we try hard to determine if her quotes and views would be best served by the SYFY channel of Comedy Central:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2010/12/nancy-pelosi-comedy-central-or-syfy.html

Her other world views are why we need to implement Federal term limits as soon as possible because, really, how much worse could it be if we replaced her and her peers with a whole new set of people:

www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com

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

By The Numbers: Govenrment and Political Class Incompetence, Part 2 - High National Debt, High National Poverty, High Food Stamp Usage

This is a second in our new series where we take a numerical and statistical review of government and political class incompetence and do it “by the numbers.” As a statistician by education and training, I believe that if you understand the true, underlying numbers and realities of problems, you have a much better chance of resolving issues and crises.

However, as the numbers are reviewed in these posts, you will see that not only to our politicians not understand the underlying numbers and realities of our situation, they are the ones that have created such a horrid set of economic, financial, and other pessimistic statistics.

1) Consider the early 2013 Congressional Budget Office view of the Federal government budget if the current spending trend continues:

• The projected cost of the Federal government during the 10-year budget period from 2014-2023 is $47.2 trillion.
• Government spending will rise every year for every program (except for defense during the first few years), topping out at $5.94 trillion in annual spending in 2023.
• This trend is a rate of growth of about 6.7% per year, trouncing the growth of the private sector of just about any time in the history of the country.
• This $47.2 TRILLION in spending comes out to almost a whopping $400,000 per U.S. household or just under $40,000 a year.

How many families do you think can pay out $40,000 a year to support this obese Federal government’s spending, especially since the average household income today, before taxes, is just under $50,000? The math does not compute and something very bad will happen to our economy and each family’s financial situation long before these ten years occur, the numbers do not lie.

2) The Bankrupting America website had the following depressing numbers on June 1, 2013:

• The economic GDP growth figures from the fourth-quarter of 2012 were revised down to 2.4% from 2.5%.
• After trillions of dollars diverted away from taxpayers and the free-market, to be spent on stimulating the economy, the great “recovery” we were promised and hear about so often is no where to be found.
• The number of Americans using food stamps is at an all time high of about 48 million Americans.
• The number of food stamp users grown 70% in the last five years, or since about the time Obama took office.
• As of April, over 16% of America’s youth were unemployed.
• America has also gone from being among the wealthy countries with the highest percentage of youth employment to now being ranked at the bottom of the list.
• The U-6 unemployment rate as of April was 13.9%, so nearly one in eight of America’s workforce is unemployed or underemployed.

To get to this pathetic state of economic growth and reality, the Federal government spent over $800 billion in its economic stimulus effort. Never has so much money in the history of the earth been spent for so little in return.

3) President Obama has recently nominated Penny Pritzer to be his new Secretary of Commerce. Given that she is one of the richest people in the country with a Hyatt hotel-based personal wealth estimated at $1.5 billion, it makes you wonder why he would want her to work in her administration when her personal wealth is six times higher than what Mitt Romney’s personal wealth is and Obama did everything possible to make Romney look unfit for being President because he was “too wealthy.”

Oh, I forgot, Pritzer ran Obama’s 2008 fund raising effort which makes the $1.5 billion all right and Romney’s $250 million pure evil.

4) Let’s talk about our nation’s poverty reality, using statistics compiled by the website, www.mrconservative.com (for readers that do not believe anything just because it came from a conservative-leaning website, either skip the follow 21 numbers or do a little research to confirm or refute the website’s numbers research):

1 – According to the U.S. Census Bureau, approximately one out of every six Americans is now living in poverty, a level not seen since the 1960s.

2 – According to the U.S. Census Bureau, more than 146 million Americans are either “poor” or “low income”.

3 – Approximately 20% of all children in the United States are living in poverty. A higher percentage of children is living in poverty in America today than was the case back in 1975, despite trillions of dollars spent since then to get rid of poverty.

4 – Approximately 57% of all children in the United States are currently living in homes that are either considered to be either “low income” or impoverished.

5 – At this point, 29.2% of all African-American households with children are dealing with food insecurity.

6 – 60% of all children in the city of Detroit are living in poverty.

7 – The number of children living on $2.00 a day or less in the United States has grown to 2.8 million. That number has increased by 130% since 1996.

8 – More than a million public school students in the United States are homeless. That number has risen by 57% since the 2006-2007 school year.

9 – Family homelessness in the Washington D.C. region (one of the wealthiest regions in the entire country) has risen 23% since the last recession began.

10 – A recent university study estimates that child poverty costs the U.S. economy $500 billion each year.

11 – Approximately one out of every three children in the U.S. lives in a home without a father.

12 – Families that have a head of household under the age of 30 have a poverty rate of 37%.

13 – Today, there are approximately 20.2 million Americans that spend more than half of their incomes on housing, a 46% increase from 2001.

14 – About 40% of all unemployed workers in America have been out of work for at least six months.

15 – One out of every four American workers has a job that pays $10 an hour or less.

16 – There has been an explosion in the number of “working poor” Americans in recent years. Today, about one out of every four workers in the United States brings home wages that are at or below the poverty level.

17 – More than 100 million Americans are enrolled in at least one welfare program run by the Federal government, programs that do not include Social Security or Medicare.

18 – An all-time record 47.8 million Americans are now on food stamps. When Barack Obama first took office, that number was only sitting at about 32 million.

19 – The number of Americans on food stamps now exceeds the entire population of Spain

20 – The number of Americans on food stamps now exceeds the combined populations of “Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming.

21 – Back in the 1970s, about one out of every 50 Americans was on food stamps. Today, close to one out of every six Americans is on food stamps. More than one out of every four children in the United States is enrolled in the food stamp program.

Kind of makes the anemic 2.4% economic growth in the fourth quarter of 2012 ring a even little hollow when you get below this large number to see these pathetic and heart wrenching smaller numbers.

Poor Americans, a very rich American, and explosive growth in government spending, the numbers are devastating and depressing. And we are not close to get through all of them.

Do you think term limits are a good idea yet?

