December, 2014, Part 5, Political Class Insanity: Studying Sex Workers In Peru, Wasting More Money In Afghanistan, Cash For Clunkers Still Clunking and More

It’s the beginning of another month which means it is time again to review the latest political class insanity from America’s politicians. Whether it is wasteful spending, inane quotes, faulty government operations, or insulting the American public, there is always new material spewing forth from these people, usually enough to fill up half a dozen or so posts every month. Given what we know today, this month should be no different as the insanity seems to be expanding exponentially from those in office today.

This is our fifth installment this month and we are nowhere near the end of the latest insanity from our politicians:

1) Kelly Cohen, writing for the Washington Examiner this past summer posed the following question: What is two years behind schedule and more than $148 million overpriced?

The answer turned out to be the U.S. embassy in Kabul, the capital city of Afghanistan. That facility has that has been under construction for an amazing twelve years, since 2002. So far, an amazing $626 million has already been spent trying to complete the place. However, even worse, according to the Government Accountability Office, in the past four years, "construction requirements have changed, costs have increased, and schedules have been extended,"

This has resulted in a 24% increase in embassy construction costs, which brings the overall cost so far to $774 million or three quarters of a BILLION dollars. All this for a building that I predict will be in the Taliban hands within the next two to three years.

How can you spend so much money on construction at a single location, a construction job that that is not even finished and which will have a very, very short useful live for the U.S.? Amazingly insane.

2) I have always found that most of the taxpayer money spent by the National Institutes for Health is wasted on some of the most inane and stupid Federal government projects we come across. Rather than working on serious issues like cancer, aging diseases like dementia and Alzheimers, developing vaccines for real life threats such as Ebola, etc., they spend money an stuff that either has a very, very narrow focus or which has no focus or purpose at all.

Typical of their behavior was a recent expenditure of half a million taxpayer dollars to study whether mother-daughter dancing can cure obesity. Rather than trying to solve the underlying root causes of obesity, e.g. bad eating habits, bad or non-existent exercise habits, nutritional ignorance, a fat and salt infested food chain, etc., we the taxpayers allowed the Federal government to see if dancing alone would cure obesity and dancing that was narrowly restricted to only African-American daughters and moms.

As any decent problem solver knows, if you do not attack the root causes of a problem, any solution you come up with is unlikely to work since you never changed the underlying causes. Even if dancing had a beneficial effect, all of the root causes of obesity are still in place that cause the problem in the first place. Which makes this half a million dollar effort just another waste of taxpayer wealth.

But it is more than that since the Federal government had already proven that this type of program was a failure from past taxpayer funded studies.

This current study was conducted with the Federal grant to the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. However, back in 1999, Dr. Tom Robinson, a professor of pediatrics at Stanford University, has already spent an amazing $11 million of taxpayer money on two very similar dance studies that found that encouraging dancing has no impact on obesity levels of minority girls:

• His two multi-million dollar studies focused on African-American and Latina girls and tried to get them to lose weight by dancing.
• The initial study was conducted between 1999 and 2006, at a total cost of almost $7 million.
• That study followed over 200 low-income African-American 8- to 10-year-old girls and their families who participated in after-school hip-hop, African, and step dance classes and involved detailed in-home surveys of family members including height, weight, skin fold thickness, and waist and hip sizes.
•  The results were not favorable to obesity reduction: “A culturally tailored after-school dance and screen time reduction intervention for low-income, preadolescent African American girls did not significantly reduce BMI gain [my emphasis] compared with health education but did produce potentially clinically important reductions in lipid levels, hyperinsulinemia, and depressive symptoms,” according to results posted in the National Library of Medicine. In other words, not a successful concept…besides not addressing the root causes back in 1999 of obesity.

So the Federal government unnecessarily spent half a million dollars to do a study when it had already spent over $11 million previously to find out the answer that the $500,000 study was supposed to provide. Insane.

