Fixing Amtrak Without the Political Hysterics

As most people know by this time, there was a horrible and tragic Amtrak accident this week in Philadelphia. A train running from DC to New York derailed and at least eight people have died and over a hundred were injured. What we know at this time, just days after the accident is the following:

1. The train was going over a hundred miles an hour when it should have been going half that speed as it approached a curve in the tracks.
2. The engineer does not remember the time leading up to the accident.
3. Safety equipment for such a situation had been installed but no activated on the train.

That is all we know. However, that did not stop some of our less kind, less sensitive, less obnoxious Washington politicians from immediately jumping on this tragedy for their own good and aims. Democrats in Congress were quick to blame Republicans for under funding Amtrak and that somehow, through what only can be called a contorted and idiotic logic flow to say that the size of Amtrak’s budget affected this single train’s fate. The most despicable of the lot went so far as to claim the blood of the victims; were on the Republicans hands. 

They went through, and are still going through, these hysterics even though we only know the three facts listed above. There is absolutely no hard proof that funding Amtrak at whatever levels caused this accident. But this is how low our political class in Washington has stooped, executing their well know failed strategy of ready, fire, aim without know the root causes of anything.

We have seen it before.Not knowing what is really going on has burned the American taxpayer before., Not knowing the root causes of our high healthcare costs resulted in the failed Obama Care legislation. Not knowing the root causes of the 2008 Great Recession resulted in the inane Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation. Our politicians shoot first and then move on to the next crisis that they can leverage for their own careers, often leaving more damage behind than prior to when they acted.

Let’s look at some basic realities of Amtrak and then come up with a root cause solution that keeps the trains safe, the taxpayers happy, and politicians focused on solutions, not press releases, courtesy of a recent Breitbart website analysis:

Reality #1 - The Federal government took over most of the long haul train business in 1971 because the business was failing. At that time the Feds created the publicly funded railroad service known as Amtrak. Given that the Federal government operates very few, if any, government programs efficiently and effectively, taking over a dying industry and allowing the Federal government to operate it was probably a bad idea 44 years ago.

Reality # 2 - Amtrak loses millions of dollars a year from its operations, having lost close to $2 billion since just 2009. It has probably lost about $44 billion since it was established. In other words, it is a money loser, being subsidized by the American taxpayer. It is expected to get another $7 billion in taxpayer subsidies in the next five years.

And some hysterical Democrats want to give this dying white elephant even more taxpayer money. Old saying: “When you are stuck in a hole, stop digging.”

Reality #3 - By far the busiest track of the Amtrak system are in the so-called Northeast Corridor, running from Boston to DC. Thus, the vast, vast majority of American taxpayers, from Hawaii to Florida to Minnesota are subsidizing a losing proposition that they will never have a reason to use.

How few people use Amtrak? Annual Amtrak ridership is about 31 million riders a year. there are about 320 million people in the country. If we assume that each of those 31 million riders were a different person, than the percentage of Americans who use Amtrak in a single year is less than 10%, not a high number. 

But assuming each of those 31 million is a unique person is definitely a generous assumption, too generous, The same people within that 31 million use Amtrak for multiple rides a year. Let’s assume that the number of unique visitors, taking into account repeat and regular users, especially along the Washington to New York track, is a quarter of the overall ridership. Then the percentage of Americans that use the Amtrak system is less than 2.5%, a small number of people getting subsidies from all of America.

Reality #4 - Not only is Amtrak heavily subsidized, it is also grossly mismanaged. We have reported several times in the past in this blog how Amtrak loses tens of millions of dollars a year just through its mismanagement and theft of food.

But there is more insanity, according to work done by the Manhattan Institute:

• Amtrak’s largest expense is labor, salary, and benefits, which cost over $2 billion in 2014. 
• Much of that high overhead is because Amtrak Maintains fully-staffed trains on infrequently and lightly traveled routes.
• The pay rate of Amtrak’s employees is extremely high with the average onboard employee made $41.19 an hour on Amtrak in 2012. Assuming a forty hour work week, an average Amtrak employee earns over $80,000 a year, about 60% higher than the average American household earns.
• U.S. railroads that contract out services to private companies pay their train employees $7.75 to $13.00 an hour.

So the American taxpayer is subsidizing high salaries for many employees that serve very few customers on the majority of Amtrak’s routes.

Reality #5: How high are the subsidies? According to some analyses, the American taxpayer pays a $60 subsidy for EACH Amtrak ticket purchased on average. Thus, a ticket from New York to DC which currently costs a rider $69 should really cost $129 if Amtrak riders were paying a market based price. Instead, the taxpayer picks up the tab for almost half of the cost of a New York to DC train ride.

