August, 2017, Part 1, Political Class Insanity: Vote For The Worst Federal Government Entity Today!

It is the beginning of another month which means it is again time to review the latest political class insanity from Washington and around the world. Political class insanity takes many forms including the wasting of taxpayer wealth, criminal fraud within government programs, inane and stupid political quotes and actions, the inability to create and implement effective and efficient government programs, stupid and ill performing economic policies and strategies, and other forms of insanity that continue to evolve and surprise and shock us.

1) Joseph Lawler, writing for the Washington Examiner on July 27, 2017, reviewed how even if you are a major screw up working at the IRS you really are never fired:

• The IRS Inspector General recently reported that the IRS is still hiring former employees that it fired for various types of misconduct.
• The Inspector General report found that of the 2,000 former IRS employees that the IRS rehired in 2015 and 2016, more than 19%, or 200 individuals, had earlier been fired or had resigned in the midst of an investigation into their bad behavior.
• Some of those 200 had been investigated for improperly accessing taxpayer private tax records while some had actually cheated on their own taxes.
• Senator Richard Burr had requested the inspector general report, calling the IRS' rehiring of fired workers a "mind boggling abuse of taxpayer money."
• Burr was also ticked off that during Senate testimony, IRS Commissioner John Koskinen testified under oath that the IRS does not hire workers it had previously fired.

Ah, the la-la land of Washington D.C. where government workers can get away with just about anything and still get a good paying, taxpayer funded job and lying to Congress and the American people, under oath, is a generally accepted practice with no criminal consequences. Insanity.

2) Over the years it has been a tough call as to what Washington bureaucracy wastes the most taxpayer money with the Social Security Administration, Medicare, Medicaid, and the Pentagon usually topping the list of the most inept and inefficient organizations. Anneta Grieffe, writing for the Dennis Michael Lynch website on July 25 2017 puts a vote in for the Pentagon with her latest report on waste:

• A recent 17 page report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) found that the Pentagon wasted over $28 million over the past decade by buying the wrong type of uniforms for Afghan soldiers.
• Unbelievably, someone in the Pentagon authorized the purchase of $28 million worth of forest camouflage uniforms, useless in a country like Afghanistan which has very few forests, instead of desert camouflage uniforms.
• Adding insult to injury, the forest camouflage uniforms are more expensive than the desert camouflage uniforms.
• Adding further insult to injury, SIGAR report cited another major screw up in that the Pentagon spent extra money for the license to the camouflage uniforms when they could have gotten a pattern for free.
• As always, the politicians get involved AFTER the damage is done with Senator Claire McCaskill ranting: “This is a contracting decision that makes you smack your head in frustration. It’s a prime example of wasting hard-earned taxpayer dollars, and we’ve got to get to the bottom of how this happened.”

She and the rest in Congress should all be smacked in their head for allowing this and thousands and thousands of other government wasteful spending endeavors to occur and endure.

3) As we always do lately, let’s check in with Chicago and see how their violence is doing. As you know, Chicago has been in the grip of a crime wave and violence wave for years now with no local, state, or Federal politician having the brains or the willpower to stop it. 

Probably driven by the illegal drug trade, Mexican cartels and other local gangs use violence to protect and secure drug sales turf every day, with the residual violence killing innocent city citizens on a daily basis. The reality is that the very stringent and tight gun control laws in the city has done absolutely nothing except make lawful and frightened citizens have a tougher time arming themselves to defend themselves.

As far as the latest from the streets of Chicago:

• In a recent week, six people were killed and 35 others were injured by the city’s violence.
• This puts this year’s death toll at a rate that was slightly higher than last year’s carnage. 391 deaths in 2017 vs. 387 vs. the same timeframe from last year, a year in which 783 Chicago citizens died from criminal violence, about two per day.
• If there is any good news from this recent week of violence is that the number of people shot is down so far this year, 2,112, vs. 2,337 in 2016. 
• This violence continues despite the boast by Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson that his department has removed more than 5,000 firearms from city streets this year.
• And yet, there have still been more murders this year vs. last year, indicating that maybe more gun control is not the way to resolve this situation.

While there has been some small encouraging signs of winning back the Chicago streets, e.g. murder arrests are up 10% and gun confiscation is up over 30%, getting more than two civilians killed every day is still a disaster with no politician in sight having the answer.

4) While the Pentagon was busy wasting tens of millions of dollars on the wrong type of uniforms, the Social Security Administration (SSA) was busy wasting hundreds of millions of dollars through sheer incompetence:

• According to a new inspector general report, the SSA improperly paid out over $200 million over the years to people who collected SSA benefits under two different Social Security numbers or people who were dead.
• This double SSA number blunder happened in at least 5,000 instances identified in the inspector general report.
• In 13,000 cases, SSA benefits were paid to dead people even though they were recorded and recognized as dead somewhere in the bowels of the SSA data systems processed.
• In addition, the report found that a whopping 4.9 million Americans currently have more than one SSA number assigned to their names.
• In one example, an individual who died in 1997 had his SSA benefits properly terminated but the SSA never checked if he had a second number assigned to his name, which he did, and that number resulted in $31,000 being cashed 14 years later.