3) We have already shown how the Obama administration “Cash for Clunkers” program back in 2009 was an unmitigated failure. The supposed purpose of the program was to jump start the domestic car industry by giving car purchasers upwards of $4,500 to buy a new car. This was supposed to get the economy moving by increasing consumer spending.

Many independent analyses have shown that there was virtually no increase in incremental car buying and thus, no economic stimulus to the economy. Those people that were thinking of buying a new car now delayed that decision until they could get that $4,500 incentive. Those people that were thinking about buying a new car in the future, moved up that decision to take advantage of the $4,500 incentive.

What was the net result? The timing of car sales was changed but the total number of incremental sales was zero. All the program did was change timing and cost the American taxpayer billions of dollars for no societal gain.

But newer, more detailed analyses shows that the Cash For Clunkers program was far worse than previously thought:

• Although the program was supposed to help the car industry, the program serious hurt the industry according to the findings of three Texas A&M University economics professors.
• Their analysis showed that the program caused the auto industry revenue stream to actually shrink by about $3 billion in less than a year despite giving out generous, taxpayer funded rebates.
• The professors concluded: “By lowering the relative price of smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles, the program induced households to purchase vehicles that cost between $4,000 and $6,000 less than the vehicles they otherwise would have purchased."
• They went on to reach the same conclusion we have already discussed, that overall, the Cash For Clunkers program produced exactly no net increase for the number of automobiles Americans purchased but did reduce the overall amount of money that Americans spent on cars purchased during the time of the promotion.

Only Washington politicians can come up with a program to help an industry, spend billions of dollars to execute that program, and leave that industry in worse financial shape than when it began. 

4) If spending taxpayer money on failed car sales programs in the U.S. is insane, what do you call a Federal government program that spends $193,989 for “a pilot study for a group that has been neglected in the Peruvian HIV epidemic, namely [Peruvian] male sex workers (fletes).” Not surprisingly, the National Institutes of Health funded this boondoggle program also…for a study of sex workers in Peru.

The grant for this insanity states: “Our research has demonstrated that fletes are an important component of the Peruvian HIV epidemic with specific social, cultural, and behavioral characteristics that place them at high risk for acquisition and transmission of HIV and STIs.” Did I mention that this money is being spent in Peru to study Peruvian sex workers?

The grant goes onto to read: “The Center will provide a space for fletes to engage with each other and develop a sense of shared community while accessing: (1) fundamental life needs, (2) safe socialization opportunities, (3) basic healthcare, (4) HIV/STI risk reduction activities, (5) personal development activities, and (6) vocational training.” Did I mention that this money is being spent in Peru to study Peruvian sex workers?

As we often have said when reviewing political class insanity, you cannot make this stuff up, it is that unbelievable. With tens of millions of Americans without adequate health care and health insurance, we are spending money in Peru on male sex workers' problems. 

With millions of veterans not getting the medical care and attention they were promised by the Federal government, we are spending money in Peru on male sex workers' problems.

With millions of Americans in need of shelter, a meal or drug treatment, we are spending money in Peru on male sex workers' problems.

Disgracefully bad priorities and total disregard for taxpayer dollars and the needs of Americans. About par for the course when it comes to Washington politicians and an out-of-control Federal government. That is why term limits is so important. Current incumbent politicians have proven time and time again that they have neither the ability or will to stop the stupid spending and reprioritize budgets and needs. 

They need to have their careers be put to rest, starting at the following website:

www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com

Because really, how much worse could it get when the current crop if politicians wastes money on Peruvian sex workers, implements programs that make conditions worse, studies issues they have already paid to answer, and takes over twelve years to build an embassy? And the sad thing is that we still have more insanity to cover this month over the next few days.

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, 2014 Political Class Insanity, Part 1: Wasting Taxpayer Money In Every Conceivable Way

Every month since this blog began back in 2009, we have spent some time writing about the insanity, idiocy, ineptness, and wasteful spending of the American political class. Back then, we could usually cover all of the insanity in one post. 