Reality #6 - And if Democrats were truly on the side of the less economically fortunate, as they always claim to be, than they should be up in arms about Amtrak, not blindly giving it more money. Why? For the most part, it is not the poor and downtrodden that are riding Amtrak.They are much more likely to be using local mass transit to get around.

The majority of Amtrak users are business people, government executives, lobbyists, etc. that are riding between New York,Boston,and DC on the Northeast Corridor. According to a CATO analysis from 1997, a situation that has probably not changed much since that report: “Amtrak’s typical riders are not low-income Americans. The poor are less likely to travel by Amtrak than by most other travel options. Only 13 percent of Amtrak passengers have incomes below $20,000. The average Amtrak rider has a higher household income than the average taxpayer. In fact, the clientele for Amtrak Metroliner service between Washington and New York consists largely of Wall Street traders, K Street lobbyists and other affluent business travelers. These folks aren’t poor.”

So in reality, taxing poorer people for Amtrak subsidies is helping out wealthier people who actually use Amtrak.

Reality #7 - The Federal government was in charge of Amtrak when it had this fatal accident. And some Democrats want to blindly give Amtrak more money when they were in charge when this accident happened? It’s like giving a teenager more booze after he cracked up the family car in a drunken stupor. Makes no sense to blindly give more money to culprits without understanding the root causes. 

And let's move beyond this analysis and review an analysis of reality that was published in the March, 2013 issue of Reason magazine:

• Amtrak is the most expensive way to transport oneself from city to city, on average costing consumers twice as much than commercial airline travel.
• The average American travels 15 miles a year via Amtrak but 15,000 miles a year via car.
• Amtrak per-passenger miles subsidies are more than nine times higher than subsidies paid to airlines and 20 times more than subsidies paid to car drivers.
• In 2012, Amtrak needed about $1.4 billion from the American taxpayer to run its operations.
• Only three of its twelve routes are profitable without taxpayer subsidies.

Come on Washington, let’s discuss reality and not politics for once. Amtrak is a loser as currently configured. It loses money, it operates losing routes, it gouges the taxpayer, and it is mismanaged.

How about we do the following before shoveling more taxpayer wealth down the rat hole:

• Shut down all money losing routes in order to make the remaining routes and the slimmed down Amtrak organization profitable.
• Focusing on far fewer routes might make the remaining routes safer.
• If you do not want to shut down the money losing routes, than either 1) make the states those money losing routes pass through make up the difference or 2) charge the right amount (i.e. higher ticket prices) to cover operations costs. Want to bet that when the states or the riders on these money losing routes have to pay their fair share that the routes die a natural death from no ridership?
• On the remaining profitable routes, raise the ticket prices to respect the reality of the operating costs, i.e. no more subsidies for lawyers and business people on the Northeast Corridor. If you are still worried about the poor who might, occasionally ride Amtrak, come up with a tight, manageable subsidy program for them.
• Get expenses under control by phasing in a more realistic and lower salary structure and tightening up inventory control so that food and beverage fraud is reduced.

There you go, Washington, five simple, logical steps to follow to address the true root causes of Amtrak’s woes. After we do these steps, THEN we can sit down and talk subsidies, with the hope that need to discuss subsidies never arises since Amtrak would then be a smaller,leaner and profitable operation.

Of course, another approach is to just give away the entire system today to a private operator. In that scenario,the taxpayer wins immediately because the subsidies go away, the riders probably win since a private operator would likely run a better, tighter and safer operation, and we would not longer have to listen to you hyperventilating and jumping on every human tragedy to leverage it as a political opportunity.

As always, “when you are in a whole, top digging.” Good advice for the Washington political class that have dug us a $18 TRILLION national debt hole with hysterics and not solutions.

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

March, 2019, Part 1, Political Class Insanity: A Mean,Nasty Senator, A Failed Railroad, and More

It is another month which means it is again time to review the latest political class insanity from Washington and around the world. Political class insanity takes many forms including the wasting of taxpayer wealth, criminal fraud within government programs, inane and stupid political quotes and actions, the inability to create and implement effective and efficient government programs, stupid and ill performing economic policies and strategies, and other forms of insanity that continue to evolve and surprise and shock us.

Let’s get started:

1) For decades the Federal government never figured out how operate an efficient and effective railroad system (AMTRAK) in a profitable manner. Then California politicians decided they were going to build and operate a high speed train line from northern California to southern California. Then the California politicians decided that after years of effort, many, many studies and the wasting of billions of dollars, it could not be done. Then daft Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez decided that the U.S. airline industry needed to be destroyed at the altar of climate change.

