December, 2017, Part 2, Political Class INsanity: Urban Violence and Wasteful Spending

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

1) Former US Senator Tom Coburn used to publish an annual list of the 100 most stupid Federal spending programs that waste taxpayer wealth. Coburn is no longer in Congress but current Senator James Lankford has continued the annual waste listings and he recently published the latest 100 Federal programs and how stupid and wasteful they are. Some examples of the waste include the following:

• In 2016, over 25,000 American families received Federal housing assistance even though they made too much money to qualify for such assistance, with one family getting Federal taxpayer housing money even though they had an annual income of $479,911.
• The National Education Agency (NEA) spent $30,000 on the production of a play called “Doggie Hamlet.”
• The National Institutes of Health (NIH) annually spends $2.5 million to care for 139 apes that were formerly used for research which comes out to a rate of $18,700 per animal per year, not very efficient.
• In Iraq, the Department of Defense somehow lost over $1 billion worth of taxpayer funded military equipment.
• Going back to NIH waste, that government agency spent $2.3 million to verify that people who exercise often lose weight.
• The NIH also spent research money confirming the reality, surprise, surprise, that men prefer dating younger, thinner women.
• Another reality that the Federal Government affirmed, is that, surprise, surprise, a $2 million study confirmed that children don’t like to eat food that’s been sneezed on.
• The EPA spent money to "immerse artists in a multi-scale investigation of transportation systems, community, and governance related to the impacts of climate change." 
• Our favorite waster of money, the National Science Foundation (NSF), spent $475,142 on a plant naming program.
• The Federal grazing program charges ranchers to allow their cattle to roam and graze on Federal land but the program is so inefficient that the Federal government pays $77.1 million more to operate the program than it collects from the ranchers getting the benefit of their grazing their cattle on Federal land.
• The Feds spent almost half a million dollars researching the sights, sounds, and smells of the medieval period, a project I cannot even begin to imagine has any societal benefit.
• The NSF spent $315,000 to research how court rulings make people feel.
• And despite the ever increasing health care costs in this country, the lack of available health care to certain geographic and income segments of Americans and our crumbling infrastructure, the Federal government spent $1 billion on hospitals and infrastructure in Palestine.

With a $20 TRILLION national debt load, a load that comes out to over $165,000 for every man, woman, and child in this country, it makes no sense to waste money on such nonsense as identified by Senator Lankford. And even if we did want to spend this money, it should not be on such stupid, non-useful projects like those listed above. Go into any bar in America at happy hour and you could prove that men like younger, thinner women, you do not need the NSF for that. Go to any school cafeteria at lunchtime and you would easily find out that kids do not like food that has been sneezed on.

Spend this wasted money to house the homeless, feed the hungry, treat the drug addicted. Research real issues that affect many Americans such as curing cancer or Alzheimer's, not funding “Doggie Hamlet” plays. Total, total insanity and insults to American taxpayers everywhere.

2) This following piece of insanity mystifies me but also makes me respect Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO of Amazon, even more. Consider what he somehow convinced the politicians in Chicago to do. According to a recent article in the Seattle Times: “Chicago has offered to let Amazon pocket $1.32 billion in income taxes paid by its own workers. This is truly perverse. Called a personal income-tax diversion, the workers must still pay the full taxes, but instead of the state getting the money to use for schools, roads or whatever, Amazon would get to keep it all instead. The result is that workers are, in effect, paying taxes to their boss,” says a report on the practice from Good Jobs First, a think tank critical of many corporate subsidies.””

I am assuming that this has something to do with the reality that Amazon is going to establish a huge second headquarters location somewhere in the country and cities and counties are falling over themselves to be the location of that second headquarters location. But really, letting Amazon keep the tax money that its employees should be paying to the state and local government, kudos to Bezos, shame on the Illinois politicians who prostituted themselves out to a single company.

3) Unfortunately, we often have to check in to Chicago to see how the out of control gun violence and death rate is doing. Chicago is a city with some of the most stringent gun control laws in the country and one of the highest rates of violent crime. The politicians would prefer to continue to erode the Second Amendment rights of citizens to defend themselves vs. actually fixing the root causes of the violence that is so rampant, probably because they have no idea how to fix those root causes to the violence.

During a recent week in late November in Chicago:

• The city experienced its second most violence Thanksgiving day in recent years.
• There were 44 shootings in the city that holiday weekend.
• Eight of those shot ended up dying.
• In the month of November in Chicago, 33 citizens were shot and killed.
• Year to date in Chicago, 3,326 have been shot and 580 of those shot have died in Chicago.
• Almost 78% of those who died in Chicago this year from gun violence were African Americans but police were involved in only 1% of those shootings, killing the Black Lives Matter and liberal tripe that police officers are out of control and killing African Americans at unacceptable levels.

Horrific violence and no end in sight as politicians and liberals dicker over false statistics and no plans are ever developed to eliminate the root cause for violence.

That will do it for our second political class insanity post. No solutions for our urban woes which is becoming more and more fatal for urban residents and Washington is still wasting our taxpayer money on useless and senseless activities. More insanity to come.

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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

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

December, 2015, Bonus Post, Political Class Insanity: Wastebook 2015

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. Today we are focusing solely on the latest publication in the government Wastebook series. For years, former Senator Tom Coburn combed through Federal government spending to annually find the 100 most outrageous ways that the Washington political class waste taxpayer wealth. 

