December,2017, Part 3, Political Class Insanity: Bribing Hollywood With Taxpayer Dollars, TSA Still Screwing Up and MOre

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) Most people know that Washington has been racked with sexual harassment and sexual predator accounts and stories over the past month or so. Congressman John Conyers and Senator Al Franken have already been forced to resign because of their disgusting behavior towards women. In the midst of this uproar, it has come to light that Congress has been managing a slush fund to secretly payoff people who have filed various types of lawsuits against Congressional members and staffs including sexual harassment suits. The whole situation has been despicable.

Now, according to a recent Newsweek article, we find out this little piece of insanity about another Congressman:

• Congressman Bob Brady oversees the settlement process and payments done by Congress to cover sexual discrimination complaints and lawsuits.
• His position on the House committee on administration gives him power over settlement payments with the taxpayer funded slush fund discussed above.
• It turns out that the Congressman is now under investigation by the FBI for making false statements, conspiracy, and campaign fraud.
• Court papers state that Brady paid a former judge $90,000 to drop out of a 2012 primary race.
• That person has already pleaded guilty to falsifying campaign finance records to hide the $90,000 payment.
• Ironically, Brady also sits on a Congressional committee that has responsibility over how campaign contribution money is raised, reported, and used for House of Representatives races.
• According to the FBI, Brady and his associates, “were involved in the commission of several crimes, including conspiracy, false statements, producing false records, false campaign contribution reports, and violating limits on campaign contributions and expenditures. Brady’s email account is likely to contain evidence of these crimes.”
• Some of those Brady associates were indicted last month.

As always, these are allegations that do not mean any laws were broken by Brady. But if true, we have another insane example of how corrupt, greedy, and amoral the politicians in America are today.

2) Let’s get into a recent report on one of favorite and most inept Federal government organizations, the Transportation Security Agency, TSA. We have often pondered which Federal government entity is the most corrupt, useless, and inept, with the Social Security Administration, The Defense Department, and the TSA usually vying for that dubious honor.

The following story of incompetence gives the TSA a boost towards that title:

• An undercover operation by the Department of Homeland Security, the parent agency of the TSA, showed that TSA “screeners, their equipment, or their procedures failed more than half the time.”
• In fact, when ABC News asked their news source if the failure rate was 80% or so, the answer that ABC received was that their estimate was “in the ballpark.”
• During a recent hearing before the House committee on Homeland security, Congressman Mike Rogers told TSA Administrator David Pekoske that, “This agency that you run is broken badly, and it needs your attention.”
• The test apparently found trouble with just about all aspects of the TSA procedures including problems with screeners, screening equipment, and “associated procedures.”

So almost two decades after it was formed, the TSA still fails far more times than it is successful. After spending hundreds of billions of dollars, the TSA still fails far more times than it is successful. And after groping millions of Americans’ bodies, the TSA still fails far more times than it is successful. At least for today, I think you would agree that the TSA is the most inept Federal government entity.

3) Most state governments, especially those that have been dominated by Democrats over time, are not in the greatest economic or financial condition. They have underfunded pension and retirement plans for government employees, they are in deep debt, and have shrinking tax bases. The state of New York is one of those states. Although not in quite in the same dire situation of other blue states like Illinois, New Jersey, and California, I am sure that their physical infrastructure, schools, and debt situations could use every last dollar that is possible.

But according to the New York Post, in a November 9, 2017, the current governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, is diverting a lot of those much needed state taxpayer funds to his liberal friends out in Hollywood, trying to entice them to use his state to film their movies there:

• In a recent year, Cuomo arranged for a whopping $420 million of New York taxpayer money to be spent to entice Hollywood to film in the the state of New York.
• That brings the five year total to $1.2 billion.
• This makes the state of New York, and its taxpayers, the second most generous state to Hollywood over the past five years with only Louisiana paying out more than $1.2 billion.

$1.2 billion is a lot of taxpayer money, and to be honest with you, I would bet that there is no financial way in the world that this was a good investment from a financial break even perspective for the taxpayers in New York. Consider some logical numbers:

• $1.2 billion over five years means that Cuomo is giving Hollywood, on average, about $240 million a year of taxpayer wealth.
• This comes out to about $4.6 million a week on average.
• Or breaking it down further, it comes out to about $650,000 every day of the week for 52 weeks.

I would assert that there is no way that the taxpayers in New York are getting back $650,000 a day, $4.6 million a week every day and every week for an entire year in sales taxes, fuel taxes, and income taxes from Hollywood shooting movies in the state. It makes no financial sense. And they would need $650,000 a day just to break even, never mind generating additional funds.