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  

April, 2013 Wasteful Government Spending, Part 2: How To Use Condoms, Studying Old Folks Knees, and Ignoring The Spending Problem

I would like to talk about different topics than the many ways that governments and politicians waste our hard earned wealth but the avalanche of wasteful spending examples keeps piling up. I feel if I do not continually clear them out at one point I will never be able t talk about anything else.

Yesterday's post discussed a compilation of idiotic government spending programs that was compiled by the Independent Journal Review. It included such lunacy as spending half a million dollars to create a prom week video game program, $27 million dollars to help people in Morroco become better pottery makers, $325 million dollars to create a robotic squirrel and 22 other equally stupid expenses which can be accessed at the following link:

http://www.loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/04/april-2013-wasteful-government-spending.html

To that list of 25, let me two more horrific wastes of spending:

1) A recent news report described how the University of Florida received a $712,714 grant under Obama’s economic stimulus program to fund a study to “characterize ethnic differences in experimental pain sensitivity, endogenous pain inhibition, clinical pain and pain-related disability among older African Americans and non-Hispanic whites with knee osteoarthritis.” Huh?

A couple of problems with this type of wasteful spending:

* It was part of the stimulus program, a massive $800+ billion program that was supposed to create jobs and get the economy moving. The stimulus program was jammed with programs like this, short term, small scale, pitiful projects that resulted in no long term economic growth or sustainable job growth, the basic premise of spending $800 billion.

In fact, according to the government's own website that tracked stimulus spending, this program even admits that not a single job was created for this $712,714 expenditure. It makes you wonder how many other hundreds of similar programs within the stimulus spending also created not a single, lasting job but still wasted billions in funding.

* Putting stimulus spending aside, in times of $17 TRILLION debt levels do we really need to spend scarce Federal government resources exploring a SINGLE condition concerning a SINGLE part of the human body, namely the SINGLE condition of osteoarthritis on a SINGLE joint, the knee? If we are going to spend limited funds on health research, let's spend it major problems affecting a major segment of the population like lung and breast cancer, dementia and Alzheimer's, Parkinsons Disease, etc. rather than one affliction of one joint.

2) Staying with the economic stimulus program but moving onto the really absurd area of wasteful spending, it has come to light that $423,000 of taxpayer money was spent on a study about how to properly use a condom. Yes, the Department of Health and Human Services allowed a grant to someone in Bloomington, Indiana to study "Correct Condom Use."

Never mind that condoms have been around forever and most people should know how to use them.

For those that do not know how to use them, instructions are included with every package.

For those that do not read the package, they could access this information on correct usage form the library, the Internet, their partner, or they could ask their friends.

Of all the idiotic uses of taxpayer wealth, this has to be in the top five. Of course, no long lasting jobs were created from this expense, according to the government's own website, how could it?

This puts yet another program in the failed category of Obama's economic stimulus program. I only wish that I could have gotten in on this giveaway several years ago. I would have studied how drinking alcohol impairs my golf game. How lying out in the sun causes sun burn. How buying a new car improves one's self esteem. I could have made a killing if I knew that programs like correct condom use were worth over $400,000 to the Obama administration.

As we have said before, these two program alone would not have solved our $17 TRILLION debt problem. Together they total only abut $1.1 million. But before you can save trillions of dollars you have to save billions of dollars and before you save billions of dollars you have to save millions of dollars. You have to start somewhere and these two expenditures would have been a great start.


Plus, just because you can do something, waste taxpayer wealth, does not mean you should do it, waste taxpayer wealth. And an even sadder part of this disgrace is that there are some people and entities within the Federal government that have done a fine job of identifying waste and insanity spending like this but their voices and recommendations have gone unheeded.

Consider a posting by the fine website, Bankrupting America, that went up on April 2, 2013:

• The Government Accountability Office (GAO) is the Federal government’s internal audit and investigation branch.
• It was created in 1921 to help better manage government finances, spending, and expense streams.
• According to Bankrupting America, their sources estimate the GAO saves taxpayers $81 for every dollar the Office spends.
• And the GAO is not the only the Federal government entity that is assigned the responsibility with identifying waste and fraud and offering suggestions for how to reduce it.
• The Offices of the Inspector General (more than 70 Federal agencies have them) also research and highlight areas of government waste in hopes that these mistakes would be corrected.
• For example, it was an inspector general that uncovered the over $800,000 that GSA employees wasted on lavish party for themselves in 2012.
• However, according to a recent report from the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, a majority of inspector general recommendations were ignored.
• The committee found that during 2012, government agencies failed to implement 16,906 IG recommendations that would have saved $67 billion worth of taxpayer wealth.
• Implementing just these changes would have wiped out about 7% of the Federal government deficit in 2012 and relieved pressure on our $17 TRILLION national debt.
• In 2011, the committee found government agencies ignored 15,784 recommendations that could have saved $55 billion.
• Thus, the Federal government and Obama administration knew about at least $120 billion in spending savings over just the past two years and did nothing to avoid those unnecessary expenses.
• A possible reason for the lapse: currently the position of Inspector General is vacant in six different agencies including the State Department, Department of Homeland Security and USAID.
• The House report explained that there was a direct relationship between these vacancies and recommendations being ignored. According to the report, “In 2012, those agencies [State, Homeland Security and USAID] ranked first, second, and fourth among agencies with the most unimplemented recommendations.”

Well, duh! Sinfully incompetent government. The latest Senate budget from the Democrats controlling the Senate (after four years of unlawfully not producing a budget) is asking for another $1 TRILLION in tax increases over the next ten years. If they were truly doing their government oversight job and following the advice of the Inspector Generals and the GAO, they could fund the vast majority of that ten year increase by just implementing the changes these two fine organizations have already identified.

If you add in cleaning up the fraud in Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps and unemployment programs along with finally getting the out of control Defense Department spending, there would be so much extra money laying around that every American could see their taxes go down without any personal significant downside from the reduced level of government spending.

