January, 2013 Political Class Insanity, Part 2: Over regulation, Stupid Regulation, Tax Evading Federal Employees, and More

Today is the second in this month’s series on political class insanity in America. As the months go by, we have needed to expand our monthly one day post into multiple posts to cover all of the idiocy, lunacy, and bad priorities of our politicians. This month is no exception. Yesterday we covered the fact that the American political class bought an armored car for a rural town in case they ever have problems at their annual pumpkin festival, the Pentagon  spent taxpayer wealth on a string of Star Trek themed meetings that had nothing to do with national defense, and several other total wastes of money.


So what did we not get to yesterday:

1) This piece of insanity and hypocrisy did not occur in the past month but I just found it last week. According to an ABC News report from January 27, 2012:

• At that time, the IRS released its Federal Employee and Retiree Delinquency Inventory.
• That report showed that a whopping 36 of Obama’s White House aides owed a total of $833,970 in back taxes to the IRS.
• And White House personnel were not the only Federal employees not paying their taxes.
• At the Environmental Protection Agency, 413 people owe more than $19 million, at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp (FDIC), 185 employees owe more than $3 million; and five people at the U.S. Tax Court owe $62,508.
• I am assuming these are not the only tax evading Federal employees but they are only the ones cited as examples by the ABC article.
• The ironic thing about the FDIC tax evaders is that the FDIC is supposed to “maintain stability and public confidence in the nation’s financial system.” Tough to have confidence in the nation’s financial system when those responsible for that integrity flaunt its requirements.

A few observations:

• The President’s call for some Americans to pay more in taxes rings hypocritical and hollow when he cannot even get his own personnel to comply with existing tax laws.
• No wonder the IRS fails to collect over $380 billion from tax evaders, many of them actually work for the same Federal bureaucracy. If the IRS cannot find the tax evaders within the government, it is doubtful it will find them out in the hinterlands.
• Shouldn’t there be a law that if you are evading taxes, and it is obvious they know who these Federal employees are given the specificity of the numbers, that their Federal pay checks be confiscated until those back taxes are paid?
• Maybe they are just following the example of Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and other top ranking political class members who did not pay their “fair” share of taxes in the past.

Why was ABC the only member of the main stream media to carry this story? Isn’t this a major discussion point in the tax debate going on in this country today?

Final question: if you or I evaded over $23,000 in taxes (the average amount the 36 White House aides evaded), wouldn’t we be in jail and if so, why are these White House aides not in jail?

Hypocrisy abounds.

2) Fiscal cliff. $16.3 TRILLION national debt. 23 million Americans either unemployed or under employed. Failing public schools. Leaky borders. High gas prices with no national energy strategy and plan. Escalating health care costs.

Some serious issues facing country and its citizens. So what did a Congressional committee concern itself with recently, according to a December 12, 2012 Associated Press report? Whether or not the National Football League Players Association was trying to get out of its agreement with the NFL to subject its players of Human Growth Hormone (HGH) drug testing:

“Hopefully as we move down the line, players will see how incredibly ridiculous it looks for them not to ... straighten this thing out," said Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee's ranking Democrat. "We're now getting ready to go into a third season, and it does not look very good."

No, Congressman Cummings, this is not ridiculous. What is truly ridiculous is that a Congressional committee and its staff are worried about this insignificant piece of reality when there are so many other real issues facing America today. Pathetic priorities.

3) During this holiday season, from Thanksgiving through Christmas, American families will be eating a lot of turkey. Did you ever wonder how turkey producers measure and document the size of their turkeys? Probably not.

Well, some Federal government bureaucrats sure did. While reading the following LABELING specifications for turkey, consider whether or not our tax dollars need to be spent paying someone in the Federal bureaucracy to come up with such detailed specs for just turkey LABELS:

Federal labeling requirements for turkey include “affixing in conspicuous and easily legible boldface print or type, in distinct contrast to other matter on the container, and on the principal display panel within the bottom 30 percent of the area of the panel, in lines generally parallel to the base: Provided, Not less than one-eighth inch in height on containers, the principal display panel of which has an area of more than 5 but not more than 25 square inches; Not less than three-sixteenth inch in height on containers, the principal display panel of which has an area of more than 25 but not more than 100 square inches; Not less than one-quarter inch in height on containers, the principal display panel of which has an area of more than 100 but not more than 400 square inches; Not less than one-half inch in height on containers, the principal display panel of which has an area of more than 400 square inches. The ratio of height to width of letters and numerals shall not exceed a differential of 3 units to 1 unit (no more than 3 times as high as it is wide). This height standard pertains to upper case or capital letters. When upper and lower case or all lower case letters are used, it is the lower case letter ‘o’ or its equivalent that shall meet the minimum standards. When fractions are used, each component numeral shall meet one-half the height standards.”