So why does he do it? Very simple, he gives Hollywood state taxpayer wealth and Hollywood gives him back substantial monetary contributions to his election campaigns:

• Recently, Universal pictures Chairman jeff Shell hosted a fundraising event for Cuomo at his California home. 
• Invitees to the affair included Disney CEO Robert Eiger and CBS chief executive Les Moonves.
• Hollywood based folks have previously given his election efforts $860,000 and California studios have chipped in another $400,000.
• Previously, alleged sexual predator Harvey Weinstein had given Cuomo $111,000 in political donations that Cuomo only hesitantly returned after it was disclosed that Weinstein might be a really bad character.

Pretty sweet deal: use taxpayer money to fund your election campaign by first laundering it through Hollywood studios and executives 3,000 miles away. If this was a drug deal, it would be a felony, Since it is a politician’s operation, it is okay.

This is why we put Step 7 in our book, “Love My Country, Loathe My Government.” That step would make it illegal for anyone to contribute to a politician’s election campaign unless they lived in that politician’s domain of responsibility. 

In this case, no one in Hollywood could give Cuomo’s election campaign any money unless they lived and voted in New York. If this tenet was in place, I highly doubt that Cuomo would be generously giving out state taxpayer to people so far away from his home state since they would not be able to reply in kind.

Another day, another bunch of scummy political antics, laundering taxpayer money through Hollywood, more TSA’s failures, and another alleged corrupt and low life politician. More insanity to follow.

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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

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

June, 2015, Part 5, Political Class Insanity: The IRS Is Still A Joke, The TSA Is Still A Joke, The Feds' Cash Management Is Still A Joke

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

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

1) We have previously shown that the Defense Department is really good at wasting taxpayer wealth. Numerous times we have reported on how the U.S. Navy built two warships almost to completion at a cost of $300 million and then spent another $10 million to dismantle and scrap them before they were ever used. We reported earlier this week on how the construction of the latest U.S. Navy aircraft carrier is already $300 million over budget and it is not completed yet.

But according to a recent Politico article, the Defense Department can waste money in much smaller quantities but in a no less despicable manner:

• According to a Defense Department audit analysis: “A Defense Department audit has found that a number of Pentagon employees used their government credit cards to gamble and pay for ‘adult entertainment’ — findings that are expected to lead department officials to issue stern new warnings.” 
• That’s right, taxpayer money being used for gambling across the country, specifically Las Vegas and Atlantic City, along with it being used for hookers and “escorts.”
• The wasteful spending was done by both military personnel and civilians working with the Pentagon.
• Besides just plain wasting taxpayer money, the activities were also used to cover up gambling and escort service usage from spouses: “A Pentagon official briefed on some of the findings stressed that the federal government did not necessarily pay the charges; holders of the cards pay their own bills and then submit receipts to be reimbursed for expenses related to their government business. The official said that the employees may have used the government cards for gambling and escort services in order to shield the charges from spouses.”
• The misuse and abuse of taxpayer money continued over the past three years despite a law that was passed in 2012 that was supposed to eliminate this type of waste.
• Unfortunately, the abuse is not restricted to the defense Department since Politico also reported that Federal employees in other government entities, including Homeland Security, the Department of Labor, and Bureau Of Land Management, also abused their government credit cards.
• The inspector general in the Department of Labor found that their employees in the Job Corps program charged nearly $100,000 to the government for haircuts, clothing, and personal cell phone service. 
• In the Department of Homeland Security, Coast Guard employees charged more than $12,000 at a single California coffee shop on their government issued credit cards.
• Three employees were fired and two resigned last year at the Bureau of Land Management after they charged a whopping $800,000 worth of gift cards on their government credit cards.

A few observations here:

• First, are you kidding me? Three years after Congress passed a law cracking down on this type of taxpayer abuse it is still going on at such mind boggling levels and across so many Federal entities?
• Why have these employees just been allowed to resign? They should have been prosecuted for breaking the law, made to pay back the money they abused, possibly go to jail, and forfeit any government pension or other benefits they may have been entitled to if they had not broken the law.
• In addition, their bosses, who allowed this fraud to go on, should be at least fired.

Only in Washington and government jobs are there no consequences for breaking the law.

2) I would assume most of our readers fly on a domestic U.S. airplane flight at least once in a while. In which case, we are always witnessed to what looks like extensive security screening by Federal employees of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) when we check in at the airport. Makes you feel kinda safe, seeing all of those Federal employees patting down 85 year old grandmothers and five year old kids to make sure they are not carrying any weapons onto your flight.