But as always, we are left with the same question: Do politicians not reduce wasteful spending because they are incapable of doing so from a process or intelligence perspective, they do not want to reduce wasteful spending, or they are too lazy to reduce wasteful spending?

Whatever answer you arrive at for that question, the subsequent action is unchanged: ALL current Washington politicians need to be replaced as soon ass possible, either through elections, election process reform, or the best way possible way, the implementation of term limits, as outlined in Step 39 from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government." These people have blown their chance to make government efficient and effective, they need to leave, the sooner the better, and take their knee studies and condom studies with them.

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

 

Washington Politicians: Fiscally Out Of Touch, Protecting Turf, Or Incompetent?

As some of you may know, if the political class does not get its act together by March 1, 2013, automatic Federal government spending cuts will kick in that will reduce government spending by over a trillion dollars over the next ten years. This “sequestering” of budget dollars was agreed to by Congress and Obama in August of 2011 in the debt ceiling negotiations.

While this is a decent first step in reining in government spending, it is still pretty meager. Overall government spending will still increase in the baseline budget view, it will just increase at a somewhat lower rate. Annual spending deficits will continue to mount up, increasing our onerous national debt and burdening future generations of Americans with that debt.

How anemic is this effort at reducing spending? Let’s do some simple math:

1. Let’s assume that the ten year trillion dollar spending reduction averages out to about $100 billion a year.
2. According to the official White House website, the Federal government will spend about $4.5 trillion in 2017.
3. This $4.5 trillion is less than it spent in 2012 but is less than it will likely spend ten years from now, under baseline budget assumptions, so the 2017 estimate is a good ten year annual average.
4. $100 billion a year in spending cuts against an average spending budget of $4.5 trillion is only a meager 2.2% spending decrease.
5. According to the White House budget website, in 2017, this $100 billion in spending cuts would still add over half a TRILLION dollars to the national debt.

Despite this feeble attempt at expense reduction, many in the Obama administration are choking on it. Recently retired Defense Secretary Leon Panetta claimed our national defense would be endangered by reducing spending by 2.2% on average. Secretary of State John Kerry recently made the same assertion that we could not afford a meager 2.2% reduction in his budget since we needed to continue to butt into the lives of people in other countries around the world. President Obama has been spreading panic by claiming all of these vital government services would be cut all because of a lousy 2.2% cut in spending.

Makes you wonder if 1) these so-called leaders are that out of touch with the real world, 2) want to protect their turfs at any cost regardless of the impact on the fiscal integrity of the country, or 3) are just that incompetent that they do not know how to run an efficient operation and can only operate it by increasing their budget rather than decreasing their organization’s waste, redundancy, and incompetence.

To help these politicians understand why this 2.2% reduction is a very easily attainable goal, let’s point out via just a HANDFUL of examples of how wasteful, redundant and incompetent their organizations are today:

- Medicare and Medicaid lose over $100 billion a year to waste, inefficiency, and criminal fraud.

- Social Security loses over $100 billion a year to waste, inefficiency, and criminal fraud.

- The IRS admits that it is so incompetent that it fails to collect over $380 billion a year from tax evaders.

- The U.S. Navy, one of Leon Panetta’s organizations, recently spent $300 million to build two Navy ships almost to completion before spending another $10 million to turn them both into scrap metal without ever using them.

- The State Department, John Kerry’s new organization, recently spent $80 million to build a consulate building in northern Afghanistan that will never be used since the $80 million is not defensible from a terrorist attack and was built by bypassing the State Department’s own guidelines for consulate building relative to terrorists.

- The Transportation Safety Agency recently bought over $180 million worth of airport security equipment that it will never use, storing it in a warehouse in its original packaging.

- Employees in the General Services Administration threw themselves a Las Vegas bash at taxpayer expense, resulting in the dismissal and resignations of several GSA employees and executives.

- The Obama administration recently made the inane decision to give Egypt over one billion dollars worth of F-16 fighter planes and tanks for no reason at all, weapons that could eventually impact both the Department of Defense and State Department operations in the future.

- And last but not least, consider some new findings relative to the President’s economic stimulus plan, as recently reported by the Independent Journal Review. Unfortunately, these types of expenses are no confined to the stimulus program, they happen every day in every Federal government department and entity.

These insults to the taxpayer occurred even though when President Obama signed the $831 billion stimulus into law in 2009, he stated that “tough choices and smart investments” needed to be made. So ask yourself: if these are “smart investments,“ you can only wonder what the dumb expenses were:

1. $250 was sent to a woman in Maryland who died in 1967.
2. $840 was spent to disassemble and assemble three desks.
3. The Lincoln Center in New York City was paid to host a “tango salon.
4. $10,000 was spent replacing light fixtures at a fish hatchery.
5. $425,000 was spent in $250 increments to 1,700 prisons inmates for social security checks.
6. $426,000 was spent to rebuild a bridge that is used by a average of ten cars a day.
7. $500,000 was spent in subsidies for rain barrel installation.
8. $600,000 was sent to a school district in Kansas …that no longer exists.
9. $1 million was spent in New York on road signs advertising stimulus projects.
10. $1 million was used to build 250 bike lockers.
11. $1.25 million was used to use electric fish to study animal sensory information.
12. $1.75 million was spent on energy-efficient garage doors.
13. $2.2 million was spent to install skylights for a liquor store in Montana.
14. $2.8 was million spent installing toilets in New Mexico’s national forest.
15. $15 million was spent to build an airport in Ouizinkie, Alaska …a town of 165 people.

Disgraceful wastes of money. Which gets us back to our central question: Are Kerry, Panetta, and Obama out of touch, protecting turf or just incompetent? Or possibly all of the above?

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

Another View On How To Reduce Spending By Trillions Of Dollars

Earlier this month we did a detailed post that showed how easy it is to reduce Federal government spending by over $6 TRILLION in the next ten years. We did it in such a way that poor children do not go hungry, needy Social Security recipients do not suffer, and the nation's defense is not denigrated. We used the output from several nonpartisan sources who had already done a lot of the detailed research and analyses and estimated other expense savings using some relatively simple math assumptions and calculations.