Some relatively high paid government employee actually spent time and taxpayer wealth actually writing this down. It probably went through many iterations. It was probably read and modified many times by this employee’s superiors. It requires much unproductive time by turkey producers to comply with such specificity.

And the sad thing about all this waste, I would bet that over 99% of turkey consumers never read the darn label anyway. They buy the turkey because of how it looks and about how big it is. This is just one reason why we have a $16.3 TRILLION national debt.

4) Continuing on this expensive, overregulation theme of turkey labeling, the following overregulation information arose in just one week in November, according to investigations by the Bankrupting America Project:

• RealClearPolicy noted President Obama introduced more regulations in two years than President Bush did in eight and twice as many as President Clinton did in his last three years in office.
• According to the American Action Forum, as of Nov. 2, “At the current pace, the published regulatory burden for 2012 will exceed $273 billion. Since January 1, 2012 the federal government has imposed $231.7 billion in compliance costs and more than 134.9 million annual paperwork burden hours.”
• The American Action Forum also notes there were three Dodd-Frank rules issued in the last two weeks that would “increase regulatory costs by $774 million … with more than 7.4 million associated paperwork hours.”

$273 billion a year in regulations comes out to well over $2,500 a year per average U.S. household. Ask yourself if you are getting your money’s worth for that $2,500 every year. Ask this question in the light of now knowing that one of those many, many regulations concerns itself with the labels on turkeys? I think most Americans would agree that $2,500 is way too much to spend based on what return we get from the federal bureaucracy.

5) Now, the following numbers will not cure our $16.3 TRILLION national debt problem, it will not feed the homeless. But it is symptomatic of how idiotic our Federal government can be when handing our taxpayer wealth in a willy-nilly manner.

The December, 2012 AARP Bulletin covered the findings from a Congressional Research Service which found that almost 2,400 IRS tax filers had annual income over $1 million in 2009 and…. were still able to collect unemployment benefits. This cost the American taxpayer almost $21 million.

Again, $21 million is a spit in the ocean of our national debt. But these kinds of atrocities go on thousands and thousands of times every day. Unemployment benefit programs were implemented to help a struggling citizen get past a rough past in their employment situation. Someone who made over a million dollars in one year do not need an additional handout from the American taxpayer. At one million dollars, these people earned at least twenty times what the average American household earned in 2009. With that kind of income advantage, they do not need a taxpayer payout to get over their rough spot.

Senator Tom Coburn has introduced legislation in the Senate to prohibit anyone earning over a million dollars from collecting unemployment benefits and checks. While I applaud his efforts to erase this disgraceful waste of money, I would make the legislation more stringent:

1. I would not put the cutoff at over a $1 million but much lower, say $500,000 which is still more than ten times what the average American household earns in a year.
2. I would also put a wealth measurement and requirement in place. It should not be enough to just look at the previous year’s income. In these high national debt times, I see no reason why anyone should be eligible for unemployment benefits who has a net worth, not an annual income, of over a million dollars. A millionaire with millions in his or her bank, mutual funds, bonds, etc. should not need a few hundred dollars a month from Federal unemployment funds.

It is such a shame the Washington political class took so long to recognize this stupidity.

That should do it for today. Tax evading Federal employees and executives, over regulation, stupid regulations, bad priorities and subsidizing millionaire earners. Just another month of political class insanity.

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

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http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.co
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

While America Burned, The Political Class Fiddled (With Nothing Of Importance)

Consider the current burning issues facing America and Americans:

1. Unemployment is stubbornly stuck at around 9% with about 400,000 Americans filing for first time unemployment benefits every WEEK.
2. This 9% translates into about 14 million Americans and does not include those Americans who have given up looking for employment or who are underemployed.
3. We continue to wage a lost war on drugs with a lawless narco state evolving just south of our borders, a state controlled by violent drug cartels.
4. Our kids continue to be under educated vs. much of the rest of the world.
5. Our borders still leak and we have no effective or compassionate plan on how to deal with the millions of illegal aliens already in the country.
6. Our national debt is fast approaching $15 TRILLION, or about $132,000 per American household.
7. Health care costs continue to increase unabated, rising about 9% in 2010, with no relief or solution in sight (including the ill written, ill designed, and doomed Obama Care).
8. Gas prices are still up about 100% from a few years ago with no relief in sight along with also no national energy strategy in sight.
9. Corporate, union, PAC, and other organized big money sources continue to pervert and subvert our democratic and political processes, with the blatant cronyism of President Obama's failed alternative energy loans just the latest example of rampant government corruption.
10. Our political processes are so broken that incumbent politicians start running for re-election over a year before the election, about the same time when the resolution of our nation's issues become secondary in these incumbents' eyes.

This list probably includes most of the pressing issues that Americans would put on their personal list as being the biggest challenges and fears in their lives. However, while the country seems to be burning down, what have the Washington politicians been working on or fiddling with recently:

- This week, three members of Congress sent a letter to a fourth member of Congress, Fred Upton, who is the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The letter urged Mr. Upton to hold a Congressional hearing on the use/abuse of human growth hormone in the National Football League, according to an October 25, 2011 Daily News article.

