January, 2016, Part 6, Political Class Insanity: Bad Obama Priorities, North Korea REALLY Goes Nuclear, Homeless Boston, and More

It is the start of another month which means it is time for our monthly review of the latest political class insanity that continually spews forth from America’s politicians. Their actions, words, quotes, incompetency, and general ineptness continue to reinforce our theory that we are currently being served by the worst set of politicians in the history of the nation.

As you read about the latest shenanigans and ineptness of the political class, keep in mind what should be their priorities in these difficult times and compare this list to what they are actually working on:

• NBC recently reported that ISIS forces are getting larger and stronger despite the Obama administration spending billions of dollars on a failed air campaign and military strategy.
• The stock market is cratering.
• Job creation is barely keeping up with population growth.
• Wage growth is anemic, growing just .2% in the second quarter, the lowest quarterly growth since 1982.
• The labor participation rate is at the lowest level in decades because the Obama economy cannot generate enough jobs.
• Thousands of veterans are still not getting the medical care they were promised by the Federal government.
• 45 million Americans are still receiving monthly Federal food assistance.
• Our borders still leak and thousands of illegal immigrant criminals continue to walk our streets.
• Major programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security are hurtling towards insolvency and lose hundreds of billions of dollars every year to fraud and mismanagement.
• Our kids are still getting lousy public educations at most public schools.
• The IRS and other government functions seem to be getting their computer systems hacked on a regular basis, exposing tens of millions of Americans to identity theft potential.
• Obama Care is a failure along so many dimensions as health care costs continue to soar despite the Obama promise that they would decrease.
• Annual Federal deficits, while down, are still about half a TRILLION a year meaning that even though the Federal government is collecting more in taxes than ever before, it still cannot run a balanced budget.

Again, keep these real crises in mind as you read what our politicians are actually doing, saying and wasting.

1) Of all the world crises that have been exploding lately, the North Koreans added another dire action when they recently announced that they not only had atomic weapons but had successfully developed a hydrogen bomb. Given how closed their society is, there is really no way to verify that this is true but if so, the potential consequences are horrifying. 

It is my understanding reading the news accounts of their announcements that a hydrogen bomb is much more powerful than an atomic bomb. In fact, an atomic bomb is used to ignite a hydrogen bomb. Putting this kind of weaponry in the hands of the nut jobs that run North Korea is truly scary.

Given the serious dangers of this development, how did the Obama administration react? Consider the words of White House Press secretary Josh Earnest and his response:

“The interests of the United States can be successfully advanced through principled, focused, tenacious diplomatic engagement and that’s what we’re going to continue to pursue. The thing that I should reiterate at this point is the rock solid commitment on the part of the United States to the safety and security of our allies in South Korea. But at this point, what we want the North Koreans to do … is we want the North Koreans to end their provocative acts, both in the form of missile tests and nuclear tests; to commit to de-nuclearization; and to demonstrate a commitment to pursuing peace and stability on the Korean peninsula. 

We would like the North Koreans to begin to orient their public posture and their behavior in the direction of constructive international engagement. We’re not asking them to do that out of charity. We actually also believe that that would be in the interests of the North Korean people and certainly the broader region.”

This is what passes for effective and strategic foreign policy under the Obama administration. “We want,” “we would like,” “we believe,” phrases that are going to have absolutely no effect on North Korea’s leaders, phrases that exist in the place of hard hitting, strategic plans and actions. 

Nothing will be done, nothing will change. While Obama was playing golf and taking multi-week Hawaiian vacations, while Congress was enjoying five week summer vacations, North Korea was busy potentially mastering the art of hydrogen bombs. Insanity.

2) The next piece of insanity has me scratching my head on why Obama has not been impeached, removed from office, and possibly tried for violating the Constitution of the United States. According to a recent Wall Street Journal article, the Obama administration has been caught spying on Israeli leaders AND members of Congress, especially during the negotiations over the failed and stupid Iranian nuclear weapons negotiations:

The U.S., pursuing a nuclear arms agreement with Iran at the time, captured communications between Mr. Netanyahu and his aides that inflamed mistrust between the two countries and planted a political minefield at home when Mr. Netanyahu later took his campaign against the deal to Capitol Hill.

The National Security Agency’s targeting of Israeli leaders and officials also swept up the contents of some of their private conversations with U.S. lawmakers and American-Jewish groups. That raised fears—an “Oh-s— moment,” one senior U.S. official said—that the executive branch would be accused of spying on Congress.

White House officials believed the intercepted information could be valuable to counter Mr. Netanyahu’s campaign. They also recognized that asking for it was politically risky. So, wary of a paper trail stemming from a request, the White House let the NSA decide what to share and what to withhold, officials said. “We didn’t say, ‘Do it,’ ” a senior U.S. official said. “We didn’t say, ‘Don’t do it.’