That tradition continued this year, operated by Senator Jeff Flake since Coburn is no longer in the Senate. The insanity and idiocy of the spending, however, is just as outrageous and insulting to hard working, tax paying Americans as ever. As we have asserted in previous years when we reviewed past Wastebook examples, no American, rich or poor, should ever pay another penny in taxes until this type of rampant nonsensical spending is eliminated by the Federal government and those that operate it.

In light of the release of the upcoming Star Wars movie, this year’s issue is entitled, Wastebook 2015, The Farce Awakens. And what a farce it is, especially in light of the problems facing Americans that we listed above.

1) One study by the National Institutes of Health paid university researchers $1 million to study the effects of monkeys running on treadmills. Some of the findings included documenting how some of the monkeys vomited and defecating while exercising on the treadmills. I can think of no reason in the world why we need to study monkey treadmill behavior. If the justification of the $1 million is to study how treadmill use affects humans, than do the study on humans directly, why on monkeys?

2) The National Science Foundation (NSF) is always a main source of idiotic projects and wasteful spending that have nothing to do with real science and real world issues. Previous wastes of taxpayer money from the NSF can be seen at:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2011/06/national-science-foundation-wasting.html

This year the NSF stepped up with studies to see if a koozie does in fact keep beer cold (it does, rejoice!), conducted wine classes to teach minors how to make wine to the tune of $853,000, and gave the Department of Agriculture $68,129 to spend on a craft beer, wine, and spirits training program…..in Vietnam.

3) The Department of Transportation spent $77,000 on anti-drunk driving public service announcements where fake drunk men criticize women’s looks. One of the announcements filmed a fake drunk guy telling a woman that “plastic surgery would do wonders for your jaw structure and definitely your nose” and another one had a fake drunk man telling a woman she would “be cuter with the lights off.” Huh, how does this type of sexist, insulting behavior fix a drunk driving issue?

4) A California professor landed an amazing $5 million to throw “commune” dance parties for young “hipsters” to try and get them to stop smoking. Party attendees were actually paid $5 a week to attend these taxpayer sponsored parties. Getting people to stop smoking is a noble effort but spending $5 million in a single location in California is not the way to do it because 1) it is a stupid idea and 2) even by some miracle it was successful, it is not transferable to the larger population, not at $5 million per location.

5) Fat seemed to be a theme in this year’s wasteful spending since in one study, $17,500 was spent to pay college students to wear fat suits for “weight sensitivity training” and $200,113 was spent to develop a “fat detector” that guesses a person’s body mass index by looking at their face. Really, weight sensitivity training and a fat detector, are you kidding me?

6) The EPA spent $15,000 to create a device that monitors how long hotel guests spend in the shower. Again, to what purpose? If hotels want to know how long people shower, then let the hotel industry pay for the device’s development.

7) Some government financed researchers spent a disgusting $2.6 million to try and craft the perfect tweet. They concluded that the best way to get retweets is to include phrase, “pls retweet.” Over $2 million for this nonsensical common sense finding.

8) $707,000 was spent on a study to start a “shrimp fight club” that resulted in 34 bouts with mantis shrimp.

9) $853,000 was spent on a “sing along brunch party” involving 80 people who sang tunes from Annie to promote a farmers’ market. No farmers’ market anywhere is worth $853,000 in taxpayer wealth.

10) Within a $5 million Department of Agriculture grant, tailgating kits were made that included a koozie, apron, and a food thermometer for University of Nebraska football fans.

11) Back to NSF waste, it also spent $1,200,000 which resulted in a life size Pac-Man game on a basketball court and another $899,000 was spent studying “the social interactions of guppies.”

12) NASA spent $1.2 million testing “microgravity” on sheep which they even admitted was a “niche” project and even though they already know that bone density decreases while in space and the likelihood they will be sending sheep to Mars is minimal.

13) The Department of Housing and Urban Development gave away $210,000 to a dog clothing company that makes a dog vest with an ”exclusive double Velcro closure.”

14) Back to the NSF (are we seeing a trend here?), $276,194 was spent trying to figure out how unattractive people find attractive mates. Their conclusions? Be friends for a while first, information that is critical to the well being of the country.

15) $50,000 was spent by the State Department for a Do-It-Yourself festival in Moscow, Russia.

16) $780,000 was spent to study pizza addiction, a malady that I would think is far less destructive than meth or heroin addictions, two problems that actually deserve studying.

17) $2.1 million was spent promoting tourism in Lebanon even though the State Department strongly advises against visiting due to ongoing terrorist and security issues.

18) $3 million in “bus security grants” was given to companies operating luxury charter buses and limousines, including a self-hyped “nightclub on wheels.”

19) $104.4 million was paid to subsidize low income public housing for high income people. 

20) $175,000 was spent to develop a smartphone app that lets you know who caught the fish you are currently eating.

Rather than spending $175,000 on that fish smartphone app, maybe that money would have been better spent on the millions of Americans that go hungry every day. 

Rather than spend a million dollars to see how monkeys behave on a treadmill, maybe that money could have been spent to give our veterans the medical care they were promised but not receiving. 

Rather than spend $780,000 to study pizza addiction of college kids, that money could have been spent to save the lives of addicts who die to the tune of over 40,000 a year due to their addiction.