Which brings us to the latest failure and ongoing saga of failure when it comes to politicians trying to build and operate a railroad system:

• An AMTRAK train going from Seattle to California has been stuck for days in Oregon after it reportedly hit a tree.
• Only a Federal government run railroad could break down because it somehow hit a tree.
• The 180 or so customers on the train were not allowed to leave the train since there was four feet of snow in every direction and the local area was out of power.
• As a result, the customers ran out of food, ran out of diapers forcing the riders to cut up clothes to make their own diapers, ran out of feminine products, and ran out of medicine. 

Obviously, this did not happen on the Orient Express in the middle of nowhere in Siberia. It happened in Oregon and yet the Federal government operation could not get 180 Americans stranded, in Oregon, out of harm’s way for three days. So sad.

Oh, and by the way, an Amtrak train crashed into a freight train in South Carolina early this past February. The crash resulted in two AMTRAK riders being killed and at least 70 other riders being injured. 

Oh, and by the way, in December, 2017, an Amtrak train derailed in Washington state, smashing through an overpass onto Interstate 5, killing three people and injuring dozens. 

Oh, and by the way, in early 2018, an Amtrak train carrying Republican members of Congress to a retreat in West Virginia hit a garbage truck in Virginia, killing one of the three occupants in the vehicle.

So, in a little over a year, we have at least four major AMTRAK incidents with death, injuries, and abandonment and not to mention the abandonment of a major high speed rail project after wasting billions of dollars. And politicians like Ocasio-Cortez think we need to stop flying and somehow use a nationwide, unbuilt rail system that does not exist that would be operated by the same idiots that operate the embarrassment known as AMTRAK. The height of insanity.

2) Washington politicians always act like they care about us but often their actions, and wasteful spending, show us that they only care about themselves and their own self gratification:

• Warner Todd Huston, writing for the Godfather Politics website on February 25, 2019, discussed one of those times when Washington politicians were so self serving again.
• Five Democrats in the House of Representatives are under pressure because of a trip they took, at no cost to themselves, to South Africa just to see a Beyonce concert.
• The trip for the five of them cost $60,000, none of which they paid for.
• According to the article, as reported by Fox: “ They attended the “Global Citizen Mandela 100” concert from Dec. 1-3 to celebrate the centenary birth of the late Nelson Mandela and raise awareness of global poverty. In addition to Beyoncé, other musical acts included her husband Jay Z, Ed Sheeran, Pharrell Williams and Chris Martin.”
• The trip was paid for my a so-called charity organization, the Global Citizen, a group that supposedly helps out the poor in Third World countries around the world.
• Which raises the question: how many poor people could have been clothed, housed, and fed if Global Citizen had used that $60,000 boondoggle money on the poor and not five U.S. politicians?
• The National Legal and Policy Center, a government watchdog group, called the trip a mockery: “These members of Congress that were given an all-expense paid vacation to party with Oprah, Jay Z, and Beyoncé in South Africa are claiming with a straight face this was needed to help poor children around the world live better lives. This was in fact, a mockery of House ethics rules on gifts and travel, the truly poor, and all Americans that expect members of Congress to live not only by the letter of the law but by the spirit and intentions of the rules of the House of Representatives.”

Well said. I almost guarantee you that the world’s poor are no better off because five U.S. Congress people went to a concert in South Africa. So ego satisfying and so useless, as always.

3) Let’s move from House of Representative members acting childish by allowing themselves to get treated to a concert at the expense of the world’s poor over to a childish politician in the Senate, one who actually wants to be President of the United States:

• According to a story by Shawn, writing for the Fix This Nation website on February 24, 2019, Senator Amy Klobuchar of the Senate is possibly not one of the nicer people you will meet in Washington.
• According to many of Klobuchar’s staff members, she is quite the tyrant when it comes to treating other human beings.
• For example, on a trip to South Carolina several years ago, Klobuchar got crazy and blew up at an aide when the aide lost the Senator’s dining utensils in the middle of the flight.
• It then got really bizarre when the Senator used her comb to eat her meal and then ordered the aide to clean the comb of food that had gotten on it when she used it as dining utensil.
• She has been known to throw binders, phones, and other things at aides who did not measure up to her needs and expectations.
• She also had aides do demeaning errands including washing her dishes or doing other cleaning for her, tasks that are quite possibly a violation of Senate ethics rules.
• She was known to point out perceived staff screw ups that were delivered at all hours of the night and day.
• Her nasty quotes included, “In 20 years in politics I have never seen worse prep”, “This is the hands down worse thing you have ever given me” and “This is the worst press staff I ever had.” 