However, over the years, it seems as if the politicians in this country have created more insanity and problems at a faster and faster rate. This has pushed the number of days each month required to cover such insanity to more and more over the years.

This month should be no exception. Even though we spent two weeks last month covering the idiocy and fiascos of Obama Care and political class corruption, there is still enough insanity this month to cover at least a week or so of posts. Today starts the process. Hopefully, at the end of this week of insanity you will feel compelled to join our effort to implement term limits at:

www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com

Because really, as you will see from the political class incompetence we will document this week, how much worse could it get with a whole new set of people sitting in elected office?

1) Many Americans like to think that we live in a capitalistic society where companies compete fairly in a free market. That is really not true. We live in a crony capitalistic society where cronies and friends of politicians use and abuse those political connections to get favored treatment at the expense of their competitors of the American taxpayer.

This point was recently driven home by a study from an organization called Open the Books. They issued a new report that went to great effort and detail to document all Federal grants, loans, direct payments, and insurance subsidies that the Federal government and political class hands out at taxpayer expense. The amount of money given to each company is relatively small in the context of the multi-TRILLION Federal budget. But when added up together, we see that the American taxpayer is paying out tens of billions of dollars to some to the largest and least needy businesses on the planet.

For example, according to the website, www.openthebooks.com:

• $21.3 billion was doled out in the form of outright income-transfer subsidies to corporate America last year. 
• On average, each Fortune 100 company received about $200 million in such handouts.
• General Electric received $380 million in taxpayer financed handouts.
• General Motors received $370 million in taxpayer funded handouts.
• Boeing received $264 million in taxpayer funded handouts.
• Archer Daniels Midland received $174 million in taxpayer funded handouts.
• United Technologies received $160 million in taxpayer funded handouts.
• The $21.3 does not include the billions of dollars in housing, bank, and auto-company bailouts in 2008 and 2009 since those payments are kept mostly invisible within the Federal government accounting system.
• It also does not include the asset purchases of the Federal Reserve, indirect subsidies such as the ethanol mandate that enriches large agribusinesses like Archer Daniels Midland, or special tax breaks for wind and solar manufacturers.
• About $8.5 billion of these financial gifts were in the form of taxpayer-subsidized loans. The big winners here were Chevron, Exxon Mobil, Ford Motor Company, and other multibillion-dollar corporations whose franchisees who somehow qualified for Small Business Administration loans despite the financial size and power of their parent companies.
• Archer Daniels Midland, the giant agricultural business, got just under $1 billion for USDA farm-program loans which does not include ethanol subsidies, a fancy name for another form of crony capitalism
• The No. 1 federal insurance program, the Export-Import Bank provides subsidizes insurance and marketing aid to such financial giants as Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase with both receiving more than $3 billion in such aid and Citigroup and Bank of America receiving more than $1.5 billion in taxpayer backstop insurance. (Remember, this doesn’t include TARP bailout money.) 
• John Deere, American Express, and even Walmart have historically reeled in taxpayer funded and backed Federal insurance support as well.
• The National Review Online article from March 27, 2014 that documented these findings pointed out that only one of the Fortune 100 companies did NOT receive taxpayer funded support and crony gifts from the American taxpayer over the time frame that Open The Books studied.

This documented $21.3 billion in crony capitalism/corporate handouts comes out to about $185 for each household in the country. Thus, as you are writing your check this month to pay your Federal income tax bill, remember that $185 of that payment is being used to give political and financial favors to the biggest banks, the biggest companies, and likely the biggest campaign donors to the politicians in Washington. 

It is just so unfair that we cannot claim Wells Fargo, American Express, Exxon and all the others as dependents on our tax forms since they truly are dependents, courtesy of the Washington political class.