Always tough to pick out the worst performing Federal government organization, the Pentagon that paid for the wrong kind of uniforms, the IRS who hires back people that should have not been rehired  or the Social Security Administration who doubles pays benefits to living people and continues to pay benefits to dead people. More insanity to follow over the next week or so.

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.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

June, 2015, Part 1, Political Class Insanity: Billion Dollar Embassies, More IRS Screw Ups, and Voter Fraud Does Exist

It is the start of another month which means it is time to review the latest political class insanity that the American political class has dropped on our heads in the past month or so. We do this review every month in order to continually prove our view that we are currently being served by the worst set of politicians in the history of our country. Their inane quotes, their failed programs and laws, their wasteful spending, their ineptness, and continued focus on their own careers and self enrichment at the expense of taxpayers is constant and disgraceful.

This month could be one of the worst ever, given the backlog that needs to be discussed. The insanity will cover a full range of areas where today’s politicians continue to disappoint and fail us. As always, the new ways they find to screw up is never ending and always creative.

1) When the State Department built an embassy in the capital of Afghanistan it overran its budget by a whopping $150 million. That same State Department spent $40 million on a consulate building in the hinterland of Afghanistan only to abandon it when it was discovered it could not withstand a terrorist attack. The U.S. embassy being built in London might easily cost an obscene billion dollars or more. CBS News reported a year ago that one of the reasons for the London expense was that glass for the embassy was actually shopped back and forth across the Atlantic Ocean to be framed.

And now that same CBS reporter, Nancy Cordes, has recently reported that the new U.S. embassy to be built in Mexico has seen its original estimate of $577 million go up by a third already, with the new estimate sitting at $939 million. This outrageous increase in the cost has happened even though not a single thing has been done to start construction on the embassy.

But this story gets even better, and worse for taxpayers. First of all, the State Department bought fifteen acres in a former Mexican industrial district at a price of….$120 million, according to the CBS reporting. This comes out to a whopping $8 MILLION PER ACRE. I dare to say that there is no acre of land in all of Mexico, or possibly the U.S., that is worth $8 million. 

And apparently, these fifteen acres sit on top of an old Colgate-Palmolive factory which left the ground infested with hazardous waste. Thus, the acreage is not even good land, it is poisoned land and still the State Department paid $8 million an acre. 

In a bit of an understatement, Congressman Jason Chaffetz, chairman of the House Oversight and Government reform committee stated that this situation: "It's a bit of a fiasco." Ya think????

Lydia Muniz of the State Department’s Construction Bureau is quoted in the CBS report as saying that the original plan to award the construction contract in 2016 will not hold. Thus, if construction is not likely to even begin until 2017, how high do we think that this cost estimate will go? Easily past a billion dollars no doubt.

Just when you think you have seen all of the different forms of political class insanity, our politicians come up with another: paying $8 million an acre for a polluted piece of land in an industrial site to build a billion dollar embassy. You cannot make this stuff up.

2) The IRS has been around for a long time. They have probably processed trillions of different tax returns in their history. And now in 2015 we learn again that they still do a terrible job in accomplishing that task.

According to recent news reports, the personal and confidential records of over 100,000 Americans had their information compromised when Russian hackers broke into confidential computers and files of the IRS and stole vital personal information. Most sane people would view this as a serious computer security breach, exposing 100,000 Americans to a real identity theft possibility all because of IRS incompetence.

But believe it or not, this is not the worst part of this crisis. Somehow IRS Commissioner John Koskinen has claimed the theft is “not a security breach.” After news of the hacking was made public, he held a phone call with reporters where he boldly asserted that: “This is not a security breach. Our basic information is secure.” Pretty sure that is not what 100,000 Americans would say, their information was seriously breached. I would hate to see what this guy views as a real security breach.

The Washington Times quoted Senator Orrin Hatch as claiming that the IRS had previously been warned many times that more needed to be done to protect taxpayer data and information: “That the IRS — home to highly sensitive information on every single American and every single company doing business here at home — was vulnerable to this attack is simply unacceptable.” 

Unbelievable that such a highly paid government bureaucrat could be so incompetent and out of touch with reality and not be able to fix what is wrong with his organization even though its flaws had already been identified for him.

3) On of the basic tenets of any democracy is “one person, one vote.” It is the underpinning to the assumption that elections accurately represent the voices of American citizens. Take away that assumption of fairness and the whole democratic process eventually breaks down since no one knows what the true feelings of the citizens are. 

Which is why I was always baffled when politicians, almost always Democrats, were so strongly against fair and easy voter id laws and regulations. Did they want to undermine our democracy by poisoning the election process? They would always justify their actions to cut or gut voter id laws with the assumption that there is very little voter fraud in America today and thus, voter id laws were solving a non-existent problem while making it harder for some people to vote.