Well, think again. According to a recent ABC News scoop, it appears that the TSA failed to identify and stop undercover government agents from smuggling fake weapons through TSA screening stations an amazing 67 out of 70 times. Another way of saying the same thing is that the TSA was successful in their jobs 3 times out of 70, a miserable success rate of just over 4%.

Ask yourself: if you were successful in your job 4% of the time, how long would you have that job? Not very long I bet. The TSA budget is easily billions of dollars a year and they cannot do better than 4%? Pathetic.

But typical for government operations and employees. Many countries around the world and some airports in the U.Sl. use private company screeners for the TSA job at their airports. History shows that private contractors do a much better job than TSA screeners when it comes to airport security. Of course, at a 4% success rate, it is not too hard to do a much better job than TSA screeners. 

It is obvious what needs to be done: we need to adapt the more effective ways of other countries and hire private contractors to do the job the TSA has failed at miserably for the past fourteen years. It is so obvious you can be sure that Washington politicians will never come up with this simple solution.

3) Earlier in this political class insanity series this month we discussed the situation where likely Russian hackers broke into IRS computer files and stole the vital personal information of about 100,000 taxpayers, making those taxpayers much more susceptible to identity theft. The IRS commissioner then had the nerve to claim that the IRS did not have a security breach...despite the fact that hackers stole private information of 100,000 Americans.

Well, apparently the IRS commissioner also has another security breach and it is not in far away Russia, it was in an IRS office in St.Louis:

• An IRS employee in that office pled guilty recently to charges of tax fraud.
• Apparently, employee Demetria Brown stole $326,000 from the IRS when she used stolen taxpayer personal information to create fake tax returns, file them, and have the IRS tax refunds sent six different bank accounts in five different states.
• She carried out this embezzlement as an IRS employee for four years, from 2008 to 2011.
• She now faces up to 42 years in prison and $75,000 in fines according to news reports. Why she does not face fines at least equal to what she stole from the IRS and American taxpayers is unknown.

I wonder if the IRS commissioner would consider this a security breach or just an IRS employee doing her job?

4) Let’s finish up today’s insanity with another kick in the stomach of the IRS while they are down. According to a recent article by Stephen Dinan of the Washington Times: 

• A new audit of the IRS found that the IRS paid out at least $2.1 billion in bogus refunds in 2012 according to a new audit report.
• In addition, the IRS somehow found a way to pay out refunds on 600 tax refunds that were filed from the same address in….Kilkennny, Ireland.
• Let me repeat the previous example of insanity and ineptness: the IRS sent refund checks containing U.S. taxpayer money 600 times to the same address in Ireland.
• In another piece of ineptness, the IRS paid refunds on 133 different tax returns that all had the exact same bank account number.
• Just in 2012 alone that bank account was sent an amazing $800,000 form the IRS.
• In a major understatement, the IRS inspector general stated: “Identity theft continues to be a serious and evolving issue.” Ya think???

I have a few questions for the IRS commissioner:

• Is it too much trouble to have a little bit of computer code that says once you have sent a few dozen tax refunds to the same address in Ireland that maybe you do a little investigating?
• Is it too much trouble to have a little bit of computer code that says once you have sent a few dozen tax refunds to the same bank account that maybe you do a little investigating?
• Is it too much trouble to have a little bit of computer code that warns long before you send $800,000 to the same bank account?

Still hard to believe that the IRS commissioner does not think he has a security breach when people in Ireland are siphoning off thousands and thousands of taxpayer dollars.

That will do it for today’s insanity. We saw today that the IRS is still a joke, the TSA is still a joke, and the Federal government’s cash management is still a joke. Which makes every Washington politicians still a joke also.

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

December, 2013 Political Class Insanity, Part 1: General Motors Owes Us Billions Of Dollars, The Pentagon Owes Us Trillions of Dollars and More

It’s the start of another month which means its time again for as review of the latest insanity, wasteful spending and corruption that has recently occurred from the American political class. We have done these monthly reviews since 2009 and two clear conclusions have emerged:

• The ineptness and lunacy of how the political class behave has grown exponentially since 2009. What used to take a day or so to review now usually takes at least a week.
• We are suffering through the worst set of politicians this country has ever had to endure. Major and minor problems never get resolved and any efforts that do get put together by the political class just seem to make a bad situation worse.

With those two happy thoughts, let’s see what the politicians have done to us this past month.

1) The Associated Press reported on November 21, 2013 that the Federal government would sell its stake in General Motors by the end of the year. The government became a major owner in the company when it unnecessarily bailed out GM during the Great Recession.

The article reported that the American taxpayer will lose about $10 billion on the deal. This means that about every U.S. household spent about $90 each to keep the company alive in its present form rather than let the bankruptcy courts do their thing and have the General Motors bankruptcy cost the American taxpayer nothing. 