Today, we will take a different approach but basically come to the same conclusions: there are so many ways to cut wasteful spending without undue hardship that it will be remarkable if the political class in the United States cannot come up with a plan to do likewise. Let's start with two large expense components, national defense and Social Security. In our earlier analysis, we identified ten years of Defense Department savings that could be taken without harming our national defense. We also identified $60 billion in Social Security savings over ten years if we raised the retirement age to 70, with a hardship exception, and stopped payments to Americans whose net worth was over $3 million.

Let's start this different approach with Pentagon spending. The approach is based on an interview of David Stockman that appeared in the August 8, 2011 issue of Business Week magazine. Mr. Stockman is a far better budget analyst than myself, having served as the director of the Office Of Management and Budget under President Reagan. I am assuming that his insights and knowledge can provide better estimates than some of mine.

In the interview, Mr. Stockman asserts that we live in a different world today but have a defense strategy and set of resources that are aligned with historical, obsolete situations, a conclusion we have supported many times in this blog.

He poses the following question in the interview: "Why do we have a defense budget at roughly $800 billion - bigger in real terms by 35% than it was when Ronald Reagan was fighting the Evil Empire and they had 8,000 (nuclear) warheads pointed at us?" He also discusses the reality that we don't have the same type of "industrial enemies" of the past and "we have been fired as the world's policeman."

Given these realities, why shouldn't the Defense Department and the resources associated with it 1) be cut back and 2) repurposed to fight today's non-traditional threats. If we take Mr. Stockman's assertions as fact, how much money could we save:

• Cut defense spending by his full 35% to be in line with Reagan era spending ratios and phase that in over a four year period: 10 year savings = $2.4 TRILLION
• Cut defense spending by half of his 35%  and phase that in over a four year period: 10 year savings = $1.2 TRILLION
• Cut defense spending by a third of his 35% and phase that in over a four year period: 10 year savings = $793 billion.

Thus, depending on how aggressive the political class wanted to be and how stubborn the military establishment wanted to be to protect its empire, the Federal government could safely cut over a TRILLION dollars, and possibly over two TRILLION dollars, from its spending without harming our national defense if you use the Reagan era budgets as a guide. These estimates are roughly consistent with the $1.4 TRILLION estimate we came up with earlier in August. But this approach also shows how much  more potential upside there is.

Stockman also discusses Social Security and his views are also consistent with our recommendations, namely raise the retirement age and stopping paying out Social Security checks to wealthier Americans, Steps 11 and 12 from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government," in order to preserve the program for those Americans that truly need the help in retirement.  In the interview, Mr. Stockman claims that we currently have 55 million people in the Social Security program, of which 40 million basically have no other source of income. That leaves up to 15 million Americans today who are more affluent and who could possibly afford to continue their life style without receiving a Social Security check.

Mr. Stockman does not talk specifics in this area but mentions that there "are 2, 5, 10 million people at the top who are quite affluent, who need to be means tested or have their benefits eliminated entirely." I would have preferred a little more specificity but lets run with these three scenarios:

• Assume ten million of these 55 million Americans are affluent enough to live without a Social Security check: ten year savings to the Federal government's budget = $1.3 TRILLION
• Assume five million of these 55 million Americans are affluent enough to live without a Social Security check: ten year savings to the Federal government's budget = $660 billion.
• Assume two million of these 55 million Americans are affluent enough to live without a Social Security check: ten year savings to the Federal government's budget = $264 billion.

Thus, if Stockman is right, the amount of savings from Social Security changes that do not impose an undue hardship on needy Americans is orders of magnitudes higher than what we estimated in the other post. If you take the two middle scenarios we calculated above for defense spending and Social Security, using Stockman's interview, you come up with expense and spending reductions of  close to $1.9 TRILLION. This is more than the $1.4 TRILLION we estimated previously.

Who would be upset about these changes? First and foremost would be the military contractors that have made themselves rich off of this unnecessary defense spending. Unfortunately, these contractors probably have great influence over the sitting politicians from a lobbying and election campaign perspective. That is where the challenge will be, are our politicians courageous enough to cut off their own money funnels to do what is right for the country? If history is any indication, that could be a tough sell.

The second obstacle would be the military themselves. As we discussed in earlier posts, the amount of bureaucracy and management layers in the Pentagon has exploded over the past few decades. We have more generals, admirals, and deputy assistant secretaries of defense than we have ever had. Dislodging any embedded bureaucracy is always difficult, especially a government bureaucracy, but it is unneeded spending that serves no purpose in defending the country.

I would have wished that Stockman had provided more insights on how to more finely tune the needed spending cuts with the least amount of angst. But his type of thinking and knowledge is what is needed to make the real cuts to real expenses and we know that there are many other Americans that have already done the heavy lifting, including the President's own Presidential commission on debt reduction.

In additional to the Stockman interview, I came across another short article that confirms my belief that the Federal government's useless, wasteful, and expensive ($107 billion a year)  Department of Education needs to be terminated. In the most recent monthly issue of AARP Magazine, an article reviewed the findings of a new Federal report on civics education in this country. According to the article, only 7% of 8th graders in this country can describe the three branches of government and only 27% of 4th graders, 22% of 8th graders, and 24% of 12th graders are proficient in civics. A disgrace.

Combine these stats with the results we have discussed in the past on public education: U.S. kids usually trail dozens of other country's test scores on standardized tests, almost 25% of those applying for enrollment in our military pass cannot pass basic reading and math tests, and about 40% of students entering community colleges in this country require remedial math and English courses before they can start their college work. There was no doubt in my mind, and these latest Federal findings just reinforce it, that the Department of Education has been an utter waste of time and money when it comes to educating our kids.