Well like many other Democratic Party/Obama promises and statements of “fact” recently (e.g. if you like your doctor you can keep your doctor under Obama Care, we are winning the war against ISIS, the Obama administration is going to be the most transparent ever, etc.), consider the following write up of several examples of voter fraud identified by the Heritage Foundation:

• In McAllen, Texas, two campaign workers (known as politiqueras in local parlance) who bribed voters with cocaine, beer, cigarettes and cash during a 2012 school board election have been sentenced separately to serve eight and four months in prison, respectively. U.S. District Court Judge Randy Crane called this election fraud “terrible” and said that “our country requires that our voting process be clear and free of fraud for democracy to work … it’s dangerous for this to occur without consequence.”
• A couple in Le Sueur, Minn., was charged with felony voter registration fraud for lying about where they lived so they could vote in a school bond referendum in another town.
• A woman in Dothan, Ala., was sentenced to six months in prison for her part in a voter fraud scheme that got a city commissioner re-elected. She was the second of the four people charged to have been found guilty of voter fraud in the case, which may have involved more than 100 absentee ballots.
• Bronx politician Hector Ramirez has been arrested after a 242-count grand jury indictment charged him with a massive voter fraud scheme that involved tricking voters into letting Ramirez and his staff illegally vote their absentee ballots. The local prosecutor told the New York Daily News  that Ramirez, who lost two prior tries at a state assembly seat, “made a decision that he was not going to lose, under any circumstance.”
• A state appeals court upheld a ruling voiding a 2013 commission election in Weslaco, Texas, in which dozens of illegal votes were cast in an election won by only 16 votes. The illegal votes included individuals falsely claiming to reside in the city and improper “assistance” that told voters who to vote for—a great example of how even a small amount of fraud can make a difference in close elections.
• In Philadelphia, the setting of the infamous 2008 New Black Panther Party voter intimidation case, four local election officials have been charged with casting multiple votes in the city’s 18th Ward in a precinct in which three of them didn’t even live and were not registered to vote. This case illustrates the importance of poll watchers, because it was a local poll watcher who saw what happened and brought it to the attention of the district attorney’s office. This is the same district attorney, Democrat Seth Williams, who indicted two Democratic state legislators last year for accepting bribes in exchange for voting against a voter ID bill after the Pennsylvania attorney general, Kathleen Kane, also a Democrat, refused to prosecute the case.
• On May 7, the Board of Immigration Appeals of the Executive Office for Immigration Review held that a Peruvian citizen who illegally registered and voted could be deported for violating federal law. Margarita Del Pilar became a permanent legal resident of the U.S. in 2004. She promptly applied for an Illinois driver’s license and registered to vote at the same time, then cast a ballot in the 2006 congressional election. When she applied for naturalization in 2007, she admitted in the INS interview that she had voted in an American election. Of course, if she had not applied to become a citizen, she could have continued to illegally vote with almost no chance of being detected.

But these are not the only seven cases of verifiable voter fraud in the country today. Go to the following link and take a look at over two hundred examples of real voter fraud that is listed out on a state by state basis:

http://thf_media.s3.amazonaws.com/2015/pdf/VoterFraudCases-Merged-3-2.pdf

And remember, these are just some of the cases that have been caught. How many others that have not been caught is anybody’s guess but it is pretty obvious that voter fraud is a problem, regardless of what Obama, Eric Holder, and others that pooh pooh the concept think. They are the frauds that would seek to undermine our democratic processes for the sake of more illegal votes in their column in the voting machines.

That will do it for today, we are just getting warmed up with the following pieces of insanity:

1. The State Department absolutely stinks when it comes to buying real estate and constructing a building on that real estate.
2. The IRS stinks at just about everything they do including preventing security breaches of Americans personal information.
3. Voter fraud does exist, it is widespread across every state, and any politician that says it does not exist obviously thinks the fraud is in her or his best interest even though it cuts the legs out of our democracy.

More insanity to come tomorrow...and the next day, ….and the next day...

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.loathemygovernmobama,washington post,politifactent.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.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

Aporil, 1015, Part 3 Political Class Insanity: Lies, Porn, Sexual Harassment, and More In Washington

Every month we do a regular series under the theme, “political class insanity.” We look at the many, many different, and often original, ways that the American political class wastes our tax dollars, undermines our freedoms, and generally act in the most idiotic ways possible, via their quotes, actions, and laws. For past examples of hundreds of instances of political class insanity, just page through the historical listings on the right side of this page at the beginning of each month or enter “political class insanity” in the search box above.

We usually do not start a new month’s insanity until the current month has ended. However, given the political class idiocy seems to be increasing, we started May’s insanity review a day early in order to get a little head start on what is shaping up as an epic month of insanity.

1) Many, many times we have pointed out that this has not turned out to be the “most transparent” Presidential administration ever nor has it ever been one that thinks all laws should be obeyed. Lay on the propensity for this administration to flat out lie and we have one of the most out of integrity Presidencies ever. Ever.