Rather than spend $104 million to help high earning Americans live in low income taxpayer subsidized housing, maybe that money would have been better spent to find shelter for the millions of homeless Americans.

I think you get the idea. So many Americans are suffering today and every day yet the Washington political class spends and wastes money on efforts that will have no immediate impact on the millions of suffering Americans and in most cases will have no impact EVER for any American…. except the college professors or universities that got the taxpayer money for such stupid and vanity projects.

There should be two strict criteria that need to be met before any taxpayer money is doled out, as we listed them in our book, “Love My Country, Loathe My Government:”

1. Unless the proposed project significantly affects the lives of a significant amount of citizens in at least five states, the Federal government and taxpayer has no right or duty to fund it.
2. Unless the funding is directly going to address the major issues of our times , i.e. homelessness, poverty, high healthcare costs, major illnesses, leaky borders, failing public education, and drug addiction, then no money should be forthcoming for any other proposal. By “directly” I mean that the connection to these major issues can be simply explained in twenty words or less.If it takes 21 words or more to explain how a proposal affects these issues than it is to be considered BS and discarded. 

Studying and funding how ugly people end up marrying attractive people and other such nonsense is a big reason why our national debt is over $18 TRILLION and why real issues never get resolved. President Obama promised he would go through the Federal budget “line by line” to wring out wasteful spending. Wastebook 2015 proves that he has lied, again, since the Federal budget still can supply a Wastebook author enough material to write a book.

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, 2014, Part 8, Political Class Insanity: Over Regulation, Job Security In The Federal Government, More Iraq Wasteful Spending, 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 eighth and final installment this month and we are getting near to the end of the latest insanity from our politicians. A lot of what you will see today comes from events that happened this past summer. It is only now that we have been able to get through the recent insanity that we can now review older, but still crazy, political class insanity. 

We will move onto other topics tomorrow, not because we have covered all of the current and recent past insanity but because it is getting too depressing to review such idiocy in such a short time.

1) One of the main components that drove the country to into the Great Recession and close to a worldwide financial meltdown was the fact that many Americans families bought houses that they could not afford. And the main driver of that problem was the fact that banks and mortgage dealers sold mortgages to millions of Americans that required little or no down payment on the house.

As a result American families over extended themselves, buying more house than they could afford, and many, many ended up in foreclosure. It was a brutal economic lesson to learn: do not allow someone to buy a home with so little of a down payment, tit can lead to events like the Great Recession.

Or was the lesson learned? According to a recent Associated Press report, the Federal government, via Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, will encourage banks and other financial organizations to sell mortgages to Americans and require as little as 3% of the purchase prices as a down payment. Unreal, having just survived a financial meltdown because of over extended mortgage holders, the Federal government is encouraging Americans to overextend themselves again on housing.

"These underwriting guidelines provide a responsible approach to improving access to credit while ensuring safe and sound lending practices," Mel Watt, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, said in a statement. The FHFA oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which have been under government caretaking since 2008 because of the housing bust. 

How in the world is this a “responsible approach” when the last time Fannie and Freddie allowed this type of reckless behavior the American taxpayer had to bailout both Fannie and Freddie to the tune of almost $200 billion? And according to the Associated Press report, this low down payment approach is targeted to first time buyers, the very type of people that cannot afford to overextend themselves. Insane.

This is the equivalent of getting hit with a right upper cut in a boxing match and after getting off the mat, doing the exact same thing to get hit with the same upper cut again. Has Washington learned nothing from how its behavior created the Great Recession?

2) More bad news out of Iraq, as if we have not had enough of it. According to a Washington Post report, after the downfall of Hussein in Iraq in 2003, the American taxpayer spent $25 billion to train, fund, and equip a rebuilt Iraqi army. 

Iraq’s new Prime Minister, Haider al-Abadi, recently publicly made the announcement that the Iraqi government had been paying for at least 50,000 soldiers who simply do not exist. These so-called ghost soldiers draw salaries but review of Iraqi military rolls showed that there are upwards of 50,000 false names in those military rolls

It appears that Iraqi military officers were making up the fake soldiers and simply pocketing the salaries of these ghost soldiers. This may help explain why the Iraqi military forces folded so easily when attacked by ISIS terrorists earlier this year, many of those forces may have not even existed. How much of that $25 billion that the U.S. spent on the Iraqi forces was not reported but you can bet that a lot of that $25 billion never made it to its ended end purpose. 

There seems to be no end on how many different and unique ways the U.S. Federal government and its Defense Department can waste, lose, and abuse taxpayer money. Whether it is in Iraq, Afghanistan or elsewhere.

3) Tom Hinchey, writing for the Heritage Foundation, uncovered another National Science Foundation (NSF) disaster and more wasteful and corrupted spending. We have never been a fan of the National Science Foundation, given how it has spent taxpayer money on a whole range of inane and stupid projects that have little to do with the problems facing Americans today. For a summary of the wasteful spending, just enter “national science foundation” into the search box above.

