September, 2017, Part 4, Political Class Insanity: Accounting Scandal At HUD, The Clinton Crime Syndicate Update 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) Democrats flipped out when they found out that Ben Carson was going to take over the Federal department, Housing and Urban (HUD). He had no experience in the Federal government bureaucracy, as if that was a good thing given how badly the Federal government bureaucracy actually worked and he had no housing industry experience. They seem to ignore the fact that he grew up poor in housing projects, giving him first hand experience with government housing programs, and that he is really, really smart.

So smart that just being months in the job he uncovered some really nasty goings on with HUD:

• One of the first things Carson did once in place was to conduct an audit of the HUD organization.
• The turned up an amazing $520 billion in bookkeeping errors.
• Which makes you wonder how the Obama administration and their administration of HUD somehow missed this whopping problem.
• According to the auditors: “The total amounts of errors corrected in HUD’s notes and consolidated financial statements were $516.4 billion and $3.4 billion, respectively.” 

Not bad for someone the Democrats thought was unqualified for the job. Makes you wonder how much of that half a trillion dollars in bookkeeping errors was siphoned off by criminals, political friends of the Democrats, or just pure wasteful and inefficient government. Also makes you wonder how many more trillions of dollars are also being hidden by “bookkeeping errors” throughout the Federal government bureaucracy.

2) It has always been our opinion that Hillary Clinton,while Secretary of State under Obama, was essentially operating a crime syndicate that probably even the Mafia envied. The syndicate tied together three components:

1. The ability of Hillary Clinton to grant favors and direct, or misdirect State Department affairs, to suit certain parties.
2. These parties would offer up large donations to the Clinton Foundation in exchange for access to Hillary and the favors she could grant them for contributing to the Foundation.
3. These same parties would often give husband Bill Clinton huge “speaking fees” after Hillary had granted special favors, making Bill and Hillary richer and richer.

Proof and examples of how this crime syndicate worked was recently uncovered by Judicial Watch which forced the government to release Clinton State Department emails via a Freedom Of Information Act request, as reported by Kyle Becker, writing for the Independent Review website last month:

• Many of the released emails involved Huma Abedin who was Clinton’s most trusted top aid during her time as Secretary of State and as a Presidential candidate.
• These emails had not been disclosed earlier even though Clinton claimed that all of her State Department emails had been turned over, according to Judicial Watch: “The documents included 91 Clinton email exchanges not previously turned over to the State Department, bringing the known total to date to at least 530 emails that were not part of the 55,000 pages of emails that Clinton turned over to the State Department, and further contradicting a statement by Clinton that, “as far as she knew,” all of her government emails had been turned over to the State Department. [...]”
• Many of the emails showed how Clinton Foundation donors used their contributions for access to and favors from Hillary as Secretary of State.
• Howard Buffett, Jr., the grandson of Warren Buffett, sought a meeting for his father, Howard Sr., with Hillary Clinton to discuss 'food security,' a meeting that Bill Clinton aid Ben Schwerin tried to arrange through Abedin, which she said “we will take care of this.”
• In April, 2009, Puerto Rican telecom executive, Miguel Lausell, who supposedly made a personal one million dollar donation to the Clinton Foundation and who was a member of the Clinton Global Initiative, asked Abedin via a third party to push for an acquaintance/friend to be made U.S. ambassador to the Dominican Republic.
• Also in April, 2009, the Managing Director of a left wing fundraising group called Democracy Alliance emailed Abedin and asked them to “reach out” to someone who was an “extremely loyal supporter” and get that person a job at a senior level in the State Department.
• In all of these emails Abedin always appears to be amenable to providing these favors and is actively involved in the contacts.

The perfect crime syndicate set up.

3) California is not in good fiscal shape, It has unfunded liabilities in the hundreds of billions of dollars. It has high levels of short term and long term debt. It has high levels of poverty and its schools and infrastructure (streets, dams, bridges) are in horrible shape. One would hope that the state political class would be doing all it could to help its legal citizens get better services from the state government.

But as always when dealing with American politicians, hope is a concept that never materializes. According to various news reports:

• According to the Los Angeles Department of Public Social Services, the city of LA paid out about $1.3 billion in welfare payments in 2015 and 2016 to illegal immigrants living in that city.
• That was about 20% of all money paid out by the city in welfare payments in that time period.
• The Department found that 58,000 illegal immigrant families received $602 million in benefits in 2015 and 64,000 families received $675 million in 2016.
• LA county’s total budget for welfare in those two years was about $6 billion, yielding a rate of about 20% of the total budget gong to legal immigrants.