But the article goes on to explain that:

• The company currently has $26.8 billion in cash. This raises the obvious question: if the company is so flush with cash, why is it not paying back its entire debt to the American taxpayer, wiping out the $10 billion shortfall?
• General Motors has added 3,000 workers since the Great Recession. Dividing the 3,000 new workers into the $10 billion unpaid debt results in a cost per U.S. job created of $3,333,333 per job created. In other words, the promise that the bailout was good economic policy since it would create jobs is nonsense if it costs over $3 million to create one new job.
• Despite having $26.8 billion in cash reserves, the company has not paid any income taxes for years because it was able to shed its debt but carry its accumulated losses forward and avoid Federal income taxes, another hit to the U.S. taxpayer.

Just another bad bailout deal that has cost taxpayers billions of dollars with nothing in return.

2) Consider a recent news report from Reuters which disclosed how ridiculously poorly the Defense Department manages its financial affairs:

• The Pentagon cannot account for $8.5 trillion dollars of taxpayer money Congress has appropriated the Department of Defense since 1996.
• For the fiscal year 2012, it is “impossible to determine” how much of the $565 billion for the Pentagon budget was used for what it was supposed to be used for.
• According to the article, there exist numerous examples of unnecessary military spending in the Pentagon; there is about a half trillion dollars in unaudited contracts with private companies, and often there is no way to tell whether goods and services were ever actually delivered to the Defense Department.
• This is not a new problem since Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld stated in September, 2001 that there were possibly $2.3 TRILLION in Pentagon spending that couldn’t be tracked. In other words, twelve years have gone by and nothing has been done to track TRILLIONS of dollars in wasted taxpayer wealth.
• The article lays out just one of the problems by describing how every month Defense Department employees were told by their superiors to make up false numbers in the monthly accounting ledger entries to make them jive with other government agencies' reports even though they were wrong.

Such incompetence and falsifying accounting reports would get normal citizens arrested and thrown in jail for fraud. But nothing happens, no one is fired, no one goes to jail when the government does it and wastes TRILLIONS of taxpayer dollars over the years. No wonder we have a $17 TRILLION national debt.

3) We have often made the comparison on how Washington D.C. is actually a true life replica of the capital city in the “Hunger Games” books and movies. In the “Hunger Games,” ordinary citizens from around the country are heavily taxed in order to subsidize and support an outrageously lavish life style for the elite ruling class in the capital city.

A November 18, 2013 article from the St. Louis News Dispatch newspaper reinforces that image and reality, “D.C. Awash In Lobbyist, Contracts, Wealth:”

• During the past decade, the D.C. metro area has added 21,000 households whose earnings place them in the top 1% of all U.S. households with no other metro area even coming close to matching this growth rate.
• In 2010, a single Virginia Congressional district received $43 billion worth of Federal contracts, almost as much as the whole state of Texas received.
• Much of the wasteful spending is a result of 9-11 and the gigantic and unbridled increases in national defense-related spending, spending that was mostly unable to be tracked (see above).

The article goes on to describe the lobbyists feeding frenzy and government spending frenzy in the D.C. metro area. The very sad part of what is going on is that it's economy is not based on producing valued goods and services, it is based on lobbying for better tax breaks, favorable legislation, a bigger cut of unnecessary spending, etc. Very little societal benefits are resulting from this Hunger Games scenario.

I will not go into the gruesome details of how the American taxpayer is being fleeced by this environment, as laid out by this excellent, well researched article. You can read the extensive details at:

http://www.stltoday.com/news/national/govt-and-politics/d-c-awash-in-contracts-lobbying-wealth/article_53336d9b-a75f-5a1a-bb19-d46d3186a960.html

4) What would a month be without a major failure from the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA), those wonderful folks at airports that grope you on a random basis? In 2007, the TSA started the SPOT program, “Screening Of Passengers by Observation Techniques.” The program was supposed to train some TSA employees to stand around and just watch people, identifying those travelers that were acting suspicious, stressed or afraid, and could be terrorists.

A billion dollars and five years later, the General Accounting Office has issued a report that finds that SPOT is no more effective than random suspect targeting:

The meta-analyses we reviewed — which collectively included research from over 400 separate studies related to detecting deception conducted over the past 60 years — found that the ability of human observers to accurately identify deceptive behavior based on behavioral cues or indicators is the same as or slightly better than chance (54%).