Using the approach we discussed in our first budget post, our plan would provide money and resources to the states to fix their education processes (teacher enhancement and certification, technology improvement, curriculum enhancements, etc.) over a four year period, using the annual Department of Education budget to fund the state level effort. After four years the funding would stop and the Federal government would save about $900 billion over the next ten years without negatively affecting national education. Combine these savings with the Stockman savings we calculated above and you have almost $3 TRILLION in government expense cuts from just three departments.

It's not hard Washington, no matter how you cut it, there are many, many ways to get spending under control. Just takes a little bit of insight, a little bit of math, and a whole lot of courage to stand up for what is right for the country, not what is right for your political career.






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/

The Unrelenting Hypocrisy and Leadership Void of The Obama Presidency

Let's talk about the national debt today from both a hypocrisy and leadership perspective. As most people know, unless the political class agrees to some sort of financial plan in the next week or so it is highly possible that the United States' Federal government will start defaulting on the massive debt levels it has created over the past decades, a trend that has violently accelerated in the past three years.

What will happen if that should occur is open to debate but it will likely not be pretty. Given that the Federal government spends $1.40 for every dollar it collects in taxes, the most immediate impact is a likely 30% decrease in what the political class has to spend on government programs which will likely result in disruptions to government services and payments.

But it did not have to get to this point. Anyone in Washington with first grade math skills could have figured out a year or more ago that this crisis was coming. That is when the political class should have started talking about a coherent, integrated, strategic way to get spending under control. Outside of crisis mode, months ahead of the crisis. This is not a debate about what to name a new post office, it is a debate that will likely negatively impact the lives of just about every American and it should have been taken much more seriously.

But the political class, including the most powerful figure within that class, Barack Obama, never got around to the crisis until just weeks before D-day. Not only did the politicians start late but they cannot even get close agreeing on how to solve the crisis. The biggest obstacle is the fact that Obama is insisting that any agreement to cut the budget and raise the debt limit must include big tax increases on businesses and wealthier Americans. Republicans are insisting on only spending cuts with no tax increases before they will agree on raising the debt limit.

Which brings us to the hypocrisy part of today's post title. Consider a generic yet accurate definition of what hypocrisy is:

Hypocrisy: an act or instance of falseness.

In the light of this definition, now consider some direct Barack Obama quotes from the past few years starting with his position when the Bush administration in 2006 needed to raise the debt limit during his second term in office and Obama was still an Illinois Senator:



"The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies. … Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that ‘the buck stops here. Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better."

So, in 2006, raising the debt limit was a failure in leadership according to the morals and standards of Obama. But now Obama wants to raise the debt limit. How is doing the exact same thing that Bush did not be a failure in leadership? How could that be a failure in leadership in 2006 but not 2011? Same issue, same person, different viewpoints. Which one is a falsehood?

Incidentally, in 2007 and in 2008, when the Senate voted to increase the limit by $850 billion and $800 billion respectively, Obama did not even bother to vote. How and why would a Senator avoid voting on these two important votes, votes that again could have affected just about every American? Hardly a leadership approach to his responsibilities.
 But the hypocrisy continues. In August 2009 when Obama was in Indiana to promote his economic stimulus plan, he was being interviewed by NBC’s Chuck Todd. Todd fielded a question from a local citizen, Scott Ferguson: “Explain how raising taxes on anyone during a deep recession is going to help with the economy.”


Obama's response: “First of all, he’s right. Normally, you don’t raise taxes in a recession, which is why we haven’t and why we’ve instead cut taxes. So I guess what I’d say to Scott is – his economics are right. You don’t raise taxes in a recession. We haven’t raised taxes in a recession.”


"We have not proposed a tax hike for the wealthy that would take effect in the middle of a recession. Even the proposals that have come out of Congress – which by the way were different from the proposals I put forward – still wouldn’t kick in until after the recession was over. So he’s absolutely right, the last thing you want to do is raise taxes in the middle of a recession because that would just suck up – take more demand out of the economy and put business further in a hole.”


So, is this even more Obama hypocrisy? While we are not "officially" in a recession, it certainly feels like one. Official unemployment is high and rising, underemployment is much higher and rising, average wages recently dropped again, a major leading indicator is trending downward, job creation is minimal, and the housing industry is still in the dumps.

Two years ago Obama correctly understood that raising taxes for any American, wealthy or not wealthy, is a stupid economic policy to follow in bad economic times, "it is the last thing you want to do." Now, in order to get Republicans to agree to spending cuts in return for support on raising the debt ceiling during a very bad economic time, he is insisting on raising taxes for wealthy Americans and businesses.

But the examples of hypocrisy just keep on rolling in. Back last fall when Obama and the Republicans agreed not to let the Bush tax cuts lapse, keeping the tax rates the same, Obama was again supporting the strategy of letting American citizens and businesses keep more of their wealth. Consider his words at that time:


“Millions of entrepreneurs who have been waiting to invest in their businesses will receive new tax incentives to help them expand, buy new equipment or make upgrades – freeing up other money to hire new workers.”

Thus, late last year it was a good idea for businesses to keep more of their profits and invest them to help the economy. Nine short months later is a bad idea since Obama wants to raises taxes on the same people that he wanted them to keep their money and invest in the economy. Hypocrisy again.

These words are not from Republicans, Fox News, Tea Party people or Rush Limbaugh. They are Obama's own words. The only way they make sense from when they were stated to today is that the President is an incredible hypocrite, willing to say anything at anytime to make political points for himself. They are called acts of falsehood, it is called hypocrisy. It is also pathetic for a so-called leader.

Enough abut hypocrisy, I think the above quotes prove the point of what type of person the President is. Let's move on to leadership. I always thought the following quote from Arnold Glasow captured a the essence of what a true leader is:

"One of the tests of leadership is the ability to recognize a problem before it becomes an emergency."

Failing to raise the debt limit and failure to get out-of-control spending under control is certainly now an emergency. Back in the fall of last year the President's own debt reduction commission, after much hard work over most of the 2010 calendar year  presented the President with a detailed, non-partisan, coherent plan for reducing government spending.