Some may call me racist but really, over a billion dollars given out to people that are not here legally to begin with? How many actual citizens could have received more and better housing options with that $1.3 billion? How many actual citizens could have received relevant job training to get them back into the workforce for that $1.3 billion? How many actual citizens could have received drug addiction treatment to help them turn around their lives? Instead, illegal immigrants, technically criminals, got to use $1.3 billion of taxpayer wealth without doing anything to deserve it.

Okay, that’s my rant for the day. Citizens getting shortchanged in California, rich people get valuable favors from a high ranking government official, and Federal bureaucracy bookkeeping errors that likely costs American taxpayers untold billions of dollars every year. 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.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

July, 2015, Part 4, By The Numbers: A Hopeful Set Of Numbers Vs. Politician Induced Numbers

On a semi-regular basis, and for the past three days, we have revisited the theme "by the numbers" just to check in on the state of the country and political class using actual realities and their underlying numbers, not the spin or lies from our politicians. You see, politicians usually have nothing to gain by looking at reality and the numbers since they are more than likely to have screwed up reality and our lives in the first place.

That is why they would rather lie and deceive than tell the truth. But that approach can be destroyed by looking at the hard numbers behind the mess they have created. I once worked for a boss whose favorite saying was: "There is nothing more devastating to an opinion than the right number.” And that is what we try to do with this theme, devastate politicians’ opinions by looking at the right numbers.

So for the past three days we have taken a look at the numbers that have recently cropped up and again prove that the political class in America continues to be one of the worst set of people to ever hold office, given the state of the country, the many ways they screw up our wealth and government functions, and their inability or non-desire to step up and tell the truth.

Today, we will take a slightly different look with a set of good numbers that show good things and good numbers can happen when the government and the American political class are NOT involved in our lives. But before we do that, let’s look at just a very small set of examples of financial mismanagement of the American political class that we have previously discussed in this blog and why the less money given to politicians, the more good society reaps:

• Through mismanagement and outright criminal fraud, the Federal government wastes or is cheated out of about $200 billion a year via the Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid programs.
• The IRS sent over 600 bogus tax refunds to the same mailing address...in Ireland.
• The U.S. Navy spent about $300 million to build two Navy ships almost to completion and then spent another $10 billion of taxpayer money to dismantle the ships before they were ever used.
• The Clinton State Department spent $40 million to build a U.S. consulate in the hinterlands of Afghanistan and then abandoned the project when they realized it could not be defended against a terrorist attack.
• The Obama Care process was recently shown to be giving out billions of dollars in tax subsidies that were not deserved. 

We could go on for a very long time with other examples of mismanagement by the political class and the government functions they operate but you get the idea. For other examples of such nonsense, just review any of our political class insanity posts that start off each month or enter the search phrase, “why no American” should pay another penny in taxes in the search box above.

Okay, we go through that set up to review a recent Forbes article that listed out which 24 people/married couples had given the most to charities in 2014. The article was based on a list compiled by the Chronicle of Philanthropy.

Bill and Melinda Gates donated the most to charity in 2014, in excess of $1.5 billion. While worth $78.7 billion, according to Forbes‘ calculations, the Gates and Warren Buffett formed the Giving Pledge in 2010, inviting other philanthropists to join them in promising to give away more than half of their fortunes during their lifetimes. So far, 128 people have joined the pledge. I would assume that some of those 128 people are also included on this 2014 Forbes list:

1. Bill Gates, At least $1.5 billion, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Trust

2. Ralph C. Wilson Jr. (deceased), $1 billion (bequest), Ralph C. Wilson, Jr. Foundation

3. Ted Stanley, $652.4 million, Broad Institute and other groups

4. Jan Koum, $556 million, Silicon Valley Community Foundation

5. Sean Parker, $550 million, Sean N. Parker Foundation and Sean Parker Foundation Donor Advised Fund at Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund

6. Nicholas and Jill Woodman, $500 million, Silicon Valley Community Foundation

7. Michael Bloomberg, $462 million, Arts, education, environment, and public-health groups, and programs aimed at improving city governments around the world