Which raises an interesting question: why didn’t the Federal government do this comprehensive study BEFORE spending a billion dollars? Since they studied research from the past 60 years, the analysis could have been done five years ago before the taxpayer wealth was wasted. Insanely poor planning. But given the TSA history of poor planning, this is not surprising.

This will do it for today but there is plenty more insanity to cover in the next several posts. Keep in mind that probably the only way to minimize the insanity, given the incompetence of our current politicians, is to reduce the amount of taxpayer money they can waste. 

We need to get them focused on a much smaller set of functions and issues since they have proven that they currently cannot control any spending, cannot control a wasteful government bureaucracy, they cannot control the insanity. Maybe if we shrunk government and focused only on a few major issues, they might eventually resolve an issue. Today that focus does not exist and no issues, small or large, are ever resolved.

This was the main purpose of Step 1 from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government.” This step would reduce Federal government spending by 10% a year for five years, resulting in a much leaner government focused on a much smaller but overall more important set of priorities. Keep this proposal in mind as we go through the stupid wasteful spending and activities of the American political class over the next few days.

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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

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

TSA Horror Update, Part 2: How TSA Really Operates

Yesterday we did a review of the latest antics and outrages from the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA), the Federal entity that is supposed to keep airline traveling Americans safe. We learned that the organization failed to detect a fake bomb being smuggled onto a plane even though the undercover agent received a security patdown.

We learned that TSA decided it would be a good idea to update their agents uniforms despite an almost $17 TRILLION national debt and the fact that the $50 million wardrobe update would include buying the new uniforms from Mexican companies.

We learned that TSA security procedures were so slow and so bad that at least 11 individuals with real criminal backgrounds were given clearance passes to supposedly secure airport locations.

And to our amusement, we found out that a U.S. Senator is much like most Americans when she was made “uncomfortable” by a hand patdown by TSA agent at an airport gate when her hands registered a suspicious substance.

We concluded yesterday’s post with two suggestion on how fix the incompetence and better protect the traveling public. Very scary, very disgraceful behavior by a poorly performing government agency.

If you thought yesterday’s stories were harrowing, today will be even worse. The following paragraphs are lifted verbatim from a March 10, 2013 New York Post article. Rather than trying to summarize the contents of the article, I thought it better to read exactly what the article says since it is the a behind-the-scenes description of how the TSA actually operates, given by a former TSA employee from Newark Airport.

Newark Airport was where the fake bomb undercover operation took place, the operation where TSA screeners did not identify a fake bomb during security screening. I cannot say that this gentleman’s experience are true or if he is exaggerating the problems. However, given our previous research and writing on this topic, I would probably bet that most, if no all, of what he describes is pretty close to reality.

According to the Post article, the ex-TSA screener calls the TSA polices silly and that lazy workers do little to stop real terrorist and violent threats to Americans:

*********************************

A LOT of what we do is make-believe.

I’ve had to screen small children and explain to their parents I had no choice but to “check” them. I would only place my hands on their arms and bottom half of their legs, and the entire “pat-down” lasted 10 seconds. This goes completely against TSA procedure.

Because the cameras are recording our every move, we have to do something. If someone isn’t checked or even screened properly, the entire terminal would shut down, as this constitutes a security breach.

But since most TSA supervisors are too daft to actually supervise, bending the rules is easy to do.

Did you know you don’t need a high-school diploma or GED to work as a security screener? These are the same screeners that TSA chief John Pistole and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano refer to as a first-class first line of defense in the war on terror.

These are the employees who could never keep a job in the private sector. I wouldn’t trust them to walk my dog.

An agent got through Newark last week with an improvised explosive device? That’s not even news to anyone who works there. It happens all the time. The failure rate is pretty high, especially with federal investigators, and the pat-down itself is ridiculous. As invasive as it is, you still can’t find anything using the back of your hand on certain areas.

When there are internal tests, conducted by the Newark training department, it’s easy to cheat because they use our co-workers. You could be working with someone all morning, and then they’re gone. Word gets around the checkpoint. Someone will come over to you and say, “Hey, it’s Joe. He’s got a blue duffel bag.”

What are the chances of you being on a flight where something happens? We always said it’s not a question of if terrorists get through — it’s a question of when. Our feeling is nothing’s happened because they haven’t wanted it to happen. We’re not any big deterrent. It’s all for show.

A real pat-down is when a police officer pulls you over, uses his hands to search, actually goes into your clothes. We have to use the back of our hands around certain areas. It just doesn’t work. It’s a really bad way to pat somebody down.

If I had to guess, I’m sure lots of things get through. One screener told me about something he did going through security when he went on vacation. Let’s just say the screeners did not catch something that was really obvious to anyone who was paying attention.

