The Continuing Ineptness and Incompetence of Washington Politicians and The Biden Administration

 I think most folks realize that the American political class, especially at the Federal government level, is pretty inept at anything it does and what it oversees the Federal government do:

• The Federal government has had over two  hundred years to learn how to operate a profitable Postal System and yet our current Postal System loses billions of dollars a year.

• Social Security has been around for about 90 years and our current set of Washington politicians are doing nothing to fix it as it hurtles towards insolvency.

• Medicare has been around for about 50 years and our current set of Washington politicians are doing  nothing to fix it as it hurtles towards insolvency.

• The American taxpayer has probably spent hundreds of billions of dollars via the Department of Education since the Department was formed and yet American kids still get under-educated vs. kids in dozens of other countries.

• These folks cannot even operate a simple National Do Not Call list,  given the many unwanted calls I get every week offering me low mortgage rates, car insurance and many other unwanted services and products.

Yes, they are quite inept and incompetent. But probably their biggest and most dangerous failing is in economic and budgeting policy. They print money and spend money like candy and nothing ever gets accomplished or fixed, as witnessed by the list above. As a result, we have a $31 TRILLION Federal government national debt and yet our schools still under-educate,  our national infrastructure of roads, bridges and dams are still  falling apart, and  major, important life sustaining programs like Social Security and Medicare are falling apart.

And the current administration seems clueless on how to fix any of these .problems and with the passage of its massive spending programs it has created inflationary price spirals that we have  not seen in about 40 years:

• When Trump left office and Biden took over, the annual  inflation rate was about 2%.

• By June, just a  few  months after Biden took office, the annual inflation rate was 5.4% but Biden said don’t worry, we have everything under control: “our experts believe, and the data shows, that most of the price increases we’ve seen were expected and expected to be temporary.”

• By December,  2021,  Biden’s “temporary price increases” had grown to 6.8% year over year.

• At that time he admitted that inflation was a “real bump in the road”   but that the economy and country had reached the “peak of the crisis.”

• Unfortunately, he was wrong again, it was not a bump in the road and we had not reached the peak yet.

• Prices continued to rise every month in 2022 hitting a 40 year high  in June, 2022.

• All of a sudden, having been proven wrong about inflation for a year, Biden decided to blame others for his ineptness and incompetence of his administration blaming the Ukrainian/Russian war, price gouging oil companies, etc.,  refusing to take responsibility for the outrageous Federal government  spending, and borrowing, initiatives he forced through the Democratically control Congress.

• But he really showed his economic ignorance, and I think this says it all for his stupidity, when he claimed that there was no inflation in the month of July, 2022: “I just want to say a number,: zero. Today, we received news that our economy had zero inflation in the month of July. Zero percent.”

• However, inflation had been  8.5% in June and ANOTHER 8.5% in July.

• Thus the rate of change in the inflation rate had been zero but the year over year inflation increases in July was still a soul crushing 8.5%.

• Given that Biden cannot understand this very simple algebra concept, it is doubtful he has the intellectual ability to fix the problem he has created.

• He tried to pawn off the horrid “Inflation Reduction Act” as a cure all for inflation but that legislation is just another wasteful spending and debt inducing boondoggle of the Washington political class.

• The Wharton economic experts at the University of Pennsylvania ran their economic models and predicted that BEST CASE, this legislation would reduce inflation by .1%, basically rounding error.

Thus, you have a President that does not understand basic algebra and fractions, never mind  economic theory and  concepts,  and a Congress that is passing legislation disguised as wasteful spending for their pet projects which will drive up the national debt while maybe reducing inflation by .1%.

And as a result of this incompetence in D.C.,  this is what Americans consumers are facing everyday when they go to the supermarket to feed their families [per the Wall Street Journal reporting, August year over year price changes for groceries during the Biden Presidency]:

• Overall increase in grocery prices: 13.5%

• Butter up 24.6%

• Roasted coffee up 18.7%

• Milk up 17%

• Snacks up 16.7%

• Chicken up 16.6%

• Breakfast cereal up 16.4%

• Bread up 16.2%

• Rice and pasta up 15.7%

• Cookies up 14.3%

• Ice cream  up 14%.