8. Rachel Lambert (Bunny) Mellon (deceased), $411.3 million (bequest), Gerard B. Lambert Foundation and other groups

9. Sergey Brin, $382.8 million, Brin Wojcicki Foundation

10. Paul Allen, $298 million, Paul G. Allen Family Foundation; Allen Institute for Cell Science

11. John and Laura Arnold, $218.4 million, Laura and John Arnold Foundation and other groups

12. Pam and Pierre Omidyar, $180 million, Omidyar Network, Humanity United, Ulupono Initiative, HopeLab, and other groups

13. Larry Page, $177.3 million, Carl Victor Page Memorial Foundation

14. Marc and Lynne Benioff, $154 million, University of California at San Francisco Benioff Children’s Hospital and other groups

15.T. Denny Sanford, $150.5 million, Sanford Health Foundation, South Dakota Community Foundation and other groups

16. Kenneth Griffin, $150 million, Harvard University

17. Ernest and Evelyn Rady, $121 million, Rady Children’s Hospital of San Diego, University of California at San Diego, Rady School of Management

18. Sidney and Caroline Kimmel, $115.5 million, Sidney Kimmel Foundation

19. Connie and Steve Ballmer, $110 million, Harvard University, University of Oregon

20. Fred Eshelman, $103 million, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Eshelman School of Pharmacy

21. Gert Boyle (tie), $102 million, Oregon Health & Science University Foundation

21. John P. and Tashia Morgridge (tie), $102 million, University of Wisconsin at Madison, Wisconsin Technology Initiative and other groups

23. Irwin and Joan Jacobs, $101.6 million, Joan and Irwin Jacobs Fund at the Jewish Community Foundation of San Diego, University of California at San Diego Jacobs Medical Center, High Tech High Foundation and other groups

24. Herb Kohl (tie), $100 million, Greater Milwaukee Foundation

24. Dennis and Carol Troesh (tie), $100 million, Loma Linda University Health

Just these 24 top donors gave out over $8 billion to charities, universities, and worthy humanity causes in a single year. Now, ask yourself: would you rather tax these people more and have those additional taxes get into the hands of Washington politicians who have proven that they cannot run efficient social programs, that they build unnecessary Navy ships and consulate buildings, that they fraudulently send taxpayer wealth to Ireland and who knows what other locations around the world, and waste our wealth and tax dollars in thousands of other ways or would you rather keep tax rates the same, or lower, so that Americans can contribute more and directly to the humanity causes they want to support? 

The numbers make this choice a no brainer. Direct contributions directly to needy causes as we see above are far more effective than general tax contributions to the Federal government bureaucracy that shows no ability to spend efficiently or effectively.

That will do it for this month’s “by the numbers” update. Hopefully, the good numbers of today offset the depressing set of numbers from the previous three 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

May, 2015, Part 2, Why No American Should Pay An Additional Penny In Federal Taxes

Hundreds of times we have shown in this blog how the Federal government and the Washington political class have wasted untold trillions of dollars of taxpayer wealth over the years. This has left the taxpayers nothing in return to show for their money except a whopping $18 TRILLION national debt. Many times the money was spent on one time, wasteful projects:

• The Navy built two new ships almost to completion at a cost of $300 million only to spend another $10 million to junk them immediately.
• Hillary Clinton’s State Department spent $40 million to build a U.S. consulate in the hinterlands of Afghanistan only to find out after spending the money that it had to be abandoned because it could not withstand a terrorist attack.
• The TSA purchased hundreds of millions of dollars of equipment for airport security in order to get a bigger discount but ended up not using a high percentage of the equipment anyway, leaving it stacked in a warehouse never to be seen or used.
• The National Science Foundation has spent millions and millions of dollars on such inane projects as building a video game to simulate prom week, studying when dog became man’s best friend, determining of dating sites were racist and other equally useless projects.

But many of these one time wastes of money pale in comparison to the money that is consistently wasted in the same manner year in and year out:

• Medicare and Medicaid lose upwards of $100 billion every year due to inefficiencies and outright criminal fraud.
• Social Security loses upwards of $100 billion every year due to inefficiencies and outright criminal fraud.
• Other welfare programs such as Federal housing support and food assistance lose billions and billions of dollars every year due to inefficiencies and outright criminal fraud.
• The IRS loses billions of dollars every year to identity theft in the income tax filing system every year.
• The IRS is so inept that it admits that it fails to collect almost $400 billion a year from tax evaders.
• The President’s debt reduction commission easily identified $100 billion a year that could be removed from the Pentagon’s annual budget without endangering national security.