Such a pleasant person. And she wants to be President of the U.S. Really cannot see such a petty, disrespectful human being becoming someone who could unite and lead the country,. Pettiness in personal dealings with people that may not be at such a high level of status would result in pettiness in dealing with anyone who has a different opinion from hers. And that is not the type of divisive behavior that this country needs today.

That is a good start for this month’s political class insanity: a childish, condescending Senator, five Congress people who needed to have scarce money spent on them rather than the Earth’s poor, and the disaster that is the Federal government’s operation of a railroad system. More insanity to follow.

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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:


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

April, 2021, Part 6, Political Class Insanity: Imaginary Counties Get Real Taxpayer Money, AMTRAK Continues Its Wasteful Spending, and Democratic States Continue To Lose Residents.

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.

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.

1) The Biden administration and Congress recently threw together a multi-trillion covid economic relief plan. And threw together is certainty the right description, given this insanity:

• According to the Tax Foundation hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars have been set aside in the relief package for county governments that do not exist.
• For example, the nimrods in Washington put a provision in the legislation so that Hartford County, Connecticut’s county government is set to receive $173 million in covid relief aid.
• Nice chunk of change except for the fact that like every other country in the state there is no county level government that could actually and legally receive the money.
• In fact, all of the non-existent county governments in the state in total are supposed to get $691 million in relief.
• The same insanity is going down in Rhode Island where there also are no formal county level government entities but nonetheless, these non-existent counties are scheduled to get $205 million.
• $15 million is supposed to go to Alaska’s Unorganized Borough which is really unorganized since it is not a real county or any other kind of government, it does not exist from a legal, government perspective.
• And it gets worse.
• Eight of Massachusetts county governments were dissolved over 20 years ago but they are still supposed to receive $942 million in relief aid.
• Norfolk County has an annual revenue stream of about $19.5 million but thanks to Congress, it is set to receive $137 million in covid aid, seven times its annual revenue stream, talk about a windfall.

Unfortunately, you cannot make up this type of stupidity. It makes you wonder what the Congressional members of Congress in Connecticut, Rhode Island, et al were thinking… or not thinking: are they so out of touch with their home states that they did not realize there is no legal way for these fictional or eliminated counties to legally receive and spend this taxpayer generosity?

2) Whenever the Federal government operates anything, any program etc. it screws it up, by being inept, inefficient, criminally crooked, you name it, they will screw it up. Such has been the case of AMTRAK for decades. The Federal government took over the operation decades ago and it has bled red ink and unprofitability ever since.

And now AMTRAK claims that it needs about $40 billion of taxpayer money to fix its backlogged maintenance problems. Keep in mind that the vast, vast majority of American taxpayers have never ridden an AMTRAK train and are likely to never ride the train. But rather than have those that actually ride the train pay their fair share of the expenses to operate it, Washington politicians would rather that the rest of the country subsidize a losing operation that benefits a tinyu, tiny number of people.

Now, AMTRAK executives see themselves getting a new windfall of taxpayer money via Biden’s ridiculous expensive and idiotic multi-trillion dollar infrastructure plan. Let Connor Harris of the Manhattan institute explain why this is so not right: “Except much of anything Amtrak gets from the federal government will not be spent on new destinations but on repairs and maintenance. Very costly repairs and maintenance, it turns out – and only what’s needed to keep service from failing completely along existing lines…Amtrak’s claimed maintenance backlog of $40 billion for the 453-mile rail line from DC to Boston — an enormous sum of almost $90 million per mile, merely to keep the same service as exists today. For comparison, in countries such as France and Spain, less than half that cost per mile would cover a brand-new high-speed rail line good for speeds of more than 200 miles per hour.”

So, other countries could build a brand new, high tech rail line for half the money that AMTRAK wants to do maintenance on a SINGLE AMTRAK rail line in the northeast section of the country. More tax dollars wasted on a typical bloated, inefficient and inept government bureaucracy.