The latest NSF stupidity comes from an audit of the non-profit National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) in November by the National Science Foundation (NSF) inspector general and the Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA). The audit found that NEON billed NSF for normally unallowable costs for entertainment, lobbying, and alcohol:

· $25,000 for a Christmas party 

· $11,000 for coffee services for employees 

· $3,000 for Board of Director dinners (which included alcohol) 

· $3,000 for t-shirts and other apparel for Contractor employees 

· $83,000 for business development 

· $112,000 for lobbying 

· $150 million in questionable construction costs

The audit report also found that the NSF had lousy accounting controls and other safeguards in place to track spending in any phase of its funding processes. Just another project in the long line of useless and out of control projects mismanaged by the NSF.

Also included in the writing by Mr. Hinchey were other inane NSF projects that even we had not heard of but which were just as useless as the ones we were aware of and reported on:

• Senator Tom Coburn released a report in 2011 identifying more than $1.2 billion in losses from waste, fraud, duplication, and mismanagement at the NSF. 
• The NSF spent $80,000 to study why the same college basketball teams always dominate March Madness.
• It spend $1 million for an analysis of how quickly parents respond to trendy baby names.
• It spent $581,000 on whether online dating site users are racist.
• And last but no least, it wasted $2 million to figure out that people who often post pictures on the Internet from the same location at the same time are usually friends.

$1.2 billion could have fed and sheltered a lot of hungry and homeless Americans, it could have treated a lot of drug addicts, and it could have given proper medical care to underserved veterans. Bad, bad priorities.

4) Years after the Great Recession ended, economic growth in this country still stinks. Median household incomes are still trending downwards, there are about 16 million Americans who are under employed or unemployed, about 46 million Americans need Federal food assistance every month, the job creation rate is still pretty anemic, and the labor force participation rate is at a 35 year low.

Tremendous economic mismanagement by the Washington political class years after the recession ended. One reason for the bad business, job, and economic environment could be the fact that the Federal government keeps issuing thousands of new regulations every year. The Daily Caller website recently reported that the Obama administration issued an amazing 3,415 NEW government regulations just before Thanksgiving.

To see how inane this overregulation binge is, 3,415 new regulations means that on average, the Federal government issued over nine new regulations EVERY DAY during the year. So much regulation does two very bad things:

1. First, business owners are faced with more and more time distracting government reporting and regulation requirements, taking time away from growing their businesses, hiring more workers, and expanding the economy.
2.  Many of these regulations also cost money and with more money going to an inefficient and incompetent Federal government, there is less money left in businesses to grow, hire more workers, and grow the economy.

And really, given that the Federal government has been around for well over two hundred years, do we really need nine new government regulations EVERY DAY? Or is it simply the reality that government bureaucracies have gotten so large and so out of control that they start to create work and new regulations that do not help Americans but only help justify the continued existence of these same bureaucracies? Look no further than overregulation to find out why this economic recovery is a historical worse.

The fact that the Obama administration released these new regulations just before the Thanksgiving holidays to minimize the fallout says that 1) many of these new regulations are useless and no defensible, and 2) as always, this administration is sneaky, cowardly, and as non-transparent as possible.

5) One last piece of insanity for this month. Readers of these monthly political class insanity posts cannot help but come away with the feeling that the Federal government has gotten so large and so bureaucratic that it is a very dysfunctional human endeavor. Wasteful spending, bloated bureaucracies, rampant criminal fraud, ineffective leadership, and other general incompetencies are rampant throughout the Federal government.

And probably the most frustrating aspect of the whole insanity is that usually no one within the Federal government is ever held accountable for the messes that are created. According to a recent analysis of government data by Eric Katz, using data from the website www.govexec.com, in 2013 only 9,244 workers out of the civilian Federal workforce of 1.87 million were fired for poor performance or misconduct. This comes out to an annual firing rate for misconduct or poor performance of just 0.49%, less 1 in 200 a year. Most federal firings are for misconduct, with a smaller share for poor performance.

No matter what data source you look at for the firing rate of employees in private companies, you will see that the firing rate of Federal employees is a tiny, tiny percentage of people being fired in the real world. As Eric Katz’s following chart shows, despite a dysfunctional Federal government, it is almost impossible to get fired once the Federal government hires you:

That will do it for this month’s insanity. Today we learned that the NSF is still wasting our money, billions of dollars were sent to non-existent Iraqi soldiers, we are overregulated by the Federal government which kills economic growth, the Federal is consciously recreating the housing conditions that caused the Great Recession, and despite overall dysfunction and incompetence, Federal government employees are almost never fired. Insanity.

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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

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, 2014, Part 1, Political Class Insanity: Lying To Americans Again, $2 Million For Fossils, Voodoo Spousal Anger, 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.

1) Senator Tom Coburn issues what he calls the Wastebook every year where he and his staff document the 100 most idiotic uses of taxpayer money. We have already reviewed some of his latest wasteful spending boondoggles in last month’s insanity series but since then we have come across another set of stupid spending from Washington:

1. $331,000 was spent by the Federal government to study “angry” spouses stabbing voodoo dolls. Might help curb divorce lawyer costs but should not be financed by the American taxpayer.

2. $16 Million to revitalize a “ghost mall” in Fresno, CA. I am assuming a ghost mall is a mall that has been abandoned because it could not compete with other shopping options in the Fresno area. So why should the taxpayer sink that much money into a proven losing proposition?

3. $70,000 for a Bruce Lee play. For what purpose?

4. $5.2 million for Columbia University to develop an interactive game designed to combat climate change, and that includes voicemails from the future warning of a post- apocalyptic world. Seriously?