Thus, it is pretty obvious that no American, no matter how rich or poor, should [pay a penny more in taxes given that the Federal government and the Washington politicians that operate it easily waste or fail to collect a whopping $800 billion or so EVERY YEAR.

But this reality is apparently lost on a Georgia Congressman. 

Hank Johnson recently stated that when it comes to taxes, “we [Washington politicians] don’t have enough [taxes] to do what the government - and do what the country needs the government to do and that’s the problem.”

The Congressman went on: “If everyone is paying their fair share of taxes than we certainly should and can live within our means. But our problem now is that taxes are being paid by the middle class. The rich, the wealthy and the corporations are not paying their fair share and so therefore we don’t have enough to do what the government and do what the country needs the government to do and that’s the problem.”

Note: before you consider whether the Congressman’s position has any merit, remember that this is the same Congressman who claimed in public:

• That the island of Guam might tip over in the middle of the ocean if too many U.S.military resources were placed on the island. That’s right, he actually stated in a Congressional committee meeting that an island could tip over.
• He also lamented the possibility that there would not be enough helium gas to blow up birthday balloons if Congress stopped funding a Federal storage facility for helium.

Yesterday we focused on how much the Federal government and the Washington political class wastes of taxpayer money every day of every year and how inane and out of touch politicians like Hank Johnson are when they ignorantly claim that more Americans need to pay more taxes. 

We reviewed any number of credible sources and analyses that constantly show that a very small percentage of people in this country pay a very high percentage of the Federal tax bill. And with more and more of these wealthier people renouncing their citizenship every year and moving away, taking their tax payments with them, that means that the rest of us will end up paying more and more in taxes unless our politicians finally get a handle on wasteful spending.

But the odds of that happening are probably pretty slim, given that they have no even tried despite being shown where the wasteful and useless spending is within the budget. Obama actually commissioned a blue ribbon commission to identify the waste, which they did and which he promptly ignored. 

Today, let’s explode another Congressman Johnson fantasy by showing that no matter how much you tax the high earners and the wealthy in this country, it will make absolutely no difference in the quality of life for every citizen or the financial chaos of the Federal government.

Our proof of this last assertion rests on some simple logic and math:

• The Federal government spends about $4 TRILLION a year.
• Let’s round it off and assume that the Federal government spends about $11 billion a DAY.
• According to the latest Forbes analysis, Bill Gates is the richest American with a net worth of about $81 billion.
• Congressman Johnson and other politicians want to tax people like Bill Gates more.
• But let's assume that Johnson et al get the ultimate politician wish and do not just raise taxes on a wealthy person’s income but that they confiscate EVERYTHING that the wealthy person owns.
• In the Gates case, if the Washington political class took everything Bill Gates owns, it could use that wealth to operate the Federal government for a grand total of … about seven days, just over one week.
• It could pay off only .45% of the national debt, less one half of one percent.
• Not only that, whatever Federal income tax Gates would have paid in the following years would now be equal to zero since it is doubtful he would ever work again, knowing that the Federal government could come along and take everything he owns. This would force the rest of the taxpayers to make up the difference.

Taking everything the richest American owns could support the Federal government bureaucracy for only a week or so. So taking less than that, something that Congressman Johnson and others would like to do would be even far smaller. 

How much smaller? Let’s assume that Bill Gates earns $8 billion a year, a totally made up number, 10% of his current net worth. And that Johnson raises his Federal income tax rate by 10% which yields an additional $800 million a year to the Federal government. In this case, taxing Bill Gates income at a 10% higher rate could result in tax revenue that could operate the Federal government for...about an hour and 45 minutes. This would pay off .004% of the national debt.

Don’t these politicians ever do any simple math before opening their simple mouths? You cannot fix what is wrong with this country by raising taxes, there are not enough rich people to get it done.You have to cut spending, starting with the hundreds of billions of dollars wasted every year by Washington.

Let’s take this imaginary confiscation example and extend to other rich Americans, first assuming that the Washington political class took EVERYTHING they earned and somehow turned it into cash:

Bill Gates $81 billion - could operate the Federal government for just over 7 days.

Warren Buffet $67 billion - just over 6 days.

Larry Ellison $50 billion - about 4 and a half days.

Charles Koch $42 billion - just under 4 days.