3) Let's check in on how the out migration trend is going with high tax, high crime states as we often do:

• Forbes writer, Chris Dorsey, recently published an article entitled, “America’s Mass Migration Intensifies As ‘Leftugees’ Flee Blue States And Counties For Red”
• According to Dorsey, the top five U.S. states seeing a mass exodus out of those states are all Democratic controlled, California, New York, Illinois, Michigan, and Illinois.
• This is consistent with our own previous analyses where we predicted that these states, especially Illinois, New York and California, are already in financial death spirals that will see one of them very soon go into at least a de facto bankruptcy condition.
• As more and more people flee these states because the state politicians have governed in such a way to continually see increases in taxation and crime, and a lowering of the quality of life, the tax base becomes smaller and smaller resulting in less and less tax revenue which forces politicians to increase taxes and cut public services which increases crime and further lowers the quality of life and causes more people and businesses to migrate out and the financial death spiral is in full force.
• According to the Census Bureau, these five states lost a combined 4 million residents between 2010 and 2019.
• Thus, while the overall country’s population grew almost 8% in that time frame, these five states saw population declines in the face of that almost overall 8% growth rate.
• According to U-Haul numbers, the five states seeing the greatest increase in population are states with much lower tax burdens and crime rates and a better overall quality of life climate: Florida, Texas, Tennessee, Ohio and Arizona.

The formula for keeping voters and residents happy is pretty simple: lower taxes, lower business regulation, lower crime rates, and a better quality of life. However, many in the American political class cannot grasp that simple concept: rather than get their government entities more efficient and effective, they continue to raise taxes, expand government intrusion, increase business and personal regulations, put forth idiotic concepts like “defund the police'' which ALWAYS increases crime.

We have always stated that “people just want to be free.” And to do that they will vote with their feet and take themselves, their families, and their businesses to where they can be free and safe, something that is not possible in states like Illinois, California, New York, New Jersey and Michigan.

That will do it for today: financially strapped states and their inept politicians continue to bleed citizens and tax base participants, AMTRAK continues to be a black hole of waste and taxpayer money, and imaginary counties get allocated real taxpayer funds.

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:

https://www.amazon.com/Love-My-Country-Loathe-Government/dp/1604942789/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=love+my+country%2C+loathe+my+government&qid=1607716020&sr=8-1

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.reason.com

http://www.cato.org

http://www.bankruptingamerica.org

http://www.conventionofstates.com

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

 

 

Washington D.C., The Great Kitchen Garbage Disposal - Subprime Lending Revisited, Head Start, and High Speed Rail

There are a lot of famous quotes on stupidity:

Stupid is as stupid does. Forest Gump

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. Albert Einstein

In politics, stupidity is not a handicap. Napoleon Bonaparte

Evil isn’t the real threat to the world. Stupid is just as destructive as Evil, maybe more so, and it’s a hell of a lot more common. What we really need is a crusade against Stupid. That might actually make a difference. Jim Butcher

Far be it for me to ever let my common sense get in the way of my stupidity. I say we press on. Sherrilyn Kenyon

There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf life. Frank Zappa

We’ll stop there. Yes, there is a lot of stupidity in the world and unfortunately, the Washington political class seems to attract a lot of stupid thinking. Consider the latest stupidity emanating out of the Beltway from the Washington political class and what quote above most ably describes the stupidity:

1) Consider what the brainiacs in Washington want to do the housing industry according to an April 2, 2013 article in the Washington Post:

• The Obama administration stated it is working to get banks to lend to a wider range of and potential homeowners by taking advantage of taxpayer-backed programs.
• These loans/mortgages would go to a “wider range” of people and would be backed by government organizations, i.e. the American taxpayer, such as the Federal Housing Administration to insure home loans that default would not hurt banks earnings.
• This “wider range” is a code phrase for giving mortgages to people with bad credit and less chance of supporting a mortgage before getting foreclosed on.
• Federal housing officials are encouraging the Justice Department to provide assurances to banks that they will not face legal or financial recriminations if they make loans to riskier borrowers who meet government standards but later default.
• Government officials are also encouraging lenders to use more subjective judgment in determining whether to offer a loan, in other words give out mortgages to people that are less likely and unlikely to ever be able to pay them back, resulting in defaults and the American taxpayer picking up the tab.

Didn’t we just relive this horror show? Wasn’t it called the “Great Recession” where sub prime lending to people with questionable credit received mortgages from banks, who made large profits but dumped the risks on the Federal government via Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the FHA, risk that was paid off by taxpayers? Didn’t that bailout cost the American taxpayer almost $200 billion with the final tab yet to come.

This insanity is especially stupid in light of recent news reports that reported the Federal Housing Authority was likely to need a $943 million taxpayer bailout to cover expected losses from mortgages it insured as the U.S. housing bubble was deflating during the Great Recession. The Obama administration reported this problem on April 10, 2013.

It would be the first bailout of the government's mortgage insurer in its nearly 80-year history. The FHA is required by Congress to keep enough cash on hand to cover all expected future losses and must take a taxpayer subsidy if its projected revenue falls short. And it could get worse. In November, an independent audit found that the FHA faces projected losses of $16.3 billion and was at risk of depleting its cash reserves. Guess who ends up paying for this shortfall?

So Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have already choked themselves and the American taxpayer on mortgages that were given to and defaulted on by low credit and low income people. The FHA may need billions dollars more because it backed mortgages on bad mortgage customers. And the Obama administration wants to loosen current credit processes so more people with bad credit and poor chances of carrying a mortgage get a mortgage, to be backed in case of default by the taxpayer. Stupid, did these people learn nothing from the Great Recession and the underlying mortgage/housing/subprime issues that created it?

My best analogy for this shortsightedness is a kitchen garbage disposal. It’s like the stupid person who mangles his right hand in the garbage disposal and just as the scabs and scar tissue are falling off from that disaster that person puts his left hand right back into the garbage disposal. Stupid is as stupid does and that is exactly what the Obama administration is about to do with reenacting the subprime disaster.

2) Apparently, one of the proposals in Obama’s delinquent and ridiculous budget proposal is to provide Federal pre-school programs for every kid in America. But why should we do that when we know that the existing Federal pre-school program in America, Head Start, has been a financial, educational, and administrative disaster:

• A detailed study by Obama’s own Health and Human Services Department conclusively showed that any positive gains by kids in Head Start programs are lost forever by the end of the first grade versus kids that had not been in Head Start programs, with all other areas of variation being controlled by the study analysis.
• Another detailed study, again by Obama’s own Health and Human Services Department, looked at third and fourth grade students and compared students that had been in Head Start programs vs. that had not been in Head Start. That study found that in general there were no differences between Head Start kids and non-head Start kids and in some areas, non-Head Start kids were actually further along from an educational and development perspective, all other sources of variability being controlled.
• Numerous government studies have found rampant waste and fraud throughout the Head Start program.

So, the many promises of the Head Start program from an educational, cultural, and childhood development perspective have never materialized and the program has been administered in a sloppy, fraudulent manner. Thus, we have spent billions and billions of dollars over the Head Start years to run an overrated, glorious babysitting service with no redeeming societal benefit in return.

And given this backdrop, the President wants to vastly expand the concept of daycare to every kid in the country without being able to fix the existing Head Start program. He just has the grandiose concept with no plan on remedial action on how to prevent a more expensive Head Start disaster.

In this example, we still have our right hand stuck down in the garbage disposal (Head Start) and want to stick the left hand down it also (Obama’s proposal). But alas, in politics, stupidity is not a handicap.

The previous posts we did that explain the Head Start fiasco in more detail can be found at:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2010/04/government-education-programs-that-do.html

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/01/failing-our-kids-again-massive-fraud.html

3) Our final example of stupidity also comes from the President’s budget proposal. Apparently, he still wants to build this national high speed rail line that will cost untold billions of dollars for questionable benefits. But before going down this garbage disposal, maybe he should fix the current Federal government railroad service, Amtrak.

Earlier this month (April 4, 2013 post) we reviewed an article from the March, 2013 issue of Reason magazine, an article that contained some interesting analyses of Amtrak, the distressed, Federally operated national train system:

• Amtrak is the most expensive way to transport oneself from city to city, on average costing consumers twice as much than commercial airline travel.
• The average American travels 15 miles a year via Amtrak but 15,000 miles a year via car.
• Amtrak per-passenger miles subsidies are more than nine times higher than subsidies paid to airlines and 20 times more than subsidies paid to car drivers.
• In 2012, Amtrak needed about $1.4 billion from the American taxpayer to run its operations.
• Only three of its twelve routes are profitable without taxpayer subsidies.

In our September 5, 2012 post we reviewed as New York Times article that described the insanity and waste in just one aspect of Amtrak:

• According to a New York Times article that was summarized in the August 17, 2012 issue of The Week magazine, Amtrak lost $834 million just on its food and beverage services over the past ten years.
• This comes out to about $83 million a year, or almost a quarter million dollars a day, 365 days a year.
• We found it amazing that any organization, even a government organization, can lose so much money so quickly just on food and drinks.
• The article blamed the astronomical losses on poor management, waste, and employee theft.
• Despite being in the train management industry for decades, it is apparent that the political class and the government agencies it operates have learned nothing on how to be efficient and effective.

Pitiful. Rather than learning from the Amtrak garbage disposal experience, billions wasted on an unprofitable rail line, imagine how much the American taxpayer would lose if the Federal government ever went ahead with their ill conceived and unnecessary high speed train pipe dream. Far be it for Washington to ever let common sense get in the way of its stupidity.