• Seafood up 8.7%

• Fruit up 8.3%

• Vegetables up 7%

• Pork up 6.8%

• Beef and veal up 2.5%

So much for inflation under Biden being temporary, transitional, a bump in the road, etc. This is what happens when politicians operate anything: they muck it up, be it the Post Office , Social Security, Medicare,  Do Not Call  list, or economic and budgeting policy. We pay the price with higher and higher taxes, higher government debt, and higher food prices. And nothing ever gets better.

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:

https://www.amazon.com/Love-My-Country-Loathe-Government/dp/1604942789/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=love+my+country%2C+loathe+my+government&qid=1607716020&sr=8-1

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.reason.com

http://www.cato.org

http://www.openthebooks.com

http://www.conventionofstates.com

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

 

January, 2015, Part 2, Political Class Insanity: Twelve Wastes Of Taxpayer Wealth and Over Regulation Nation

It is the beginning of both another year and another month which means it is time to review the latest political class insanity from the American political class. For regular readers of this blog, you know that as 2014 progressed, the insanity, stupid quotes, ineffective governing and legislating, and general incompetence of our politicians seemed to accelerate as the year grinded on. 

No major issues got addressed, never mind resolved. Obama Care’s implications across the entire country and entire economy continued to unfold in disaster after disaster. Our foreign policy, or what was passed off as a foreign policy, was in tatters. Terrorism was on the march across the world. Veterans were dying because the Federal government could not fulfill the medical and health care promises those brave veterans were promised. 

The national debt hit a mind boggling $18 TRILLION. And our President continued to play golf and go on political campaign swings like no other President ever did. Congress narrowly missed becoming the least productive Congress of all time. Billions were spent and wasted on the November elections to elect people that did not deserve the time of day never mind billions of dollars. Racial division spread across the country, a division that was fomented and spread by those in office with something to gain. 

And guess what? Over the next week or so, starting with yesterday’s post, you will see nothing has changed except the calendar. The political class is still out of control, the government entities that they rule over are bloated and ineffective, and the quality of life and freedom in this country continues to deteriorate. Hang on, it is going to be a bumpy next seven days or so. 

1) The Heritage Foundation in an article by Romina Boccia recently listed out twelve ways that the Federal government wasted your tax dollars last year. Even though we have already covered a few of them, I include all twelve here today in case you missed the previous mentions: 

 - NASA spent $237,205 to study how rainfall affects the red crab’s annual migration to Christmas Island. Vital information for …no one. - Medicare Part B paid $132.9 million for the same medical supplies for cancer treatment that Medicare Part D paid $22 million to receive, a difference of six fold. Not very efficient sales bargaining. don’t these people working in the same organization ever talk to each other? 

 - The United States Postal Service lost or cannot confirm receiving 37 trailers from a leasing company. The United States Postal Service purchased the titles of the missing trailers and paid $287,000 for the trailers yet they cannot be found anywhere. So not only does the Postal Service lose our mail on a semi-regular basis they also lose vehicles. Who knows, find the missing trailers and we might find the missing mail. 

 - The Defense Department overpaid by $3.3 million for radios for the Afghan army because the Defense Department failed to follow contracting procedures. Same lack of purchasing skills as the Medicare Part B people. 

 - The Federal Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) paid an informant working for Amtrak, an actual AMTRAK employee, $854,460 over 20 years to get hold of Amtrak passengers’ names. However, the DEA could have received this information for free since the Amtrak Police Department will share this information with other law enforcement agencies. You cannot make this stuff up, it would be too unbelievable for fiction. 

 - The National Institutes of Health spent $484,000 to study whether hypnosis can reduce hot flashes in postmenopausal woman and breast cancer survivors. A self-help book entitled “Relief from Hot Flashes” describes a session as “You go to a place in your mind that’s going to cool you off. It’s almost like your body is cooling itself off.” 

 - Federal agencies paid close to $50 million to the Department of Commerce’s National Technical Information Service for information that is almost always available online for free. 

- Paralegals at the Patient Trial and Appeal Board were paid $5.1 million over four years as they watched Netflix, shopped online and used social media while on the job. Nice work if you can get it. And you can bet the paralegals were not the only Federal employees doing such nonsense, they were just too stupid and got caught, which does not say much for the government’s legal eagles. 

- The Department of Agriculture’s Market Access Program provided $400,000 to the liquor lobby, which used part of those funds to transport foreign journalists to different breweries and distilleries in the southeastern United States. I am sure we can all drink to that. 

- The Department of Agriculture granted $500,000 to provide start-up materials for butterfly farming to Native Americans in Oklahoma, which included butterfly eggs and vehicles to transport them. Butterflies, really? 