2) But it is not just big corporations that the American political class wastes taxpayer wealth on. According to an April 1, 2014 article from the Independent Journal Review, the Federal government has recently spent taxpayer wealth on the following dubious projects:

• $3 million to create a safe street crossing for turtles.
• $137,500 for the creation of a video game called “Layoff.”
• $71,623 to study cocaine use in monkeys.
• $3 million for NASA to study Congress, giving hope that we may finally find out what color the sky is in Nancy Pelosi’s world.
• $15,551 to study drunk mice behavior.
• $544,338 to update the Justice Department’s Linkedin page.
• $17.4 million to install broadband capability to serve 30 people.
• $10,000 to develop a moose-themed musical called “Moosical.”

I dare anyone justify to me these kind of expenditures being worthy of taxpayer money. Useless, wasted spending on programs that do nothing to resolve the half dozen major issues facing the country today.

3) But the Independent Journal Review was not done with just documenting these eight wastes of taxpayer wealth. The day before exposing the above eight atrocities of waste, they identified massive wasteful spending by the National Science Foundation (NSF) in any number of areas that have absolutely minimal impact on the vast majority of Americans

Let’s start with the a Federal funded musical play. The NSF has spent nearly $700,000 of taxpayer money on a “climate change-themed theatrical production” entitled The Great Immensity. The theater company “The Civilians” applied for and won a grant in 2010 to produce the play. According to the musical’s website, The Great Immensity is “a thrilling and timely production,” presented by an “investigative theater company.”

Useless spending. The Federal government, especially one of its primary science agencies, should not be in the mode of financing the production of musical plays on an issue that is far from settled in the minds of many, many Americans, including myself.

This NSF musical funding effort was just one of several questionable expenditures that were recently scrutinized by U.S. Senator Lamar Smith of Texas. He recently interrogated the White House “science czar” John Holdren in a committee hearing about how the NSF is choosing to spend its money. Along with the musical, Smith specifically queried asked Holdren about the following questionable and idiotic NSF projects:

• A $15,000 study on the fishing practices in and around Lake Victoria in Africa. In Africa, not America, Africa. 
• $340,000 study on the examination of the “ecological consequences” of early human fires in New Zealand. In New Zealand, Not America, New Zealand. 
• $200,000 towards a three-year study of the Bronze Age. 
• Another $50,000 towards the survey of archived lawsuits from 17th century Peru. Not this century, not America. Three centuries ago in Peru. 
• $20,000 for a study on the causes of stress in Bolivia. In Bolivia, Not America, Bolivia.

Ridiculous wastes of money. If the Federal government is going to have a national science agency, and I question the need for one given the abject failure of the NSF to recently develop and deliver any kind of useful scientific breakthrough or technology despite spending tens of billions of dollars over the years, shouldn’t the projects it is funding be geared to resolving the major issues of our times?

I can think of seven areas where I would want scientific breakthroughs to happen to address the major issues facing most Americans today:

1. Find a cure for the leading cancers of today such as breast and lung cancer.
2. Find a cure and treatment approach for aging diseases such as Alzheimers and Parkinsons, diseases that will ravage our aging population.
3. Find a way to make coal a clean fuel since most of the world will be using it for decades into the future on a worldwide scale.
4. Find a way to treat addiction to break the deadly hold drug addiction has on millions of Americans.
5. Find a way to make clean energy cheaper, more efficient, and more accessible.
6. Find a way to reduce the ever escalating health care costs in this country since it is now obvious that Obama Care will not be able to resolve that issue.
7. Find a way to make existing and new energy sources cheap, plentiful and clean.

If the NSA could fund research that would solve just these seven issues, most of America would be able to pay their tab. However, the political class has allowed the NSF to waste money in New Zealand, Bolivia, Peru, and Africa on projects that are of absolutely no concern to the American public. That is insanity and that is why the NSF should either get refocused on what is important to Americans or be disbanded and their budget redistributed back to Americans.

That will do it for today, the myriad of ways our politicians have found to waste our money on their business cronies and other stupid porgrams and projects. The insanity is just getting started, much more to follow in the next few days.