Einstein once said: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” We would substitute the word “stupidity” for “insanity” to summarize the state of the political thinking in Washington:

- Subprime mortgage lending to people with poor credit and poor chances of carrying a mortgage caused the Great Recession but Washington wants to go down that path again today.

- Head Start has been a disaster for over four decades and the Obama administration wants to do the same program on a grander scale, likely wasting a grander sum of money.

- The Obama administration wants to build a massive high speed rail line across the country even though the current Federal rail line loses over a billion dollars a year.

The Washington kitchen garbage disposal is alive and well, continually shredding taxpayer wealth every day.

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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.reason.com/
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

October, 2021, Part 1, Political Class Insanity: Pelosi Goes Stupid yet Again, Defunding The Police Fails In Another City , And More AMTRAK Deaths

Before we get to today’s insanity, please consider the following proposition: as many of you know, the withdrawal from Afghanistan has been a historic and fatal endeavor. But the failure did not start just in the past few weeks, it has been a twenty year disaster. It has cost American taxpayers about a trillion dollars, has left thousands of our brave armed forces folks dead, maimed, or wounded and has resulted in an unknown but substantial number of civilian deaths.

Afghanistan has been a collective failure of multiple Presidential administrations and multiple sessions of Congress. Thus, please consider signing the petition below that calls for the immediate resignation of every member of Congress that has at least twenty years of service and the resignation of President Biden, Vice President Harris, and critical, and failed, members of the Biden Administration. They do not deserve to serve any longer given their miserable twenty year track record of death, destruction and waste in Afghanistan.

Also, if you are passionate about this topic and effort, feel free to pass the link along to others who might also feel the same way, i.e. incompetence should not be rewarded:

https://www.change.org/p/american-citizens-demand-immediate-congressional-resignations-for-the-twenty-year-afghanistan-debacle

Biden and others need to resign for dereliction of duty, incompetence and total lack of empathy. Nothing short of resignation is acceptable. Thank you.

*****************************

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.

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.

1) Eight months into the Biden Presidency and most people would agree he has already made a mess of everything:

• His withdrawal from Afghanistan was a debacle, resulting in unnecessary injuries and deaths to over two dozen US service people.
• His horrible withdrawal plan left thousands of Americans and green card holders behind at the mercy of the horrific Taliban killers.
• Inflation is at its highest level in over ten years and he has no plans to fix the problem of escalating prices and, in fact, his policies will make inflation even worse.
• He has created a humanitarian, covid, drug cartel, human trafficking, criminal gang, and juvenile abuse crisis at the southern border.
• He has emboldened our enemies, Russia, China, North Korea and Iran, while insulting and alienating our allies, England, France, South Korea, etc.
• He cannot carry on an adult conversation without getting confused and disoriented, just one symptom of his cognitive decline.
• He is not allowed to talk to the press unless the time in front of journalists is short, structured and fake.
• The national debt continues to go higher and higher while current problems facing the country are no closer to being resolved than they were eight months ago.

Which gets us to the old age question when it comes to American politicians: are politicians actually that dumb when they say so much stupid stuff or do they think we are too dumb to know when they are saying stupid stuff? This brings us to the latest dumb stuff said by Nancy Pelosi, in the context of the many Biden failures listed above: “Let me just say about our president, President Biden…President Biden is…It’s so…we’re so fortunate that he did not win for president before when he ran because we needed him now. He’s perfect for now. He knows his foreign policy, he was chair of the foreign policy committee he’s been…extends the hands of friendship to friend and foe alike in order to have communication…He understands the value of that, he is…he knows and is known by most leaders.”

Seriously? Does she actually believe this idiocy or does she think we are too dumb to realize how bad Biden is? Biden’s accomplishment from over 40 years in Washington is minuscule. Robert Gates, Obama's Secretary of Defense, once said that Biden "has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades." Obama once said: "Don't underestimate Joe's ability to f... things up."

And it looks like both Gates and Obama were right. France is ticked off at us, one of our strongest allies. Many members of Britain's political class correctly think that Biden has no ability to reason or lead. China is making threatening moves against Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Japan.

Seriously? Inflation is growing worse everyday. The Federal government’s spending is out of control. Biden left hundreds, if not thousands ,of people behind in Afghanistan, at the mercy of the cut throat Taliban. In the process of doing so, he turned the Taliban into one of the best equipped armies in the world, courtesy of the American taxpayer.

Maybe, just maybe, Pelosi, the third in leadership ranking of the country, is also in the same type of cognitive decline that Biden is experiencing. Here’s one description of Pelosi, "Pelosi looks and sounds like she’s had a severe stroke. Her words are slurred, her face looks drawn, and she’s making some of the strangest hand movements ever…even by her standards.”