- The National Institutes of Health has granted more than $10 million towards the creation of “Escape from Diab,” which is a video game about five children who must get healthy enough to escape from a town full of obese people and their evil king. Yes, those obese people can really be mean and evil. 

- Employees at the Environmental Protection Agency used government credit cards to purchase $79,300 worth of “prohibited, improper and erroneous” goods and services. Included in the purchases were gym memberships for EPA employees and their family members, DVDs and academic memberships. 

Disgraceful abuse of taxpayer wealth. And to add insult to injury, I would be that few if any of these abusing Federal employees were disciplined, fined, or terminated for their inability to perform their jobs or for basically stealing from the American taxpayer. 

Just these twelve programs alone unnecessarily cost the American taxpayer almost $85 million. When you multiply twelve by thousands and thousands of other abusive Federal government spending insults, you really get a good picture of how careless the political class and Federal employees are with your money. 

And even if this money never made it back to the taxpayer, imagine how much better the country would be if that $85 million was used instead to: 

• Feed the homeless. 
• Shelter the homeless. 
• Treat drug addiction victims. 
• Train the unemployed. Repair infrastructure. 
• Increase cancer, aging, and other major disease research. 

The payoff for humanity and American citizens would be so much higher rather than subsidizing butterfly farming, video games and other such nonsense. 

2) Just before Thanksgiving, the Obama administration secretly introduced over 3,000 new regulations into the Federal bureaucracy. This averaged out to about nine new regulations every DAY of the year in 2014. 

At that time, we questioned and still believe that such over regulation is a waste of time and only happens as bloated Federal government entities try to justify their continued existence and worth. It is difficult to believe that all previous Presidential administrations were so lax that this administration needs to introduce nine new regulations a day within a single year. 

Over regulation, especially regulations that do usually nothing except support government bureaucracies, burden business owners and workers with excessive and needless paper work and costs, it bogs down the growth in the economy and employment as resources and time is diverted to meaningless government conformance and not growing the market and economy. This is likely a driving reason why the economy has been such a laggard and poor performer under Obama, even years and years after the recession ended. 

But despite the overwhelming regulation wave in late November, according to an article by Onan Coca writing for the www.freedomforce.com website, the regulation tsunami is not over yet: Just before 2014 ended, the Obama administration burdened the country with another 1,200 regulations. 

This brings an average daily total of almost twelve new regulations every DAY. Energy and environment rules are the biggest category, with 139 published by the Federal government in the last 15 days of 2014. Just one of those regulations, the coal ash rule, is expected to burden the economy with a cost of $20.3 million or about $176 for every household in the country. 

According to the article, 2015 will see more and more regulations form this administration, regulations that could add at least tens of billions of dollars in regulatory costs to the economy and American households. Many of these regulations are seen as unneeded and politically motivated and will likely face court challenges. 

I am not an expert on environmental or any other kind of regulations. But again, I find it difficult to believe that things are so bad, that past Presidential administrations were so delinquent in their duties, that this administration has to add so many regulations to the economy with seemingly little direct or indirect benefit to Americans. 

Add in the fact that these regulations are announced during light news coverage periods rather than being upfront with the American people raises suspicions that there is something seriously amiss. This administration and this President for once ought to be a man and be upfront with these types of actions rather than acting like a typical Chicago politicians, always working in the shadows. Very little good and very little trust get transacted in the shadows. 

Only two topics of insanity today but they are big ones, Government entities and government employees abusing taxpayer wealth in so many original and disgraceful ways and the Obama administration sneaking out thousands of regulations that are likely unnecessary but are overly secretive and destructive to the economy and economic well being of American workers. 

More insanity tomorrow, many forms and many shapes and many disgraces.

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

The Political Class: When It Comes To The Post Office, A Day Late and $5.5 Billion Short

If you had not heard, the U.S. Postal Service is in very dire shape as laid out in the September 6, 2011 Associated Press article:

• Postmaster General Patrick Donahue recently warned Congress that the Postal Service is on the brink of financial default.
• If Congress does not act by September 30, the Postal Service will default on a Congressionally mandated $5.5 billion payment to the U.S. Treasury.
• If no Congressional action is taken, about a year from now the Post Office could run out of money to pay its operating expenses.
• The Postal Service lost more than $8 billion last year despite having cut 110,000 jobs and closed smaller Post Office locations.

