May, 2016, Part 8, Political Class Insanity: Still Wasting Taxpayer Money On Stupid Projects, Food Stamp Fraud In Florida, and More

It is the beginning of another month which means it is time again to review the latest political class insanity from the American political class. Each month it takes us multiple posts to cover the wasteful spending, incompetent government organizations and employees, government programs that usually make a problem worse than resolving it, inane and idiotic politician comments, etc. In fact, last month we set a record, needing ten full posts to cover it all.

To review past posts on this insanity and idiocy, just click on the first few posts in each month listed to the right of this page. After reviewing just a handful of these insanity posts we think you will agree that we are currently being served by the worst set of American politicians ever to hold office in our entire history.

It looks like our politicians have been especially insane over the past month or so let’s get started with the latest insanity from today’s American politicians:

1) A recent online article by the Heritage Foundation reviewed a Congressional oversight report from Arizona Senator Jeff Flake entitled, “Twenty Questions: Government Studies That Will Leave You Scratching Your Head.” As you read these insanely wasteful uses of your tax dollars, keep in mind that 45 million Americans still need government food assistance every month, almost 50,000 Americans die from a drug overdose every year, millions of Americans go homeless in their lifetimes, our veterans are not getting the medical care they need and were promised, cancers and dementia kill thousands of Americans every month, and the country is about to go bankrupt with almost $20 TRILLION in national debt. Then decide if these examples are more important and better uses of your tax money:

• The National Institutes of Health spent millions of its $32 billion budget to study the appearance of Jesus Christ’s face on toast, the musical preferences of monkeys, and the contagious nature of yawning.
• But then cried that they did not have enough money in its budget to fight Ebola.
• The Oregon Health And Science University spent $5 million of taxpayer wealth to study whether zebra finches altered their singing habits when intoxicated, finding that alcohol did have an effect, something that anyone at closing time in their local bar could have concluded for far less than $5 million.
• Researchers at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana spend almost a quarter million to observe and measure the impact of cocaine on honey bees, finding that cocaine usage caused the bees to tend to dance twice as much. Not only is this a stupid study but taxpayer dollars were spent to purchase cocaine, an illegal substance.
• Bowdoin College in Maine spent a whopping $3.6 million to find out that when male goldfish are given sex steroids, they exhibited more social behavior and swam closer to their female counterparts.

These are just a handful of wasteful government spending examples that go on everyday in Washington while Americans are hungry, homeless, drug addicted, and dying from uncured diseases. And to add insult to injury, the NIH, one of the biggest culprits in wasting taxpayer wealth, has the nerve to ask Congress for an additional $2 billion to fight the Zika virus despite having already wasted a ton of money on toast, yawning, and who knows what else.

And these examples are nickel/dime compared to the $100 billion in wasteful, useless spending that Flake recently published in his annual compilation of wasteful spending, “Wastebook 2016.” Enter the search word “wastebook” in the search box above to find out about recent and past Wastebook insults to taxpayers.

In light of the mega-wasting of taxpayer wealth every year, it is almost comical to review Obama’s massive whopper of lie when he was first elected when he promised to go “through the Federal budget line by line” to weed out wasteful spending. Seven plus years later we can see what a joke and deception that false promise was. But at least we finally know that sex steroids in goldfish make them more aggressive. 

2) There is an old baseball saying that goes: “You cannot tell the players without a scorecard.” And now apparently in New York state, you cannot tell the criminal state politicians without the Buffalo News acting as your scorecard. A recent online article by the Buffalo News reporter Robert J. McCarthy provided “A Guide To Political Corruption Probes In New York State:”

- Former Democratic Assembly Speaker Sheldon was recently sentenced to 12 years in prison.

- Former Republican majority leader Dean Skelos of the State Senate, and his son, were recently sentenced for their crimes.

- G. Steen Pigeon, a statewide political operative and previous Erie County, New York Democratic chairman, had his home raided by state authorities last May. Recently, a New York State Supreme Court Justice was questioned by state and Federal government authorities based on information obtained by that raid. A grand jury is expected to be convened to follow up on both the Justice and others.

- NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio found out that the state Board of Elections found reasonable cause to go after a de Blasio political operation for possible coordination to hanky panky when it comes to donation limits in various New York state Senate races. Federal, city, and state district attorneys are investigating.