Today we add to that horrible legend. A while ago, the commissioner of the IRS testified under oath in front of Congress that thousands of emails of IRS employee Lois Lerner had been “lost.” These were important emails since they likely showed that Lerner and other high ranking IRS employees, and possibly White House employees, had purposely and illegally used the IRS to hinder the First Amendment rights of conservative and Republican groups to be politically active within IRS guidelines.

Two serious problems if this was reality. First, it would have been an obvious criminal act to not retain those emails for which someone should have been brought up on criminal charges. That fact is indisputable from a law perspective. Secondly, however, if those emails were not lost, merely hidden to avoid uncovering massive political fraud and illegal acts, and someone testified UNDER OATH in front of Congress that they were lost, then you have a whole other set of law breaking.

Given this administration’s penchant for lying, it should come as no surprise that those emails were not destroyed, that thousands of them do exist. This is in direct opposition to what the IRS Commissioner testified to in front of Congress. A Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration has found those “lost” emails that were claimed to have been lost forever. The find included 6,400 lost Lerner emails.

Back in early 2015 when another 32,000 lost Lerner emails were “found,”Katie Pavlich wrote for Townhall that Deputy Inspector General for Investigations, Timothy Camus, had told the House Oversight Committee that there was “potential criminal activity” involved in the disappearance and possible hiding of Lerner’s relevant emails: “Not surprisingly, in order to stonewall the congressional investigation into the targeting of conservative groups, IRS officials never asked IT professionals to look into gathering back-up tapes or recovering emails requested by Congress. Despite IRS Commissioner John Koskinen repeatedly saying under oath in previous hearings that Lerner’s emails could not be recovered, Camus and investigators have been successful in recovering nearly 33,000 emails relevant to the IRS investigation.”

If this administration had not lied so many times in the past, you could give it the benefit of the doubt and assume the emails were lost due to incompetence. However, it is becoming pretty obvious that this administration has stonewalled Congress in its attempt to find out if there was massive government, IRS, and White House abuse of First Amendment rights of political opponents. Lies, criminal activity by government officials, and shredding of the Constitution, insanity at the highest levels of government and Washington's political class.

2) If you work in the private sector and sexually harass 17 women, there is no doubt you would no longer have a job. If you work in the private sector and watch pornography on company computers and company time, there is no doubt you would no longer have a job. In both instances, you might also be in jail.

Which makes working for the Federal government so cool in that you can harass upwards of 17 women and view pornography on the job and not get fired. In fact, you might even get promoted. According to recent Congressional committee testimony, despite the sexual harassment of many women, one EPA government official was actually promoted despite at least 17 females employees' sexual harassment claims beginning as early as 2009. EPA rules require employment termination after just two sexual harassment claims but apparently that is more a guideline than a hard and fast principle.

Another two EPA employees were caught watching porn and but were only put on paid leave. One eventually retired but still received the full benefits as if nothing had happened.

"It is well past time someone is held accountable for these management failings," said Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah. "We have a duty and obligation to the American taxpayer to fire the people who are abusing the system." Elijah Cummings, the committee's top Democrat, was equally critical: "There is no doubt that these employees should have been fired," the Maryland congressman said.

Nice work if you can get it, high pay to watch porn and harass some female co-workers without fear of any retribution. 

3) Let’s get back to the Obama promise that his administration would be the most transparent ever, a claim that has been proven wrong so many times. Recall from past discussions that the Veterans Administration (VA) is a highly dysfunctional organization, paying its executives high pay and high bonuses while veterans died and suffered from not getting the medical support they had been promised.

This scandal eventually blew up with the head of the VA being fired and Obama and Congress promising to shake things up for the better for our vets. Well, maybe Congress did. According to a recent Washington Examiner article by Luke Rosiak, a Veterans Affairs hospital threatened its staff members with a $20,000 fine if they became whistle blowers for VA misdoings. 

This latest VA scandal was at the Veteran's Affairs Caribbean Healthcare System where upper level executives began threatening employees who leak information to outsiders with a $20,000 fine. Not only that, they tried to pressure the Office of the Inspector General to identify hospital workers who previously leaked documents showing evidence of widespread wrongdoing in the facility.

The cause for the alarm is likely connected to at least two recent instances of bad behavior on the part of the hospital. First, a patient at the facility recently died after a doctor performed an unnecessary procedure without authorization from the primary physician. The doctor also allowed his wife, a medical trainee who he was supervising, to participate in the procedure to get experience in it.

Second, the hospital's director, DeWayne Hamlin, had been arrested in Florida with painkillers in his possession and tried to have a low-level employee fired after that employee whistle blew the situation to supervisors in Washington. When an investigator said her review found that the whistle blower did nothing wrong, Hamlin then ordered that the investigator be fired.

So much for the “most transparent” administration ever, it is an administration that goes after whistle blowers like no others before it.

4) I love it when politicians think we are so stupid that we will believe anything they say, even when they say they never said it in the first place. As most people know, there have been riots going on over the past week over the death of a young African American who was in police custody. 