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

February, 2014 Political Class Insanity, Bonus Post: Syphilis In Peru, Ungratefulness In Afghanistan, Going Postal and More

Every month we write about the latest insanity and idiocy that the American political class generates every thirty days or so. The first post in this month’s series can be accessed at:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2014/02/february-2014-political-class-insanity.html

The challenge of writing about this type of political incompetence is not that there is not enough to write about. Just the opposite: you cannot keep up with the wasteful spending, ineffective programs and operations of government, the idiotic comments, etc. As soon as you dare to think you have it all covered for this month, more insanity pops up.

Thus, while we thought yesterday’s post would be the last for this month, by the time we wrote and posted the first five insanity posts, more insanity popped up, insanity which we will cover below:

1) We have a $17 TRILLION national debt. We just cut the retirement benefits that had been promised to our brave military veterans. We have almost 50 million Americans who are receiving food assistance from the Federal government every month. Despite all this, since 2012, the American taxpayer has paid out $464,272 to determine why gay men get syphilis in Peru. Not America, Peru:

“Syphilis remains an uncontrolled infectious disease globally, with high prevalence and incidence in certain high risk populations, affecting more than 20 percent of men who have sex with men (MSM) in Peru…The incidence of syphilis in MSM in Peru is about 9 cases per 100 person-years. We are proposing a study to improve our understanding of syphilis epidemiology and molecular biology, particularly among MSM.” according to the grant, awarded by the Federal government’s National Institutes of Health (NIH).

A few observations:

• How many American homeless could have been fed for that nearly half a million dollars?
• Adding insult to injury, the money went to a Peruvian university to do the study, it cannot even be justified that an American university using American citizens was doing the study and being paid with American taxpayer money.
• They could have saved the money and just asked me the question they are trying to answer: gay men get syphilis in Peru because they have unprotected sex with other men in Peru. Duh.

With all of the economic, financial, and debt issues we have in this country, this type of nonsensical spending has to stop.

2) We have often talked about how the past so-called farm bills that Washington has passed have almost always been a legal way for corrupt politicians to profit and help out big business, always to the detriment of America’s taxpayers and their health. Just in the past few days we reviewed an article and analysis by the Washington Examiner that showed how rich, non-farming politicians, lobbyists, etc., are able to get farm subsidies even thought they physically live In D.C., New York City, and Chicago, none of which are close to being farm meccas.

Well, Congress has just passed the latest rendition of the legislation and all it needs now is Obama’s signature. Did the Washington politicians clean up their act and clean up the farm trough of wasteful spending and corruption? 

Apparently not. Kendric Ward of Watchdog.org characterizes the latest farm bill as “the ultimate in pork-barrel politics.” Among some of the bigger insults to taxpayers:

• Government price supports on sugar will continue to force Americans to pay twice what global consumers pay for sugar.
• Taxpayers provide loans totaling just over $1 billion to sugar producers every year, but in 2012 only three sugar producer firms received the bulk of the money. Want to bet that those three firms also made a lot of campaign contributions to incumbent politicians?
• Ward claims that junk-food additives, such as obesity producing high-fructose corn syrup, will continue to be subsidized.
• Those subsidies are enough to buy every kid under 18 in the country eight 2-liter bottles of soda every year. 
• Major, wealthy corporations including McDonald’s, Fruit of the Loom and other giant agricultural companies and trade associations will continue to receive funds from the $200 million-per-year Market Access Program, which subsidizes ad campaigns for large American farm related companies

Corporate welfare for rich companies. Subsidizing obesity which is a main driver of high health costs in this country. Higher consumer costs. Just another day in the office for the most inept set of politicians that Washington has ever seen.

3) We deployed military forces into Afghanistan over twelve years ago to fight both Bin Laden ‘s followers and the Afghan Taliban who were supporting them. We have probably spent over a half a trillion dollars in protecting the presidential administration of Afghan president Hamid Karzai. Thousands of American soldiers have died and been wounded in carrying out this assignment. 