5. $15,000 for NASA to hunt for the lost tomb of Genghis Khan. Because that is the kind of work NASA was established to do.

6. $3 million for the State Department to tweet at terrorists. These are the same people that think nothing of beheading other humans, do we really think that State Department tweets are going to intimidate them? 

Ridiculous wastes of taxpayer wealth especially when you consider that millions of Americans need drug addiction treatment help, millions of Americans are homeless and hungry, veterans cannot get the medical care they were promised and need, etc.

2) The fabulous website, Crony Capitalism, recently ran an earth shattering article relative to the city of Detroit. You remember Detroit. Once one of the largest and richest cities in the country. 

But in the course of fifty years, through horrendously corrupt local politicians whose corruption was exceeded only by their greed and incompetence, Detroit was turned into a hell hole on earth and became the largest American city to ever declare bankruptcy. Substandard or non-existent government services, population flight, thousands of abandoned houses, and a whole host of every other type of urban problem.

It has gotten so bad that the Detroit police department recently declared that Detroit was too dangerous of a city to enter. That is how bad it has gotten, even the police say do not come. This is the American political class at its finest, running a rich vibrant city literally into the ground. Pitiful and sad.

But the Crony Capitalism website had an interesting and radical approach to resurrecting the city. They proposed turning Detroit into an economic “free-zone.” No taxes, private everything (e.g. schools, police, garbage, everything), and see how it does. If excessive government and politicians' actions killed the city, maybe minimal or no government and politicians' control and create a new city. Because really, just like term limits, how much worse could it be than what is going on now, now that even the local police are saying to stay away? 

3) The U.S. Export-Import Bank gives out taxpayer back loans to foreign entities to encourage them to buy American made goods. Over the years, it has turned into a corporate boondoggle with American taxpayers funding private corporations’ costs that should be paid by the shareholders of those companies.

The fact that Boeing uses well over 50% of the Export-Import Bank’s budget over the years, with other such large companies also getting free taxpayer support, stands in contrast to politicians who support the Bank who claim that the majority of the Bank’s resources are to help smaller and medium size U.S. businesses.

Well, that claim may have just turned into another lie from the political class. According to a recent Reuters report: “The U.S. Export-Import Bank has mischaracterized potentially hundreds of large companies and units of multinational conglomerates as small businesses, a flaw in its record keeping that could undermine the export lender's survival strategy. A Reuters analysis showed companies owned by billionaires such as Warren Buffet and Mexico's Carlos Slim, as well by Japanese and European conglomerates, were listed as small businesses and Ex-Im acknowledged errors in its data in response to those findings.”

Another government screw up or were we just being “grubered” by our politicians to keep the taxpayer spigot open for these large companies, who are likely contributors to politicians’ election campaigns in a quid pro quo? Warren Buffet has not been involved in a ‘Small Business’ in decades so I go with the quid pro quo option. This is just another way for Washington politicians to keep their campaign finance money flowing at the expense of the American taxpayer.

4) As Nixon found out and most other humans find out sometime in their life, sometimes the crime, the error, or the screw up is not as bad as the lies and botched cover ups that happen afterwards. Recently, the Federal Weather Service had what it caused “technical glitches” in its data systems and Internet operations. Fine, could happen to any data systems operation.

However, that turned out to be a lie since we now know from Scott Smullen, a spokesman for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration it was not common technical glitches that caused the problem but computer hackers based in China that caused the mischief: “The intrusion occurred in late September but officials gave no indication that they had a problem until Oct. 20, according to three people familiar with the hack and the subsequent reaction by the NOAA, which includes the National Weather Service.”

Representative Frank Wolf (R-VA) was quoted by the Washington Post: “NOAA told me it was a hack and it was China.” He believes the agency was “deliberately misleading the American public in its replies. They had an obligation to tell the truth. They covered it up.”

The cover up is worse than the crime since now Commerce Department Inspector General Todd Zinser is investigating the matter, specifically demanding why law enforcement was not informed of the incident. Fortunately, no one was injured as a result of the Chinese hacking but it could have been worse if had it occurred during a high-impact weather event and the weather satellites were fouled up. 

Lying and incompetence, potential national security breaches and cover ups, this is the distressing level of incompetence our $3 TRILLION in taxes pays for every year.

5) One more piece of insanity for today, plenty more to come in the upcoming days. Before we go into this wasteful spending experience, again keep in mind there are millions of Americans who need help treating their drug addictions, there are millions of Americans who are homeless and hungry every day, there are probably millions of veterans who may not be getting the medical care they need and deserve, and there are millions of Americans who are unemployed or under employed.

Now, how much suffering do you think could be relieved in any or all of these categories of need we just discussed? Well, a certain $2 million pocket of taxpayer wealth will not go to alleviating any of this suffering. As reported by Watchdog.com and the Heritage Foundation, the Federal government and Washington political class allocated that amount to…wait for it… have the University of Florida build a new online telecommunications network that would allow amateur fossil enthusiasts to more easily communicate with each other online. 

I swear, you cannot make this garbage up. The project’s name is: Fostering Opportunities for Synergistic STEM in Informal Learners, or FOSSIL, (STEM is an acronym for Science Technology Engineering and Math). The project consists of a user-friendly website, social media outreach and event get-togethers. 