David Koch $42 billion - just under 4 days.

Christy Walton $38 billion - about 3 and a half days.

Jim Walton $36 billion - about 3 and a quarter days.

Mike Bloomberg $35 billion - not even 3 and a quarter days.

Alice Walton $35 billion- not even 3 and a quarter days.

Robson Walton $35 billion - not even 3 and a quarter days.

Mark Zuckerberg $34 billion - just over 3 days.

Sheldon Adelson $32 billion - just under 3 days.

Larry Page $31.5 billion - just under 3 days.

Sergey Brin $31 billion - just under 3 days.

Jeff Bezos $30.5 billion - about 2 and three quarters day.

Total - $620 billion which could operate the Federal government for only 56 days, less than two months, about eight weeks or pay off only 3.6% of the national debt.

As with the Bill Gates example above, you cannot make this work even if you take EVERYTHING the richest 15 Americans own in their lives. You could only operate the government for two months in only one year because in the following years these people would have nothing to contribute Federal tax wise. Which means that everyone else would have to make up the difference.

If we continue the Gates example with the 15 richest Americans, than that $620 billion becomes $62 billion which could not operate the Federal government for even a week. And, if you used that money to operate the government, you still have not paid off any part of the growing and dangerously high national debt.

No matter what people like Hank Johnson say, taxing the wealthy even more cannot overcome the out of control spending and government waste of people like Hank Johnson. All this kind of rhetoric does is divide America, waste more wealth, allow the debt to soar, and get nothing accomplished. And remember, this economic wisdom is coming from a man who was worried a Pacific island would tip over take anything he says with a huge grain of sand.

Note: we have already shown how to take trillions of dollars out of the Federal government’s budget without negatively impacting government operations and returning trillions of dollars to pay down our debt and pay back taxpayers. That analysis can be seen at:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2012/12/day-7-eight-days-of-logic-and-sanity.html

The analysis was developed by someone who knows that Pacific islands cannot tip over.

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

July, 2013 Obama Care Update, Part 4: Obama Care Strangling Medicare, Ohio Insurance Policies up 88% and More

This is our fourth post in this update series on the failure that is Obama Care. According to experts and the latest news reports, budgets are already falling short for some segments of the legislation, some of the programs are already shut down, and looking forward, plans are grossly inadequate or way behind schedule. And most importantly, the legislation is not reducing costs or providing quality health care.

How much else could go wrong with one piece of legislation? The following points try to answer that question:

1) The Ohio Department of Insurance recently predicted that Ohio residents will see their individual policy health insurance rates increase 88% in 2014 because of Obama Care. Lt. Governor Mary Taylor recently stated in Forbes magazine that, “We have warned of these increases. Consumers will have fewer choices and pay much higher premiums for their health insurance starting in 2014.”

Higher cost, less variety and choices. Does not get much worse than that.

2) A Heritage Foundation analysis that was posted on its website on June 3, 2013 pointed out how Obama Care will decimate Medicare and hurry its demise. First, recall from a previous post that Medicare’s Part A trust fund is expected to be bankrupt  by 2026 and the overall program has a long-term unfunded obligation of more than $35 trillion.

But under Obama Care, Medicare’s budget is going to be slashed by over $700 billion in the next ten years, budget resources that will be redirected to Obama Care’s needs and budget. Thus, Medicare’s financial status gets much worse, not better under Obama Care.

Heritage quotes a study by the Congressional Budget Office which concluded these budget cuts will hit health care  providers such as hospitals, nursing homes, skilled nursing facilities, and hospices. The Medicare trustees predict that if Congress allows these cuts to go into effect, 15% of Medicare providers would go in the red by 2019, 25% by 2030, and 40% by 2050.

And two things are likely to happen, neither of them good, if this red ink scenarios come to past: “Providers could not sustain continuing negative margins and would have to withdraw from serving Medicare beneficiaries or (if total facility margins remained positive) shift substantial portions of Medicare costs to their non-Medicare, non-Medicaid payers.” In other words, many senior citizens could lose access to their medical care or costs could go up for everyone, the exact opposite  of what Obama Care was supposed to do.

3) A June 2, 2013 article from The Hill reported that there are at least two major sets of lawsuits still pending against Obama Care’s tenets:

1. One set of lawsuits accuses the Internal Revenue Service of illegally implementing new subsidies to help people buy insurance that is in conflict with the actual text of the legislation.
2. Additionally, more than 60 lawsuits have been filed challenging the law’s mandate for health plans to cover birth control.