At the time of the plan's completion, the Democrats controlled the White House, the Senate, and the House of Representatives. A leader would have taken that plan, ran with it, convinced his Democratic friends in the Congress to pass it, without needing Republican support, and the debt crisis we are weeks away from would have never become an emergency.

All it would have taken is a little leadership and fortitude for the President to tell the American people that government had to tighten tighten up spending and shown how HIS commission had the right plan to do it. Heck, if he wanted to be a total weasel, he could have blamed the deficit reduction commission to avoid any personal blame and any political fallout.

The President missed that opportunity to avoid an emergency but he had other chances. Earlier this year he submitted his budget plans to Congress for review. His plans did nothing to control spending. In fact, if that original Presidential budget had been approved, it was projected to add at least another $9 TRILLION to the national debt, or about $80,000 worth of debt for every American household.

This budget was rejected by the Senate by a unanimous vote of 97-0. Even his Democratic friends in the Senate knew that his budget plan was a disaster. Thus, rather than start the discussion constructively towards reducing spending many months ago, the President chose to pass the buck again, missing another chance to avoid the current emergency.

As the potential for an emergency got closer and closer, the President avoided all contact with this issue, leaving Joe Biden and six members of Congress only a couple of months  to tackle a problem that a his full Presidential commission took almost a year to wrestle to the ground.

In those months, the President was no where to be found relative to this emerging emergency, spending time touring the world, having tea with the queen, and blaming Congress for the impasse on the debt ceiling issue. Rather than giving credit and taking blame, the behavior of a good leader, Obama was doing just the opposite in order to politically protect his own selfish interests.

At least three instances where a true leader could have recognized the problem before it became an emergency and in each instance, the President failed to step up and perform. It is now obvious that his only priority is to get re-elected in 2012, the country's financial and economic welfare be damned. His positions on taxes, spending, and the debt limit are so incredibly and so obviously hypocritical. His failure at leadership so blatant and destructive.

The truly pathetic thing about this whole emergency is the tax increases he is proposing, removing oil company loopholes, taxing corporate jet owners, taxing the rich, etc., his hypocritical demands that are holding up a solution to the emergency, are infinitesimal in the whole picture of out-of-control spending. They are simply ploys to energize his base and prove he is tough on corporations and rich people, they would have nothing to do with fixing this fiscal emergency.

Using some simple math, we will review these cheap political ploys and their insignificance tomorrow when we will see the hypocrisy continue from what is turning out to be one of the worst and most destructive Presidencies of all time.



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/

You Cannot Spell W-a-s-t-e Without A Involving A Lot From W-a-s-h-i-n-g-t-o-n

Just when you think you know about all the waste that is generated by the American political class and the government that it runs, more wasteful spending, and the taxpayer money used to support it, comes tumbling down the road and into the storm sewer, never to be seen again.

In past posts to this blog we have reviewed the Federal government's estimate that it wastes between $60 and $90 billion a year in fraud and erroneous payouts in its Medicare and Medicaid programs. Earlier this week we reviewed a Senate investigation of the National Science Foundation that had actually spent research dollars investigating on how to ride a bike, estimating when dogs became man's best friend, and measuring how racist are users of online dating sites.

But it does not end there, if you consider some recent identification of more government waste that has just been found and publicized over the past few weeks:

- An Associated Press article by Stephen Ohlemacher on June 14, 2011 documented how the Social Security Administration (SSA) made $6.5 billion in erroneous overpayment's to people not entitled to the payments in 2009. The $6.5 billion included $4 billion in bogus payments from a single SSA program, supplemental income program for the poor. This $4 billion was a whopping 10% of the program's entire budget.

More distressing than the $6.5 billion, which is bad enough, the SSA Inspector General has estimated that the entire Federal government doled out $125 billion worth of improper payments in 2010 for all reasons, fraud, incompetence, etc. This is $15 billion more than what were improper payments in 2009, a 14% rise in waste in just a single year. The trend in curbing government waste is obviously going in the wrong direction.

For comparison purposes, without the $125 billion in waste, last year's budget deficit would have been reduced by more than 10%. Put another way, if this wasteful spending had been sent back to the taxpayers, every U.S. household would have received over a $1,000. Disgraceful.

- A June 8, 2011 news report from Kevin Drawbaugh of Reuters was titled, "Prisoners, The Dead Got 2009 Car Tax Break, Report Shows." The Qualified Motor Vehicle (QMV) program was better know as Cash For Clunkers. People could trade in their older cars and get a government rebate and other tax benefits relative to the purchase of a new vehicle. The two fold purpose of the program was to jump start the auto industry and get people into more fuel efficient vehicles.

However, according to the report, it does not appear the IRS ran a very tight operation. According to the article, taxpayers who claimed the deduction were not required to provide the independent proof that an auto had actually been purchased. Obviously, a criteria like this opens up the entire program to fraud. The Inspector General for the program found the following:

• The IRS failed to qualify 4,257 individuals who made QMV claims.
• These 4,257 claims were for $151.1 in QMV benefits. 
• 439 claimants were actually prisoners in jail when they claimed a total of $955,843 in sales tax as part of the program in 2009,  "even though they were behind bars for a full year in 2009 when the vehicle was purportedly purchased."
• Another $36,490 worth of claims were for people who were dead before the start of the program.
• And adding insult to injury, 18 people who were under the age of 15 also got $31,139 in QMV benefits.

While these are smaller numbers relative to $125 billion, it is still waste. And this is what the Inspector General has somewhat confidently identified. Who knows how much other waste in this program exists that was not identified.

- Speaking of autos, consider another wasteful auto government program that involves the General Motors Volt electric car. General Motors convinced the political class to basically subsidize the purchase of a Volt since the company could not make the electric car cost efficiently. Thus, they got a corporate welfare benefit from Washington in the form of a taxpayer funded rebate. Theoretically, an American who buys a Volt will get $7,500 Federal tax credit.