It is no surprise that the National Science Foundation is behind this idiotic program. This is the same federal entity that spent hundreds of thousands of dollars building a video game program that simulated prom week and which funded an effort to estimate when dog became man’s best friend.

So many problems with this effort:

• Why fossil collectors? Why not spend another $2 million on stamp collectors, $2 million on coin collectors, etc.? Don’t they have the same needs and desires as fossil collectors?
• Who is going to program this effort, the same hacks who programmed Obama Care’s online exchanges? I may not be a technical person but I am pretty sure you do not need $2 million to create a relatively simple website that allows for “a user-friendly website, social media outreach and event get-togethers.” A high school kid could probably put this together in his bedroom in a few weeks.
• And even if you think this is a good use of taxpayer money, is it a better use than helping the homeless, addicted, veterans, and hungry in this country? I think not, that is how screwed up the priorities of the Washington political class has become. Fossils that have been dead for thousands of years are more important than suffering, very alive Americans today.

That will do it for today’s insanity. More wasteful spending on such nonsense as fossil collectors, a Bruce Lee movie, and voodoo dolls, more lies and cover ups from Washington, the death of a great American city, and more. And we have just barely scratched the surface on this month’s political class insanity. More to come in the following 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

Wastebook 2015 - The Unrelenting Wasteful Spending of Washington

Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma has been one of the very few politicians in Washington who have taken the time to identify and document the incredible amount of taxpayer wealth that the government wastes every year. From funding stupid science projects to criminal fraud to inefficient and ineffective management of government operations, the incompetence of the Federal government and the politicians that oversee its operations is truly insulting to those of us that fund their ineptness and waste. Previous years' examples of wasteful spending as identified by senator Coburn can be accessed in this blog by entering either “coburn” or “wastebook” in the search box above. 

The Senator’s annual summary of wasteful spending is entitled Wastebook followed by the year of its publication. He has just releases “Wastebook 2015” and trust me, as you will see below, the wasteful spending on idiocy continues unabated under the Obama administration. Before we go into the latest Wastebook results, let’s do a quick review of the major wasteful spending examples that we have previously exposed in this blog: 

• Medicare and Medicaid likely lose over $100 billion a year to waste, fraud, and inefficiencies. 
• Social Security easily loses over $100 billion a year to waste and fraud. 
• The IRS readily admits that it fails to collect almost $400 billion a year in taxes owed. 
• Obama’s debt reduction commission recommended that over $100 billion a year could be removed from the Pentagon’s budget without compromising national security; I contend that this is a substantially low ball figure. 
• The Navy recently spent almost $300 million to build two ships to near completion, decided that they were not needed, and then spent another $10 million to junk them. 
• The State Department spent $60 million to build a consulate in Afghanistan and then realized that it could not be defended against a terrorist attack and abandoned it without ever using it. 
• The National Science Foundation annually wastes billions of dollars on such inane projects as a video game that simulates prom week, determining when dogs became man’s best friend, and other such nonsense. 

 You get the idea. We have a Federal government bureaucracy that is out of control when it comes to smartly spending our tax dollars. And that out of control spending has resulted in about an $18 TRILLION national debt with nothing to show for it. And we got to $18 TRILLION by wasting money like the following “Wastebook 2015” items: 

 1) According to Coburn’s research, the National Institute of Health’s Center for Alternative and Complimentary Medicine spent $387,000 to study the effects of Swedish massages on rabbits. This is the same government organization that says it does not have a big enough budget for Ebola vaccines but apparently has enough for rabbit massages. 

 2) The Department of Interior spent $10,000 to monitor the growth rate of saltmarsh grass, i.e., the government is paying people to watch grass grow.

3) The National Science Foundation has granted more than $200,000 to a research project that is trying to determine how and why Wikipedia is sexist. 

 4) At a cost of $371,026 the National Institute of Health funded a study to see if mothers love dogs as much as they love kids. 

 5) The Federal government granted $804,254 for the development of a smartphone game called “Kiddio: Food Fight.” The game is intended to teach parents how to convince their children to try and eat new healthier food choices. I guess telling your kids you cannot leave the table until you eat your vegetables is no longer a valid way of child rearing like it was for my mother. 

6) The National Endowment for the Humanities has provided $47,000 for undergraduate classes that teach students about laughing and humor. 

 7) The National Science Foundation spent $856,000 to teach mountain lions how to walk on treadmills as part of a research project whose aim was to better understand mountain lions’ instincts. 

 8) A Government Accountability Office (GAO) study found that the Federal government has recently paid more $700,000,000 to over 57,000 government employees who have not shown up to work for a variety of reasons. In some cases, workers accused of serious misconduct are reportedly getting paid to stay home and do nothing. The Department of Defense (DOD) has the highest number of paid leaves on record. During the three years that ended in September 2013, DOD put 8,600 employees on leave for one to three months, close to 900 for three months to a full year and 123 employees for more than a year. 

 9) The country that put men on the moon, the United States, no longer has the capability of putting a man into orbit, relying on the Russians to put an American in orbit at the outrageous cost of $70 million per astronaut per trip. Once up in space at the International Space Station, more money is wasted on such idiotic projects as the design and creation of better golf clubs. 

 10) The Coast Guard has reduced its focus and resources on drug and migrant interdictions and but now offers free patrols for private yacht parties. 