Other reports have reported that email and other electronic communications options have steadily reduced the amount of first class mail over the past several years. This has placed financial burdens on the Postal Service which is faced with a declining revenue stream but high fixed costs of physical post office locations, vehicles that go out everyday regardless of how much mail needs to be delivered, and employee unions that severely limit layoffs.

Although there are long term structural and market head winds for the Postal Service, the current short term crisis is really a Congressionally instigated problem. In 2006, Congress mandated that the Postal Service create a fund to start prefunding the medical benefits of employees for the many decades out.

In other words, Congress wanted large upfront payments from the Postal Service's annual operations budgets to fund the future medical benefits of employees that have not even been hired yet, or possibly not even born yet. This fund would start funding employee medical benefits starting in 2017 and be the sole source of money for those benefits.

However, Congress severely missed the forecast of how much money could be put away by the Postal Service in light of its declining revenue and declining market size. Also, according to the article, this is the only Federal government agency that is required to prefund its medical costs decades into the future.

Two observations on this whole mess, one complimentary and one critical. From a complimentary perspective, it appears that some people in the Post Service actually understand the root causes of the agency's problems. Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe understands that he has a huge fixed cost problem with a permanently declining revenue stream.

He and others in the Postal Service want to shut down 3,700 more Post Office locations, further cut the workforce by 220,000 employees, eliminate Saturday mail delivery, withdraw from the Federal retirement system and set up and manage its own retirement systems, get back $6.9 billion from the Federal government that it claims it overpaid into the current government retirement systems, and adjust union contracts for future flexibility in staffing. All good, solid, and appropriate actions in light of the current situation. Best of luck to Mr. Donahoe.

Of course, the critical comments, as always, are reserved for our politicians. Consider some quotes and opinions from members of Congress that were quoted in the article:

• Senator Joe Lieberman - "We must act quickly. The U.S. Postal Service is not an 18th century relic, it is a 21st century national asset, but times are changing rapidly now and so, too, must the Post Office."
• Senator Susan Collins: She is quoted as stating that "the Postal Service supports a $1.1 trillion mailing industry employing more than 8 million people in direct mail, periodicals, catalogs, financial services, and other businesses."
• Senator Tom Carper: he stated that Congress needs to work on areas where agreement can be found.

Carper and Collins have introduced Postal Service reform legislation in the Senate and several other reform plans have been introduced in the House of Representatives. However, how fast can a Senate reform bill be approved, how fast can a House bill be approved, how fast can these two bill be reconciled, how fast can the President sign the reform bill, and how fast can the changes in a final bill be implemented? Given the speed, or lack of speed, track record of the political class, it does not appear like any reform legislation will be forthcoming any time in the next few weeks, not in time to avoid default on the required payment.

Let's review. According to our politicians, the Postal Service is a national asset, it supports a major part of the nation's advertising industry, and Congress needs to do something but is only at the start of the reform legislative process. So, why are we only a few weeks away from a Postal service default?

The political class should have known about this looming crisis long ago. It should not have been a surprise to them that Postal Service mail volumes were in a permanent state of decline. It should not have been a surprise to them that Postal Service revenues were in a permanent state of decline. It should not have been a surprise to them that legislation they passed in 2006 was going to overwhelm Postal Service operating revenues. They should have known but we are still only weeks away from a default.

Given that the Postal Service is a "national asset," it never should have come to this point of crisis and panic. But it did, as does just about any problem that confronts the political class. Failing public schools, lost war on drugs, subprime financial crisis, escalating health care costs, terrorist attacks, etc., problems are never anticipated in time, problems' root causes are never understood, and problems are never solved, or are solved in a panicky last moment in a suboptimal way, usually wasting taxpayer money in the process.

Step 34 from "Love My Country, Loath My Government" would address this type of institutional incompetence. Given the mess of an impending Postal Service default, Congressional members in both the House and Senate would be removed from any committee or subcommittee post they sit on that had Postal Service oversight and responsibility, according to Step 34. That is the only way to get their attention and force them to actually be accountable for their Congressional behavior.

One final thought. If our politicians are so concerned about saving this national asset, why did they spend five summer weeks and the entire month of August on vacation? I guess it is not such a national asset to our politicians if their vacation time is more important than this national asset.

Lesson learned: if you have anything to mail, do it soon before this national asset is a day late and $5.5 billion short.

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/