Most TSA screeners know their job is a complete joke. Their goal is to use this as a stepping stone to another government agency.

We work in a culture where common sense has no place. All but a very few TSA personnel know they’re employed by a bottom-of-the-barrel agency.

Our first question to anyone in a wheelchair is to ask if they’re able to stand for a pat-down. If someone is in a wheelchair, he likely can’t stand. Even when they’re sitting, we’re required to ask them to move so we can check under their buttocks.

All I needed was for a passenger to fall over because I asked them to stand. And if that did happen, the screener would be vilified and the official p.r. spin would be that he needed “additional training.” Every time you read about a TSA horror story, it’s usually about a screener doing what he or she is instructed to do.

Supervisors play absolutely no role in day-to-day functions except to tell you not to chew gum. Gum chewing is a huge issue with management. I once saw a supervisor make an officer open his mouth to prove he had a mint and not a piece of gum.

Goofing off and half-hour-long bathroom breaks are the only way to break up the monotony. There is also a lot of ogling of female passengers by the male screeners. So, ladies, cover up when you get to the airport. These guys are checking you out constantly.

A small number of screeners are delusional zealots who believe they’re keeping America safe by taking your snow globe, your 2-inch pocket knife, your 4-ounce bottle of shampoo and performing invasive pat-downs on your kids.

(Incidentally, the flap over the new rule allowing small pocketknives is overblown. Most of the public doesn’t realize it, but you are already allowed to bring scissors, screwdrivers, tweezers, knitting needles and any number of sharp instruments on board.)

The rest are only there for the paycheck and generous benefits. Screeners start at $15 per hour, and there is tons of overtime — mainly because they are filling in for the many screeners who don’t bother coming to work. For every 40 hours you work, you receive four hours of vacation and four hours of sick time.

One screener didn’t come to work for four weeks. When he finally reappeared, he asked for another week off. The answer was no. So what did this brainiac decide to do? He took another week off — and didn’t get terminated.

People have been caught falling asleep on the job. They get written up, it’s put in their file, and that’s it.

New hires see how bad it is working there, and, believe it or not, TSA does manage to hire some pretty decent people. They just don’t last because they can get a normal job.

It’s the people who’ve been there a good number of years who could never find employment elsewhere. When you have a real job, it usually means you have to actually work and think, which a lot of them have a hard time doing.

Anyone boarding an aircraft should feel maybe only a teeny tiny bit safer than if there were no TSA at all.

*****************************

Let’s review some of the descriptions that were used to describe the worker environment within the TSA:

• Supervisors are too daft to actually supervise.
• Bending the rules is easy to do.
• Failure rate is pretty high.
• We’re not any big deterrent.
• It’s all for show.
• Lots of things get through.
• Their job is a complete joke.
• Gum chewing is a huge issue for management.
• People have been caught sleeping on the job.

Scary, scary stuff. Incompetent people managed by incompetent management, all doing an incompetent job of protecting Americans. And everyone knows about the situation, except all but one member of Congress (Senator McCaskill) which probably explains why the situation is never addressed, failures are never fired, and taxpayer wealth is constantly wasted for an illusion of safety and security.

This is a disaster waiting to happen, a disaster that will not be pretty and which would have been totally avoidable if our two suggestions from yesterday’s post had been implemented:

1) The United States is one of the few countries in the world where the government operates almost every aspect of airport security. Most countries do it far better than us by using outside experts and companies that are professionals, not government employees. And we have previously discussed the fact that when some domestic airports have used private, professional security firms, the results have been much more efficient, save, and less expensive, as proven by the private/Federal Screening Partnership Program:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2011/06/transportation-security-adminstration.html

2) TSA continues to be a great example of why Step 34 from “Love My Country, Loathe My Government” is so desperately needed. Step 34 would remove all Congressional committee members from committees that do not adequately do their job. In this case, we have known for a long time what Senator McCaskill has just found out: TSA is a bloated, ineffective, and fourth amendment rights destroying government bureaucracy.

Until these two steps are executed, I think I’ll drive.

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.reason.com/
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w
 

More TSA Horror Stories, Part 1: A Senator Gets Groped, Fake Bombs Get Through, But The New Uniforms Are Marvelous

The Transportation Safety Administration has always been a fertile ground for material used in this blog. They have shown over the years to be one of the most incompetent, wasteful, useless, and freedom destroying Federal government organizations across just about any measure. Some of the previous posts that were dedicated to their insanity included the following:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2011/06/transportation-security-adminstration.html

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2012/10/november-2012-political-class-insanity.html

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2012/05/wasteful-government-spending-week-tsa.html

These are just a small subset of TSA screw ups from the past few years. You can use the search feature in the upper left corner of this blog to search other mishaps and affronts to the American traveling public.