- New York Governor Andrew M. Cuomo is seeing some of his political associates being investigated by state authorities relative to a state financed and sponsored manufacturing complex relative to how state government contracts are awarded. Additionally, a former Cuomo staff aide is being investigated to see if he and his wife improperly got tens of thousands of dollars from an engineering firm involved in the complex. Others are also being investigated, both individuals and companies. The Federal government is also investigating.

- State Democratic Senator Marc C. Panepinto is under investigation by a state ethics agency for undisclosed reasons after four Senate staffers resigned late last year. Panepinto suddenly decided not to seek re-election even though he was busy raising election campaign funds.

Just another day of political corruption, this time in the state government halls of New York.

3) The WSVN television station in Palm Beach County, Florida recently reported on the supposedly largest food stamp bust in U.S. history. The bust occurred at a flea market in Hialeah, Florida. The raid followed a complaint by an individual citizen who was a victim of identity theft. 

Details of the scam included the following facts:

• 500 Palm Beach County, Florida residents had their identities stolen which were then turned around and used to get fake Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) “food stamp” cards.
• The cards were then exchanged for cash at the flea market.
• Federal criminal charges involving 22 retail stores or operators who were involved in the scam were arrested.
• The scam resulted in at least $13 million of taxpayer wealth being illegally obtained by those charged.

More waste and more government ineptness. At least these people got caught. How many other similar taxpayer ripoffs are going on in every other county across the country that has not been busted by law enforcement? You can bet the Palm Beach County is not the only site of massive EBT corruption and criminal activity.

4) Earlier this week we reported on a recent opinion poll that showed only 6% of Americans believe that the media and today’s journalists are telling the truth when they report. We stated that we believe that most media and news outlets and sources have picked which political “side” they are in favor of and then report and slant any news coverage to make their side look good and the other political side look bad. 

This hypothesis and the opinion poll results get a little more credible when you consider the inane statement two, not one, MSNBC newscasters recently said on TV. According to MSNBC’s Thomas Roberts and Tamron Hall, Bill Clinton’s many, many instances of extra marital affairs are just “alleged affairs” and “alleged misconduct.” “Alleged?” Come on, Monica Lewinsky, Jennifer Flowers, Paula Jones, Kathleen Willey, and many, many others were only “alleged?” 

If you are going to tell a lie or stretch the truth, at least work with material that has a potential for truth. Bill Clinton was a serial philanderer and adulter, no American with any sense of politics from the Clinton administration on forward knows that. Do not insult our intelligence and try to put forth a false narrative, that only makes you a modern day Pravda. 

That will do it for today’s insanity: still wasting taxpayer wealth on stupid projects, New York state politicians look to be more involved in getting indicted than governing, criminal fraud in government welfare programs proven again in Palm Beach county in Florida, and delusional MSNBC political commentators who somehow cannot face the reality that Bill Clinton has had a few extramarital 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

May, 2016, Part 3, Political Class Insanity: Nobody Likes Clinton and Trump, Afghanistan Fail and More

It is the beginning of another month which means it is time again to review the latest political class insanity from the American political class. Each month it takes us multiple posts to cover the wasteful spending, incompetent government organizations and employees, government programs that usually make a problem worse than resolving it, inane and idiotic politician comments, etc. In fact, last month we set a record, needing ten full posts to cover it all.

To review past posts on this insanity and idiocy, just click on the first few posts in each month listed to the right of this page. After reviewing just a handful of these insanity posts we think you will agree that we are currently being served by the worst set of American politicians ever to hold office in our entire history.

It looks like our politicians have been especially insane over the past month or so let’s get started with the latest insanity from today’s American politicians:

1) As of the April 29, 2016 issue of The Week magazine, not one of the five remaining Presidential candidates, Trump, Kasich, Cruz, Sanders, or Clinton, was regarded favorably by a majority of those polled by a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll. Trump was the most disliked candidate with 65% of those polled viewing him unfavorably and only 24% viewing him favorably. 56% view Clinton unfavorably and only 32% view her favorably but that gap between the two measures is getting worse over time, doubling in the past month of that issue of The Week.

Bottom line: our political processes are so broken in this country that even the last standing candidates are viewed with disdain by the majority of Americans. Maybe it is time to change the processes since what we have now is obviously not working.

2) Staying with that same issue of The Week, an article in that issue reviewed how a Taliban truck bombing in the center of the Kabul, the capital city of Afghanistan, killed at least 64 people and wounded hundreds more. Many of those hurt and killed were women and children and other other civilians. At the same time of the bomb’s detonation, Taliban gunmen entered the government’s National Security Directorate building, that nation’s equivalent Secret Service organization, and began firing.