At the onset of the riot situation, the mayor of Baltimore was videotaped at a news conference saying that she was going to give rioters “space to destroy.” Well, that statement was taken a green light to act unlawfully, violently, and without fear of reprisal by the rioters, resulting in billions of dollars worth of property damage, injured civilians, and police officers, and a total disrespect for the rule of law.

A few days later, the same mayor said she never said that she was going to give rioters the “space to destroy.” Is she that dense that she forgot what she said a few days ago on video or does she think we are that dumb that we do not realize what she said a few days ago? In either case, it is pure insanity that this woman is in charge of a major U.S. city. 

To say her conflicting claims, go to the 4:00 mark of the following video clip:

http://dailyheadlines.net/2015/04/baltimore-mayor-backtracks-she-did-not-saygive-those-who-wish-to-destroy-space-to-do-that/

5) One last piece of insanity for today. According to a recent article by Bloomberg that was summarized in the April 17, 2015 issue of The Week magazine: 

• Average American household income fell by almost 1% in 2014.
• The average household income of the bottom fifth of the nation;s earners fell by 3.5%.
• The average income of the wealthiest 1% rose by almost 1% in 2014.

Now, I am not saying tax the rich more because they earned more. Even if you taxed the rich at a 100% rate, it would make minimal difference in the lives of the other 99%.

What I am saying is that we continue to be served by the most economically ignorant set of politicians ever who cannot and have not put forth coherent economic policies to grow the economy and provide good earning opportunities for 99% of the American households.

So what insanity did we learn of today:

• If you work for the Federal government, it is okay to lie to Congress.
• If you work for the Federal government is is okay to harass women and watch porn on the job.
• If you work for the Federal government it is okay to harass and threaten whistle blowers even though it is against the law.
• If you are a politician it is okay to pull a Star Wars mind trick on Americans, adapting the movie phrase, “These are not the droids you are looking for” to “That is not the quote I said just two days ago.”
• And if you are a Washington politician, economic experience, common sense, and training is obviously not a required skill of the job, given how poorly Washington manages the nation;s economic affairs.

More insanity tomorrow.

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.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

April, 2015, Political Class Insanity, Part 4: Finally Rooting Out Food Stamp Fraud, Taxpayer Funding Or Marijuana Farms, and More

It is the beginning of another month which means it is time to review the latest political class insanity that has cropped up over the past 30 days or so. As regular readers of this blog know, political class insanity comes in many different forms including, but not limited to, the following craziness:

• Spending taxpayer wealth on idiotic programs and projects.
• Wasting taxpayer wealth on their own selfish financial and political needs.
• Implementing legislation to resolve problems that make the original problems worse or which created unintended bad consequences as a result of their legislation.
• Implementing legislation that supports their political donors and financial backers rather than the typical American citizen.
• Issuing idiotic and stupid comments.
• Overseeing government organizations that are incompetent, inefficient, ineffective, and wasteful of taxpayer wealth.

As always, it is highly likely we will identify new forms of insanity over the next few days as we review the past ineptness coming out of Washington and other bastions of American politicians.

1) Everyone likes the idea of the government stepping in to help out disaster victims. What is seldom reported is the botched job the government usually does in handling the disaster aftermath and more importantly, the funding that eventually gets wasted to support the government effort. From 9-11 to Hurricane Katrina, we could probably go on for days about how the political class and government agencies probably wasted more money than they used to actually help disaster victims.

Which brings us to one of the latest disasters that the government and politicians had to handle, Hurricane Sandy, which ravaged the middle Atlantic states a few years ago. According to an article posted on the Convention of States website from the Washington Free Beacon, nearly one million dollars in taxpayer funding was given to a New York City cherry factory that had a hidden basement filled with hundreds of hydroponically grown marijuana plants.

The company, Dell’s Maraschino Cherries in Brooklyn, got $900,000 in Hurricane Sandy relief cash after it’s “cherry” inventories were damaged by the 2012 storm. But that money might have to be given back, assuming it still exists, after investigators found a hidden door in the factory. 

The door led to a 2,500-square-foot basement containing hundreds of thousands in cash and about 100 pounds of weed: “We have advised Dell’s that the funds are subject to recapture and the city can commence legal proceedings, if necessary,” said a spokesman for the city’s Department of Small Business Services, which administered the Federal Sandy money.

To add insult to injury, the company has also received hundreds of thousands of dollars from New York state taxpayers in state government for power subsidies, which was important since the marijuana plants that were being grown need strong grow lights to grow in the basement, eating up a lot of electricity. Adding more insults, the article reported that the New York District Attorney’s office had been tipped off about the illegal drug activity going on at Dell’s….. in 2009, years before the government gave them almost a million dollars of taxpayer wealth. Insanity.

2) In 1978, Washington politicians passed a law that allowed Federal employees who are union members to spend part of their day addressing union issues. The theory behind the law was that since not all Federal employees have to pay dues and be union members, the law was supposed to provide a financial help to the unions in their union activities by allowing union work to be done with taxpayer funding. 