 11) The IRS has mistakenly given over $4 billion to identity thieves across the country since it was too incompetent to identify thousands and thousands of bogus tax returns. 

 12) The Federal government spent $331,000 to see if people would stab voodoo dolls when angry and hungry at the same time. 

 13) That same government spent $171,000 to study the gambling habits of monkeys, finding out that monkeys share “our unfounded belief in winning and losing streaks,” a completely useless finding for every single American. 

 14) Coburn said that the Defense Department has budgeted $80 million over four years to build a Tactical Assault Light Operator Suit, and is spending some of that taxpayer money collaborating with Hollywood costume designers along the way. No use having a Tactical Assault Light Operator Suit if it does not look cool. As if $80 million was not enough to waste, Coburn’s research cited one industry source that estimates that $1 billion would eventually be needed to build just a single prototype. 

 15) The report estimated the annual level of waste related to food stamp fraud at about $3 billion. 

 16) In 2012, the State Department funded a gathering of world musicians from around the world in Florida, where they participated in a flash mob. 

 Unbelievable. Hundreds of billions of dollars wasted every year for nothing in return. Millions of Americans are homeless and hungry but the government spends money on rabbit massages. 

Thousands and thousands of veterans are not getting the medical care they need but the government spends money the gambling habits of monkeys. 

 Tens of millions of Americans cannot afford health insurance or health care but the government spends money on voodoo doll research. 

 Millions of Americans are fighting destructive addictions to tobacco, alcohol, and drugs but the government spends money on treadmill walking lions. 

 Pathetic leadership from the American political class. Especially from Obama who apparently has broken another campaign promise when he promised to go through the Federal government “line-by-line” to weed out waste. 

 So the next time a politician or a big government loving friend says that taxes need to be raised to fund essential government work, ask him how the massaged rabbits are making out. Until the Federal government and those that operate it stop the insanity of these types of spending, no American should pay one cent more in any kind of taxes. 

 Step 1 From “Love My Country, Loathe My Government” was custom made for this tragedy. Step 1 would reduce Federal government spending by 10% a year for fives years. This approach would bring the Federal government spending in line with its tax revenue stream, it would result in focusing the government on just essential projects since it would not have the budget to do these kinds of frivolous projects, and it would help out those in our society that really need the help vs. the well connected that really need nothing, including our tax dollars.

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

The American Political Class: "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly:" Today The Ugly, Part 2

This week we have been using the old Clint Eastwood movie, “The Good, The Bad And The Ugly” to describe politics in America today. We started off with “The Good,” a post meant to get us in a better mood before we looked at the Bad and the Ugly. The Good post focused on the good things that individual Americans are doing for the country, other people, and the environment since the American political class and the government it operates are certainly not doing those things. That post of Good can be accessed at:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-american-political-class-good-bad_15.html

Unfortunately, we had to follow up that good feeling post with two posts that covered The Bad about the politicians in this country. The wasteful spending of taxpayer money with no societal benefit in return, the inefficient and ineffective government programs that often make a problem worse, etc. The first Bad post can be accessed at:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-american-political-class-good-bad.html

Yesterday and today we are looking at “The Ugly” side of American politicians. This does not mean that what they have done to the country is not ugly:

• Record high unemployment numbers for a record length of time.
• Economic programs that are expensive and useless.
• Government programs that are fraught with fraud and which lose well over $100 billion a year.
• A health care reform piece of legislation that is increasing the cost and decreasing the health insurance coverage of Americans, the exact opposite of what it was supposed to do.
• Downgrading of the country’s credit rating for the first time in our history.
• A tax burden that forces Americans to work over half of the year just to pay for taxes at all levels of government.
• A regulatory burden that stifles the economy and job creation.
• A national debt approaching an unfathomable $18 TRILLION, well above $50,000 for every person in the country including our kids.
• A foreign policy that is in tatters and useless besides endangering the national security of the country.

We could go on and on but you get the idea. Our politicians are bad at problem definition and resolution, they have no idea how to run an efficient and crime free government, and they are killing freedom and liberty in this country. But yesterday and today we go beyond these dismal results.

Today we continue to look at their attitude and how their selfishness and personal greed are likely major contributing factors to the dismal results they seem to always end up producing. It is their attitude, as much as their non-success in resolving major issues, that cause the majority of us to loathe them so much. 

Remember, recent and credible public opinion surveys put our approval rating of Congress at levels far less than 10%. Obama’s approval rating has been in free fall for a while now with far more Americans disapproving of his performance than those that approve his performance. We despise them and yesterday and today we look at several reasons while that spite goes beyond their inability to effectively govern.

3) Much like the same behavior that the Washington political class used to gut the STOCK Act (see yesterday’s post) and make it easier for them to do insider trading and personal enrichment, they were up to the same secrecy and shenanigans on another topic recently. Our Washington political types recently made it more difficult to identify which members of Congress, and their spouses and other family members, are lavished with all-expenses-paid trips around the world by non-government entities.

House of Representatives rules have quietly been changed and the Washington political class has stripped away the requirement that privately sponsored and paid for travel be included on lawmakers' annual financial-disclosure forms. Such disclosures made it very easy to track what companies, unions, and other entities were treating sitting politicians to special favors and travels, in all likelihood hoping for political and financial favors in return. 