Thus, after more than a decade of supporting the war effort in Afghanistan, trillions of taxpayer dollars spent, and thousands of U.S. military personnel killed and wounded, this country still cannot stop a massive bombing within the capital’s city limits and a direct attack on what should be a secure branch of the government. From Bush to Obama, what a massive military, foreign affairs, and economic failure.

3) We often talk about how screwed up the country's tax code is today. It is long, cumbersome, impossible to police, and detrimental to economic growth. An article from The Atlantic, that was summarized in the April 29, 2016 issue of The Week magazine, outlined how out of the $4 TRILLION in profits that the top 50 American companies made from 2008 through 2014, $1 TRILLION of those profits have been left off shore in other countries to avoid paying the second highest corporate income tax rate in the world in the U.S. 

Imagine how much good $1 TRILLION would be for this economy if the political class actually had put together a coherent tax code that encouraged companies to invest in America rather than stranding a trillion dollars overseas, a trillion dollars that generate no taxes for the Federal government and create no incremental economic advantages for American workers. Insanity...with a lot of zeros attached to that dollar sign.

4) Staying with the same issue of The Week magazine, April 29, 2016, there was a synopsis of an article written by Malik Jalal for The Independent in England. Mr. Jalal claims that he is a member of the North Waziristan Peace Committee, a group of Pakistani tribal leaders that are trying to find peace among the warring parties in Pakistan, parties that include the Taliban. He claims that while his own government recognizes their mission and search for peace, the Obama administration has ruled them as a terrorist group aligned with the Taliban and has been trying to kill him with a series of drone attacks since he has been placed on a U.S. kill list.

As a result, multiple times U.S. drones have attacked him or what they thought was him with the following results:

• The first drone attack destroyed his car and injured his nephew who had borrowed the car while killing four innocent men in an adjacent vehicle.
• The next drone attack blew up a car similar to his, killing another four innocent Pakistanis.
• The next attack killed three more innocent victims.
• A fourth drone strike, aimed at tribal leaders, killed 40 people.
• 51 people killed without successfully killing the intended target.
• He also claims that U.S. drone attacks kill nine Pakistani children for every successful killing of an intended target. 

I have no idea if he is telling the truth. But if he is telling the truth, how much more insanity, wasted taxpayer wealth, and killing of innocent civilians will there have to be before the Obama administration takes a hard look at what looks like a horrible military and public relations program.

5) We always like to give equal time to corrupt politicians regardless of what level of government they serve. Natalie Johnson, writing for the Washington Free Beacon on May 3, 2016, helped us with that objective when she reported that former New York State Assembly Speaker, Sheldon Silver, was sentenced in Federal court to 12 years in prison on corruption charges. In addition, Silver will have to pay back $5.2 million in the money he stole and another $1.75 million in criminal fines.

He was found guilty of getting $5.2 million from his corruption activities over a two decade period. These illegal activities, from a legal perspective, involved honest-services fraud, extortion and money laundering. The good news is that he was caught and found guilty and will spend 12 years in prison. The bad news is why did it take 20 years to get him for his corruption. That’s the insanity of the whole situation.

6) Citizens Against Government Waste are an organization that identifies and shames wasteful government spending in Washington. Every year, they publish their annual”Pig Book” which documents the worse pork barrel spending and wasting of taxpayer money by the political class in Washington in the past 12 months. This year they added another feature to their website which documents their “Pork Of Shame,” some of their most egregious wasteful spending of taxpayer wealth. A few "Pork Of Shame" entrants include the following idiotic spending of Congress:

• $15 million for “wood utilization research.”
• $681,000 for one latrine at Fort Harrison.
• $77.2 million for bike paths.
• $10.1 million for peanut research.
• $7.3 million for grasshopper research.
• $1 million for a dinosaur exhibit at the LA Museum
• $273,000 to “combat Goth culture.”
• $3 million for the Alaskan “bridge to nowhere.”
• $350,000 for the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame.
• $16.1 million for brown snake research.
• $500,000 for the Sparta Teapot Museum.
• $1.8 million for “swine odor and manure management.”
• $948.6 million for Abrams tanks... that the Pentagon does not want or need.