But some in Washington think that after 37 years, the program and intent of the program have gotten out of control. According to the Office of Personnel Management, in 2012 (the most recent year there are statistics for) Federal workers spent a whopping 3.4 million man-hours on union issues and not the work they were hired for. The estimated cost to taxpayers was more than $157 million.

What’s worse is that two of the most dysfunctional government entities, those that have experienced the most failure in serving their respective clients, purposes, and goals, the Veterans Administration and the IRS, also appear to have the most Federal workers doing union work vs. helping Americans. In both entities, hundreds of workers spent 100% of their time doing only union work.

At the VA, a whopping 259 employees worked solely on union issues. At the IRS, which only disclosed their statistics when the National Review sent them a Freedom of Information Act request, the number of employees was 201. These are 259 employees that are not serving our underserved veterans and their medical needs and 201 IRS employees that are not serving the tax filing needs and questions of Americans.

Georgia Senator Johnny Isakson is co-sponsoring a bill in the Senate to curtail the practice for the same reasons we just discussed: "The VA's had problems getting veterans appointments within 30 days, yet they're taking thousands of hours to organize the union. Something's wrong with their priorities. We need to get it fixed."

While we wish the Senator luck in this endeavor to protect taxpayer wealth, three previous efforts to do the same thing failed to get out of Congress. Thus, even a simple thing of controlling out of control employees is beyond the reach of the Washington political class unless the fourth time is the charm.

3) What is an interesting correlation with the previous piece of insanity is the recent speech of IRS Commissioner John Koskinen. He asserted that IRS taxpayer/customer service levels have gotten so bad that the IRS is ignoring an embarrassing 60% of taxpayers’ phone calls. And apparently the trend is not good since a couple of weeks ago they were not answering 57% of the phone calls. 

Maybe if the good Commissioner had used the 201 employees discussed above for the jobs they were hired to do, vs. union work, and had not used a lot of IRS resources to harass tea party and other organizations, he would actually be able to do a better job than failing 60% of the time. Rather than do his job efficiently and effectively, the good Commissioner is crying poverty and is looking for more budget money rather than fixing what is wrong within his organization. At a 60% failure rate, if he worked in the real world, he would no longer be holding that job for his ineptness.

4) I am not going to try to summarize the following insanity and insulting deception that the Washington political class set up to to avoid the additional costs that Obama Care would impose on Congressional members and their staffs. Instead, I have copied below the press release that recently came out from U.S Senator David Vitter and Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton on how the Obama administration's Office of Personnel Management has been using taxpayer money to illegally subsidize healthcare for Congress: 

The Affordable Care Act clearly states that Congress and staff must participate in the new insurance framework based on health-care exchanges, but there’s no available exchange for large employers, like Congress who has nearly 16,000 employees. That meant members of Congress and staff could only participate in the individual exchanges. Just like the rest of America, Congress had to abide by the same Obamacare rules and use these expensive individual exchanges with no employer contribution to help pay their premiums with non-taxable dollars.

In fact, part of the political price to pass the law was that specific provision that there would be no special treatment for Congress. But Republican and Democrat leaders in Congress begged Obama to step in. Rather than losing their tax-free premium subsidy, which would mean higher health insurance bills for themselves and their families, congressional leadership cut a side deal with the administration. The result? The Obama administration’s Office of Personnel Management (OPM) ignored the law and decreed that Congress could participate as a “small business” eligible to purchase a “Gold-tier” plan from Washington D.C.’s health-care exchange.

The District of Columbia defines a “small business” as fifty employees or less. Congress has nearly 16,000. According to the documents disclosed by Judicial Watch in a taxpayer lawsuit challenging this scam, the House and Senate filed false applications with the D.C. Health Benefits Exchange claiming they each were a “small business” with “fifty or fewer full-time equivalent employees.”

The applications state that the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives each have 45 employees and that the federal institutions are actually “local/state governments.” The “electronic signature” section of the application states that the signatory has “provided true and correct information to all questions” and is aware that if “not truthful, there may be a penalty.” When we requested to see these documents, the names of the signatories had been blacked out by the D.C. Exchange.

These documents appear to be an outright fraud. They are the basis for using taxpayer money to illicitly subsidize health insurance for Congress. More than 12,300 members of Congress, their staff, spouses, and dependents obtained health insurance through the exchange between October 2013 and September 2014, and that number surely is climbing. It would be hard to credibly attack Obama’s executive overreach (and as the House did – sue to stop him from violating Obamacare), when Congress is a co-conspirator.

The classic "do as I say, not as I do," a common theme of the Washington political class. Or in this case, "pay as I say [relative to Obama Care], not as I pay."

5) The following is political class insanity but in a somewhat good way, especially when you consider that over 45 million Americans are receiving food assistance from the Federal government and other welfare rolls are at record highs. According to an article on the www.800whistleblower.com website, Maine Governor Paul LePage is among the states cracking down on welfare fraud by instituting work requirements for benefits recipients:

• Beginning in 2014, Maine required non-disabled residents who get Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits (food assistance/”food stamps”) to put in at least a 20-hour work week, attending vocational training, or volunteering.
• The results of the work and volunteer requirement was astonishing.
• According to David Sorensen, spokesman for the Department of Health and Services, of the 12,000 non-disabled enrollees without children who were previously on the dole, only 2,680 remain as of now, an amazing drop of almost 80%.
• Could it be that a large number of people receiving food assistance, and other forms of welfare, simply because it is so easy to do so?