Today’s blog will be devoted to a review of the latest shenanigans from the TSA, the organization that keeps on giving when it comes to incompetence:

1) We have already covered this first bit of recent TSA news but wanted to do it again. In the light of shutting down White House tours because of the budget sequester, an annual cost of under $1 million, the TSA announced that it was spending $50 million to retrofit the uniforms that TSA officers wear while on the job.

Call me silly but it seems that the current uniforms did the job quite well and that the $50 million unnecessarily spent on new uniforms would have been much better spent keeping the White House tours function going for the next fifty years. And to add insult to injury, news reports are now reporting that the new uniforms will be purchased from a company in Mexico and thus, the $50 million will not even be used to help the U.S. economy, the wealth will be sent to Mexico.

2) The New York Post recently ran an article that reported on a major TSA screw up involving an undercover TSA agent that was able to smuggle a fake bomb onto an airliner despite going through two TSA security checks. Unbelievably, one of the security checks included an actual pat down from TSA employees who failed to detect the fake bomb.

This failure comes on the heels of a recent announcement that TSA agents will no longer worry about passengers bringing small knives onto airplanes, another bit of insanity in itself. The justification for allowing small knives to be carried onto airplanes is that it will allow TSA screeners to concentrate on more dangerous materials like say, bombs!

So now, taking these two news stories together, TSA will allow sharp objects onto planes AND not be able to detect bombs even given their increased focus. No thanks, I’ll drive to my destination. I remember that the 9-11 hijackers/terrorists were able to carry out their death and destruction without bombs but with small sharp instruments. Has the TSA forgotten that reality?

3) A recent report from the Department of Homeland Security’s Inspector General’s office had some more bad news on TSA incompetence. According to the Inspector General’s research, TSA allowed airports to issue security badges to employees without conducting Federally required background checks between April 20 and June 1 of 2012 because the TSA had a heavy backlog of security checks work yet to be done.

As a result of their incompetence, the airports issued security badges to at least 11 individuals with criminal backgrounds that allowed these past criminals easy access to secure areas of U.S. airports, i.e. allowed unescorted access to secured areas of airports. The investigation concluded that there still may be individuals with criminal records who are working in secured areas of airports.

Let’s review: members of the Federal government, including some in Congress, want all law abiding citizens to go through extensive background checks before they can use their Second Amendment rights to purchase a gun. But other parts of the Federal government, i.e. TSA, have no problem allowing criminals to access secure areas of airports where the potential for death and destruction is very high. Talk about incompetence and hypocrisy.

4) This last item shows how out of touch Washington politicians are with the reality of common Americans. Senator Claire McCaskill was recently subjected to a patdown while traveling through airport security. You know, the kind of affront and groping experience that millions of Americans have had to endure since 9-11 and she did not like the experience, tweeting out the following message: “Today in my airport screening, test on my hands was positive. Got private, more aggressive pat down. OMG. #veryuncomfortable”

That is what America has been telling Washington for the past ten years, it is very uncomfortable to have your body groped or to see your kid’s body groped by a government employee. Uncomfortable? Is she just finding this out now? More importantly, what is she going to do about it?

It is fun, though, when a politician gets hit in the face with the reality of everyday Americans.

All of this gets us to two important points:

- The United States is one of the few countries in the world where the government operates every aspect of airport security. Most countries do it far better than us by using outside experts and companies that are professionals, not government employees. And we have previously discussed the fact that when some domestic airports have used private, professional security firms, the results have been much more efficient, save, and less expensive, as proven by the private/Federal Screening Partnership Program:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2011/06/transportation-security-adminstration.html

- TSA continues to be a great example of why Step 34 from “Love My Country, Loathe My Government” is so desperately needed. Step 34 would remove all Congressional committee members from committees that do not adequately do their job. In this case, we have known for a long time what Senator McCaskill has just found out: TSA is a bloated, ineffective, and fourth amendment rights destroying government bureaucracy.

Those Washington politicians sitting on the Congressional committees responsible for oversight of the TSA should be replaced with other members of Congress that might actually provide some effective and efficient oversight of the TSA mess. Those politicians that have been on those committees over time have certainly bungled their jobs.

That is enough TSA horror stories for today. Tomorrow we will dedicate the entire post to the actual experiences of a former TSA employee and how bad the situation really is, as told by a former insider. After tomorrow, you may never fly again.