The entire list can be seen at: http://cagw.org/reporting/pig-book/pig-book-timeline

Keep in mind, as we often remind readers, that while the Washington political class was spending real dollars and taxpayer wealth on these inane projects, millions of Americans were going hungry, were homeless, were drug addicted, were unemployed or were without proper health care, including thousands of our veterans. 

Now ask yourself if we really needed to spend $500,000 on a Teapot museum and not on these unfortunate Americans. 

Did we really need to spend over a quarter of a million dollars to combat a lifestyle choice, Goth, and not on on these unfortunate Americans? 

Shouldn’t people or industries of these vested interests, e.g. the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the pork industry, the peanut industry, etc., pay for their own interests and either let the taxpayers keep their own money or divert this vested interest money to the unfortunate Americans who need help.

Just another set of outrageously bad priorities in this country as forced on us by the political class. 

That will do it for today’s insanity. Bad spending priorities, political corruption, a potentially ineffective and inhumane drone military program, a stranded trillion dollars, failure in Afghanistan, and leading political figures that no one likes. You cannot make up this insanity, it is too gruesome and original. More 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

December, 2015, Part 7, Political Class Insanity: More VA Corruption, Another Stupid Politician Quote, and More

It is the start of another month which means it is time for our monthly review of the latest political class insanity that continually spews forth from America’s politicians. Their actions, words, quotes, incompetency, and general ineptness continue to reinforce our theory that we are currently being served by the worst set of politicians in the history of the nation.

As you read about the latest shenanigans and ineptness of the political class, keep in mind what should be their priorities in these difficult times and compare this list to what they are actually working on:

• NBC recently reported that ISIS forces are getting larger and stronger despite the Obama administration spending billions of dollars on a failed air campaign and military strategy.
• The stock market is stalling.
• Job creation is barely keeping up with population growth.
• Wage growth is anemic, growing just .2% in the second quarter, the lowest quarterly growth since 1982.
• The labor participation rate is at the lowest level in decades because the Obama economy cannot generate enough jobs.
• Thousands of veterans are still not getting the medical care they were promised by the Federal government.
• 45 million Americans are still receiving monthly Federal food assistance.
• Our borders still leak and thousands of illegal immigrant criminals continue to walk our streets.
• Major programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security are hurtling towards insolvency and lose hundreds of billions of dollars every year to fraud and mismanagement.
• Our kids are still getting lousy public educations at most public schools.
• The IRS and other government functions seem to be getting their computer systems hacked on a regular basis, exposing tens of millions of Americans to identity theft potential.
• Obama Care is a failure along so many dimensions as health care costs continue to soar despite the Obama promise that they would decrease.
• Annual Federal deficits, while down, are still about half a TRILLION a year meaning that even though the Federal government is collecting more in taxes than ever before, it still cannot run a balanced budget.

Again, keep these real crises in mind as you read what our politicians are actually doing, saying and wasting.

1) When reporting on political class insanity, sometimes you just have to shake your head in disbelief and say out loud you cannot make this stuff up. This is the case with our first topic today,based on a Washington Examiner article from November 24, 2015 by Sarah Westwood. The Veterans Administration (VA) has been under fire and investigation for a while because of their incompetence in providing the promised medical care to our veterans. 

Thus, you would think and hope that the people running the VA would be on their best behavior and be diligent in our taxpayer money at the VA was being spent and used. But alas, that would be a major error. According to the article:

• According to an inspector general’s report, two employees of the VA who allegedly stole $400,000 of taxpayer money from the organization will be allowed to KEEP the money they defrauded from the VA.
• While they did each get pay cuts and demotions, they do not have to return the stolen money
• Diana Rubens and Kimberly Graves were both accused of abusing a program that was used to relocate VA employees who transfer long distances to new jobs within the VA. 
• Rubens fraudulently stole more than $274,000 and Graves stole more than $129,000, according to the agency's inspector general.
• Congressman Jeff Miller was justly outraged by the fraud: "This is not a situation in which VA can have it both ways," Miller said in a letter to VA Secretary Bob McDonald Monday. "In demoting Rubens and Graves, VA has already admitted what they did was wrong. Consequently, the department's failure to recoup the money Rubens' and Graves' unethical behavior enabled them to benefit from defies all logic."
• In a bit of twisted irony, the Congressman pointed out that the VA aggressively goes after veterans or their surviving family members when they accidently get overpayments from the VA but are letting their own employees get away with far more than the typical overpayment to a veteran.
• In even more irony, Alison Hickey, the VA's former top benefits official, stepped down from her position in October amid controversy over the inspector general's findings.