In closed-door debate, the Obama administration weighed which allied leaders belonged on a so-called protected list, shielding them from NSA snooping. French President François Hollande, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other North Atlantic Treaty Organization leaders made the list, but the administration permitted the NSA to target the leaders’ top advisers, current and former U.S. officials said. Other allies were excluded from the protected list, including Recep Tayyip Erdogan, president of NATO ally Turkey, which allowed the NSA to spy on their communications at the discretion of top officials.

Spying on our allies, spying on Congress, probably still spying on American citizens. We are truly living in Orwell’s “1984” world. Maybe if the Obama administration had used some of these spying resources on our enemies, e.g. ISIS, Russia, North Korea, it would not look and be so inept when its foreign policy crashes and burns so often.

3) We have often discussed the reality that the Pentagon is one of the worst Federal entities when it comes to wasting taxpayer money on stupid programs and projects. They recently added to their horrible track record when its latest, supposedly highest tech warship basically had to call AAA for a tow when it completely shut down about 40 miles out at sea.

The USS Milwaukee, launched with much fanfare last month, had to be towed back to shore after engine problems shut it down. They think that “fine metal debris collected in the lube oil filter” which shut down everything. Senator John McCain kind of summarized the absurdity of the event: “Reporting of a complete loss of propulsion on USS Milwaukee is deeply alarming, particularly given this ship was commissioned just 20 days ago. US Navy ships are built with redundant systems to enable continued operation in the event of an engineering casualty, which makes this incident very concerning."

The ship cost $437 million to build and had to be towed home. Last month the Navy claimed that the: “Milwaukee is a fast, agile, focused-mission platform designed for operation in near-shore environments yet capable of open-ocean operation. It is designed to defeat asymmetric "anti-access" threats such as mines, quiet diesel submarines and fast surface craft.” 

Instead it needed a tow home because of a clogged oil filter. Insane.

4) If Obama is to be believed, he has done a wonderful job lifting the economy out of the Great Recession. Of course, we have discussed this fantasy many times in this blog. His so-called recovery has been the weakest, most anemic economic recovery in a very, very long time:

• Years after the recession ended, over 45 million Americans are still receiving Federal food assistance every month, about 50% more than when the recession started.
• Annual national economic growth never attained the long term average annual economic growth, never exceeding 3% a year.
• About 14 million Americans want full time jobs but cannot find them, settling for no job or for a part time job.
• The labor participation rate is at forty year lows.

These horrible economic results were attained even though Obama had the benefit of a $800 billion (failed) economic stimulus program, record low energy costs, and trillions of dollars pumped into the economy by the Fed. Pathetic economic management and strategies.

But forget the high level economic numbers for a minute. What has been the effect of Obama's economic policies on ordinary Americans? Consider a recent Boston Globe interview of a Boston cabbie:

• Bill Ford has been driving a cab in Boston for 42 years.
• In those 42 years he has seen good economic times and bad economic times on the streets of Boston.
• But he has never seen things so bad as now despite the economy being in “recovery:” “But when I’m out on these streets I’m seeing things I’ve never seen before, at least not as bad as they are now. When I heard Marty Walsh saying Boston would be willing to take in some of those refugees, I knew he was speaking from his heart. But if we bring them in we’re going to have to give them the works: housing, food stamps, welfare, medical. You can’t just bring them in and say, ‘OK, now you’re on your own.’ I’ve never seen so many people (Bostonians) sleeping on stoops or in doorways.” 

A major homeless problem in Boston as seen from someone on the front lines of society and the political leaders of Boston want to take care of Syrian refugees first. Sounds like the Obama approach to society’s ills: screw Americans who are homeless, hungry, drug addicted, jobless,...let’s spend billions of dollars to relocate and resettle foreigners and give them housing, food, and jobs. A world insanely turned upside down.

5) As we discussed a few days ago, gun control/gun violence ranked no better than 16 other issues facing Americans today according to a recent Gallup poll. Only 2% of those polled said gun control/gun violence was the top issue in their minds, trailing at least 16 other issues. 

So, of course, what did Obama focus on this past week or so, holding a major news conference and a townhall meeting? Gun control and gun violence. While he was focusing on this relatively minor topic in the eyes of America, the following crises and dire events were going down around the world:

• U.S. Special Forces troops were pinned down and surrounded by Taliban forces who continue to gain and control more and more territory in Afghanistan.
• North Korea conducting another nuclear weapons test and claimed they now know how to make a hydrogen bomb.
• China started landing planes on the man made islands they created in the South China Sea as they attempt to take over the major sea lanes that go through that area.
• The Chinese stock market bombed, and in doing so, cratered the U.S. stock markets.
• Dozens of people were arrested across the country, charged with planning terrorism plots within the United States.
• Saudi Arabia and Iran got into a spitting match when it was reported the Saudis had shot a missile at the Iranian embassy in Yemen after the Iranians firebombed the Saudi embassy in Iran after the Saudis had executed an Iranian favored cleric.
• ISIS announced that they had established a Bombmaking University to create even more dangerous weapons and bombs. 
• French police shot and killed an ISIS sympathizer after he tried to enter a Paris police station wielding a cleaver while shouting “Allahu Akbar.”

Add in all off the other crises listed at the beginning of this post, which obviously did not get any better in the past couple of weeks as this administration focuses on a non-issue and one that Americans are unenthusiastic about, and you can see why the country is in the state it is.

That will do it for this month’s political class insanity, not a pretty picture. Today we learned (again) that this Presidency has no answer for North Korea’s nuclear weapon drive, this President has no qualms about spying on allies and members of Congress, an act that must be illegal and impeachable, the American taxpayer just paid half a billion dollars for a warship that does not work, the economy is still in the doldrums, and the priorities of this administration are all out of whack. 

Sounds about right, just another month of wasteful spending, bad priorities, illegal actions, etc., courtesy of the worst set of politicians ever to serve this country.


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

January, 2016, Part 5, Political Class Insanity: Dozens Of Examples Government Corruption, Lies, Wasteful Spending, and Incompetence

It is the start of another month which means it is time for our monthly review of the latest political class insanity that continually spews forth from America’s politicians. Their actions, words, quotes, incompetency, and general ineptness continue to reinforce our theory that we are currently being served by the worst set of politicians in the history of the nation.

As you read about the latest shenanigans and ineptness of the political class, keep in mind what should be their priorities in these difficult times and compare this list to what they are actually working on:

• NBC recently reported that ISIS forces are getting larger and stronger despite the Obama administration spending billions of dollars on a failed air campaign and military strategy.
• The stock market is cratering.
• Job creation is barely keeping up with population growth.
• Wage growth is anemic, growing just .2% in the second quarter, the lowest quarterly growth since 1982.
• The labor participation rate is at the lowest level in decades because the Obama economy cannot generate enough jobs.
• Thousands of veterans are still not getting the medical care they were promised by the Federal government.
• 45 million Americans are still receiving monthly Federal food assistance.
• Our borders still leak and thousands of illegal immigrant criminals continue to walk our streets.
• Major programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security are hurtling towards insolvency and lose hundreds of billions of dollars every year to fraud and mismanagement.
• Our kids are still getting lousy public educations at most public schools.
• The IRS and other government functions seem to be getting their computer systems hacked on a regular basis, exposing tens of millions of Americans to identity theft potential.
• Obama Care is a failure along so many dimensions as health care costs continue to soar despite the Obama promise that they would decrease.
• Annual Federal deficits, while down, are still about half a TRILLION a year meaning that even though the Federal government is collecting more in taxes than ever before, it still cannot run a balanced budget.

Again, keep these real crises in mind as you read what our politicians are actually doing, saying and wasting.

We have often made the case, and supported it with real life, verifiable examples of how the entire Federal government operation is severely broken. Nothing works, problems that are supposed to be addressed are usually worse once the Feds get involved, often the Feds not only do not solve the issue at hand but create no problems and issues,and all of this incompetence is carried out at great expense to the taxpayer with no societal benefit in return.

In previous posts in this blog we have talked about how many Federal employees have been caught watching pornography on their government computers rather than doing their job but no one ever seems to get fired. We have discussed how Las Vegas parties have been held at great expense even though most of the party attendees live and work in the D.C. area. We have reviewed how the ATF had guns and explosives stolen right from their own secure facilities.

And there is not enough time in the day to discuss how broken and dysfunctional the Veterans Administration, TSA, Medicare, and the IRS are. Stick any of these organizations in the search box above and be prepared to spend hours finding out how badly and how often these entities screw up.

Which brings us to today’s political class insanity post which was basically written by the Washington Weekly News. They recently put forth an incredible piece on their website that documented and verified the massive ineptness and insanity that currently passes for government functions and workers in D.C. today. Their original article and the links to verify that they are not making this idiocy up can be accessed at:

http://washingtonweeklynews.com/long-long-list-of-lies-how-corrupt-is-the-american-government-see-for-yourself/#

Some of the insanity they uncovered, which sometimes verifies the same incompetence and waste we have previously discussed, include the following:

 - High level SEC employees spent up to 8 hours a day on pornography websites instead of cracking down on financial crimes

- Nuclear Regulatory Commission workers watched pornography on the job instead of cracking down on unsafe conditions at nuclear plants

- An EPA employee who downloaded 7,000 porn files then spent 2-6 hours each workday watching them. He’s been doing it for years but the EPA never fired him.

- Another EPA employee harassed 16 women co-workers but was promoted to a higher-paying job with more responsibility, where he harassed more women

- NSA spies pass around homemade sex videos and pictures they’ve collected from spying on the American people

- NSA employees have also been caught using their mass surveillance powers to spy on love interests, such as girl friends and former wives.

- NSA employees also eavesdropped on American soldiers’ intimate conversations with their wives back home. 

- An employee of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) admitted that TSA agents share and laugh at nude scans of passengers. 

- Another TSA employee claimed that screeners make excuses so they can grope and fondle travelers that they’re attracted to.

- Investigators from the Treasury's Office of the Inspector General found that some of the regulator’s employees surfed erotic websites, hired prostitutes and accepted gifts from bank executives,people that they were supposed to be overseeing and regulating.

- The Mineral Management Service was riddled with “a culture of substance abuse and promiscuity”, which included “sex with industry contacts,” all of which may explain why this Service did not see the BP oil spill coming before it happened. 

- Agents for the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) had dozens of sex parties with prostitutes hired by the drug cartels they were supposed to stop.

- DEA agents also received money, gifts and weapons from drug cartel members.

- Pentagon employees used government credit cards to pay for adult "escorts" (i.e. prostitutes) and to gamble.

- North Carolina passed a law legalizing prostitutes for state lawmakers. 

- Federal agents with the DEA and Secret Service investigating Bitcoin money laundering extorted and stole over $1 million in Bitcoin

- The IRS gave promotions to employees who were themselves tax cheats. 

- Regulators knew of and allowed the use of debt-hiding accounting tricks by the big banks

- The SEC has been shredding Wall Street documents for decades to help the big banks cover up their fraud.

- The Secretary of Treasury (Tim Geithner) was complicit in Lehman's accounting fraud.

- The former chief accountant for the SEC  says that Bernanke and Paulson broke the law and should be prosecuted.

- The government knew about mortgage fraud a long time ago. For example, the FBI warned of an “epidemic” of mortgage fraud in 2004. However, the FBI, DOJ and other government agencies then stood down and did nothing. 

- Paulson and Bernanke falsely stated that the big banks receiving Tarp money were healthy when they were not. The Treasury Secretary also falsely told Congress that the bailouts would be used to dispose of toxic assets … but then used the money for something else entirely.

- Every year D.C. the politicians have bailed out large banks to the tune of many tens of billions of dollars and created a system where all of the profits were privatized and all of the risks were socialized. 

- Obama and Congress promised help for struggling homeowners, and passed numerous bills that they claimed would rescue the little guy. But every single one of these bills actually bails out the banks and do not really help the homeowner

- A high-level Federal Reserve official says quantitative easing is "the greatest backdoor Wall Street of all time."

- The American government’s top official in charge of the bank bailouts wrote, “Americans should lose faith in their government. They should deplore the captured politicians and regulators who distributed tax dollars to the banks without insisting that they be accountable. The American people should be revolted by a financial system that rewards failure and protects those who drove it to the point of collapse and will undoubtedly do so again.”

- The non-partisan Government Accountability Office (GAO) calls the Fed corrupt and riddled with conflicts of interest

- Both the Bush and Obama administrations broke the law by refusing to close insolvent banks.

- Congress may have covered up illegal tax breaks for the big banks

- Congress recently told the courts that Congress can’t be investigated for insider trading

- Congress has exempted itself from the health care rules it insists everyone else follow.

- The government has gone to great lengths to cover up nuclear accidents, radiation dangers, and unsafe conditions at nuclear plants

- The government made sure that false claims were made about the amount of oil spilled by BP in the Gulf.
  - The government covered up the health risks to New Orleans residents associated with polluted water from hurricane Katrina, and FEMA covered up the cancer risk from the toxic trailers which it provided to refugees of the hurricane. 

- The Centers for Disease Control, the lead agency tasked with addressing disease in America, covered up lead poisoning in children in the Washington, D.C. area (the Centers for Disease Control has also been outed as receiving industry funding.

- Government scientists originally pushed fluoridation of water as “safe and effective” because fluoride is a major byproduct of making nuclear weapons… and the government ordered them to downplay the risks of fluoride exposure in order to prevent massive lawsuits by those suffering injury from poisoning

- When one of the most respected radiologists in America – the former head of the radiology department at Yale University – attempted to blow the whistle on the fact that the FDA had approved a medical device manufactured by General Electric because it put out massive amounts of radiation, the FDA installed spyware to record his private emails and surfing activities (including installing cameras to snap pictures of his screen), and then used the information to smear him and other whistle blowers

- The EPA colluded with Dow Chemical to toss aside Dow’s own safety studies showing that the Agent Orange ingredient 2,4-D caused kidney damage in rats, so it could approve an increase of 4100% of 2,4-D in the American diet.

- The Bush White House worked hard to smear CIA officers, bloggers and anyone else who criticized the Iraq war

- The FBI smeared top scientists who pointed out the numerous holes in its anthrax case. Indeed, the head of the FBI’s investigation agrees that corruption was rampant.

- After a top USDA scientist disclosed that commonly-used pesticides kill monarch butterflies and beneficial insects, the government punished him and tried to make his life miserable.

- The government has intentionally whipped up hysteria about terrorism for cynical political purposes. For example, former Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge admitted that he was pressured to raise terror alerts to help the president win reelection. 

- Warmongers in the U.S. government knowingly and intentionally lied us intol a war of aggression in Iraq. The former head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff – the highest ranking military officer in the United States – said that the Iraq war was "based on a series of lies" The same is true in Libya, Syria, and other wars. Indeed, the U.S. has often launched or proposed launching wars based on false premises.

- The U.S. has supported main backers of Islamic terrorism because they have a lot of oil and do our government’s dirty work. In the name of fighting terrorism, the U.S. has been directly supporting Al Qaeda  and other terrorists and providing them arms, money and logistical support in Syria, Libya, Mali, Bosnia, Chechnya,Iran, and many other countries before and after 9-11. 

- Conservatives like the director of the National Security Agency under Ronald Reagan (Lt. General William Odom) and liberals like Noam Chomsky all say that the American government is the world's largest purveyor of terrorism. 

- When the American government got caught assassinating innocent civilians, it changed its definition of “enemy combatants” to include all young men between the ages of say 15 and 35 who happen to be in battle zones. When it got busted killing kids with drones, it changed the definition again to include kids as “enemy combatants”

- U.S. government officials say that the government has long PROTECTED drug cartels.

- $8.5 trillion dollars in taxpayer money doled out by Congress to the Pentagon since 1996 ha never been accounted for. 

- Congress pushes expensive boondoggles that our generals say are unnecessary and unhelpful because it’s pork for their district

- The government lied when it said it doesn;t conduct mass surveillance on Americans and then lied again when it said that spying was aimed at protecting America against terrorists. 

- The same Congress members who backed mass surveillance against the American people have only become indignant only when they were spied on by the government

- The government also lied when it said America doesn't torture and then lied once again when it said torture was aimed at protecting America against terrorists

- The government protects criminal wrongdoing by prosecuting whistle blowers. The Obama administration has sentenced whistle blowers to dozens of times the jail time of all other Presidents COMBINED. And the government has framed whistle blowers with false evidence.

- The government treats journalists who report on government corruption as CRIMINALS OR TERRORISTS. And it goes to great lengths to smear them. For example, when USA Today reporters busted the Pentagon for illegally targeting Americans with propaganda, the Pentagon launched a smear campaign against the reporters. 

- The intelligence services blackmail people in both government and the private sector with evidence of homosexuality ,nude pictures and other information that people want to stop from going public

- Terror attacks such as 9/11, the Boston Marathon bombing and the Texas shooting all happened because of PERVASIVE CORRUPTION in our intelligence agencies.

The sad thing is that I did not include all of the corruption and ineptness that the Washington Weekly News article put forth, again, all of which can be verified by the links they embedded in the original article’s web address listed above. 

Additionally, the article did not get to all of the corruption, wasteful spending, spying, and ineptness of the political class and the government it oversees that we have previously reviewed. To review even more government incompetence, just browse through the first few posts at the beginning of each month listed above through the years. It is at the beginning of each month where we put the latest insanity from the political class.

After reviewing all of the insanity we just discussed, you will certainly reach the same conclusion that we reached and that Mark Twain reached years ago:

• Our view: We are currently served by the worst set of American politicians to ever hold office.
• Mark Twain’s view: Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself.

Incompetent idiots, a deadly combination in Washington and around the country. More political class insanity tomorrow.

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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

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

January, 2016, Part 4, Political Class Insanity: Hillary Math Failure, War On Drugs Fail, United Nations Fail and More

It is the start of another month which means it is time for our monthly review of the latest political class insanity that continually spews forth from America’s politicians. Their actions, words, quotes, incompetency, and general ineptness continue to reinforce our theory that we are currently being served by the worst set of politicians in the history of the nation.

As you read about the latest shenanigans and ineptness of the political class, keep in mind what should be their priorities in these difficult times and compare this list to what they are actually working on:

• NBC recently reported that ISIS forces are getting larger and stronger despite the Obama administration spending billions of dollars on a failed air campaign and military strategy.
• The stock market is stalling.
• Job creation is barely keeping up with population growth.
• Wage growth is anemic, growing just .2% in the second quarter, the lowest quarterly growth since 1982.
• The labor participation rate is at the lowest level in decades because the Obama economy cannot generate enough jobs.
• Thousands of veterans are still not getting the medical care they were promised by the Federal government.
• 45 million Americans are still receiving monthly Federal food assistance.
• Our borders still leak and thousands of illegal immigrant criminals continue to walk our streets.
• Major programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security are hurtling towards insolvency and lose hundreds of billions of dollars every year to fraud and mismanagement.
• Our kids are still getting lousy public educations at most public schools.
• The IRS and other government functions seem to be getting their computer systems hacked on a regular basis, exposing tens of millions of Americans to identity theft potential.
• Obama Care is a failure along so many dimensions as health care costs continue to soar despite the Obama promise that they would decrease.
• Annual Federal deficits, while down, are still about half a TRILLION a year meaning that even though the Federal government is collecting more in taxes than ever before, it still cannot run a balanced budget.

Again, keep these real crises in mind as you read what our politicians are actually doing, saying and wasting.

1) Sometimes, when politicians speak, you just have to scratch your head and think, What in the world are they talking about? This certainly applies to a recent speech that Hillary Clinton gave in Iowa where, speaking of education reform, she said: “Now, I wouldn’t keep any school open that wasn’t doing a better than average job.”

Think about the idiocy of this statement. By the definition of average, that means about half of something is at or below the average and about half or at or above the average. If you shut down all the schools that were below the average, according to Clinton, you would be shutting down about half of the schools. Where would those kids go to school? I am sure those kids from the shut down schools would not all fit into the existing schools so how would those kids be educated if half the schools, those below average, were shut down?

And let’s assume that Clinton did shut down half of the schools performing below average. What would she do next year, shut down half of the remaining schools that were performing below average? At some point we would be down to a single school. Idiocy.

The problem is not that half of the schools perform below the overall average. The problem is that some schools stink and need to be fixed, not shut down. But as always, American politicians do not understand root cause analysis and problem solving. And in Clinton’s case, she obviously does not understand basic math concepts.

2) As listed above, as a nation we currently face many problems. Millions of Americans struggle to eat every month. Thousands of veterans do not get the medical care they were promised. Millions of Americans go homeless at least part of the year every year. Tens of thousands of Americans die from drug overdoses every year without the treatment they need to kick the habit.

Which brings us to the following Twitter post that Susie Morrison, head pastry chef at the White House, recently tweeted: "A lot of love goes into this 500 pound gingerbread house!" Yes, in the face of all of our problems, the White House is bragging how they made a quarter ton worth of gingerbread house, incurring the expense to do so. It might just be me but Marie Antoinette’s famous “let them eat cake” comes to mind. Nothing says we do not care about your food, homelessness, medical care, or drug addiction problems more than flaunting a vain, useless 500 pound gingerbread house in millions of needy American faces.

3) We have often pointed out how tepid and anemic the Obama economic recovery has been despite:

• Spending over $800 billion on a failed economic stimulus program.
• Enjoying a drastic reduction in energy costs that should have pumped untold billions of dollars into the economy.
• Benefiting from the Fed pumping trillions of fake dollars into the economy.

Despite these these historic tail winds, the Obama economic recovery has probably been the weakest recovery in the past hundred years with historically low GDP growth, low labor participation rates, and stagnant wages and salaries. Six years into the Obama economic recovery, a recent survey study from Google shows how bad that recovery has been:

• 62% of Americans have less than $1,000 in savings.
• 21% have no savings at all.

Thus, a large majority of Americans are one unexpected bill from being in dire economic straits. A broken car, a broken water heater, unforeseen medical bills, and things get very dicey very quickly. Six years into an economic “recovery.” Insane.

4) At a recent House oversight committee hearing, Congressman Jason Chaffetz of Utah, who led the hearings, opened the day with some serious comments regarding terrorist Tashfeen Malik, one of the San Bernardino terrorists, and her terroristic threats and comments on social media: “It is unclear how someone who so openly discussed her hatred of our country and way of life could easily pass three background checks. We need to understand how the breakdown happened with Malik and what we are doing to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

Certainly a worthwhile observation and a lacking need in our immigration and anti-terror processes and procedures. But the really scary finding of the hearing came when the Congressman asked Michele Thoren Bond of the Bureau of Consular Affairs about the Obama administration’s anti-terror and national security strategies. Bond tried to brag that the U.S. has yanked more than 122,000 visas since 2001, nearly 10,000 of which were revoked due to terrorism concerns.

Which sounds like great news until Chaffetz asked Ms. Bond where those thousands of foreigners possibly linked to terrorism were now located. Unfortunately, Bond’ answer was a frightening, “I don’t know.” 

Yes, we have identified 10,000 potential terrorists, we have revoked their visas but in reality, we have no idea where they are physically located so that we can deport them. Feeling safe? This insanity is what passes for competence in the the Obama administration and Washington in general these days, from people/government employees that are all probably earning over $100,000 a year but who cannot do their jobs.

5)We have often lamented the reality that the decades long Federal government “war on drugs” has been a dismal failure. It has not attacked the root causes of the illegal drug trade in this country, i.e. addiction, it has failed to stop the international flow of illegal drugs, it has added to local crime rates, cost us untold billions of dollars in law enforcement and prison costs. and it has created some of the most powerful and violent criminal gangs ever, the notorious drug cartels.

And recent news articles out of New York prove again how widespread illegal drug pushing is and how ineffective the political class and government has been in stopping it. New York city police and Federal agents recently intercepted a “staggering” load of cocaine in the Bronx where it had been shipped from Massachusetts. They arrested two men from Puerto Rico alleged to be part of a major drug trafficking network.

The bust accounted for a whopping 136 pounds of cocaine, with an estimated street value of $3 million. According to NYC’s Special Narcotics Prosecutor Bridget G. Brennan: “The sheer amount of cocaine seized in this case is staggering. This is the largest seizure of cocaine being transported in the region that our office has handled in recent years.” Just two guys caught with $3 million worth of illegal drugs. How many guys did not get caught today that were also transporting millions of dollars worth of drugs? 

When it will be time to wake up and find another approach to drug addiction? Einstein once said that “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” Sounds like he was predicting our failed war on drugs.

6) One last piece of insanity for today. Anyone observing world events over the past few years realizes what a joke the United Nations is today:

• Russia invaded and annexed parts of an independent country, the Ukraine, and the United Nations has done nothing.
• The Syrian civil war has killed hundreds of thousands and turned millions into refugees and the United Nations has done nothing.
• Terrorism is rampant across the world and the United Nations has done nothing.
• The Israeli/Palestinian problem is no closer to being resolved and the United Nations has done nothing. 
• North Korea and Iran have gotten much closer to becoming nuclear weapons owners and the United Nations has done nothing.
• ISIS is enslaving children and women and killing and butchering untold thousands and the United Naitons has done nothing.

The United Nations might be the one entity in the world that is less competent than the Washington political class. Did you ever wonder what we pay for this incompetence? Well, now you know: according to a recent CNS news report, the American taxpayer will pay almost $3 billion for their United Nations share in 2016. This is a whopping 22% of the UN’s entire budget.

Given that millions of Americans go homeless every year, that millions of Americans struggle to provide enough food for their families every day, and millions of Americans struggle with drug addiction, is annually sending almost $3 billion to a useless international body that accomplishes nothing worthwhile? That is the definition of insanity.

Three billion dollars of taxpayer wealth for nothing in return, a failed war on drugs, 10,000 missing potential terrorists, a lousy economic recovery, a quarter ton White House gingerbread house, and Hillary Clinton’s math failures. You cannot make up this insanity that is the American political class. More insanity tomorrow.

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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

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

January, 2016, Part 3, Poltical Class Insanity: Afghanistan Goes Down the Drain, Four Times Worth Than Solyndra, and We Do Not Trust Hillary or Donald

It is the start of another month which means it is time for our monthly review of the latest political class insanity that continually spews forth from America’s politicians. Their actions, words, quotes, incompetency, and general ineptness continue to reinforce our theory that we are currently being served by the worst set of politicians in the history of the nation.

As you read about the latest shenanigans and ineptness of the political class, keep in mind what should be their priorities in these difficult times and compare this list to what they are actually working on:

• NBC recently reported that ISIS forces are getting larger and stronger despite the Obama administration spending billions of dollars on a failed air campaign and military strategy.
• The stock market is stalling.
• Job creation is barely keeping up with population growth.
• Wage growth is anemic, growing just .2% in the second quarter, the lowest quarterly growth since 1982.
• The labor participation rate is at the lowest level in decades because the Obama economy cannot generate enough jobs.
• Thousands of veterans are still not getting the medical care they were promised by the Federal government.
• 45 million Americans are still receiving monthly Federal food assistance.
• Our borders still leak and thousands of illegal immigrant criminals continue to walk our streets.
• Major programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security are hurtling towards insolvency and lose hundreds of billions of dollars every year to fraud and mismanagement.
• Our kids are still getting lousy public educations at most public schools.
• The IRS and other government functions seem to be getting their computer systems hacked on a regular basis, exposing tens of millions of Americans to identity theft potential.
• Obama Care is a failure along so many dimensions as health care costs continue to soar despite the Obama promise that they would decrease.
• Annual Federal deficits, while down, are still about half a TRILLION a year meaning that even though the Federal government is collecting more in taxes than ever before, it still cannot run a balanced budget.

Again, keep these real crises in mind as you read what our politicians are actually doing, saying and wasting.

1) Nowhere has Washington political class been more horrid or incompetent than when it comes to managing the war in Afghanistan. It has been America’s longest war, it has killed and wounded thousands of our soldiers, and has probably cost over a trillion dollars to execute. As we have pointed out many times, the fraud, corruption and wasting of American taxpayer dollars has been rampant and widespread. 

And what has all this cost gotten us, seven years into the Obama administration’s management of the war? According to a recent Washington Post article, not a lot:

• Our enemy, the Taliban, have more “battle discipline and initiative far superior to the Afghan security forces trained and equipped by the United States.”
• Privately, top Afghan and U.S. officials admit that the Taliban are resurgent across the country.
• The Taliban control about 30% of the Afghan districts across the country, equating to more territory under their control now than any year since 2001.
• The struggle now is to keep the key area around Helmand in southern Afghanistan from falling into Taliban hands again, fourteen years into the fight, despite the Afghan security forces significantly outnumbering the Taliban forces in the area.
• 7,000 Afghan soldiers have been killed this year fighting the Taliban and 12,000 have been injured, a whopping 26% increase over last year.
• Desertation rates are soaring as it has become apparent that the Taliban are somehow now better organized and better equipped than previously.
• Outside of the battlefield, the economy stinks, there is high unemployment, and high levels of corruption exist throughout the government and political class.

Two administrations, 14 years, a trillion dollars, and likely all for nothing, given that the Afghan government and its armed forces are getting weaker and weaker as the Taliban get stronger. Insanity.

2) We have often discussed how the Obama administration wasted upwards of $40 billion of taxpayer wealth on failed alternative energy companies, most of which were operated by Democratic Party operatives and backers. The biggest loser was Solyndra which crashed and burned, taking down $500 million worth of taxpayer wealth with it.

But now it appears that Solyndra was not even close to being the biggest alternative energy investment failure during the Obama Presidency. It now appears that a company named Abengoa may be have destroyed up to four times as much taxpayer wealth than Solyndra. Details of this disaster include the following:

• The Department of Energy recently released over 1,200 government pages regarding Abengoa as required by a Freedom of Information Act request by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
• Unfortunately, much of the 1,200 pages had been blacked out, making the details of this scandal difficult to scope out from the heavily redacted text. 
• On some pages, every word was blacked out. Which raises serious suspicions on what really happened behind the scenes to this Spanish based alternative energy company if the Obama administration would go to such lengths to deny access to the requested information.
• Of particular interest was Abengoa’s $400 million biofuels plant in Kansas. a plant that received a $132 million Federal taxpayer funded loan and a $97 million grant.
• However, after only a year of operation, plant problems led to Abengoa filing for bankruptcy and shutting down its Kansas plant.
• In a Spanish court, Abengoa’s bankruptcy filing shows the largest single creditor to the bankrupt company is the U.S. taxpayer. Specifically, the Federal government’s U.S. Federal Financing Bank holds $2.3 billion worth of Abengoa’s debt, a debt incurred on behalf of the American taxpayer by the Obama administration.

Thus, Solyndra almost looks like a sick bargain with its half a billion worth of losses compared to the over $2 billion worth of losses that taxpayers will likely suffer from the Abengoa bankruptcy. How many homeless Americans could have gotten shelter for $2.3 billion, how many American drug addicts could have gotten treatment for $2.3 billion, how many teachers could have been put into our schools for $2.3 billion? 

Instead, we got nothing in return for our $2.3 billion. Not a single gallon of alternative biofuel fuel was ever sold from the plant’s operations, nothing, nada.

Oh, I take that back. We did get something from this investment: another failed Obama green energy initiative and another scandal and cover up of the ineptness of this administration.

3) A recent opinion poll by the Economist/YouGov organization asked 2,000 Americans their opinions on the honesty trustworthiness of seven presidential candidates: Jeb Bush, Ben Carson, Hillary Clinton, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Bernie Sanders, and Donald Trump. As one would expect relative to other discussions we have had with the growing disgust that Americans have for today's politicians, the results were not good:

• 53% of the respondents view Hillary Clinton as dishonest and untrustworthy.
• Only 31% view as honest and trustworthy.
• Only 59% of Democrats view her as honest and trustworthy, not a good sign when your own party supporters cannot even get to a 60% level on your honesty.
• Donald Trump did not do much better with 51% of people saying he was untrustworthy and dishonest. 
• He did just slightly better on the other side of the question with 33% viewing him as trustworthy and honest vs. only 31% for Clinton.

So if this poll is to be believed, the leading candidates to become the next President are viewed by a majority of Americans as dishonest and untrustworthy.

The other leading candidates were generally bunched together with an equal number of respondents judging them all to be dishonest and untrustworthy at about the same levels, around 33% or so.

How pathetic are the politicians that currently populate our elected offices today? Seems like all of them, regardless of what poll or survey we look at, think that our politicians are untrustworthy, dishonest, inept, por a danger to the country. Heaven help us.

What did learn today: we do not trust our politicians, we continue to lose billions of dollars to Obama’s ill fated and idiotic alternative energy investments, and Afghanistan is going down the drain. More insanity tomorrow.

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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

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