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Every month we take a number of days at the start of the month to review the latest idiocy, lunacy, and insanity from the American political class. While we are in the midst of that regular feature now for September, we are going to digress from that series for a day or so to review the specialized political class insanity that is focused on Syria.
As most informed Americans know, in the summer of 2012, President Obama warned the Syrian government not to use poison gas on the opposition rebel force involved in the civil war in that country. He explicitly stated that using poison gas would “cross a red line” and result in dire consequences for the government of Syria.
Unfortunately, the President left the threat at that, “you had better not do it.” He did not go to Congress and get Constitutional authorization to engage the Syrian government with U.S. armed forces if that line was crossed.
He did not explain his rationale and reasoning for his threat to the American people to get their support for yet another military conflict in the Middle East.
He did not go to the United Nations to get the international community behind his threat.
He did not rally America’s allies to support him in any military operation against the Syrian government.
He did not use diplomacy with Syrian allies such as Russia and China to leverage their pull with the Syrian government to prevent the use of poison gas.
Bottom line is he made the red line threat and did NOTHING to back it up. He played a lot of golf, he had a lot of lavish vacations, etc. but he did not do the necessary detailed work to provide the back up to what is turning out to be an idle threat.
As a result, he is now faced with making good on the red line threat without Congressional support so far, without the American people supporting his threat, without the legal backing of the United Nations, with virtually no support from our allies to support a military operation, and getting no support from Syria’s allies.
He has put himself and the country out on a very thin limb in the eyes of the world. If he does not back up the threat, he looks weak. If he does back up the threat, he risks making the U.S. look like the neighborhood bully, more people will likely die, more American taxpayer wealth will be wasted, and his lack of planning will result in another useless and expensive U.S. military excursion into the Middle East. None of the previous excursions did any good and there is no reason to believe that this one will do any good either.
We will explore the many, many reasons why this Obama adventure makes no sense from a bunch of different perspectives and reasons from various sources and experts over at least the next two days. Hopefully, cooler heads will prevail in Congress and no authorization for military use is approved for the President, for the myriad of reasons listed below.
1) A September 5, 2013 article from Newsmax, summarized the latest public opinion findings relative to our use of our military in Syria to punish the Syrian government for the alleged use of poison gas on its citizens:
- According to an ABC News/ Washington Post poll from August 28-September 1, 59% of Americans oppose U.S. missile strikes, even when told of the administration's belief that the Syrian government used chemical weapons to kill an estimated 1,429 civilians.
- Only 36% of those surveyed support retaliatory strikes.
- Another 70% oppose the United States and its allies supplying weapons to the Syrian rebels.
- The findings in the poll of 1,012 adults are consistent across party lines.
- The poll also determined that people are less opposed to action in Syria if the U.S. is joined by allies. 46% of those surveyed would support allied air strikes, while 51% would still oppose them. Great Britain, however, has already voted against air strikes.
It looks like no matter you cut the feeling in America, the majority of the country does not want to get stuck in another no win military situation in Syria. When Bush foolishly invaded Iraq, he had a large majority of the country supporting him at the beginning and it was still a failure. Going into the Syria problem without the backing of most of America is not a good position for the President to be in.
2) Let’s stay with what the American public is saying about U.S. military intervention in Syria but look at it through the eyes of the twitter and social media accounts of Washington politicians, not just an opinion survey:
- Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Washington, tweeted, “Calls and emails from my constituents is 100 to 1 AGAINST getting involved in Syria. The American people are speaking.”
- Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., said 99 percent of the calls his office oppose an attack.
- Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md., said, “Constituents who have contacted my office by phone or mail oppose action in Syria 523-4 so far.”
- Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., tweeted, “My phones are blowing up, and an overwhelming amount of constituents oppose U.S. military intervention in Syria.”
- Rep. Matt Salmon, R-Ariz., tweeted, “Syria constituent calls 489-2 against.”
- Rep. Shelley Capito, R-W.V., said of “about 1,000 calls to my office, maybe 5 are for.”
- Rep. Vern Buchanan, R-Fla., said calls and emails to his offices are 600 to 9 against striking Syria.
- Rep. Tim Griffin, R-Ark., tweeted, “I received 225 emails via www.griffin.house.gov website over the weekend regarding Syria, and out of the 225 only 3 support U.S. military action against Syria.”
- Rep. Steve Chabot, R-Ohio, said he is getting swamped with phone calls and on-the-street comments from constituents telling him to oppose a strike on Syria.
- Rep. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said, “I’m told the phone calls are 9 out of 10 against a strike in Syria, from my constituents in Kentucky.”
- Rep. Ralph Hall, R-Texas: “I have received hundreds of calls and letters from constituents expressing strong opposition.”
- Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., tweeted, “My office has been inundated with constituent phone calls and emails about Syria. Virtually unanimous opposition to military intervention.”
- Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, tweeted, “So far about 500 emails regarding Syria. 499 say NO and 1 say YES go to war” and “Hundreds of calls to our Provo and Washington, D.C., office. So far not a single call in favor of bombing Syria.”
- Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., tweeted, “The phones in my office are ringing off the hook and mail is flowing in. Almost all of the people are opposed to intervention in Syria.”
- Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, tells WND his office is hearing the same overwhelming opposition to intervention.
- Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif., said, “I don’t know a member of Congress whose e-mails and phone calls are in favor of [bombing Syria.]”
- Rep. Steve Southerland, R-Fla., said 96 percent of his emails and phone calls are from constituents who want to express their opposition to military action. He said, “Overwhelmingly, we are hearing pushback from our citizens against military intervention in Syria.”
- Rep. Jeff Duncan, R-S.C., said he’s heard no support from his constituents for striking Syria: “I have not had a single person, not a single person, in over 92 Facebook posts just a little while ago in a question we posed, having a single constituent or a South Carolinian saying let’s go to war in Syria.”
- Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, said “a very high percentage” of the constituents contacting his office have been against U.S. involvement in Syria. He estimated that 90 percent of more than 1,000 calls and emails from Americans have been urging him not to support intervention.
- Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said, “I can tell you that in my office, the phones are bopping off the hook there. And almost unanimously people are opposed to what the president is talking about.”
- Rep. Ted Yoho, R-Fla., told the House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing he and his constituents say “not just no, but heck no!” to Syria intervention.
- Rep. Justin Amash, R-Mich., tweeted, “I’ve been hearing a lot from members of our armed forces. The message I consistently hear: Please vote no on military action against Syria.”
Democrats and Republicans, House of Representatives people and Senators, from Florida to Washington state, the message is brutally clear of those citizens taking the time to weigh in on this very serious matter: Americans do not support military intervention in Syria. Period.
At least Americans understand that this effort is fruitless and will make a bad situation worse. It will be interesting to see if the members of Congress take this mandate to heart and deny the President Constitutional authority to launch an ill advised, just plain stupid and useless, military attack.
3) One of the sad things about just about anything the American political class does is to take action without understanding what unintended consequences may occur. Syria and Obama’s idle threat are no different. In an interview on September 4, 2013, Russian President Vladimir Putin indicated the potential for two unintended consequences if Obama attacks Syria.
First, he indicated that if we do attack Syria, Russia would provide missile defense hardware to Syria and other near by countries to protect them from subsequent U.S. military attacks. Second, he also indicated that Russia would replace any military equipment destroyed by a U.S. attack.
Great planning, Mr. President. Looks like you could be starting another Cold War environment with Russia for no military, security, or international gain. Given that Obama has made it clear that any attack would be short and small and he has given the Syrians twelve months warning to secure their military apparatus, any damage our missiles do will likely be minimal and not anything close to a knock out punch.
We will leave the Syrian government intact and likely stronger and more belligerent, with any damaged military hardware replaced by Russia, with a new missile shield to protect against any future attack, and make the U.S. look like a fool. You cannot make up this insanity.
4) Staying with the Russians for a moment, they have compiled a 100-page report detailing what it says is evidence that Syrian rebels, not forces loyal to President Bashar Assad, were behind a deadly sarin gas attack in an Aleppo suburb earlier this year. They also claim that the United Nations is also leaning the same way, that the rebels and not the government released the gas.
Now, Russia is not an uninterested bystander in this affair. Syria buys a lot of stuff from Russia and Russia’s only Mediterranean port is in Syria. It has a lot to lose if the regime changes in Syria. But given how many lies the Obama administration has told us relative to Benghazi, Fast and Furious, Obama Care, etc., it makes you almost wonder if Russia is actually telling the truth as opposed to the Obama administration telling the truth, for once.
And the Russians are not the only parties making this allegation, although these other parties also have irons in the fire. The most persistent story is that Saudi Arabia provided the poison gas to the rebels, who they side with. And that the rebel forces, who had no experience in dealing with poison gas canisters, accidentally release the gas when handling the canisters.
And consider the logic in the Russians’ position and assertion. The Syrian government was starting to turn the tide against the rebels. With support from Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah, the rebels were back on their heels. Why would the Syrian government risk U.S. military intervention when they were wining? Makes no sense from a logic perspective unless 1) the Syrian leaders are idiots or 2) the Russians and others are telling the truth as opposed to Obama, Kerry, and others in the administration.
This gets us started down the political class insanity trail as it relates to Syria. More insanity to come, at least for one or two more days, but it may take longer as Congress gets off its five week vacation next week. The bottom line so far is that the American public does not want this military action and the unintended consequences for so very little upside is truly lunacy.
If you are so inclined to agree with this conclusion, please contact your Congressional representatives in Washington as soon as possible and make your voice heard. U.S. military intervention in the Middle East has never worked out and this is no exception. These folks in the Middle East have been fighting amongst themselves for centuries, anything we do militarily will have no positive effects whatsoever.
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
This is the fourth post in the blog this month on the latest lunacy, idiocy, and insanity from the American political class. We do this at the beginning of every month just to check in to see what chaos, heartburn, and stress the politicians in this country are dumping on the nation and its citizens. The frequency, intensity, and depth of their antics and insanity has gotten larger and larger over time, requiring more and more days to cover their behavior every month.
So let’s pick up where we ended yesterday, a day where we covered how politician’s seem to almost take delight in closing down food banks that safely serve the hungry and homeless in this country, how they seem to not care that they continue to waste billions of dollars in Afghanistan for nothing in return, and how their ineptness when it comes to economics has resulted in a substantial drop in median household income AFTER the Great Recession ended:
1) Many times in this blog we have cited government sources and investigators who have estimated how much money major Federal government programs lose to waste and outright criminal fraud every year:
- Mediciad: $30-40 billion every year.
- Medciare: $70-90 billion every year
- Social Security: At least $100 billion every year.
Thus, in just one typical year, the ineptness of the Federal government results in at least $200 billion a year not fulfilling what the political class promised it would fulfill.
I bring these numbers up after reading an interview of Bill Gates in the recent interview issue of Business Week magazine. Mr. Gates and his wife are active philanthropists whose charitable foundation is doing wonderful things around the world. One of their biggest objectives is to wipe out the disease of polio in the near term and malaria in the longer term timeframe. Fabulous and worthwhile work serving all of humanity around the world.
What caught my eye was some background numbers on their foundation which indicated that since the foundation was up and operational, it has handed out $26.1 billion in grants to help fight worthy causes like these. It gave out $3.4 billion in grants in 2012.
Thus, they are able to invest about $3.4 billion a year in great initiatives as compared to the Federal government who wastes over $200 billion a year. This is almost 60 times more wasted and lost to fraud than what the Gates’ foundation is able to provide to the world. I was just thinking what a shame it is that we cannot reverse these numbers, spend over $200 billion to wipe out diseases and fix other major problems while wasting only $3.4 billion in the process. The Gates do it right, our Washington politicians obviously do it way wrong.
3) One of the bigger political jokes over the past four years or so is the claim that Obama operates one of the most transparent administrations of all times. We have previously reported on a Bloomberg report that tried to get simple travel records of high level administration officials but were blocked at every turn in their Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests by the Obama administration, in violation of the FOIA law.
We reported on how the Department of Labor demanded a million dollar payment/ransom when the Associated Press submitted a FOIA request for a simple list of administration email addresses.
We reported on how this administration has gone after more than twice the number of government whistle blowers than ALL previous administrations combined.
Congressional committees have been blocked dozens and dozens of times as they try to get documents and information to get to the bottom of the many Obama scandals including Fast and Furious, Benghazi, IRS misdeeds, spying on reporters, etc.
Bottom line: this is not even close to being the most transparent administration of all time. But the most insulting and silliest violation of this claim was pointed out in the August, 2013 issue of Reason magazine. The American Civil Liberties Union wanted to find out how the FBI was applying court ordered guidelines to accessing the text messages of American citizens. Thus, they filed a FOIA act request with the Justice Department.
The good news is that the Department complied with the letter, if not the spirit of the law. They sent the ACLU a copy of the memo that the ACLU was looking for entitled, “Guidance For The Minimization of Text Messages Over Dual Function Cellular Telephones.” This cover letter was attached to a 15 page document that supposedly had the guidelines that the ACLU was looking for.
I say supposedly because the Justice Department had taken a black magic marker function and had blackened out the contents on ALL 15 pages. Every page looked like a black hole with a white border around it. Reason magazine’s article illustrated two of the pages to show how useless the Justice Department had been in providing the information. They provided the memo just none of the information in the memo. Pathetic.
So that is why when Obama states anything, numerical, policy, or practice, I assume it is false until proven otherwise. His track record of integrity when discussing anything is wobbly at best, and if the Justice Department action relative to the ACLU request is typical, his administration is the least transparent and most devious of any I can remember.
4) I do pick on the current set of Washington politicians a lot but I do it out of respect since I believe they are the most inept and incapable set of politicians we have ever had to live through in the history of our nation. But that is not to say past politicians were not also devious and underhanded. Newly declassified audio tapes from the Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon era show again how Nixon would fit right into today’s Washington crowd, according to an article in the March 29, 2013 issue of The Week Magazine.
The recordings show that Nixon intervened with the government of South Vietnam and convinced them not to accept any peace plans from Johnson or North Vietnam to end the war, promising South Vietnam they could get a better deal if he was elected President. Nixon apparently thought if the war dragged on until after the election he ran against Hubert Humphrey, he would be more likely to win. He did this despite the fact that North Vietnam was willing to make some major concessions at Johnson’s urging to bring the war to a quick end.
Well the South Vietnamese bought his sales pitch, the war continued on for another five years, 22,000 more American servicemen lost their lives, billions and billions more taxpayer wealth was unnecessarily spent, and North Vietnam ended up winning the war and taking over South Vietnam. All because a Washington politician wanted to win an election. Nixon would have fit right into today’s political class.
As a side note, Johnson thought that Nixon had indeed committed treason but did not say anything since it would reveal that his administration was illegally wiretapping South Vietnamese leaders. Given Obama and the NSA’s massive wiretapping of every American’s electronic communications, looks like Johnson also would have fit right into today’s political class and its scheming and illegalities in Washington.
5) One last piece of depressing bit of news courtesy of the political class before we wrap up today, assuring you that there is more idiocy and hi-jinks from our politicians to be reviewed tomorrow. According to a Wall Street Journal report that was summarized in the August 30, 2013 issue of The Week magazine, less than a third of American teenagers between the ages of 16 and 19 had jobs this past summer, as reported by the Labor Department. Before the recession, more than 40% of teenagers in this age bracket had summer jobs.
Just another indication that this set of politicians in Washington has no economic planning and instincts at all. More than three years after the Great Recession ended, household income is down and teenagers are still a forgotten segment in the unemployment department, not able to get a job in the summer. Pathetic.
Four insanity posts and we are still not close to being done, more of their antics and incompetence tomorrow. In the meantime, please visit our sister website where you can join our effort to institute term limits on all current Washington politicians because, really, how much worse could it get than what we have today:
www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:
www.loathemygovernment.com
It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.
Please visit the following sites for freedom:
Term Limits Now:http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w
This is a third in a series of posts we are doing early this month to try and capture the lunacy, idiocy, and other insanity that the American political class has dumped on us recently. The first post in this series can be accessed at:
http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/09/part-1-september-2013-political-class.html
We do this political class insanity at the beginning of every month. Since 2009, when we started this feature, we have seen the monthly insanity grow almost exponentially every month. What once could be summarized in one blog post now takes many days to cover. Thus, it will not be likely that today’s information will be the end of the insanity.
1) Government insanity is not restricted to Washington. A blurb in the July, 2013 issue of Reason magazine shows that the government insanity reaches down to the local government also. James Kelly, a homeless man in Houston, was actually given a summons for “disturbing the contents of a garbage can.” Kelly is quoted in the article that he was just looking for something to eat, given his homeless status, but apparently in Houston trying not to go hungry is against the law.
Three things wrong here. First, the man is homeless and hungry, do we really have to make him a criminal? It does not appear he was flinging the garbage into the street or attacking some one with it, he was just hungry. Second, do we really think that he is going to pay the summons/fine, he’s homeless! Third, Houston’s local government bureaucracy actually spent taxpayer resources and money to write and enforce a law about “disturbing the contents of a garbage can?” Is this really necessary? Insane.
2) But denying food to America’s hungry seems to be an ongoing theme of politicians in America. Not only is looking for food in a garbage can a criminal offense, we previously reported on a fight hunger program that was shut down by the Louisiana state government that allowed hunters to donate food that they had hunted to local food banks, denying hundreds of thousands of meals to hungry citizens of that state. The details of this insanity can be found at:
http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/08/part-3-august-political-class.html
Not to be outdone, New York City recently shut down a load of food banks. The reason? These food banks had been collecting healthy, uneaten, fresh surplus food from city restaurants and giving it to the hungry and homeless in New York without the city being able to check for SALT CONTENT.
The hungry and homeless were denied the same food that other city residents would have eaten in these restaurants who donate because no one could check the salt content which could be unhealthy. Thus, better to deny food to today’s hungry and homeless in the hopes of lowering their salt intake would help them live longer. Beyond bizarre reasoning, let them suffer from not having any food but their salt profile is improving. You cannot make this stuff up.
3) Fortunately, the same food insanity was thwarted in Dallas which was also trying to stop the hungry from eating perfectly good food. The courts stepped in when the Dallas political class passed an ordinance that required any program that fed the homeless and hungry had to fulfill a long list of mostly useless requirements including having restroom and washing facilities, city approval of food bank locations, and supervision by someone who had taken a food safety course.
In most of these food banks disasters, the operators of the food banks have been doing the same thing for years and decades without seriously injuring the health of the needy. These are compassionate and loving people trying to take care of Americans who are down on their luck. It is a shame that the politicians in this country try to prevent their kind actions via stupid regulations and ordinances.
4) According to a recent analysis and report from the Special Inspector General For Afghanistan Reconstruction, hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars are being misspent or wasted. The article, printed in the August 9, 2013 issue of The Week magazine, pointed out that the Pentagon is insisting that $772 million worth of aircraft be purchased for the Afghan military even though… wait for it… “the Afghans lack the capacity to operate and maintain them.”
The Inspector General found little or no oversight of contractors and the overall conclusion “is one of weak monitoring, duplicitous contractors, and hundreds of millions spent on facilities the U.S. military won’t use or the Afghans don’t want or can’t feasibly use.” And there are still no White House tours and apparently, no one losing their jobs in the Pentagon or this administration for wasting hundreds of millions of dollars.
5) The fabulous Bankrupting America website had a fascinating, if depressing, article on its website on August, 22, 2013. It cited a New York Times article that stated that in June 2013, American households’ real median income was $2,400 below the level it was at in June 2009, the month the Great Recession officially ended and five months after President Obama took office.
This is what the administration’s and Washington’s economic policies and lack of expertise have wrought on every American, a substantial drop in household income AFTER the recession ended. According to the website, theoretically, the following is what American households could have purchased with that missing $2,400 if the Washington political class had even the faintest idea of how to keep household income stagnant in the past four years:
- 5 Car Payments. Americans’ average monthly car payment is $460. $2,400 could pay for more than five months of payments.
- Back To School Gear For About Four Children. The Associated Press recently reported: “The National Retail Federation trade group predicts that families with school-age children will spend an average of $634.78 on shoes, clothes, supplies and electronics, with total back-to-school spending expected to reach $72.5 billion.” $2,400 could fund back-to-school shopping for nearly four children.
- 3 Months Of Food. The average four-person household spends $777 on food a month. $2,400 could pay for more than three months of food.
- 2 Years Of College Textbooks. According to The Huffington Post, “the College Board puts the annual cost of books and materials at $1,168.” $2,400 is more than two years worth of books.
- Wipe Out Half Of All Credit Card Debt. According to CBS News, in the first quarter of 2013, “Average credit card debt per borrower fell 1.7 percent to $4,878 …” $2,400, of course, would erase about half of that debt.
The math is simple, the economic policies of the past four years out of Washington have been a disaster, hampering American families’ ability to afford transportation, by clothes and school supplies for their kids, feed their families, help their college age kids afford school, and ease their credit debt burden.
6) The Federal government obviously has a lot of secrets. It obviously sits on a whole lot of sensitive information. It obviously wants to protect those secrets and sensitive information. That is why it goes through what was thought to be a thorough employment screening process before hiring anyone who has access to that information and secrets.
Or so we thought. According to an article in the July 15, 2013 issue of Business Week, those secrets and sensitive information might not be as protected as we think and as the nation deserves:
- Former investigator and employment screener, Kayla Smith, submitted 1,600 phony credit reports over an 18 month period, according to the Inspector General for the U.S. Office Of Personnel Management (OPM).
- She pleaded guilty to these potential breeches in security and received three years probation and paid a criminal fine of almost $100,000.
- Ramon Davila was another screener. He filed numerous reports claiming he interviewed people for background checks that he never actually talked to and claimed to have obtained records that he never obtained.
- He pleaded guilty to Federal charges and is awaiting sentencing.
- Another screener, Anthony Domico, claimed to have interviewed someone that had been dead for over ten years. He got five months prison time and paid almost $70,000 in criminal fines.
- In total, 20 investigators/screeners have been found guilty or convicted of “fraudulently manipulating documents.”
According to the article, the government is pretty sure that these are not the only culprits, that screenings and backgrounds checks are being falsified and forged by many others.
The obvious issue here is that there are quite possibly many people that were hired as government workers under false pretenses and who have access to some of the most secret secrets and most sensitive sensitive information that the Federal government possesses. Who knows what damage they will wrought on our national security, our personal identities, and who knows what else. All because the Federal government and the political class that operate it cannot even manage to run a competent hiring process.
Starving America’s hungry, wasting money for no reason in Afghanistan, cutting our household income, and bypassing security protocols and processes when hiring Federal workers. Horrific performances from your political class, a performance that we still have not covered in full. More horrors to come 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
This is the second in what promises to be a long series of posts on the latest political class insanity from the American political class. Yesterday we reviewed 15 of the latest abuses and wasteful spending of taxpayer money as identified by the Heritage Foundation. We learned that a major human smuggling ring operating out of the Phoenix was being run by a Mexican national that had already been deported eight times. We learned that in just one of the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing efforts it had spent and wagered $600 billion for less than $20 billion in return. Pathetic and disgraceful.
But the insanity and lunacy continues today:
1) The first set of insane political antics comes form the Washington Could Learn A Lot website and their compilation of the latest statistics on what is going on in the country from a posting on their website on August 6, 2013, “Everything Sucks:”
- Home ownership is at an 18-year low at 65%. People are renting instead of buying.
- College graduates are moving in with their parents to save money or bide their time.
- The only reason unemployment numbers are at 7.5% is that they don’t count those who just stop looking for work. People who are not in the labor force increased by 240,000 in July relative to the 165,000 jobs gained.
- And when people can find a job, it’s usually part-time and/or unsatisfying. Of the 953,000 jobs created in 2013, 731,000 were part-time. And only about one-third of people feel engaged at work.
- The weekly Gallup Economic Confidence Index shows that on a scale from -100 to 100, confidence has remained above -30 since January of 2012, and this is up from a low of -65 in 2008.
- In the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal Polls we see that a record-breaking 83% percent disapprove of the job that Congress is doing.
- While more than 45% of Americans were confident that the POTUS had the “right set of goals and policies to improve the economy” in 2009, that confidence has dropped all the way to 33% while economic confidence has risen.
- Washington has made a lot of promises to fix all this junk, and we know what you are thinking: “WHAT IS TAKING SO LONG?? %$#@!!”
Great question. Why is it taking longer than expected or do these politicians in Washington have no idea, inclination, or will to make things right and resolve the major issues of our time. I vote for the latter explanation.
2) According to a recent General Accountability Office analysis and report, between 2008 and 2012, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) issued more than $36 million in checks to about 6,300 farmers who had bought the farm, I.e. they were dead.
If there is any good news in this disgrace it is the fact that the Department of Agriculture is less inept today than it used to be. The Department’s Farm Service Agency (FSA), which oversees farm income subsidies and disaster payments, had paid out a whopping $1.1 billion to 172,801 deceased farmers between 1999 and 2005.
The USDA’s Risk Management Agency (RMA), which administers the Federal crop insurance program is not much different when it comes to handing out taxpayer wealth for no reason. This agency provided $22 million for some 3,434 farmers who had been dead for two or more years. Yesterday, we found out that taxpayers were sending checks to people in jail. Today we are sending checks to dead farmers. Can hardly wait to see where our taxpayer wealth is fraudulently being spent tomorrow.
3) And politicians continue to wonder why most of us never believe what they say. Bloomberg caught the Justice Department and Eric Holder in a bad math lie in the middle of August. The Obama administration claimed that it was cracking down and rounding up mortgage providers that illegally operated and helped cause the Great Recession.
Obama’s Mortgage Fraud Working Group in the Department of Justice wrongly claimed it had criminally charged 530 people who had victimized 73,000 Americans. When Bloomberg journalists reporters got underneath the claim, the Department first stalled and then admitted it had inflated the claims themselves, a fib they admitted late on an August Friday, a time when news reporters are getting more focused on the weekend than reporting.
We are not talking minor math rounding errors here. Originally the Justice Department said 530 people were charged criminally as part of a year-long initiative by the multi-agency Mortgage Fraud Working Group. Turns out the actual figure was 107 or 80% less. Holder originally said the defendants had victimized more than 73,000 American homeowners. That number was revised to downward to 17,185, a reduction of about 75%. Estimates of homeowner losses associated with these mortgage frauds dropped to $95 billion from $1 billion.
Makes you wonder what else they are lying about. Or probably more accurately, are they telling the truth about anything that they speak of. Again, these are not rounding errors, they are outright lies and deceptions. Thankfully, at least two reporters were doing their jobs correctly and uncovered just the latest lies from this administration.
Given that they would lie about a relative trivial matter like this, the administration should not be given any credibility and benefit of the doubt when we are talking about major issues such as illegal IRS targeting, Benghazi, spying on news organizations, NSA spying, etc.
4) Comedian Jeff Dunham once made the somewhat accurate observation that the only difference between the government and the Mafia is that the Mafia is profitable. Listen to the audio dialog at the following site and then tell me if this is not akin to a Mafia shakedown of a legitimate business:
http://www.mrconservative.com/2013/08/22461-voicemail-leaked-of-democrat-congresswoman-using-bribery/
This is an actual voice mail that a lobbyist firm kept that contains a voice mail message left for them from sitting Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton. Basically, she is telling the lobbyist that he had not sent any money to her perpetual reelection campaign and that was not good since she sat on several Congressional committees that were involved in the areas this lobbying firm focused on.
This was basically an extortion phone call from a member of Congress. It has the undertones of an Al Capone standard operating procedure. It is this type of gangster-like behavior that requires that 1) we establish term limits for all Federal politicians since there is no longer any perpetual reelection efforts and 2) we need to fix our politics processes so that only individual American contribute to election campaigns. PACs, businesses, lobbyists, unions, etc. would be forbidden to do so, only individual Americans.
Both of these steps were proposed in our book, “Love My Country, Loathe My Government.” The term limits idea has been operational zed at:
www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
We should not have to pay protection money to a sitting Washington politician in any, any circumstance.
5) According to an article in the August 2, 2013 issue of The Week, the Federal government is getting into the magic industry. Believe it or not, American taxpayers are paying for this Department of Agricultural insanity.
The Department recently and officially demanded that magicians that use rabbits in their act submit plans to the Federal government on how they would save their rabbits in the face of a natural disaster. I swear, you cannot make this stuff up. Somewhere in the obese government bureaucracy actual human beings are worried about stuff like this. And being paid for it with my tax money.
In the face of this idiocy, magician Gary Maurer said he would carry around a reminder note so that in the case of a natural disaster he would read the note which says: “Take rabbit with you when you leave.” That was his plan. For this common sense we need a government bureaucracy. Insane.
6) According to another article from The Week magazine that appeared in its August 9, 2013 issue, the U.S. government has spent over $24 million over the past six years to fly a plane over Cuba that broadcasts American-sponsored television programming to the island below. However, the Cuban government blocks the signal with signal jamming equipment so no Cuban citizen has ever seen what is being broadcast.
Despite this fact, according to the article, Congressmen representing the Cuban exile community insist that the useless flights continue. Einstein must have this insanity in mind when he said: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results.”
How stupid and wasteful is this program. Its funding could have kept the White House tours going for more than 24 years instead of broadcasting stuff over Cuba that is never seen.
Lies, wasteful spending, extortion, and more. Never a dull moment, or rational moment, when dealing with American politicians. And we are just getting warmed up, more tomorrow.
Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:
www.loathemygovernment.com
It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.
Please visit the following sites for freedom:
Term Limits Now:http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w