Like I said, you cannot make this stuff up. Steal tax money, get to keep the money you stole, get to keep a job within the VA, get your boss fired, and as always, get Congress all fired up who end up doing nothing. Insanity.

2) There is an old saying that goes something like the following: "It is better to remain silent and thought stupid than to speak up and remove all doubt.” That wisdom certainly applies to a recent sentiment by California Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez. In light of the recent terrorist attack in California, the good Congresswoman issued the following statement: “We let the assault weapons ban, which was led by our Senator Dianne Feinstein, we let that lapse. So you know, multiautomatic round weapons are easily available, even though not in California, but they can cross the state line, as you know.” 

The only problem here is that there is no such thing as a “multiautomatic” weapon. So how are we expected to take her seriously on a very important issue and topic when the Congresswoman is so ignorant of what she is talking about? This is similar to a Colorado Congresswoman who several years ago stated that over time there would no longer be any large capacity magazines left in the world as they got used up:

http://blogs.denverpost.com/thespot/2013/04/03/as-lead-sponsor-in-house-on-gun-legislation-rep-diana-degette-appears-to-not-understand-how-they-work/93506/)

Little did she know that a magazine is refilled when it is empty.

Again, word of advice to politicians: better to remain quiet and thought stupid than to speak up and remove all doubt. Because when you speak up on topics you have no knowledge about your credibility goes to zero, a journey that is usually pretty short to begin with.

3) Several times over the past few years we have reported on several studies and audits of the Pentagon's financial systems and accounting processes and how everyone who has looked at those processes comes away with the same conclusions: the Pentagon’s financial processes are so screwed up that they are not only are they in disarray but they cannot even be audited, that is how bad the situation is.

Given that the Pentagon accounting systems cannot even be audited, one can only imagine how much fraud and waste is going on within the Defense Department. If they were a private company within the country, the SEC would likely have prosecuted them under any number of accounting laws.

Well, according to a recent article by Nathan Barton, writing for the Daily Caller website, the Pentagon is not alone in being totally out of control from an accounting and audit perspective:

• A government inspector general report recently concluded that it could not audit billions of dollars allocated to the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) because HUD’s accounting processes and books are so poorly kept.
• HUD's financial statements are missing financial records, some records are inaccurate and in some cases actually violated Federal law. 
• Just one single HUD entity, the Government National Mortgage Association, had $20 billion in financial accounting problems (Ginnie Mae).
• According to the inspector general report: “This audit report contains nine material weaknesses, eight significant deficiencies in internal controls and six instances of noncompliance with applicable laws and regulations. These weaknesses were due to an inability to establish a compliant control environment, implement adequate financial accounting systems, retain key financial management staff and identify appropriate accounting principles.”
• With regards to Ginnie Mae, the audit could not audit $19.8 billion in Ginnie Mae’s purse “because of the inaccurate reporting from its budgetary system.” Specifically, Ginnie Mae — a HUD agency — is missing documents needed to audit the funds.
• The audit could also do nothing with $5.4 million of Ginnie Mae’s loan assets because accounting documents “did not completely transfer” after the agency switched contractors maintaining the records, the report say. As a result, "Ginnie Mae was unable to provide appropriate supporting documentation and data to enable us to audit the completeness and accuracy of these asset balances.”
• The audit report also noted that HUD’s accounting has not had any oversight for the past ten years.

Again, just like the Pentagon, if a company tried to pull off some of these accounting shenanigans many people would have been investigated and possibly gone to jail under Federal laws. But alas, these are government workers wasting taxpayer dollars so you know that no one will get demoted, no one will get fired, and the problems are unlikely to be fixed within our lifetimes.

4) Let’s finish up today’s and this month's political class insanity with some good out fashioned corruption. What makes this case special is that the corrupt politicians actually got caught and actually got jail time. The added twist is that he is closely to Hillary Clinton.

In 2008, Clinton called New York state politician Sheldon Silver “a stalwart voice on behalf of the needs of New Yorkers.” Which is not surprising since way back in 2000, Silver, a former speaker of the New York state assembly, lobbied members of the state assembly to support Clinton’s Senate campaign. He offered Clinton his law office for Clinton to do lobby Assemblyman Dov Hikind.