We have propped up his administration, one that is infested and infected with rampant corruption, with cash and other enticements that have probably made him and his accomplices rich beyond anyone’s dreams.

And what do we have to show for it? According to a recent interview that Karzai gave to the London Times:

• The Taliban, who we have been fighting and protecting him from, are not his enemy, they are his “brothers.”
• Americans are his “rivals.”
• Americans “did not work for me, they worked against me.”
• Although the United States spent hundreds of billions of dollars in Afghanistan during the Afghan war, Mr. Karzai said the money did not help him: “The money they should have paid to the police they paid to private security firms and creating militias who caused lawlessness, corruption and highway robbery.” 
• In other words, he ran a pure, and honest government operation, it was the Americans and their billions of dollars that corrupted his nation.
• He had not talked to President Obama in over seven months even though the U.S. has spent so much money and blood in the country, making both of them an insult to those that died and were wounded in the battling.

No doubt that Afghanistan has been one of the biggest con jobs ever pulled on the American public, made possible by the incompetence in both the Bush and Obama administrations and the corruptible Afghan politicians. Those Afghan politicians fleeced and scammed our politicians for 12 long and expensive years, leaving us poorer and nothing to show for our effort. 

Unfortunately, it took twelve long years for our politicians to finally figure it out. Our military forces cannot get out of the country fast enough and leave the ungrateful and despicable Karzai to his Taliban “friends,” friends who I think will end the friendship quite quickly after American and NATO forces leave the country.

4) The U.S. Post Office lost $5 billion in 2013. Their first class mail volumes have been disappearing quickly as various forms of electronic communications, e.g. online bill payment, Skype, Facebook, Twitter, email, etc., make traditional first class snail mail less and less attractive. It is a part of the Federal government who has shown absolutely no ability to institute a functioning, useable, and hacker proof information systems process, with Obama Care’s failures just the latest in a long line of failed Federal government data systems efforts.

In the face of these realities, U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren thinks that it would be a good idea for the U.S. Post Office to get into the banking business to offset its declining revenue stream. In a recently published op-ed piece in the Huffington Post, Warren cited an Office of the Inspector General report that found 68 million Americans have no checking or savings account and rely on non-bank financial services like payday loans and check cashing to the tune of $89 billion in 2012.

Warren sees this as a lucrative area for the Postal Service to get into to boost sagging revenues: “The OIG explored the possibility of the USPS offering basic banking services—bill paying, check cashing, small loans—to its customers. With post offices and postal workers already on the ground, USPS could partner with banks to make a critical difference for millions of Americans who don't have basic banking services because there are almost no banks or bank branches in their neighborhoods.”

A couple of problems here, Senator:

• Did you ever think there are not banking services in these neighborhoods because private banking experts do not see a way to make profits in these neighborhoods? Trust me, if there was money to be made with basic banking services, someone would be filling that market void today already.
• How many different banks would the Post Office have to interface with and do you really think the Post Office and the Federal government has the wherewithal to cope with the different money handling and data systems interfaces necessary for all of those different banks, given the disaster that is Obama Care’s systems and procedures?
• Many of us have probably had a wide range of experiences dealing the Post Office. I would bet there are far more negative experiences than positive experiences, a lot more. Thus, Senator, do we really think that a lot of Americans are going to trust their money to these same people and operations?
• To wipe out the five billion deficit, the Post Office would have to clear almost $17 million a day, six days a week to equal that deficit. Given that the Senator argued for “nothing fancy, just basic bill paying, check cashing, and small dollar loans,” is this enough to make any kind of dent into the unprofitable operation, even if it could be done logistically?

Another half baked Washington idea with no chance of working from an out of touch politician, an idea that takes time away from fixing the major issues of our times of which a fading/declining need for a postal system is not one of them.

Okay let’s review: syphilis in Peru, the next edition of farm corruption and cronyism, ungrateful Afhgans, and a post office idea that has no chance of delivery. Your tax dollars at work, for nothing in return again this month. More insanity next month. Unfortunately.

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