Let's do some simple math. There are 32 NFL teams with about 50 players on their roster at any one time. Thus, there are only about 1,600 members of the NFL at any one time. There are 14 million unemployed Americans.


So now at least four members of Congress, and more if hearings are actually held, are preoccupied with and will be investigating the potential of HGH abuse by a very small set of rich Americans rather than focusing on the generally non-rich 14 million unemployed Americans. Fiddling around while millions struggle economically.

- College football is undergoing a lot of changes lately, with conferences looking to expand and pick off schools from other conferences to expand the number of schools/teams in their own conference. The primary driver to the reshuffling of these conferences is the potential for increased television revenue. Bigger college football conferences usually equates to more revenue flowing to the schools already in the conferences.

One of the subplots to this whole situation is the competition between Louisville University and West Virginia University as they compete for one opening in the Big 12 Conference. Rather than work on reducing the onerous national debt of $15 TRILLION, Kentucky U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell reportedly personally called the Big 12 conference's officials to lobby for Louisville and West Virginia U.S. Senator Jay Rockefeller is reportedly to also be involved, according to an article in the October 27, 2011 issue of the St. Petersburg Times. Fiddling with college football while the nation burns.

- In the October 18, 2011 issue of New York Times, the following news blurb occurred:

The Senate stood up Tuesday for the humble white potato and rebuffed an effort by President Obama to limit its consumption by millions of schoolchildren around the country. The administration has proposed limiting the amount of potatoes and other starchy vegetables that can be served in school lunches to one cup per student per week, and banning them from school breakfasts.


The Senate on Tuesday moved to block the proposal by adopting an amendment to the 2012 spending bill for the Agriculture Department. The amendment, approved by unanimous consent, prohibits the department from setting “any maximum limits on the serving of vegetables in school meal programs.”

So let's review. At least four House members are worried about whether rich football players use HGH and now we find out that all 100 members of the Senate and major members of the executive branch are heatedly debating what should be the weekly ration of potatoes should for our kids. Our kids are going to school to be under educated while our so-called leaders debate about what the kids should eat while they are being under educated. Fiddling around in the cafeteria while they should be working to fix what goes on in the classrooms.


- The Obama administration recently declared that it will aggressively start to shut down and prosecute the owners/operators of medical marijuana clinics in California. Even though the clinics are legal under California state law, they are illegal under Federal law. The original purpose of the clinics was to provide marijuana pain relief to people suffering from various ailments and sicknesses, ailments and sicknesses that most medical authorities agree can be eased by smoking marijuana.


While a strong case can probably be made that the process has been subverted in some cases to get marijuana to people that really do not need it for pain relief, at least some Americans' lives are eased and made more bearable because of the clinics. By shutting down the clinics, there is no doubt that this Obama administration drive to shut down the clinics will add significant physical pain to the lives of many ailing Americans.


While the administration fiddles with some marijuana clinics, it has no plan in place to deal with the overwhelming violence, reach, and drug operations of the Mexican drug cartels. Seems the administration would rather hassle and persecute some small shop owners and medical marijuana users, entities that pose no threat to our national security, then deal with the real drug abuse problem, namely the Mexican cartels.


- Recent news reports indicate that Obama's economic stimulus initiative paid out about $230 million to various entities to  run anti-soda ads. The purpose of the ads was to address the obesity problem in the country by demonizing the drinking of sugary soda drinks such as Coke and Pepsi.

No one can doubt that we do have an obseity problem in this country, a problem that directly contributes to disease and increases our health care costs. No argument there. But solving the obesity problem should be a long term, strategic, coordinated public health effort, not a one time set of anti-soda television ads.

Again, just another example of the Obama administration's blatant inability to think strategically, it only can develop short term tactical programs that seldom work without an overarching  strategic framework.

The point of the stimulus program was to immediately help create jobs and the conditions for an economic recovery. The stimulus plan has obviously failed, as witnessed by the 14 million Americans currently unemployed. Maybe it failed because the political class was on a sugar high and did not realize that another quarter million taxpayer dollars was not being used for its intended purpose, i.e. create economic recovery as soon as possible. Telling people to stop drinking soda does not create jobs and does not attack the obesity problem, it just fiddles away millions of taxpayer dollars.

Giving this inability to set priorities straight, always dealing with insignificant issues vs. our nation's most pressing issues, we must find a way to reform our political processes so that we start getting smart people in office that can resolve our economic, drug abuse, education, and other major issues.

Many of these processes are laid out in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government," with the most important process being a way to implement term limits for Federally elected officials. As a nation we deserve better than the fiddlers we currently have in Washington, fiddlers that would make Nero proud but who do nothing to stop the burning down of America.










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/