Unfortunately, Silver was recently found guilty in a Federal corruption trial. He was charged with seven counts of fraud, extortion and money laundering and was found guilty on all counts. The prosecutors showed that Silver managed a scheme through which he received a whopping $4 million in illegal payments for taking official and illegal actions that benefited a cancer researcher, Dr. Robert Taub, and two real estate development companies. Evidence pointed that Silver orchestrated the New York State Health Department to grant Dr. Taub $500,000 to study mesothelioma in return for Dr. Taub to refer patients to the law firm Weitz & Luxenberg, which in turn gave money to Silver.

The good news is that this corrupt politician is going to jail. The bad news is that he had access to the one of the highest political power players in the country, Clinton. The further bad news is that I doubt he is the only corrupt American politician raping the American taxpayer today.

That will do it for this month's political class insanity. Seven days were needed to digest all of the insanity from the past month or so. And you can bet that it is likely we will repeat the process again next month.

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

February, 2015, Part 1, Political Class Insanity: Corruption and Ineptness at the Federal, State,and Local Government Level

It is the beginning of another month which means it is time again for the our monthly review of political class insanity. We believe that the nation is living through the worst set of politicians to ever hold office in this country, from the President down to the local mayors. Our current politicians never resolve any problems facing Americans, waste untold billions of dollars every year, and operate government programs that never deliver what they promise, always miss their deadlines, always go over budget, and often make the original problem even worse. And these shortcomings do not include outright criminal activity, a topic that will be an integral part of this month’s insanity review.

Over the past week, we did an in-depth, multi-day analysis of how the Obama administration has failed in an epic way across five dimensions. As you will see over the next week or so, it is not only the President that is an epic fail in the American political sphere today. Let’s get started, it is going to be a long trek as the political class came out of the holiday season with more incompetence than ever before.

1) Before we delve into the first piece of insanity, consider the following realities:

• Thousands of veterans are not receiving the medical care they were promised and deserve.
• Millions of Americans are suffering from a wide variety of different cancers.
• Millions of Americans face a future of aging diseases such as dementia and Alzheimer’s.
• Medicare and Medicaid are quickly approaching insolvency.

Thus, if the government is going to spend money on health care issues, then one would hope all resources would be focused on these four issues above. But, alas, that is not happening, as outlined by a January 22, 2015 article in the Washington Free Beacon:

• The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has recently given $432,000 worth of taxpayer money to Columbia University to study how gay men use smartphone apps to hook up with other gay men.
• The study is attempting to determine if gay men using smartphone apps are more likely to engage in risky sexual behavior.
• According to the grant: “Smartphone technologies have provided a new venue for sexual partnering among men who have sex with men (MSM). Indeed, there are a rapidly growing number of smartphone applications designed to facilitate sexual partnering among MSM.”

Where to start with this insanity:

• This study, even if successful, will serve only a minute fraction of Americans, gay men who use smartphones to hook up for sex, as opposed to the tens of thousands of veterans who need medical help or the millions and millions of Americans who are facing a life of cancer and dementia.
• The sample size consisted of only 60 subjects, nowhere close enough to being a valid statistical sample to make accurate conclusions.
• Dividing the sample size into the study cost we see that the cost of the study comes out to an obscene cost of $7,200 per study subject. No way this is a cost effective study design.

Look, I have nothing against the gay lifestyle. But when viewed in the context of an $18 TRILLION national debt and the health and medical needs of millions of other Americans, this is a complete waste of resources for a very, small fraction of the citizenry on what is likely an invalid study design. 

How many veterans could have gotten the real medical care they needed for the $432,000? How many cancer researchers could have been hired for the $432,000? How many dementia drugs could be tested for $432,000? 

You get the idea, we have an out of control government wasting money on insignificant projects while big issues never get resolved.

2) Sarah Westwood, writing for the Washington Examiner on January 15, 2015, reported on how the Pentagon paid almost a half a million dollars to build a military training facility in Afghanistan that started “melting” once it got wet. Details of the wasteful spending and failure include the following:

• The Special Inspector General For Afghanistan Reconstruction called the failed facility “not only an embarrassment” but “a waste of U.S. taxpayers’ money,” given the fact that Afghans had to tear down the Defense Department contractors’ work and rebuild it themselves.
• The facility cost $456,669 and was supposed to be a simulated Afghan village where Afghan troops could train.
• Defense Department officials signed off on the completed construction in October, 2012, signifying that the building was completed, adequate, and ready to go.
• But just four months later, the buildings began to disintegrate once rain water seeped into the bricks that were used to build it.
• Thus, even though some Defense Department officials signed off on the completion, subsequent inspections showed that the contractor never followed proper protocol and building requirements in the construction, requiring the entire project to be stripped down to the foundations and rebuilt correctly since it was deemed “completely unsafe” by the Inspector General.