Sounds simple enough, buy a Volt and the taxpayer rewards you with $7,500. But nothing is simple when it comes to wasteful government bureaucracies and programs. According to an LA Times article that appeared in the June 4, 2011 edition of the St. Petersburg Times, General Motors dealers are scamming the process in two ways. The most egregious scam involves the dealerships actually selling the car to themselves and keeping the $7,500 tax credit for themselves. They then sell the Volt to regular customers as a used car.

Since the rebate applies to only first time buyers of the Volt, the regular customers cannot now claim the rebate since the car is technically "used" even though the mileage is minimal. Thus, a government program designed to help an American own a new electric car, essentially funnels free taxpayer money to dealers, not end users, defeating the whole purpose of the rebate.

The second scam regarding the Volt is the rebate itself. If a product cannot stand on its own in the marketplace, it does not deserve to exist in that marketplace. General Motors should be making cars that can successfully compete on their own features, quality, and price, not on the generosity of the political class to waste taxpayer dollars on a private company's inferior products. All corporate welfare such as the Volt rebate is waste, pure and simple.

- In a June 3, 2011 report from CNN, it was reported that a new government report from the Commission on Wartime Contracting warned that billions of taxpayer money may be wasted because of the inability of both Iraq's and Afghanistan's governments to keep American financed programs and projects operating. Specifically, the Commission chairman, Christopher Shays stated in the report: "Unless government officials identify and address sustainment requirements and change or kill doomed programs, an enormous amount of taxcpayers' money will turn out to have been wasted.

After ten years in Afghanistan and eight years in Iraq, we still do not know how to effectively spend taxpayer dollars in a non-wasteful manner?  Apparently that is a correct assumption. The CNN report goes on to state that over the past decade, wartime contracting in both countries has already identified specific programs that have wasted tens of billions of dollars. The investigation forecasts  that past billions of waste "could pale in comparison to additional waste developing from [current and future] unsustainable projects and programs."

Over a hundred billion dollars from domestic Federal programs wasted annually, tens of billions of dollars already wasted in Iraq and Afghanistan with the potential for much more waste ever present, government programs that incorrectly pay benefits to dead people, imprisoned people, and underage people for their non-purchase of a car. It never ends.

There are several drivers behind this waste. The failures of these programs sometimes happen because the host country cannot supply trained personnel to continue the program, the host country may not be able to financially support the program, or the host country does not have the ability to perform essential maintenance on the bridges, schools, or other such efforts.

They also fail because of the standard government waste causes: incomplete analysis, overly ambitious objectives, poor planning, weak coordination, and inadequate follow up. Sound familiar? Probably the same reasons why Cash For Clunkers and waste in SSA programs exist. But as the title today says, you cannot spell w-a-s-t-e without a lot of W-a-s-h-i-n-g-t-o-n.

How do we get Washington out of the waste business? A number of recommended steps from "Love my Country, Loathe My Government" would go a long way:

- Step 1 - this step would reduce government spending in all entities by 10% a year for five years. Included in this step is a ground up, zero based approach of looking at every facet of every government operation in order to wring out waste, look for expense synergies, and kill unsuccessful or unneeded embedded government programs, projects, and departments. If government operations were streamlined and simplified, the chance of lowering waste, defining accountability for waste, and eliminating waste is greatly increased.

- Step 34 - hold members of  Congressional committees accountable for waste in their areas of control and responsibilities, removing them from their committee posts for their inability to rein in wasteful spending.

- Step 37 - base annual pay treatment for Congressional members for their actual performance during the year, with a major part of their annual performance review being a component on how well they did or did not eliminate wasteful spending.

- Step 44 -  do not use Federal tax dollars for any program or project that does not substantially affect a significant number of Americans from at least five states. Anything less than this criteria becomes the responsibility of the state governments.

This step would downsize and focus the Federal government to a much smaller set of programs and projects, hopefully saving money on local pork barrel programs and focusing attention on a smaller set of more important priorities.

- Step 46 - impose strict accounting, accountability, and audit procedures on every facet of the Federal government's budget, much like the Federal government has imposed on private industry under the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation, with the same penalties for not fulfilling these rather strict reporting and budget management duties including fines, imprisonment, and termination from their job.

Wouldn't it be nice if w-a-s-t-e was not such a big part of  W-a-s-h-i-n-g-t-o-n?  H-a-s-t-e is also a big part of Washington, it's about time that the political class used a little haste within Washington to finally get the TRILLIONS of dollars of wasteful spending under control.





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

Excuse Mr. President, But No Kids With Autism Are Affected by These Spending Cuts

Mr. President:

I was quite disappointed by your speech recently regarding the out-of-control government spending levels and our skyrocketing national debt. In what should have been a call for unity and action across all Americans, you took the opportunity to make some crass political points. You belittled Republicans in the audience, that your staff invited, in an ambush attack that was loathsome, mean-spirited and based on no sense of reality.

Rather than debating issues and providing an alternative to their detailed plans, you came up way short, acting only like a politician. Your speech did not nothing to improve the country's financial situation.

However, the worst part of your speech was your statement that American kids with autism and Down Syndrome would suffer tremendously if the Republican plan was adopted. This is the lowest of the low, using disadvantaged Americans as props for your political gain. You provided no proof that the Republican spending cuts would affect these kids so directly and if this statement is in fact true, you provided no budget alternatives that would reduce the budget in other areas while protecting these kids. Despicable behavior in my view.

And behavior that is not true. If protecting kids with autism and Down Syndrome is so important to you, I suggest you consider the following spending cuts that will have absolutely no impact on these kids, or most ordinary Americans:

1) Your sparse budget reduction ideas in your speech said that you would reduce the Pentagon budget by $400 billion over twelve years (why you went to twelve years is a mystery to me when everything else you have talked about is in ten year increments). This comes out to about $33 billion a year or about 5% of the overall Pentagon budget. Such a low level is unacceptable, especially when you consider the following, approximate foreign U.S. troop deployment:

Iraq: 50,000

Germany: 54,000

South Korea: 30,000

Japan: 30,000

Total: 164,000

Your administration has stated that it costs a million dollars a year per soldier to deploy one soldier to a combat zone. Since the above 164,000 troops are not in a combat zone, let's assume it costs half of that $1 million to deploy them overseas in a non-combat zone.