Dozens of lawsuits still pending and dozens of implementation failures so far, this is one loser piece of legislation.

4) The Wegman’s supermarket chain has historically had a very good health insurance program for its part time workers. It was a voluntary program, offered to any employee who worked at least 20 hours a week. However,  the chain recently announced that it would be discontinuing the program because of the requirements of Obama Care, the additional costs imposed on them would be too much. 

Thus, another group of Americans see that Obama broke his promise when he vowed that if you like your health insurance you can keep it under the Obama Care legislation. Not so much at Wegman’s and hundreds of other companies across the country.

5) One of the attributes of Obama Care is that if an American was not financially well off, they could qualify for Federal tax subsidies to help pay for health care coverage. The process was that IRS tax records would be electronically and automatically correlated with a person’s application for financial help and if they fell below certain income thresholds, they would get government assistance.

There was a major problem with this process when it was formulated. Let’s say that a person made $100,000 a year and correctly filed that amount on their tax return. However, since they filed that return, they lost their job and their income went to zero. The IRS/Obama Care process would have denied them financial assistance despite their zero income level since the benchmark was when they were earning $100,000 a year.

Reverse the process. Let’s assume a person was unemployed and had zero income, an amount they correctly filed with their IRS tax return. However, soon after they filed that return, they got a job paying $100,000 a year. Thus, if they filed for Federal financial assistance, they would qualify because in the eyes of Obama Care, they had zero income.

Insanity. Apparently, tax filing timing, not true need, would drive the eligibility of financial assistance. Additionally, this process insanely only looks at recent income levels, not wealth levels.
Consider this extreme example. Assume that Warren Buffet turned all of his assets into physical cash, stuck in in a giant safety deposit box and decided not to work for a year. Under Obama Care, he would qualify for Federal assistance because he had a zero income level, DESPITE the fact that he had billions of dollars in his possession in a safety deposit box. Idiotic planning and reasoning on the part of Obama Care’s writers.

But the situation is far worse than this lunacy. Why? This week we found out that the Federal government has no idea or data processing infrastructure in place to make this correlation between historical tax records and a person’s Obama Care application for financial assistance.

The Obama administration has finally and openly admitted that the Federal government lacks the ability to verify if people are telling the truth about needing ObamaCare-related tax subsidies. This process was supposed to make the overall Obama Care legislation financially viable since it was supposed to be partially paid for by curtailing widespread waste, fraud and abuse. Now, this failed assumption and process potentially makes waste, fraud and abuse even more prevalent and easier.

And to add insult to injury, the administration plans to still go ahead with the roll out despite absolutely NO income checks to protect taxpayer wealth.

Guess what? Four full days of posts into the Obama Care train wreck and we are still not done documenting all of the bad things that are happening and will happen as a result of this legislation. More to follow 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.robertringer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

The Money Behind Our Politics - Do You Really Think Your Vote Still Counts?

I recently came across a wonderful, if depressing, website called www.opensecrets.org which is operated by the Center For Responsive Politics. Their mission statement reads as follows:

The Center for Responsive Politics is the nation's premier research group tracking money in U.S. politics and its effect on elections and public policy. Nonpartisan, independent and nonprofit, the organization aims to create a more educated voter, an involved citizenry and a more transparent and responsive government. In short, the Center's mission is to:

•Inform citizens about how money in politics affects their lives

•Empower voters and activists by providing unbiased information

•Advocate for a transparent and responsive government

We pursue our mission largely through our award-winning website, OpenSecrets.org, which is the most comprehensive resource for federal campaign contributions, lobbying data and analysis available anywhere. And for other organizations and news media, the Center's exclusive data powers their online features tracking money in politics — counting cash to make change

They have a wealth of information on how money flows into our political class, election processes, and government functions. The data is detailed, extensive, and able to be pulled up in summary form or extremely detailed form. For a political junkie or concerned American, one could probably spend days mining the information they have gathered, analyzed, and have charted.

Why is their work important?  Their findings dramatically detail the amount of money from unions, corporations, lobbyists, etc. that flow into the campaign coffers of our political class, money that is huge and getting larger on every election cycle. It is my opinion that this gushing flow of money perverts the election processes in this country, making a every citizen's vote less and less important over time.