As with the neutering of the STOCK Act, this move was also made secretly behind closed doors and without a public announcement by the House Ethics Committee. This move undoes more than three decades of reporting on gifts of travel to politicians. Gifts of free travel to lawmakers have appeared on the yearly financial form dating back its creation in the late 1970s, after the Watergate scandal.

The only reason anyone outside of the inner circle of Congress knows about this trickery is that the National Journal uncovered the deleted disclosure requirement when it analyzed the most recent batch of yearly filings: "This is such an obvious effort to avoid accountability," said Melanie Sloan, executive director of the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. "There's no legitimate reason. There's no good reason for it. The more you can hide, the less accountable you can be. It's clear these forms are useful for reporters and watchdogs, and obviously a little too useful."

I would disagree with Ms. Sloan is that there is a no legitimate and good reason for the deletion of the requirement: it makes it easier to bribe sitting Congressional representatives without their constituents finding out. It may not be a good reason from a voter perspective but from a self enriching sitting politician’s view point, it makes perfectly good sense.

Free trips paid for by private groups must still be reported separately to the House's Office of the Clerk and disclosed there. But they will now be absent from the chief document that reporters, watchdogs, and members of the public have used for decades to review, analyze, and report on lawmakers' finances.

Not unexpectedly:

1. News reports claim that House Ethics Committee Chairman Michael Conaway, did not return reporters’ calls for comment.
2. Ranking minority member Linda Sanchez, of the same committee, referred questions to committee staff. 
3. In turn, the committee staff declined to comment.

In 2013, members of Congress and their aides took more free trips than in any year since the influence-peddling scandal that sent lobbyist Jack Abramoff to prison back in the middle of the Bush Presidency. Nearly 1,900 trips at a cost of more than $6 million last year, according to Legistorm, which compiles travel records. As a result of this secrecy and the change that enused, now none of those trips must be included on the annual disclosures of lawmakers or their aides.

Craig Holman, a lobbyist for the consumer group Public Citizen which tracks the international travels of lawmakers and the actions of the Ethics Committee, was as surprised and shocked as Ms. Sloan: "There's seems to be no reason I could imagine why the Ethics Committee would minimize the amount of information that gets reported. It's always good to have more disclosure than less. It just seems a little odd that the Ethics Committee would pass such a rule change."

Not odd, just typical and greedy. And in a way, cowardly. If you have to do something secretly and behind close doors that has life style and financial benefits to you, than there has to be an unethical strain running down the middle of your conscious. Be a man and stand up front of your voters and tell them that you are taking everything you can get from being elected, don’t hide behind the bureaucracy.

4) Historically, earmarks have been little goodies and favors that are tucked away and partially hidden in legislative bills in Congress that make a sitting member of Congress look good to his or her voters back home. They may include anything from a special grant of money to a hometown university to the funding of a bike path in a town back home to special consideration to a home town company to other types of political favors, possibly in response to having a trip financed by a non-government entity as we discussed above.

We have talked about the uselessness and wastefulness of earmarks many times in this blog. They are nothing more than taxpayer funded public relations events for a sitting politician to help him stay in office. They do not improve the education of our kids, they do not help in the losing war on drugs battles, they do not help ailing veterans get the medical attention they desperately need, they do not seal the border, they do not reduce the ever rising cost of health care, or resolve any major issue facing the country today.

The money, that historically has annually run into the billions and billions of dollars, resolves none of these problems. It is like candy for voters, empty calories that make no real progress in helping taxpayers.

Fortunately, mostly at the urging of Tea Party candidates and principles, the amount and cost of earmarks has gone down recently. However, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid recently went on a rant to bring them back: “I have been a fan of earmarks since I got here the first day. Keep in mind that’s what the country has done for more than 200 years, except for the brief period of time in recent years that we haven’t done these.”

Obviously, doing something for 200 years does not make it right. Slavery probably existed in this country for two hundred years. That does not mean it should be reinstituted because Harry Reid points to tradition.

But Reid is not alone. Other Senators, especially those who have served on appropriations committees, are beginning to advocate for a reconstitution of earmarks. Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin recently called earmarks the “glue” that held together each transportation bill, to which earmark hater, Senator Tom Coburn, replied via a Wall Street Journal editorial that “restoring earmarks in today’s Congress would be like opening a bar tab for a bunch of recovering alcoholics.”

We do not need earmarks, which are also used not only to pacify the voters back home but are also used to bribe for votes on legislation. Remember how a Nebraska Senator got a so-called “Cornhusker Exemption” for his voters back home in the Obama Care legislation to garner his vote of support? If you have to bribe to get legislation votes, maybe you either need:

• Better, smarter people writing better pieces of legislation that can stand on its own merits.
• Better, higher integrity people that can develop and debate legislation for the good of the entire country, not just for their state or their Congressional district.
• Allow the current set of Washington politicians run their own bar tab and activate term limits to give them the time to run that tab.

Using taxpayer earmark money to serve their careers, sneaking around in the dead of the night to hide their insider trading and outsider financed lavish travels and vacations from taxpayers, and taking lavish vacations at $12 million vacation homes while lecturing the country on “income inequality. Just four more Ugly reasons why most of us find the current set of politicians in this country not just incompetent but totally loathsome at the same time.

And there you have it. Five days of “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly,” with the Bad and the ugly doing far more damage than the good that individual Americans are doing for each other.

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