And it is not as if the work and volunteer requirements were onerous, with the volunteer option coming out to only 24 hours a month, less than an hour a day. That meager requirement was enough to reduce these welfare loads by a 80% or so. 

Previously we reported in this blog that when the English government required disability payment recipients to re-register in order to continue receiving benefits, they also experienced an incredible decrease in people claiming benefits. Lesson learned: when you make it easy for people to get free money, they will take it, whether it is food assistance leeches in Maine or disability fakers in England.

Imagine how much taxpayer money could be saved if this Maine model was repeated across the country. The insanity of it all is that why this type of gross mismanagement has been going on for decades, not a single Washington politician has had the will, intelligence, and courage to do what the Maine governor has done. How insane and pathetic is that?

Unfortunately, after five days, we are still not through the latest month of political class insanity, more to follow.

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.loathemygovernmobama,washington post,politifactent.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.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

February, 2015 Part 4, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: States Rebelling, And Inept IRS and More Perosnal Horror Stories

For over a year we have had to dedicate multiple posts each month to cover the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care. If you follow all of the disasters from this legislation that we have discussed, you cannot help but conclude that this is the worst piece of legislation ever passed by Washington. 

Millions and millions of Americans have been forced off of their current and preferred health insurance policies. Millions have lost access to their preferred doctors. Millions have lost access to their preferred hospitals. Millions are paying higher premiums and deductibles than before. Over a trillion dollars will be added to the national debt. Unemployment and underemployment has been made worse because of the law’s criteria. Economic growth has been stifled. Millions of Americans are now at a much higher threat of identity theft as a result of the poor data system processes of the law. Many Americans now have health insurance, at a higher cost, but are having trouble getting access to health care as doctors are retiring earlier as a result of the law and many doctors are not accepting the lower payments they will receive from Obama Care insurance customers. And after tens years, there will likely still be tens of millions of Americans who do not have health insurance coverage despite the purported objective of Obama Care.

And as we have pointed out dozens and dozens of times, the legislation will never be successful because it never addressed the underlying root causes of our high health care costs in this country. Obama put forth an insurance solution to a public health problem:

• Americans eat too much.
• Americans eat too much of the wrong kind of food.
• Americans smoke too much.
• Americans drink too much alcohol.
• Americans do not exercise enough.
• America’s food chain is infected and infested with high fructose corn syrup and sugar.
• America is aging making citizens much more likely to be victims of aging diseases such as dementia and Alzheimers.
• Medical practice tort reform is needed nationally and has been shown to work at the state level.
• Cross state border insurance company competition needs to be encouraged.
• The Federal government loses tens of billions of dollars every year via Medicare and Medicaid through waste, efficiencies, and outright criminal fraud, money that could be used to make America healthier, not criminals wealthier.

In the face if these ten root causes, Obama chose to ignore all of them and put n place a Rube Goldberg like government bureaucracy that has no chance of succeeding. To prove this point, let’s take a couple of days and look at the latest unfolding disasters being spawned by Obama Care:

1)While Obama and the Democrats in Congress adamantly do not want to change Obama Care in spite of the all the failures it has spawned, many states are not waiting. They see the costs, heart breaks, and other downsides to this legislation and are taking steps to protect their citizens in many ways:

• A study done by the Center For Public Integrity found that there are over seven pieces of state legislation under consideration across the country at the state government level in opposition to Obama Care.
• According to National Conference of State Legislatures’ health care expert Richard Cauchi: "The number of bills is remarkable. There are definitely strong opposing opinions on the topic of the Affordable Care Act.”
• According to Oklahoma State Representative Mike Ritze: “We need to do everything we can to try and reverse this. We can make it harder to enforce if the states get together to attack it on all fronts.”
• Most of the state bills are trying to nullify all or parts of the law or hinder its implementation.
• One approach being taken is to suspend the state businesses licenses of insurers who accept Federal subsidy money, effectively putting them out of business.
• Other bills will make it illegal to compel or force a citizen to participate in a national system.
• As a result of Republicans taking more control of state legislatures last November, the number of opposing bills is likely to increase going forward.

This is what happens when you pass a terrible piece of legislation without getting buy-in from the country and refuse to admit mistakes were made and take corrective action. Americans individually and via their state governments rise up and nothing positive is accomplished for anyone.

2) Earlier this month we reported on how the IRS is so inept that it will have a very difficult time provided any value added services to tax filers this year. And what makes a bad situation worse this year is that the IRS,which could not do its basic job effectively, now has to administer the complex tax consequences of Obama Care.

