June, 2016, Part 4, Political Class Insanity: Zombie Voters In LA, Failing MIlitary Hardware, Failing Foreign Policy,and More

It is the beginning of another month which means it is time again to review the latest political class insanity from the American political class. Each month it takes us multiple posts to cover the wasteful spending, incompetent government organizations and employees, government programs that usually make a problem worse than resolving it, inane and idiotic politician comments, etc. In fact, last month we set a record, needing ten full posts to cover it all.

To review past posts on this insanity and idiocy, just click on the first few posts in each month listed to the right of this page. After reviewing just a handful of these insanity posts we think you will agree that we are currently being served by the worst set of American politicians ever to hold office in our entire history.

It looks like our politicians have been especially insane over the past month or so let’s get started with the latest insanity from today’s American politicians:

1) We often debate in this blog about which Federal government entity is the most incompetent. Candidates always include the IRS, Homeland Security’s TSA entity, the Social Security Administration and the Veterans Administration. Today, the TSA steps forward for its ineptness in performing its most important job, security at the nation’s airports.

According to CBS News in New York City:

• A cellphone camera video at JFK airport shows airport workers entering a restricted area of the airport without going through a security check.
• This behavior was recorded over a number of days with airport workers strolling through a turnstile after scanning their security card and entering a PIN number. However, the workers’ identities were not verified and their bags were not checked for weapons or bombs.
• Senator Bill Nelson stated the obvious: “I’m horrified, but I’m not surprised. I think one of the main threats is employees of the airport getting on carrying contraband, possibly weapons. There you have the potential for disaster.”
• The article reminded its readers that in 2014, a Delta airline employee was able to smuggle more than 100 guns through Atlanta’s airport security and hand them off to a passenger who was heading to New York.

So as innocent American citizens are getting groped at security lines at our airports, potential terrorists are walking into restricted areas with no security, no groping. This ineptness comes out on top of the recent news that TSA operatives failed to detect 95% of fake bombs and guns that were put through TSA screening points and the reality that TSA’s incompetence has been causing thousands of travelers to miss their flights because they could not get through security lines fast enough. Looks like the TSA may have taken the lead as the most incompetent Federal organization.

2) One of the most critical components of our democracy is the one person, one vote notion. We operate our government and maintain our freedoms via voting for people that theoretically represent our views and positions. Under this process, every living citizen gets equal representation of their views.

I say “living citizen” because according to a recent investigative reporting effort by the CBS television affiliate in Los Angeles, there are a lot of dead citizens continuing to vote, undermining the very foundation of our democracy. Details of the investigation,that was done by CBS reporter David Goldstein found that:

• L.A. resident John Cenkner died in 2003.
• However, Mr. Cenkner continued to vote in elections that were held in 2004, 2005, 2006, 2008, and 2010.
• And he was not the only dead person voting after his death with at least 215 other dead people who managed to vote after they died in just L.A county alone.
• This number was derived by comparing county voting records with death records from the Social Security Administration.

Now, 215 is what could be positively identified. There are likely many more that were not identified or could not be identified because of the commonness of a name, e.g. John Smith. Repeat this voter fraud across the thousands of counties across the country and you eventually have to conclude we have a voter fraud problem in this country, a fraud problem that undermines our democracy.

3) Although the Defense Department budget has varied over the years, let’s assume that the average annual budget for the Pentagon is around a whopping $600 billion. This comes out to well over $5,000 a year for every U.S. household. It is a lot of money, one would hope that we are getting good value for our taxpayer wealth and that our fighting forces are getting the best possible equipment and support.

And as always, hoping that the Washington political class and the Federal government was getting us good value for our tax dollars is just another disappointment. According to reporting by Lucas Tomlinson and Jennifer Griffin on April 17, 2016 for Fox News:

• Despite a Defense Department budget of about $600 billion a year, the vast majority of Marine Corps aircraft cannot be considered airworthy.
• Out of 276 F/A Hornet fighter jets, only 30% are able to be flown.
• Only 42 out of 147 CH-53E Super Stallion helicopters are airworthy.
• There are combination of factors at work including the overuse of the aircraft in Iraq and Afghanistan, budget cuts to the Defense Department budget which is still close to $600 billion a year, and the reality that a lot of highly trained Marine mechanics have left the service for the private sector.
• To keep many of their aircraft operational, the Marines cannibalize parts off of non-working aircraft since they cannot get new parts and in one case, they took a landing gear door off of a jet that was in a museum.
• Sometimes it takes 18 months to get parts of some of the early model F-18 jets that the Marines use.
• One Marine air wing currently has only two operative jets out of.
• This results in Marine pilots getting less training and flying time experience that makes them less effective in combat.

$600 billion or so a year for years and this is what the Washington political class has given us: inferior aircraft that endangers the pilots and soldiers that use them and their ability to fight for our defense and freedom. Pathetically insane.

4) The Obama Presidency will likely go down as a disaster from a foreign affairs perspective:

• Meddling in internal Libyan and Syrian affairs that caused hundreds of thousands to either be killed or wounded by warfare and turned millions into refugees while destroying two whole countries in the process.
• Allowing North Korea and Iran over almost 8 years to easily get closer to becoming nuclear weapons powers.
• Allowing Russia to rise and become a dangerous military power on the world stage including the invasion of the Ukraine.
• Allowing China to assert itself throughout the south Pacific and build up man made islands that will serve as military bases which threaten international shipping and commerce.
• Allowing the creation of ISIS, the most violent, dangerous, and wealthy terror organization of all time.
• Failing to support the countries, cities, and citizens of Paris and Brussels, France and Belgium after massive terror attacks.
• Ticking off the heads of state of countries that should be our allies by spying on their personal communications.

To this list of failures and the dangers they have caused, consider the new reality, according to reporting by the Heritage Foundation that China is just about ready to deploy nuclear powered submarines, armed with nuclear long range missiles, within range of much of the United States. According to the the reporting:

• This deployment of nuclear armed submarines is part of a larger trend in Chinese military upgrades.
• China is “developing a suite of weapons platforms that were once thought to be reserved for only the U.S. or would take nations like China and Russia decades to develop.”
• For example, China is building its first two aircraft carriers.
• It is now into its fifth generation of stealth fighter jets and has advanced its air defense systems so much that it may now negate the U.S. advantage in stealth aircraft technology.
• It may already have or will soon have anti-satellite weapons that could knock the satellites that help U.S. military efforts.
• It has a missile that may now be able to attack enemy vessels from as far as 2,500 miles away, equivalent to launching a missile in Miami and having it take out a target somewhere in the Rocky Mountains.
• China may also be working on a hypersonic missile that travels five times the speed of sound and which could render current air defense systems useless.

Thus, while we are spending $600 billion a year on defense but our Marines have to go to museums to get spare parts, China is building and deploying a modern military machine that could allow it to rule vast parts of the earth if it ever decided to use their new military capabilities. That is what is called a massive foreign affairs failure.

In summary, from a foreign affairs perspective - compared to when Obama took office: Russia is now a real military threat to both Europe and in the Middle East, China is now a real political threat to the South Pacific and around the world, ISIS is now terrorizing the world but did not exist eight years ago, the Middle East is in crisis mode from Yemen to Syria to Libya to the Israeli/Palestinian standoff to Iranians nuclear progress, North Korea is eight years closer to having advanced nuclear weapons. Bravo, Mr. President. Oh, and thanks a lot for working and focusing on getting men into women’s bathrooms and locker rooms across the country, a very important effort relative what is going on in the rest of the world.

Another day, another set of insanity. More tomorrow.

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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

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

June, 2016, Part 3,Political Class Insanity: Taxpayers Pahying For Pecan Snacks, Economy Killing Regulations, and a Senseless Rant In Louisiana

It is the beginning of another month which means it is time again to review the latest political class insanity from the American political class. Each month it takes us multiple posts to cover the wasteful spending, incompetent government organizations and employees, government programs that usually make a problem worse than resolving it, inane and idiotic politician comments, etc. In fact, last month we set a record, needing ten full posts to cover it all.

To review past posts on this insanity and idiocy, just click on the first few posts in each month listed to the right of this page. After reviewing just a handful of these insanity posts we think you will agree that we are currently being served by the worst set of American politicians ever to hold office in our entire history.

It looks like our politicians have been especially insane over the past month or so let’s get started with the latest insanity from today’s American politicians:

1) Let’s start today’s insanity with some good old fashioned wasteful spending. According to Eric Scheiner, writing for the CNS News website on May 19, 2016, the United States Department of Agricultural recently gave out $247,000 of taxpayer wealth to “help develop a pecan snack.” Which, as always, raises the same question when the Washington political class wastes our money on nonsense like this: why isn’t the pecan industry spending $247,000 to develop a "pecan snack?”

But pecans are not the only food getting taxpayer research support. Mr. Scheiner points other wastes of taxpayer wealth that went out to industries, that should be paying for their own research, under the Federal government’s Value Added Producer Grant (VAPG) program in 2015:

• $247,677 to Front Porch Pecans LLC of Georgia “to help develop a pecan snack.”
• $250,000 to Calloway Farms LLC of Delaware “to expand the local market for watermelon.”
• $250,000 to Goat Milk Stuff LLC of Indiana “to expand caramel sales to the online customer base, and fund a marketing campaign.”
• $214,000 to Hillandale Farms Inc. of Pennsylvania “to further development a Mid-Tier Value Chain to add value to egg layer manure produced on the farm and other small farms within Central Pennsylvania.”

These programs account for almost a million dollars of unneeded and stupid subsidies to private businesses and industries that should be paying for these research efforts themselves rather forcing the taxpayer to pay for their needs. Even if you do not want this million dollars to go back to the taxpayer, imagine how many drug addicts, homeless Americans, hungry Americans and other needy souls could be helped for a million dollars a year vs. “expanding the caramel sales to the online customer base.” A pathetic waste of money.

2) It has always been our theory that one reason the Federal government spends so much money on such stupid projects as pecan snack development is that it has gotten so large and unwieldy that government bureaucrats make up projects of little value just to justify their continued existence and the continued funding of their jobs. As a result, government spending gets out of control to justify itself and its components.

The following example of political class insanity reinforces this theory. The following are details from a Heritage Foundation article written by James Gattuso and Diane Katz regarding the overwhelming amount of new business regulations that the Obama administration has burdened the economy and Americans with:

• During the Obama Presidency, the Federal government has added 20,642 new regulations to the American economy.
• This comes out to about 232 new regulations, on average, every month since Obama took office.
• This further breaks down, on average, to over 7 regulations being imposed on our economy and lives every DAY since the onset of the Obama administration, seven days a week for the seven and half years the Obama administration has been in place.
• These regulations require businesses, business owners and others to spend more and more time responding to likely unnecessary and burdensome government regulations than working on expanding their businesses and thus, expanding the economy.
• We say “likely unnecessary” regulations because it is difficult to believe that all of the Presidential administrations before Obama somehow missed 20,642 vitally important regulations that needed to be imposed.
• But as our theory goes, if a government bureaucracy is not constantly justifying its existence via producing more and more regulations, it will cease to exist. And this is how you end up getting 7 new regulations every day for seven and a half years.
• A Heritage Foundation analysis estimates that just the new regulations passed in 2015 added $22 billion a year in new regulatory costs to the American consumer and American businesses while at the same time muting economic growth.
• This brings the total annual cost of government regulation to about $100 billion a year or over $3,000, on average, for every U.S. household.
• This is $3,000 that every U.S. household cannot spend in the economy to help it grow and build up new employment opportunities.
• And Obama is not done yet since there are more than 2,000 proposed or final rules in the Obama regulatory pipeline including 144 that will likely cost $100 million a year or more. 
• The Heritage report is apolitical, correcting pointing out that the Bush’s administration also added a lot of regulations, adding about $76 billion a year to the economy in addition to Obama's additional $100 billion.

And according to the Heritage Foundation report and likely reality, we are certainly not getting good societal value back for the massive amount of new regulations that the Obama administration has imposed:

• We got reduced access to credit under the hundreds of rules created under the Dodd–Frank financial regulation statute
• We got fewer health care choices and higher medical and healthcare insurance costs from Obama Care.
• We got less Internet investment and innovation under the network neutrality rules dictated by the Federal Communications Commission.
• We got higher and higher electricity costs due to EPA regulations, e.g. Obama’s Clean Power Plan,” that even the EPA admits will have very minimal, if any, impacts on the environment.

And keep in mind that the vast majority of these rules that severely affect our lives are not done in a representative government way, in which we have a say in which regulations should happen via our elected representatives, but are done by government bureaucrats that are accountable to their bureaucratic bosses and not American citizens. This is how democracy dies, not by an external force but by the overwhelming mucking up of the economy by career bureaucrats protecting their home turf.

3) Politicians saying the darndest things help make this blog work since their  vocalizing of idiocy is so rich and full. Consider just a small example of their past hilarity:

• Nancy Pelosi, then Speaker of the House, once said that the Obama Care legislation had to be passed so that we could see what is in it. Forget about reading a proposed law BEFORE you vote on it, let’s just vote on it like it is a wrapped gift so that we can see what is inside of it. Probably the most inane comment any Washington political figure has ever made.
• A Georgia Congressman once stated in a public Congressional hearing that he was afraid that the island of Guam might tip over. Yeah, Congressman, that is why all islands have anchors so that they do not drift away or tip over.
• A Texas Congresswoman once wondered out loud if a Mars probe would be driving past the location on the moon where Neil Armstrong walked. Think about that one for a minute.

To this list of insanity, let’s add the recent inane quote from a Louisiana state politician. The state politician, Barbara Norton, insisted that the Declaration of Independence, is a “racist relic from our past” and should not be taught to school kids in the state’s schools. Yes, one of the greatest human documents EVER written, a document that formed the basis for our freedoms that we enjoy today, is somehow racist.

Her words are pretty nonsensical, especially how she tries and fails to somehow get Dr. Martin Luther King into her logic stream: “I’m not really sure what your intent is but one thing I do know is: all men were not created equal. When I think back to 1776, July the 4th, African-Americans were slaves and for you to bring a bill to request that our children will recite the Declaration, I think it’s a little bit unfair to us to ask those children to recite something that’s not the truth. In 1776, Dr. King was not even born. African-Americans were in slavery so since they were in slavery and the Declaration of Independence says we were all created equal, we were not created equal because in 1776, I, nor you, nor any of us were born, now was Dr. King born, so we were in slavery and to have our children to repeat again and again documents that were not even validated, I don’t think that’s fair because we are teaching them a lie.”

A number of observations:

• Only three sentences, but over 150 words, no way this rant was going to make any sense.
• How does Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. figure into this rant? Of course, he was not born in 1776, what is your point?
• The country eventually lived up to the promise of the Declaration from her perspective, slavery was eventually defeated via the Civil War.

Trying to figure out her rant is not worth the time from anyone's life. The Declaration was always an aspiration and a fine one at that, an aspiration that eventually got rid of slavery. Verbal and logic insanity.

That will do it for today’s insanity. A senseless rant out of Louisiana, over kill from a regulation perspective, and still wasting taxpayer money on stupid projects like pecan snack development. 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

June, 2016, Part 2, Political Class Insanity: Biden Admits He Does Not Work, The VA is Still Dysfunctional, and More

It is the beginning of another month which means it is time again to review the latest political class insanity from the American political class. Each month it takes us multiple posts to cover the wasteful spending, incompetent government organizations and employees, government programs that usually make a problem worse than resolving it, inane and idiotic politician comments, etc. In fact, last month we set a record, needing ten full posts to cover it all.

To review past posts on this insanity and idiocy, just click on the first few posts in each month listed to the right of this page. After reviewing just a handful of these insanity posts we think you will agree that we are currently being served by the worst set of American politicians ever to hold office in our entire history.

It looks like our politicians have been especially insane over the past month or so let’s get started with the latest insanity from today’s American politicians:

1) Politicians usually take themselves way too seriously in public, given how poorly they generally perform their tasks. That was certainly not the case of Vice President Joe Biden who recently pronounced: “I’ve never been gainfully employed in my life. I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do.” Never have truer words ever been spoken by a member of the political class. Maybe if Biden had been gainfully employed, he and Obama would not be leaving office in seven months leaving behind the following legacy:

• 45 million Americans still receiving food assistance every month, six years after the recession ended.
• A true unemployment rate that is just under a whopping 10%.
• A doubling of the national debt from $10 TRILLION to $20 TRILLION.
• A labor participation rate that is at 50 year lows.
• Household incomes and wages that have been stagnant for the entire length of the Presidency.
• Annualized national economic growth rates that never got close to the historical trend of just over 3% and which will probably average about 1.5% for the duration of the Presidency.
• A national healthcare law, Obama Care, that is failing miserably.
• A foreign policy that is also failing miserably with ill fated military interference in Libya and Syria, causing millions of people to die, get wounded or become refugees and which led to the creation of the most ruthless and heartless terror organization of all time, ISIS.
• Failure to fix Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, all of which are hurtling towards insolvency.
• Failure to address and remedy the drug addiction problem in this country, leaving about 50,000 American to die every year from drug addiction and leading to the creation of world wide crime syndicates called the drug cartels.
• Failure to address the under education of our kids in our public schools relative to the education of kids in other countries around the world.
• Shredding of the First, Second, and Fourth Amendments of the Constitution.
• Numerous violations of the Constitution and existing laws.
• Failure to reign in the lawless action of people in the executive branch, from Fast and Furious to the harassment of Conservative groups by the IRS to the intentional use of private email accounts to bypass Federal laws and guidelines.

This is what happens when people like the Vice President are not “gainfully employed,” no problem ever gets addressed, never mind resolved.

2) Speaking of drug cartels and the failure of this administration, or any administration, to adequately address the lost war on drugs, consider a recent article by Fox News Latino. Andrew O’Reilly wrote on May 16, 2016 that:

• Mexican drug cartels have taken over the methamphetamine production and trade in the Ozark mountains in Missouri.
• Douglas County Sheriff Chris Degase told Fox: “We’ve always had a meth problem because we’re a rural county. But now we’re not seeing the ‘shake-and-bake’ cooks anymore, the stuff we’re getting now is about as pure as it can get.”
• The Sheriff has arrested 69 people in just the past four months relative to the meth problem.
• In neighboring Webster County, prosecutors recently charged five people with the murder of a cartel agent who was sent to the county to collect a debt.
• The DEA suspects that the Sinaloa drug cartel is likely the cartel most active in the mountains of Missouri when it comes to meth.
• This should not come as a surprise since the DEA has already admitted that Mexican based drug cartels are operating in all 50 states and these cartels have expanded their product offerings to also include high grade heroin, meth, and human smuggling.
• By moving their operations out of big cities and into rural areas like the Ozark mountains, it is easier for the cartels hide their operations.

Thus, due to the failure of the Obama administration, and every administration that came before it, to address and resolve the scourge of drug addiction, we end up with higher crime rates, more death and destructive of American lives, and the enrichment of the criminal drug cartels. Instead, Biden and his boss focus on who should use what bathrooms across the country. Insanity.

3) Obama likes to claim that he did a great job saving the U.S. economy from the last recession. As we listed above, his salvation was very tepid at best, and downright horrible at worse, especially when you consider he had the following tailwinds to help him:

1. A failed economic stimulus plan that cost well over $800 billion.
2. A long stretch of remarkably low energy costs that should have juiced the economy well beyond what actually happened.
3. The infusion of trillions of paper dollars into the economy by the Federal Reserve.

Despite these helping economic tailwinds, his administration could not even attain half of the long term average growth rate of the U.S. economy.

But the human cost of having overseen a failed economic recovery and the strategies that caused it are starting to mount up. According to a recent Bloomberg article, almost 20% of Americans over the age of 65 are still in the workforce. That’s the largest percentage of older Americans still working since early 1960s. I would bet that they are working not because they want to continue their careers but because economic conditions are causing them to work into their retirement years just to survive. 

On the opposite end of the age spectrum, a recent report found that more Americans aged 18-34 are living at home with their parents than ever before. Either they are too lazy to move out or more likely, they cannot find a job that would allow them to be economically self sufficient outside of the economic break they get by living at home.

So despite a massive economic stimulus program, record low energy costs, and massive Fed dollar infusions, this administration’s economic strategies are causing older Americans to work longer, younger Americans to not find substantial jobs, have caused the true unemployment rate to linger at around 10%, has led to anemic economic growth, and have not helped minority Americans lower their unemployment rate vs. the overall national average. Insanely bad economic management. 

4) As we have discussed in previous posts, the Obama administration has done a horrible job in providing the medical and health care treatment that has been promised to our veterans. Obama promised to take care of them when he was campaigning, after he was elected, and a year or so ago when he replaced the head of the Veterans Administration because seven years into his administration, veterans were still waiting and sometimes dying because of the inept Veterans Administration.

Which raises the question: given all of the promises, has the treatment of our veterans gotten any better? Apparently not, according to recent reporting by Martin Matishak writing for The Hill:

• A Veterans Administration internal report asserts that about one out of every three veterans waiting to receive medical treatment have already died.
• The estimate comes from a Huffington Post analysis of veteran death records which found that as of April, 2016, 847,822 veterans were officially waiting for health care treatment and of those, 238,647 had already died.
• The VA tried to spin the numbers to show that while some of the veterans may have been awaiting VA medical care, many of them may have gone ahead and gotten medical treatment outside of the VA sphere.
• However, the article quotes Scott Davis, a program specialist at the VA’s Health Eligibility Center in Atlanta: "The VA wants you to believe, by virtue of people being able to get health care elsewhere, it's not a big deal. But VA is turning away tens of thousands of veterans eligible for health care. VA is making it cumbersome, and then saying, 'See? They didn't want it anyway.'"

If it comes down to believing a VA employee or the official VA position, one has to go with the VA employee’s accusation, given the history of botched VA operations, lies, and coverups of the VA administration and executives. So sad that in this week of celebrating Memorial Day and those veterans who served to defend our country and its freedoms, that the Obama administration still has not fixed what is broken in the VA, likely resulting in the unnecessary deaths of thousands of veterans.

5) One last sad bit of insanity for today, also courtesy of the Veterans Administration. Robert McDonald was brought into to head up the Veterans Administration and shape it up, getting veterans the medical attention they were promised and what the deserve. Given what we just talked about, massive VA waiting lists, it does not look like he is doing a good job so far. 

And then he compounds this ineptness with the following insanely insensitive public statement: “The days to an appointment is really not what we should be measuring. What we should be measuring is the veteran’s satisfaction. What really counts is how does the veteran feel about their encounter with the V.A.? When you go to Disney, do they measure the number of hours you wait in line? What is important is, what is your satisfaction with the experience.”

Well, sir, they actually do measure the time you wait in line at Disney, Disney measures everything. Plus, if you wait in a long line at Disney, you do eventually get into the attraction and the potential of dying while waiting is quite low. That is not the same thing as waiting and waiting for the VA to get to where you have a very real chance of dying. Insanely insensitive and stupid, of course waiting times matter and should be measured when people’s lives are at stake. Idiocy. 

That will do it for today’ insanity. A truly out of touch head of the VA, an organization that continues to be a failure, bad economic performance continues affecting the old and young in dramatically bad ways, the cartels continue to infest every part of America as 50,000 drug addicts die every year, and Joe Biden admits he has never been gainfully employed in a rare burst of political honesty.

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

June, 2016, Part 1, Political Class Insanity: A Pentagon European Slush Fund, IRS Still Trampling the First Amendment and Loosy Goosy With Nuclear Codes

It is the beginning of another month which means it is time again to review the latest political class insanity from the American political class. Each month it takes us multiple posts to cover the wasteful spending, incompetent government organizations and employees, government programs that usually make a problem worse than resolving it, inane and idiotic politician comments, etc. In fact, last month we set a record, needing ten full posts to cover it all.

To review past posts on this insanity and idiocy, just click on the first few posts in each month listed to the right of this page. After reviewing just a handful of these insanity posts we think you will agree that we are currently being served by the worst set of American politicians ever to hold office in our entire history.

It looks like our politicians have been especially insane over the past month or so let’s get started with the latest insanity from today’s American politicians:

1) Identity theft and hackers are a constant problem today for anyone that uses a computer, smartphone, or tablet. That is why we are constantly being told to change our passwords frequently and use offbeat combinations of letters and numbers to make it more difficult for someone to access our computer related tools. Sound advice that everyone should follow that has anything worthwhile protecting on their electronic devices.

And when we are talking about nuclear weapons, you would think and hope it is especially important to use difficult to break launch codes and passwords to make sure that no one of ill repute gets access to our nuclear weapons. But as we have constantly shown in this blog, having hope that the Federal government does anything right and logical is often a bad strategy. 

According to Karl Smallwood, writing for the Gizmodo website several years ago, for 20 years, the nuclear launch codes of U.S. Minuteman nuclear rocket silos was 00000000. No letters, no caps and lowercase, no mixing up of the sequences, just one long string of 0s.

According to the National Security Action Memorandum 160 that John F. Kennedy signed way back in 1962, each nuclear weapon was supposed to have a Permissive Action Link (PAL) which ensured that every nuke could only be launched with the right code from the right authority. The PAL system was supposedly so secure that it was described as being “about as complex as performing a tonsillectomy while entering the patient from the wrong end.” If true, that is certainly a secure system.

But that assumes that the PAL is actually installed. Twenty years after Kennedy issued his memorandum, only half of the U.S, nuclear weapons in Europe had had PAL installed. And even though they were installed, most were not activated until 1977. The other half were still protected by simple mechanical locks. 

The nuclear silos in the U.S. had had PAL installed but the military had reset the codes back to 00000000 after installation. This gave the Pentagon a way to fire missiles without waiting for launch codes from the President, an obvious Constitutional disconnect bordering on treason. Under this arrangement, just four people acting in unison could easily launch a nuclear missile despite the PAL system being installed. That’s right, a conspiracy of as little of four people could have ignited World War III before the President even knew what was going on. 

Makes you wonder what other major screw ups are going on in all facets of the Federal government if it could not even get this one critical piece of security to work. 

2) Let’s stay with the Pentagon and screw ups. We have reported a number of times that the Defense Department’s budgetary processes are so screwed up that not even trained auditors within and outside of the Federal government have been able to figure out where and how taxpayer money is spent once it is assigned to the Defense Department. All we know is that the American taxpayer shells out a whopping $600 billion a year with little or no tracking of where that money ends up.

This point was recently driven home by a short May 26, 2016 article on the Against Crony Capitalism website. Congressman Mick Mulvaney apparently has come across a Pentagon slush fund that no one knew about that was operating over in Europe. His reaction to this revelation: “There is no indication of how [Overseas Contingency Operations] money is being spent. There is no limitation on when it is spent other than we have to spend it in 5 years, and there is no indication on where it is going to be spent other than it has to be outside the United States. That is it. It is hard for me to imagine of a less accountable, less transparent way for us to spend money in this country.” Another example of government out of control and in the process of politicians losing control, the wasting of vast sums of taxpayer wealth.

3) Obviously, if the U.S. Federal government was functioning as it should, efficiently, effectively,and fairly, there would be very little for me to write about. Fortunately for me and unfortunately for freedom, that is not the case. 

The following story illustrates how government today has become an enemy of freedom and liberty. Cleta Mitchell, an attorney for conservative causes, was being interviewed on CSPAN. She was discussing the need to abolish the IRS since it was not only inefficient but it had trampled on the First Amendment rights of many Americans who simply have a difference of opinion from Obama. 

During the course of the interview, CSPAN opened up the telephone lines when a caller, claiming to be an IRS employee, made the following threat to Ms. Mitchell: “You can bet every dollar you’ve got, I’m gonna go after you.” The alleged IRS caller went on to say that he would “go after” and “target” Ms. Mitchell and all and any conservative group that she would represent. Additionally, the clerk claimed that when he looks at a Tax Free Status application, he reviews the group’s website and discriminates against them if he personally disagrees with what the views and opinions of the group applying for tax free status.

Pathetic suppression of rights by a government employee. A lowly IRS employee has no right or power to usurp the Constitution, as Ms. Mitchell so clearly stated: “As a government employee, he works for us and it’s not his right nor is it permissible to say ‘I don’t like that group so I’m going to punish them’ which is viewpoint discrimination and is unconstitutional….A government employee is not supposed to superimpose his beliefs, or his concern about his job, over those of a citizen who has a First Amendment right to express that opinion.”

Not only is this outrageous but it verifies that Obama was again a liar when he originally claimed that the IRS harassment of conservative and tea party groups was because of some out of control IRS employees in Cleveland. The harassment and abridgement of free speech appears to be more widespread than Cleveland if this caller is to be believed. 

The IRS and this individual employee should be sued for Constitutional violations. The full power of the government should be used to protect rights, not trample them, a concept that is often a foreign idea to the Obama administration.

First day of this month’s political class insanity reveals that Pentagon budgeting and spending is still out of control, we have been living with a major Constitutional disconnect when the military decided it knew best when to launch nuclear weapons, and the IRS may still be looking for ways to deny First Amendment rights to anyone or any organization that dare to oppose Obama’s agenda and actions. 

Never underestimate the ways that the American political class can screw up our tax dollars, our safety, and our freedoms. More insanity to come in the next several days.

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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

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