Thus, if agree that we do not need 54,000 troops in Germany to protect western Europe any more, if we agree that we do not need to support South Korea's defense any more since they have one of the strongest economies in the world along with mandatory armed forces service, if we agree that Japan is unlikely to attack us anytime soon, and you finally fulfill your campaign promise to withdrawal ALL U.S. troops from Iraq, then the Federal government and the Pentagon could save $82 billion a year or $984 billion over twelve years. Just these four troop movements would more than double your feeble Pentagon reduction plan of $400 billion, without harming our national defense, and not one kid with autism or Down Syndrome would be affected.

2) But wait, there are more Pentagon savings to be had. Consider a recent in-depth analysis by the U.S. Public Interest Group and the National Taxpayer Union, two organizations somewhat removed from each other on the political spectrum but united in the knowledge that our government  spending is out of control. They did an extensive analysis of the Federal budget and came up with even more Pentagon savings:

- Cancel the production of the V-22 Osprey aircraft that is over budget, likely to under perform, and has been designated as not critical by the Sustainable Defense Task Force. Cutting this program, according to their analysis, would save $6.2 billion over the next five years.

- Cancel the production of the F-35 jet fighter which, according to the Sustainable Defense Task Force, "may represent all that is wrong with our acquisition process." It "would provide a capability that is not warranted considering emerging threats." Cutting this other unnecessary weapons program would save $22.5 billion over the next five years.

- Cancel the Space Tracking and Surveillance System which can be replaced with lower cost and more reliable options. This would save the Pentagon $5 billion over the next five years.

- Cancel the outdated, unreliable, and unneeded Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle. The General Accountability Office cited the program's history of cost growth, schedule misses (14 years late), and performance failures as reasons for terminating the program. Defense Secretary Gates also chimed in by acknowledging that the vehicle was no longer a big need. Canceling this program would save $16.3 billion over the next five years.

These four simple moves would save the country $50 billion over the next five years and no kid with autism or Down Syndrome would be affected.

- Cancelling weapons systems and bringing troops home from non-critical areas is only the start. The General Accountability Office found that the Army, Navy and Air Force are wasting billions of dollars a year by purchasing items that were either never used or were never required. The GAO identified purchasing reform processes that could save $36.9 billion a year or about $443 billion over twelve years.

national defense. And best of all, no kid with autism and Down Syndrome would be affected.

3) However, the analysis by the U.S. Public Interest Group and the National Taxpayer Union did not stop with defense spending:

- The findings recommended that many forms of corporate welfare be terminated and the costs be picked up by the corporations that were getting the  welfare payments courtesy of American taxpayers. These programs include the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, the Market Access Program, trade association subsidies for foreign marketing, subsidies to large agriculture business and wealthy farmers, tax credits for the blending of ethanol, the ultra-deepwater natural gas and petroleum research program, public timber sales subsidies, and Southeastern Power Administration. Just ending these corporate welfare programs would save about $12 billion a year or about $146 billion over twelve years.

- The Federal government owns more than 55,500 buildings that are either not used or are underused. The analysis suggests that if 50% of these buildings were eliminated over the next five years, not an unrealistic target, savings in the area of $48 billion would be realized.

- According to government audits of Housing and Urban development, the Federal government wastes about $4.5 billion a year due to bad accounting and billing processes. Fix this problem and save about $54 billion over twelve years.

Thus, just these three non-defense changes would save us $248 billion over twelve years. Best news of all? You guessed it, no kid with autism or Down Syndrome would be affected.

4) Conservatively, annual earmarks, which are usually nothing more than thinly disguised ways for incumbent politicians to fund their re-election campaign with taxpayer money, cost the Federal government about $16 billion a year in unneeded expenses. Eliminating earmarks would save $192 billion over twelve years.

5) A March 1, 2011 Wall Street Journal article reporting on the following government insanity, as quantified by the General Accountability Office:

• The Federal government has 15 different agencies overseeing food safety laws.
• It has more than 20 programs helping the homeless.
• It has 80 programs to help economic development.
• It has 82 agencies working on improving teacher quality, few of which are working if you see how poorly American kids are being educated vs. the rest of the world.
• It has 47 agencies working on job training.
• It has 18 programs working on food and nutrition assistance.

This type of redundancy results in tremendous waste and unneeded overhead, duplicative responsibilities, and inefficient service. Senator Tom Coburn, who pushed for the report and analysis, estimates that $100 billion and $200 billion a year could be saved by consolidating and downsizing these functions. If we take the midrange of his estimates, we end up with $1.8 TRILLION in savings without affecting any kid with autism or Down Syndrome.

6) An Associated Press article and analysis last year reported that the Federal government admitted it loses anywhere from $60 to $90 billion a year in fraud and incompetency in its Medicare type programs. If we were to take the midrange of this range, $75 billion, and cut the amount of fraud and waste in half to $37.5 billion, we would recoup $450 billion over twelve years without affecting any kid with autism or Down Syndrome.

I could go on and on, Mr. President, but I hope you get the idea. These are just a sampling of ideas that smart Americans are coming up with to get spending under control. Just this small handful of ideas would save the country $5.2 TRILLION over your twelve year window.

This does not even get into some of the more drastic recommendations like eliminating the Department of Education and the Department of Energy, two Federal functions that have failed miserably over their decades of existence. They need to be put out to pasture and the billions of dollars of their budgets saved. "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" has other ideas for savings including going after the hundreds of billions of dollars lost every year through income tax fraud.

The ideas are out there to save big without sacrificing kids with autism and Down Syndrome and sacrificing national defense, while making government services more efficient and effective for less money. You just need to start working like a President and stop politicking like a typical Chicago politician. Your vindictive speech was not becoming of the office you hold, as was using the kids as props to further your political aims and not the addressing the needs of the nation.





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