As a recent Associated Press (AP) article points out, getting help with Obama Care questions relative to your tax return is likely to also be a disaster:

• Only half of the 100 million people who call the IRS helpline for their taxes will likely get through to an IRS employee.
• Those who do get through will likely been on hold for 30 minutes or more.
• The IRS even acknowledges how bad they are according to IRS watchdog Nina E. Olson: “Taxpayers who need help are not getting it, and tax compliance is likely to suffer over the longer term if these problems are not quickly and decisively addressed.”
• According to IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, budget cuts will prevent the IRS from continuing to help low income taxpayers fill out their returns and tax refunds could be delayed for paper filers.
• Given that the budget cuts are only about 3%, this excuse, like much of the Obama administration’s excuses, rings a little hollow. It is highly, highly doubtful that there is not 3% worth of wastetful spending, inefficiencies, or stupid IRS programs that could not be cut or made better to recover the 3% cut.
• According to the AP story, Koskinen’s advice to taxpayers: "Don’t call the IRS unless you absolutely have to.” Since it is his job to handle calls and to run and effective and efficient organization despite a meager 3% budget cut, he should be removed from his position immediately, given this awful advice.

But a lot of people should be removed from their government positions for being ineffective, wasteful, and horrible managers, starting with the people who put together Obama Care and then did not have the government resources lined up to execute it properly.

3) Dan Munro, writing for Forbes recently, did a nice job of summarizing the current state of affairs and mess mess that Obama Care caused relative to health care industry:

- Remember that Obama Care was supposed to reduce the cost of health care in the country and in the economy as we get into the first stat from Mr. Munro. According to the Federal government, the National Healthcare Expenditure (NHE), the total amount that the country spends on health care, is expected to hit $3.2 TRILLION this year. Given that the U.S. population is about 320 million, that means that for the first time ever, the country is going to spend about $10,000 in 2015 for every man, woman, and child living in the country. So much for reducing healthcare costs.

- One reason the NHE is not even higher is the fact that many businesses are moving to high deductible health care plans, forcing employees and families to pay more for their insurance with higher deductibles and premiums. So much for the Obama promise of reducing every family’s average health insurance cost by $2,500 a year.

- Sometime this summer the Supreme Court will decide if people who got their Obama Care policies via the Federal website are still entitled to their Federal government subsidies are will have to give them up, as clearly stipulated in the words of the actual legislation. If the court rules in favor of the clear language of the law, Federal customers of Obama Care are NOT entitled to subsidies, then most of the legislation collapses onto itself since people in 37 states with Obama Care would see an immediate and large rise in their insurance premiums.

What a mess.

4) As we have done with with the preceding posts in this month’s Obama Care update, let’s review what is happening at the human level as a result of Obama Care, all of which were culled from the website:

www.ourhealthcarestories.com

MARIANNE - OHIO Have had affordable insurance my entire life, both individual, and employer based. Now I am uninsured due to the huge premiums and deductible I found on the exchange when I lost my coverage as of 12/31/13. Never has insurance been based on my income and never have I been so devastated to find the premiums for my son and I more than a house payment. Thankfully, I HAD a great affordable plan last year when I was diagnosed with breast cancer and had surgery, chemo and radiation. I am SO VERY fearful of this returning even though the oncologist said I am cured. No insurance and I absolutely cannot afford this. As a young widow who lost my husband to cancer, I am the sole provider and parent to my son. This law is unjust and I am just sick with worry without insurance for the first time in our lives

DIANE - ILLINOIS We got a letter from our insurance company stating that our premium for both my husband and me was going to be $1120 a month with a $12,700 deductible. This through a private company. Our policy was being cancelled. I went on Medicare in January. Prior our premium on cancelled policy was $679 for both of us. After policy was cancelled 12/31/2013 then reinstated for just my husband his premium for just him was $475.13. The reinstated policy term was to be from January til December. The old policy ran from May of last year and was to go to May of this year. So my husband's premium got increased in January and then we got a letter from insurance company stating his premium was going up again this May to $538.56. So they used the January date and the original May date to levy premiums twice. So what's going to happen next year. Are we going to get two premium increases in one year again? We are all at the mercy of this disgusting messed up law and Obama keeps changing it at will to push his political agenda. 

JIM - NEW YORK As CBS 2′s Dick Brennan reported, some are being forced to get a new doctor to remain covered. It appears insurers are trying to cut their costs in light of the coming health care changes next year. Doctors are getting bumped off plans and their patients are getting worried, Brennan reported.

“I just can’t believe it because this is the man you rely on,” heart patient Leonard Goldberg, 82, said.

“It hurts, it hurts inside and it’s a terrible feeling to think that you can’t get what you want,” Tony Molesphini, 83, said.

“Nobody wants to die, me above all people,” 79-year-old Jim Heffernan said.

The three men with heart trouble say their biggest problem is losing the doctor they’ve had for decades, and they fear for their future.

For the original reporting, go here:

http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2013/11/01/doctors-dropped-by-insurers-as-affordable-care-act-rollout-continues/

That will do it for today’s disaster: states rebelling, IRS failing, and more. One more day to get through all of this month’s Obama Care disasters tomorrow.