This large and constant political money peddling destroys the "life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness" principle for every American, replacing it with a new political class pledge: "You give me money and I influence legislation, not for the good of the country, but for the potential of more campaign donations in the future from you." Disgusting and discouraging to our democracy and our freedom.

Like I said above, you could spend days going through the Open Secrets website. However, for illustrative purposes of how bad the situation has become, consider a sampling of results I have pulled out of their treasure trove of information:

- The following data highlights the top ten campaign contributing sources to President Obama's 2008 Presidential campaign:

1. University of California $1,648,685
2. Goldman Sachs $1,013,091
3. Harvard University $878,164
4. Microsoft Corp $852,167
5. Google Inc $814,540
6. JPMorgan Chase  $808,799
7. Citigroup Inc $736,771
8. Time Warner $624,618
9. Sidley Austin LLP $600,299
10. Stanford University $595,716

I find it very interesting that three out of the top seven sources of campaign funds were from three of the biggest banks in America. These banks received billions and billions of taxpayer bailout dollars from the Federal government, a bailout that Obama approved of as a Senator and allowed to go forth as President. 

And as we pointed out in an earlier post this week, these banks and fifteen of the other biggest banks in this country continue to receive upwards of $76 billion annually as taxpayer subsidies. JP Morgan, the sixth largest contributor to Obama's 2008 campaign heads the list of subsidy receivers, annually receiving $14 billion worth of government subsidies, according to the IMF and analyses done by Bloomberg. Coincidence? I think not.  

I really got a kick out of the next set of data. Mitt Romney used to work at Bain Capital, a company that would help maximize the assets and profitability of ailing companies. Sometimes they were able to reverse a company's decline, sometimes they were not able to and ended up maximizing shareholder value by dissolving the company and selling off its assets.

Nowhere has anyone accused Bain of behaving illegally in their ventures. Venture capital firms do these types of business ventures all the time, including the companies run by wealthy, liberal, Democratic Party supporters such as Warren Buffet and George Soros. Venture capital firms were big campaign donors to Obama's 2008 Presidential campaign.

However, if you were only to listen to Obama's campaign managers, they are trying to position Bain, and Romney, as insensitive to the needs of Americans by deliberately shutting down companies and getting rich in the process. I disagree with this assessment, again pointing out to the similar efforts done by Buffet and Soros, but that is not the point. Each person is entitled to their own opinions.

But talk about hypocrisy. If Bain Capital is so bad, why have the many Washington Democrats in the following list accepted campaign donations from Bain over the past ten years, according to Open Secrets, if Bain is so bad, so corrupt, so immoral, so despicable? You cannot accuse Bain of being the devil and still accept the devil's money without being the height of hypocrisy:


Al Franken (D) in 2012
Christopher S. Murphy (D) in 2012
Claire McCaskill (D) in 2012
David Cicilline (D) in 2012
Jack Reed (D) in 2012
Jeanne Shaheen (D) in 2012
Jim Himes (D) in 2012
John Kerry (D) in 2012
Mark Udall (D) in 2012
Mark Warner (D) in 2012
Michael F. Bennet (D) in 2012
Nancy Pelosi (D) in 2012
Niki Tsongas (D) in 2012
Richard Blumenthal (D) in 2012
Scott P. Brown (R) in 2012
Sheldon Whitehouse (D) in 2012
Anthony D. Weiner (D) in 2010
James Webb (D) in 2010
Jon Tester (D) in 2010
Maria Cantwell (D) in 2010
Paul W. Hodes (D) in 2010
Sherrod Brown (D) in 2010
Bob Casey (D) in 2008
Edward M. Kennedy (D) in 2008
Harold E. Ford Jr (D) in 2006
Marty Meehan (D) in 2006
John Kerry (D) in 2004
Judd Gregg (R) in 2002
Max Cleland (D) in 2002
Gordon H. Smith (R) in 2000


I find two names particularly interesting on this list, besides the fact the the list is overwhelmingly composed of Congressional Democrats who accepted Bain campaign money. Anthony Weiner, that less than stellar and upstanding Congressman from New York, received Bain money. If I was Bain, given sorry Weiner's disgraced history, I would have asked for my money back.

But best of all, Nancy Pelosi is also a recipient of Bain money. Please, Nancy, how can you look us in the face and agree Bain is bad, which makes Romney bad, if you have no qualms about taking the Bain money? Talk about hypocrisy, talk about a lack of integrity.