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.reason.com/
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

March, 2013 Political Class Insanity, Part 6: New Wardrobes, New Weapons, and Other Wasteful Insanity

Okay, finally, I promise, this will be the last political class insanity post for this month. It has taken us six posts to get through all of the garbage the American political class has created over the past month or so. We discussed the corruption of a U.S. Congressman who now faces serious jail time, wasteful spending, politicians’ horrid math skills, and more. It is so sad that as we go through time, the performance in Washington and state houses around the country continues to degenerate and get so bad.

Today will be a quick look at what the Federal government still wastes our money on based on research from a number of sources. Consider this atrocious misuse of taxpayer money in light o the childlike temper tantrum that President Obama has been throwing over the past few weeks, insisting that the budget sequester, that he proposed and agreed to, would devastate government functions and the U.S. economy. His insistence that the sequester spending reduction of only about 2% was catastrophic was the ultimate “the sky is falling” charade in the history of the U.S. government.

Let’s start with a checklist of bad government expenditures from Alan Caruba who wrote the following for CSN news on March 4, 2013. I cannot verify all of his assertions are correct but since some of them have been researched, verified, and covered in past posts to this blog, I am assuming that the rest of them are legitimate:

-The government spends $1.7 billion for maintenance on empty buildings it owns, although some sources put the figure at closer to $25 billion. The Office of Management and Budget estimates that 55,000 properties are underutilized or entirely vacant.

-The federal government owns approximately one-third of all U.S. land. It does not need more land and it could be argued that it should not own 80% of Nevada and Alaska, and more than half of Idaho.

- Nevertheless, the Federal government wants to spend another $2.3 billion to purchase more land and the National park Service currently has a backlog of maintenance tasks totaling $5 billion.

- Tom Schatz, president of Citizens Against Government Waste, the Department Of Homeland Security has $9 billion in unspent preparedness funds and thus, there was no need to release thousands of criminal illegal aliens.

- Republican lawmakers in Congress took the sequester fear-mongering as an opportunity to note, as Rep. Tom Price (R-GA) said, “There are pots of money sitting in different departments across the federal government, that have been authorized over either a number of months or years.”

- Rep. Tom Coburn (R-OK) identified programs to fund a space ship to another solar system, funds for advancements in beef jerky from France, and $6 billion for research to find out what lessons about democracy and decision-making can be learned—from fish!

- The National Science Foundation gave a $350,000 grant to Purdue University researchers on how to improve your golf game.

- The National Institutes of Health gave a $940,000 grant to researchers who found that the production of pheromones in—wait for it—fruit flies, declines over time.

- The NIH also paid researchers to find out why gay men in Argentina engage in risky sexual behavior when they’re drunk and spent $800,000 in “stimulus funds” to study the impact of a “genital-washing” program on men in South Africa.

- Various entities of the government have spent $3 million for research on video games; $2.6 million to train Chinese prostitutes to drink responsibly; $500 million on a program that would try to figure out why five-year-olds “can’t sit still” in a kindergarten classroom; and grants such as $1.8 million on a “museum of neon signs” in Las Vegas, Nevada.

-Sanity does not apply to the $2 billion given annually to U.S. farmers to not farm their land.

But Mr. Caruba is not the only source of flagrant government waste. Recent reports have found that the Department of Homeland Security, a supposed non-police and non-military entity of the federal government has been awfully busy buying billions of dollars worth of police and military gear:

• DHS has recently purchased 2 billion bullets (enough to fight the War in Iraq for 25 years) and 7,000 fully automatic assault rifles
• In February, the DHS spent $2,000,000 buying “no hesitation” targets depicting old folks, pregnant women, and small children holding guns. The purpose behind this type of target it is to train law enforcement officials to overcome their instinctive reluctance to fire on those soft targets.
• In September 2012, the DHS recently retrofitted 2,717 Mine Resistant Protected armored vehicles, which are intended for use on American streets.

Given that we already have various levels of police and the largest military force in the history of the world, why is the Obama administration wasting billions of dollars on police and military gear that is absolutely not needed for an entity that should not have armed responsibility.

The last thing a sane person does in a budget crisis is to go on a clothes shopping spree. However, the Federal government is not a sane entity which explains why it recently spent $50 million on NEW UNIFORMS!

Keep in mind that none of these expenditures were critical to the daily functioning of American families or the U.S. economy. They just wasted taxpayer wealth, making the Obama temper tantrum that much more irresponsible.

His reaction to the sequester? He had his staff shut down school children’s tours of the White House, part of his reported vindictive effort to make these minor budget cuts as painful as possible for ordinary Americans.

Vindictiveness, certainly not a trait one wants in their national leadership. But certainly a trait of our insane, inane, vindictive, wasteful, and incompetent American political class.

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.reason.com/
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w