Thus, another half a million dollars of taxpayer money spent with absolutely no return benefit. Want to bet that no one involved in this project, including the officials that initially deemed the construction done and complete and safe, got fired or demoted for such incompetency? 

How many homeless Americans could have been housed for that half a million dollars? Home many hungry could have been fed for that half a million dollars? How many drug addicts could have been treated for that half a million dollars? Answer: a lot. Instead we are left with a mountain of wet sand halfway around the world.

3) We have previously reported how Nancy Pelosi, when she was Speaker of the House, arranged transportation legislation to get passed that had a great financial benefit for her husband's real estate interests in California. We more recently reported on how California U.S. Senator Diane Feinstein supported Federal Postal Service legislation that provided a financial boon to her husband's business, possibly to the tune of a billion dollars. 

However, it is not just Washington politicians that are inept, greedy, and criminal and who use their positions of public trust to self enrich themselves. Consider a recent New York Post article that reported how the Speaker of the New York State Assembly had been arrested by the FBI for criminal activity:

• Sheldon Silver was accused of using his powerful state government position to arrange to get millions of dollars in bribes and kickbacks that were falsely classified as legitimate income.
• The FBI arrested him on a series of public corruption charges.
• Law enforcement officials said at the time of his arrest: “There is probably cause to believe that Silver obtained about $4 million in payments characterized as attorney referral fees solely through the corrupt use of his official position.” 
• His attorney denied any criminal activity had taken place.
• However, the Post article did point out that Silver did try to stifle a state government commission that was looking into just these types of public corruption in 2013.

American politicians today are mostly selfish, self serving hypocrites, whether in D.C., in Albany, New York, or elsewhere around the country.

4) Okay, we have talked about Federal government political class insanity, state government insanity, so it makes sense to sign off today with local government political class insanity. According to a recent Heritage Foundation article written by Kate Scanlon, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio's administration announced that effective July 1, 2015, restaurants in New York City will no longer be allowed to serve any food in polystyrene foam containers, whether the containers are for food or drink.

Apparently, this edict fulfills a de Blasio campaign promise to eliminate the foam since it supposedly causes environmental harm. A spokeswoman for the Mayor claims that there are far better options for serving food and drink than foam that she claims has had dire environmental consequences including clogging landfills and not being biodegradable.

But is this a real solution to a real problem? Consider some other opinions and objections to this political decree:

• A spokesman for the New York State Restaurant Association said alternative containers can be upwards of 50% more expensive that will either cause prices to rise or small food operators to go out of business.
• Diane Katz, a research fellow in regulatory policy for the Heritage Foundation, claims that the ruling is mostly nonsense: “Mayor de Blasio would be better to to focus on more pressing problems plaguing New York City these days. The green lobby’s claims about polystyrene are largely nonsense, and the alternatives to foam consume more energy and produce more waste.”
• The Competitive Enterprise Institute also claims that foam containers are often more environmentally friendly. 
• A study by the research group Franklin Associates found that “the average 16-ounce polystyrene uses a third less energy, produces 50% less solid waste by volume, and releases a third less of so-called green house gases. than does a 16-ounce paper cup with a sleeve. Over their life cycles, polystyrene packaging products require 20 to 30% less water than do paper alternatives."
• Plus, talking about self defeating, food providers with less than $500,000 in annual revenue can apply for a waiver that exempts them from the ban. Since I would be that many of restaurants and food stands and trucks that serve their food in foam containers make less than $500,000 a year, the ban will probably affect a small percentage of food providers.

A classic example where a politician’s actions make an existing problem worse. In this case, more pollution, less “green” behavior, and by exempting many restaurants, having a minimal impact anyway.

That will do it for today’s insanity. Stupid studies focused on gay smartphone apps, a building that literally melts at a cost of almost a half a million dollars, potential corruption at the highest levels of New York state politics, and a NYC solution that probably makes a likely imaginary problem worse.

Until tommorrow, consider joining our cause to impose term limits on all Federal politicians because really, how much worse could it get than melting buildings if we replaced every politician in Washington every few years:

www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w