- What types of industries contribute to political campaigns? I thought that would be very interesting since all of us deal with most of these industries quite often in our daily lives. We should know what these industries are dong politically and how that might affect our day-to-day lives. The following list contains the contributions to the 2012 election cycle from just over the past year or so, a total of about $1.4 billion:

1. Finance/Insurance/Real Estate $298,910,163
2. Other $212,559,836
3. Miscellaneous Business $194,198,190
4. Lawyers & Lobbyists $130,201,920
5. Health $116,194,309
6. Ideology/Single-Issue $102,889,573
7. Communications/Electronics $87,514,353
8. Energy/Natural Resource $66,428,838
9. Construction $54,280,646
10. Labor $52,766,843
11. Agribusiness $40,202,777
12. Transportation $35,557,147
13. Defense $15,569,517

A few observations:

• The second and third categories, Miscellaneous and Other, consist of a large number of smaller business categories that seem pretty unrelated to each other so the two largest, focused contributor groups appear to be the Financial/Insurance/Real Estate and Legal industry groups.
• Is it a coincidence that the Financial industry continues to get favored status in Washington, from bank bailouts, to favorable Federal Reserve treatment to annual taxpayer subsidies and also contributes the most to political campaigns?
• Is it just a coincidence that tort reform is not close to being a major part of Obama Care, even though tort abuse is a major driver of escalating health care costs, and the Legal industry is the second biggest contributors to the 2012 election cycle?
• Do we really believe that these industry groups, who have already contributed over $1.4 billion to the 2012 election cycle, want nothing in return for their contributions and what they want will always be for the good of the individual American and American family? I think not.
• Remember, this election cycle is no where close to being over, this $1.4 billion is just a starting point for what is to come.

If you look at some other summary data you will get an idea of how bad the problem is and how much worse it is growing. According to the website, in the 1992 Presidential election cycle, the Financial/Insurance/Real estate industry group contributed about $120 million to the political campaigns. By the 2008 Presidential election cycle, that pot of money had grown fourfold to about $480 million, with Goldman Sachs being the largest contributor. (Why does it seem that Goldman Sachs and government activity always seem to intertwine at some point?)

Similarly, the Legal industry contributed about $60 million in 1992. By 2008, that pot of money was up to almost $300 million, a fivefold increase. The biggest contributor in 2008 was the American Association for Justice, one of the biggest tort lawyer groups in the world, an organization who would have probably been hurt financially if Obama Care had seriously implemented the right type of medical tort reform. Coincidence?

But it gets worse. These numbers and examples do not include the millions and millions of dollars that labor groups contribute. These numbers do not include the millions and millions of dollars that Super PACs are pumping into the election process. The volume is overwhelming.

Several steps from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" are critical if we are ever to stop this tidal wave of money and influence buying and peddling:

1. Step 6 would allow only individual American citizens to contribute to election campaigns. When our Founding Fathers came up with freedom of speech I am pretty sure it was "individual" freedom of speech not PAC, Super PAC, corporate, and labor union freedom of speech that they had in mind.
2. Step 7 would only allow people to contribute to elections that impact their Congressman's race or their Senator's race. They could not contribute to an election campaign in another state or Congressional district.
3. Step 8 provides a process to take the Federal Election Commission out of the political realm and place it into the criminal prosecution realm so that we no longer have the wolves (politicians) guarding the hen house (our election processes.)
4. Step 39 would implement term limits for all Federal politicians so that they serve one term only in Federal office. Since much of the influence peddling, buying, and selling revolves around incumbent election campaigns, making incumbents a relic would stifle this practice.

Too much money, too little freedom. Not a good situation for a democracy or our liberty.

We invite all readers of this blog to visit our new website, "The United States Of Purple," at:

http://www.unitedstatesofpurple.com/

The United States of Purple is a new grass roots approach to filling the office of President of The United States by focusing on the restoration of freedom in the United States, focusing on problem solving skills and results vs. personal political enrichment, and imposing term limits on all future Federal politicians. No more red states, no more blue states, just one United States Of America under the banner of Purple.

The United States Of Purple's website also provides you the formal opportunity to sign a petition to begin the process of implementing a Constitutional amendment to impose fixed term limits on all Federally elected politicians. Only by turning out the existing political class can we have a chance of addressing and finally resolving the major issues of or times.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at
http://www.loathemygovernment.com/. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom

http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment/