May, 2014 Political Class Insanity, Part 7: the President Lies Again, Rolls Royces All Around, Counting Space Junk, and More

Its day seven of our latest monthly political class insanity review with possibly an end in sight. Sometimes I think that is better when Washington politicians take long vacations because when on vacation they are far less likely to screw anything else up. A sad, sad commentary on the lack of leadership and ability of the current set of American politicians.

1) Let’s start today with some outer space political class insanity. Circling around the earth are thousands and thousands of pieces of space junk. Often, space junk collides with other space junk which creates thousands and thousands of new pieces of space junk.

Most of this space junk is traveling really fast so that even a little piece of space junk can cause big trouble when it hits another piece at speeds up to 17,000 miles an hour. This action even has a name, the Kessler effect. It is named after NASA scientist Donald J. Kessler, who wrote about it in 1978. It is a scenario in which the density of objects in low earth orbit gets larger over time, so that that a collision between objects causes a cascade. Each collision produces more space debris, which in turn increases the likelihood of further collisions. 

As the number of pieces of space junk gets larger, the probability of a piece hitting and disabling a working satellite gets larger and larger. Such an event, if it knocked out a satellite, could have severe commercial, telecommunications, and national defense issues. So this is serious stuff. To quote George Clooney from his character in the movie, “Gravity”: "Half of North America just lost their Facebook." 

There really is no way to solve the problem with today’s technology, there are just too many pieces of junk floating around and racing around in space. However, that will not stop the Federal government from wasting at least $6 billion to try and fix it. The Feds want to build something called the "Space Fence." It really isn't a fence. It's a $6 billion radar system that will monitor just a tiny fraction of the space junk. 

Let’s be clear. Spending $6 billion will monitor and track only a small portion of the junk load. It will not be able to prevent any collisions. It will not be able to predict when these collisions will occur. It will only be able to say: “There was a collision.” 

There is no known solution to this problem. There is no program to solve it. The "Space Fence" merely lets some Air Force person, who is staring at a screen, watch the chain reaction blow holes in the world's space-based telecommunications system, impact by impact. 

But you know that some aerospace company gave some money to some politicians somewhere along the line to get $6 billion for a project that basically looks out into space. Pathetic waste of money.

2) The Washington Examiner reported on May 7, 2014 how a former Congressman was able to turn his life around inside of ten weeks despite resigning from Congress under suspicious circumstances. Former New Jersey Congressman Rob Andrews was facing an ethics probe for allegedly using his political campaign funds for personal travel and other personal expenses. When Andrews announced a sudden resignation from Congress in February, some observers concluded that it was because of the ethics investigations, a conclusion the former Congressman denied, citing quality of life issues.

Within ten weeks after his last day in Congress, Andrews registered himself as a Federal lobbyist. And guess what? As a former member of the House Armed Services Committee, he will lobby for a New Jersey defense company, to help them "gain business opportunities with the Department of Defense and other federal agencies," as he puts it on his disclosure form.

Again, nice work if you can get it. Yesterday, we discussed the fact that an EPA employee was paid despite spending many hours everyday downloading and viewing porn on the job. And now this former, possibly ethics-challenged Congressman escapes out of Congress to land a sweet deal in the lobbying industry. Sweet for the former Congressman, disgraceful for those of us that paid his salary for a very long time and ended up allegedly being abused by his actions.

3) I love pointing out hypocrisy and the following data from the Federal government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics points out a big hypocrisy of the Obama administration. Recall that over the past six years or so, the Democrats via Obama have controlled the White House and have controlled the Senate so they are not idle sideline observers in the following labor situation.

The Obama administration is always crying out about the “war on women,” blaming Republicans for being insensitive to the needs of American women. This President tries to position himself as the champion of women and their well being. 

But is that true? Not if you consider the latest statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS):

• The number of women 16 and older not in the labor force climbed to a record high of 55,116,000 in April, according to a recent from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). 
• In other words, officially there were 55,116,000 women 16 and older who were in the civilian population who not only did not have a job, they did not actively seek one in the last four weeks. 
• That is up 428,000 from the 54,688,000 women who were not in the labor force in March.
• According to BLS, the labor force participation rate for women was 56.9%, down from 57.2% in March. The labor force participation rate is the percentage of this population that either has a job or actively sought one in the last four weeks.
• In April, according to BLS, the female civilian labor force was 72,835,000 which was down 340,000 from the 73,175,000 in March.

In other words, the economic policies of this administration and this Congress have not been good to the women of America. It is not the Republicans that are waging a war on women, as Obama likes to claim, it is the whole political class, including Obama and the Democrats and the Republicans, and their idiotic economic policies that are hurting the labor chances and opportunities of women. For him to claim that it is only the Republicans, more than five years into his administration, is ludicrous.

4) Speaking of hypocrisy and lying, the President was recently giving a speech where again he whined about the Republicans and how they had filibustered 500 pending pieces of legislation to thwart his plans for the country. Nice try, but the usually Obama-friendly Washington Post called him on yet another lie, giving this claim its top liar rating of four Pinocchio’s. 

Apparently, this claim is nowhere close to being reality with true filibusters occurring just a fraction of the time that the President claimed. But I guess we should not be too surprised that he lied or deceived again since he lied about how Obama Care would not cancel your existing policy or cut you off from your preferred doctors and hospitals, how he would close the prison at Guantanamo right after being elected but still has not, how he would cut the annual Federal deficit in half but has recorded record deficits since coming into office, how he would have the most transparent administration but really has the most secretive and opaque administration, etc. Remember that he was awarded three of the top ten political lies by the Post in 2013 and it appears that he is driving hard for a similar dubious record in 2014.

The really underlying problem is not just this lie. Independent polling organizations are now finding that a strong majority of Americans do not believe what the President says or they believe that he lies on a regular basis. When the country does not believe what the President says, his ability to lead is seriously impaired since no one will believe what he says, support what he says, or have any faith in his ideas, being scared of getting burned with yet another lie. That is no way to lead a country but that is what a multitude of Pinocchio’s will do for you, destroy your reputation for integrity and dignity.

5) One last piece of insanity for today. The nation’s Federal government debt load is now around a mind numbing $17.5 TRILLION as the Obama administration and the Washington political class continues to spend and waste not only the wealth of this generation but the wealth and well being of future American generations. Both the Congressional Budget Office and the new chairwoman of the Federal Reserve have warned that current government spending levels are not sustainable and will have dire consequences for the country in the future.

But how much is $17.5 TRILLION? It is so large it is almost incomprehensible, much like most of the political class. Given that this past week we celebrated Mother’s Day, the wonderful website Bankrupting America tried to quantify how much $17.5 TRILLION actually is:

• With $17.5 TRILLION, you Could Buy Your Mom 71 Billion Flower Arrangements From An Expensive NYC Florist. Matles Florist currently offers an orchid arrangement with a premium price of $245.
• With $17.5 TRILLION, you Could Buy Your Mom An Extravagant Private Island …Or 190,375 Of Them. Rangyai Island is a developed private island for sale off the coast of Thailand. It is currently listed for $160 million dollars.
• With $17.5 TRILLION, you could Buy Your Mom 11.7 Billion Jars Of Diamond Face Cream. If your mother has expensive taste for beauty products, Forever Flawless offers a face cream that is infused with diamonds for $1,500.

To this list we would two more ways to measure our national debt:

• With $17.5 TRILLION, you could give every adult resident of New York state a check for over $1.2 million, every adult, no exceptions.
• With $17.5 TRILLION, you could buy every resident of Massachusetts a Rolls Royce Ghost, starting price of $253,200. Thus, a family of four living in Massachusetts would have four Rolls Royces sitting in their driveway.

We are allowing the Washington politicians to spend and waste our country into a financial death spiral without any flowers, islands, face cream, or Rolls Royces to show for it. Pathetic.

That will do it for this month’s insanity, enough is enough. Today we learned that the President got caught in another obvious lie, the country is going broke for nothing in return, we are wasting time and money looking at space junk explode, and life is bad for the working women in this country but great for allegedly ethics challenged politicians. Sounds about right.

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

May, 2014 Political Class Insanity, Part 6: Ilegal Crossswalks In Tacoma, Pornagraphy at the EPA, Chinese Invade Atlantic City, and More

This is our sixth post this month as we desperately try to keep up with the latest political class insanity coming out of the American political class. The first post in this series can be accessed at:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2014/05/may-2014-political-class-insanity-part.html

Wasteful spending, stupid programs, criminal neglect, and the stripping away of freedom are just some of the ways that today’s politicians drive us all insane.

1) The EPA has recently come under Congressional review, hearings, and investigation for a wide ranging set of abuses and insults to taxpayers:

• A former high level EPA executive was apparently paid an salary for over 10 years by the EPA while he pretended to be an undercover CIA agent.
• Another EPA employee was getting paid for several years after moving to a retirement home, where the employee allegedly did not perform any EPA work. When an investigation began, the worker was simply placed on sick leave. 
• In another case, an employee with multiple-sclerosis was allowed to work at home for the last 20 years. However, for the past five years, she allegedly produced no work though she was paid roughly $600,000. She retired after an investigation but apparently no effort was made to recover the ill gotten $600,000. 
• Another EPA employee was accused of viewing pornography for two-to-six hours a day since 2010 when an inspector general investigation found that the EPA worker had 7,000 pornographic files on his EPA computer. 
• At a Congressional hearing, an inspector general testified there was a “total and systematic refusal” to provide information that had stymied his investigations into EPA abuse
• EPA executives had made the ludicrous claim that they did not cooperate with the inspector general because of national security. 

Keep in mind that out of touch politicians like Nancy Pelosi still claim that there is not waste or excess to cut from the Federal government and that is why the American taxpayer needs to pay more in taxes. I suggest that she read this Congressional testimony and rethink that position since it is obviously insanely wrong and ignorant.

If a business paid employees for not doing any work, who allowed them to spend the majority of their work time viewing pornography, and tried to cover up the incompetence, that business would not exist for very long. Unfortunately, that tenet does not exist with the Federal government. The waste and shameful behavior continues to roll along unabated across the entire Federal bureaucracy.

2) Some times you wonder why and how the Federal government gets involved in even the tiniest of local matters. Consider some recent insanity from Tacoma, Washington. Some concerned local citizens were upset that the city had not painted cross walks around town at dangerous road crossings. Tired of waiting for the city to take action, a group of Tacoma residents, calling themselves “Citizens For A Safer Tacoma,” that apparently included some city employees, took the matter into their own hands and painted the needed cross walks onto the roads.

One would have thought their actions would be applauded. Concerned citizens concerned about the safety of their fellow locals taking action to better their town and the lives of their fellow citizens. 

One could have thought that but you would be wrong. Tacoma’s city government is determined to crack down on its “rogue crosswalks” and prosecute anyone caught painting them. Additionally, the city government is going around and spending $1,000 per rogue crosswalk to remove all of the new cross walks that have been painted on the streets of Tacoma.

Think about this insanity for a minute: the city did not have the time and/or funds to paint city authorized cross walks but somehow found the time AND funds to remove citizen created cross walks. Makes no sense…until you find out that the Federal government is involved. 

Why? Because the Tacoma Interim Public Works Director stated that city crosswalks must comply with Federal guidelines related to sight distance, traffic volume and street width. Yes, someone, somewhere in Washington took the time and taxpayer expense to develop guidelines on local town and city cross walks. 

Our schools are failing, we have lost the war on drugs, energy prices are exploding, our foreign affairs are in tatters, over 20 million Americans are unemployed or under employed, etc. and somewhere in Washington a group of Federal employees are being paid to develop and manage street cross walking guidelines. Pathetically insane and wasteful.

“We’re not asking for major infrastructure changes,” says a spokesman for Citizens for a Safer Tacoma. “All we’re asking for is a little bit of paint.” And maybe asking that the Federal government do a few things right rather than doing a million things wrong, like worrying about cross walk guidelines.

3) The website Celebrity Wealth estimates that Nancy Pelosi's net worth is about $100 million. Her husband and herself have vast real estate holdings throughout California besides owning other assets. By any measure, Nancy Pelosi is rich.

Our nation’s national debt is well over $17 TRILLION dollars. Americans are homeless, unemployed, and hungry. Our veterans are being shunting away from good medical care in Phoenix and elsewhere. There is a lot that could be done with Federal revenues besides paying Nancy Pelosi and the other many rich Washington politicians, a salary of about $170,000 a year.

In fact, Step 41 from “Love My Country, Loathe My Government” would prohibit a Congressional salary going to any Federal politician if their net worth was over $3 million. The purpose of going to Washington is to serve the country and its citizens, not to get rich or richer. There are far better things do to than to give people like Nancy Pelosi more money. 

Her $170,000 annual salary is less than .2% of her net wealth, she would not miss the paycheck and possibly that money would find its way to Americans who are truly suffering. However, that possibility of compassion and generosity will not be forthcoming from her.

Despite a Congressional approval rating that is historically low at around 10%, a dismal rating that as former Speaker of the House she had a lot to do with, Ms. Pelosi recently told an interviewer from The Hill that: “I don’t think we should do it [cut or reduce Congressional pay]; I think we should respect the work we do. I think it’s necessary for us to have the dignity of the job that we have rewarded.” 

We have no respect for the work you and your peers do in Washington, Ms. Pelosi, and we should be the ones that judge what your dignity levels are. The nation is falling apart, Washington has not resolved a major issue in decades, the approval ratings are in the gutter, and there is no hope that you or any of your peers have the smarts, the will, and the ability to fix anything. You should not be rewarded for anything since you do nothing except get richer from the first day every politician takes office until they finally leave.

4) Consider this insanity, along the lines of the Tacoma cross walks/Federal government meddling, this time in New Jersey. Fisherman’s Energy company wants to install five giant windmills off the coast of Atlantic City to generate wind powered electricity. Apparently, Fisherman’s Energy has a large set of Chinese financial backers.

The New Jersey Public Utilities Commission rejected the plan, not once but twice. They thought the plan would put New Jersey electricity ratepayers at risk and they also found that these Chinese backers did not demonstrate “financial integrity.” In other words, local citizens and local government looked at the situation and made the best possible decision given local conditions and analysis.

Before you know it, the Federal government’s Department of Energy jumps into the middle of the fray and awards Fisherman’s Energy, a company with substantial CHINESE backing, $47 million of AMERICAN taxpayer money to help push the deal along to completion despite New Jersey saying that it was a bad deal.

Another example of an out of touch and overreaching Federal government sticking its hand into something that was appropriately handled locally. Want to bet that Chinese lobbyists in Washington had something to do with American taxpayers supporting a shaky Chinese energy venture in new Jersey? Another $47 million of taxpayer wealth possibly down the drain, following billions of other dollars that went down the same drain because of Solyndra, A123, and dozens of other failed Federal government clean energy disasters.

So let’s review: rampant pornography and financial waste at the EPA, cross walk insanity in Tacoma, rich politicians thinking their abysmal performance has any kind of dignity, and the U.S. taxpayer supporting Chinese companies against the will of U.S. citizens. Sounds about right, more insanity tomorrow.

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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

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

May, 2014 Political Class Insanity, Part 5: Tapxayers Pay For A Congressman's Crimes, Making Tanks Nobody Wants,The Illinois Fiscal Cliff and More

This is our fifth post this month in our monthly series nonpolitical class insanity. Every month we spend more and more time trying to keep up with the wasteful spending, idiotic programs and laws, and general ineptness of the American political class. This is a task that seems to get harder and harder to do every month as their incompetence seems to be growing exponentially.

1) There are still over twenty million Americans who are either unemployed or under employed throughout this nation. One reason might be because of what the following graph illustrates, as presented in a recent Independent Journal Review article:



Since 1978, the percentages of businesses being created every year (‘firm entry” rate) has generally been declining while the percentage of businesses being terminated every year (“firm exit” rate) has recently been increasing. These two trends crossed over in 2008 when the rate of business creation fell below the rate of business termination.

One could try and fine tune the data to their own political views and by blame patterns. However, the bottom line is that over the past 36 years, a time period when Democrats and Republicans controlled Congress and the Presidency at different times, no one in the political class was able to reverse the two negative trends illustrated in this graph.

Their economic incompetence as created a death spiral of business the business failure rate increasing and the business creation rate decreasing, getting us into the position where over 20 million Americans can not find a good job for themselves and their families. 

Einstein once said the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Our political class has been doing the same lame economic dance for 36 years, raising existing taxes and creating new business taxes, expecting different results but proving Einstein right after all: pure insanity. 

2) All parts of the Federal government are big wasters of taxpayer wealth but the Pentagon has to be one of the biggest black holes of waste. Recall in past posts that we have discussed the fact that government auditors have thrown up their hands trying to get their arms around the wasteful spending in the Pentagon and actually gave up, contending that Pentagon spending is so out of control that it is not possible to even audit and document the waste.

A recent example of how bad and insane Pentagon spending is concerns the production of the Abrams tank, a tank that is only made in one location in Ohio:

• The Army currently has more than 2,300 in active use around the world to serve its needs.
• Unbelievably, it also has another 3,000 in storage that it does not need or use.
• In the most recent budget agreement in Congress, another $181 m illion was authorized to continue production of more tanks that the Army does not need into the next year or so.
• Even those in the actual Army do not want more unused and unneeded tanks: “If we had our choice, we would use that money in a different way,” Gen. Ray Odierno, the Army’s chief of staff, told the Associated Press in April.
• Even the Pentagon’s assessments estimate that holding off on tank production and refurbishment for just three years would save the taxpayers $3 billion.
• But there are Ohio jobs and political careers at stake along with the financial results of General Dynamics who makes the tanks so the combination of corny capitalism and political cowardice in thousands of tanks being produced but never used.

So rather than restore the reductions in military benefit packages that Congress and the White House recently approved, rather than divert some of this wealth back to the taxpayer wallets or some other worthy cause such as job training, feeding the hungry, treating the addicted, housing the homeless, etc., our political class in Washington would rather just continue making unused and unneeded tanks. Pathetic.

3) Now this is a nice racket if you can get it. Unfortunately, you have to be a card carrying member of the Washington political class so god luck with that. Jess Jackson. Jr. was convicted of a number of financial felonies in connection with and his wife’s misuse and abuse of campaign contributions he was sentenced to two and half years in jail for his crimes. Remember those two words: “convicted” and “crimes.”

Despite having no mental problems for his entire life and his seventeen years in Congress, the former Congressman has suddenly developed a “mood disorder,“ allegedly happening as the Feds started closing in and examining his crimes. As a result of this sudden trauma to his odd, he has somehow been approved to receive a whopping $8,700 MONTHLY payment in Federal government disability pay. Remember those words, convicted and crimes, but still eligible to get $8,700 a month of taxpayer wealth for his mental state.

But it gets better. Despite him being “convicted” for his “crimes,” he is somehow still elibigle for an annual Federal pension of $450,000 a year. Thus, between his monthly $8,700 in disability payments and his annual $45,000 Congressional pension, he will be earning almost $150,000 a year despite having been :convicted for felonious “crimes.“ Again, great work if you can get it.

Thus, for doing nothing in the future, he will earn almost as much as if he was still a Congressman ($150,000 in pension and disability vs. a Congressional salary of about $170,000.) Even worse, at $150,000, he will be making about three times as much as what the median U.S. household earns in a year even though the members of that household have to go to a job everyday to get one third of what this convicted politician will earn. It does not get much more insane that this.

4) But it is not just rich Washington politicians that stick it to working Americans and taxpayers. Consider a recent, in-depth analysis done by the Taxpayer Union of America (TUA) relative to the horrid financial condition of the state government of Illinois:

• Just the pension liabilities for government workers in Illinois is an unreal $187 billion.
• This means that every Illinois household would have to write a check for over $35,000 just to pay for the current liability of the Illinois pension system.
• And that $187 billion is the estimate today, but given that the state political class and state government has not put any true reforms into place, that number is highly likely to grow in the coming years.
• The real insult is when you get underneath the $187 billion number and find 11,054 Illinois state pensioners now get more than $100,000 per year in pension payments, twice what the median U.S. household income level is. 
• By the year 2020, number will more than double to 25,000. 
• There are over 78,526 state pensioners receiving annual pension payments over $50,000. The TUA pointed out in their analysis that these robust pensions are funded by taxpayers who get an average Social Security pension of about $15,000.
• Funding those impossible pension liabilities is even more difficult since Illinois has the second highest unemployment rates at 8.4%, the second highest property taxes in the country, and the lowest rating in the country for its general operating bonds, making it difficult to raise more taxes when taxes are already so high and so many citizens are unemployed and contributing nothing to the tax revenue.
• Getting even further down into the TUA analysis on finds that someone named Tapas das Gupta has annual pension of $452,843, about nine times more than what the typical U.S. household earns in a year. 
• His estimated lifetime pension payout of $5,276,384 makes him a millionaire five times over.
• Edward Abraham has an Illinois state annual pension of $439,965, or $9,073,587 in estimated lifetime payouts according to the TUA. 
• Larry K. Fleming retired from Lincolnshire-Prairie View District 103 at the age of 55 and is now receiving $258,163 per year while only paying in $326,507 into the system during his career. In other words, he recoup his payments into the system in less than 16 months of pensions payouts. Disgraceful.

Again, nice work if you can get it as long as you and your union keep supporting the same crooked politicians in office.

Something has to break at some point. You cannot keep rewarding Washington politicians for non-performance and criminal performance and expect no consequences. 

You cannot keep having exorbitant pension payouts to your union supporters and not expect the entire Illinois financial system to crash at some point in time. 

You cannot keep building Army tanks that never get used and which contribute nothing to society except any ever increasing national debt burden without the Federal government eventually crashing under that burden.

And you cannot keep increasing the tax burden on businesses, both existing and new, and expect them to continue creating jobs and economic vitality as they did in the past.

Our politicians are taking us to the edge of a very steep cliff in so many ways and one day, probably sooner than later, we are all or some going over that steep cliff for a nasty fall. That is why we call it insanity, going over a cliff even though we see it ahead of us in so many ways.

To avoid that cliff, please consider joining our term limits effort at:

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

May, 2014 Poltiical Class Insanity, Part 4: Spending More But Getting Less, The Obscene Cost Of Regulation, And Destroying Good Ammunition

This is our fourth and probably not last post this month in our monthly series on political class insanity. At the beginning of every month, we review the insanity, lunacy, idiocy, and wasteful spending and programs of the American political class. Having done this for the past five years, we are continually amazed at how inept and incompetent our politicians are today with our wealth, our freedom, and quality of life.

1) The first several instances of insanity today comes to us from the wonderful website, Bankrupting America. In a previous insanity post several months ago, we discussed how in 2013 the Obama administration had issued over 3,000 new Federal regulations, almost 10 a day for every day of the year.

The obvious problems with such a performance is threefold:

1. Forcing businesses to comply with ten new regulations everyday takes away from business owners’ ability to grow their business and thus, grow the economy and economic opportunities for Americans.
2. At some point, the ever growing mountain of regulations becomes self defeating since they are too numerous to know or too numerous to comply with.
3. And if these thousands of new regulations are so important, why were they not identified in previous Presidential administrations? Could it be that we have gotten to a point that government bureaucrats are making up regulations just to justify their government existence and large compensation packages?

And now Bankrupting America has identified a fourth reason why so many regulations are so stupid and dangerous. A new study conducted by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) found that the average US household pays nearly $15,000 a year in regulatory costs as a result of the thousands and thousands of government regulations. 

If this estimate is accurate, this means that in 2013, the average consumer spent 23% of their household income to pay for just the Federal government’s regulatory burden. Obviously, state government and local government regulations place an additional burden on U.S. household incomes and wealth. 

The CEI study was entitled, titled “Ten Thousand Commandments 2014,” and it found that:

• In 2013, Federal regulation costs reached $1.863 trillion. 
• This is more than the GDPs of Canada or Australia. 
• In 2013, Congress passed only 51 laws but that resulted in 3,659 new rules and regulations, a ratio of 72 new regulations for each law that was enacted.
• Federal regulations burden each household with almost $15,000 in costs each year which is more than what an average household spends on every other household budget item except housing - more than health care, food, transportation, entertainment, apparel, services, and savings. 
• Even worse, according to the CEI, 63 Federal departments, agencies and commissions have more regulations in development.
• The study also showed that small businesses pay more in per-employee regulatory costs than larger firms. According to CEI, “Firms with fewer than 20 employees pay an average of $10,585 per employee, compared to $7,755 for those with 500 or more employees.” These costs are costs that cannot be used to expand business opportunities, which in turn expand the economy and economic opportunities for Americans.

Look, some regulations are necessary to protect the safety and welfare of citizens, that is one of the few legitimate fucntions of government, But adding 10 new Federal regulations every day proves that the political class and the government it oversees has no clue as to what are critical safety needs and what is bureaucratic idiocy and redundancy. And it is quite possible that this idiocy and redundancy are what has stifled economy growth for the entire length of the Obama Presidency.

2) Also from Bankrupting America, in late April, 2014, USAToday reported that the Pentagon plans on destroying more than $1 billion worth of ammunition that otherwise could still be used. According to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, the GAO found that the different armed services for the Defense Department have ammunition inventory systems that cannot share data directly. 

Only the Army uses the standard Pentagon format to report their ammunition stockpile, while the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps operate under different and obsolete formats. The GAO suggests this leads to waste from buying new ammunition, while usable stockpiles exist.

Sen. Tom Carper, chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee stated, “We simply cannot afford this type of waste and ineffectiveness. The (Pentagon) has a responsibility to efficiently manage its ammunition stocks, not only because it is important to be fiscally responsible, but also because our antiquated ammunition inventory systems can shortchange our war fighters and compromise their ability to complete their mission.” Could not agree with you more, Senator, what are you going to do about it? 

Our armed forces have been around for over two centuries. Computers have been around for over sixty years. We pay the Pentagon hundreds of billions of dollars every year. Given these factors, is it asking too much of the Federal government and the Washington political class to have a few databases that can count and not waste billions of dollars in perfectly good ammunition?

3) Another Bankrupting America update comes from an editorial piece that recently ran in The Hill publication. The editorial discussed a recent study from the Mercatus Center that examined the true root causes of poverty in America and how to attack this chronic problem. 

The study found that there are two simple truths about poverty: poverty arises from joblessness, and government spending doesn’t reduce poverty, two pretty simple ideas that seem lost on the Washington political class. The study identified laws such as the Affordable Care Act and minimum wage legislation that are government programs with good intentions in an ideal world (everyone gets health care, low-wage earners receive higher wages), but in reality lead to greater rates of joblessness and poverty. 

Additionally, consider a quote directly form the study itself, a quote that examines the insanity of how politicians waste our wealth on failing programs:

Throwing more government dollars at this problem won’t solve it. Despite record spending on programs to help the needy, there were a record 46 million Americans in poverty in 2012. Federal spending alone on these programs was $750 billion in the 2011 fiscal year, up more than 30% from 2008.

Let’s do some simple math to put these numbers in perspective: at $750 billion a year, with 46 million Americans in poverty, if we could somehow divide up the $750 billion and just send a check to every American living in poverty, each one of those people would get a check for over $16,000. A family of four would get a check for over $64,000, more than the median household income of every U.S. household. That is how insanely inefficient and ineffective our politicians are when it comes to helping Americans in poverty. 

The money to help them is there, the delivery of that support is pathetically poor. And that $16,000 per person does not include poverty support from state and local governments.

The study concludes that the root of problem lies in the labor market. The majority of Americans living in poverty between the ages of 18 to 64 were unemployed, and only 11% had full-time employment in 2012. According to the editorial, as long as the government continues to pursue policies that discourage people from working or businesses from hiring (see the regulations insanity discussed above), we’ll continue to see high rates of unemployment and consequently, high rates of poverty.

The real problem is that there does not appear to be anyone in Washington who is bold enough and bright enough to break this cycle of wasting taxpayer wealth on poverty programs that do not reduce poverty. As a result, more Americans fall into poverty while anti-poverty programs spend more and more money. Only in Washington could this idiotic combination continue to exist for decades, spending more to get less.

That will do it for today but more insanity will come forth tomorrow. If interested in actually ending the insanity, please consider joining our effort to impose term limits on all politicians at:

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