Again, do American opticians actually believe the dumb stuf they say or do they think we are dumb enough to believe the tripe they peddle? In any case, the leadership of this country is in dire straits.

2) Far too many times we have discussed the fiasco that the “defund the police” movement turned out to be. By stripping away police resources across the country in mostly liberal/Democrat run cities, the crime rate and criminal violence has skyrocketed. Murder rates are up, felony crimes are up, people are being killed because of the whole defund movement, while politicians have used taxpayer money to pay for personal armed guards for themselves while exposing their constituents to violent increases in crime.

Washington DC is no exception to the this failed and fatal experiment in defunding the police:

• Washington DC has traditionally had some of the most stringent gun control laws in the country.
• It has also been one of the most violent cities in the country over the years despite the city’s strict gun control laws.
• In 2019, the city ranked 13th nationally when it came to the homicide rate per 100,000 residents.
• Their homicide rate did not get any help when the city joined the defund the police movement.
• As a result, a recent local newscast from Fox 5 found that city residents are more than ever trying to acquire gun permits to protect themselves and their families against the upsurge in criminal violence in the city, an upsurge that raised the city homicide rate 12% in the past year.
• John Ayala, a certified firearms instructor and the owner of Archangel Security and Training in DC has found that: "A lot of women … especially African American women coming to us, asking us to train them. And this is because there’s been a lot of women getting shot in D.C. We just had one yesterday down Congress. So because of that, the women feel that they have to protect themselves."
• The numbers verify his experience since the number of people applying for gun permits in the city is up about 150% over the same time last year.

There was no way defunding the police was going to be a good idea without a proven, existing way to handle crime as an alternative. As a result, violence is up and citizens are not as stupid as their elected officials: they will protect themselves and their families even if their local politicians cannot. They will either move out of violent areas for their safety or take steps to do what the local government cannot do, provide protection.

We have always claimed that a very, very basic function of any government entity is to protect the lives and property of the people they serve. No matter how well they execute other government services, they are a failure if they cannot protect the lives and property of their citizens.

3) AMTRAK has been a disaster from a profitability perspective for decades. Why anyone thought that the Washington political class and the bureaucrats it oversees could actually run an efficient and profitable railroad system is beyond me. Washington cannot run anything efficiently and effectively so no surprise that AMTRAK has been a financial disaster for taxpayers since the beginning.

But it has also been fatal for any number of its customers over the years:

• An AMTRAK train going from Seattle to California was once stuck for days in Oregon after it reportedly hit a tree.
• Only a Federal government run railroad could break down because it somehow hit a tree.
• An AMTRAK train once crashed into a freight train in South Carolina that resulted in two AMTRAK riders being killed and at least 70 other riders being injured.
• In December, 2017, an AMTRAK train derailed in Washington state, smashing through an overpass onto Interstate 5, killing three people and injuring dozens.
• In early 2018, an AMTRAK train carrying Republican members of Congress to a retreat in West Virginia hit a garbage truck in Virginia, killing one of the three occupants in the vehicle.

And the carnage recently continued anew:

• An AMTRAK train recently derailed in Montana, leaving several train cars off the track and on their sides.
• Unfortunately, three riders died in the accident.
• Fifty riders were injured.

One wouldn't think that a train system could kill and maim so many of its riders. It is not like a plane crashed from 30,000 feet going several hundred miles an hour. A train is on a track that is on the ground likely going under 100 miles an hour. But leave it to the Federal government to muck up the simplest of tasks, running a train system that costs way too much to operate and even high, high expenses cannot keep it running safely.

That will do it for today: AMTRAK continues to kill, maim, and waste money, defunding the police movement fails in yet another city, and Pelosi goes stupid yet again.

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:

https://www.amazon.com/Love-My-Country-Loathe-Government/dp/1604942789/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=love+my+country%2C+loathe+my+government&qid=1607716020&sr=8-1

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.reason.com

http://www.cato.org

http://www.openthebooks.com

http://www.conventionofstates.com

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

 

 

April, 2013 Political Class Insanity, Part 2: Why Detroit Is Pathetic, Amtrak Is Still A Loser, and More

Yesterday was the first post in this month’s political class insanity. There we discussed the fact that taxpayer dollars were spent on a wide variety of puppet initiatives and to study the sex habits of New Zealand snails. We learned that a lucky county commissioner in California is not only earning over $400,000 a year but will continue to earn about the same amount every year in retirement. We learned that three of the toughest areas of the country for gun control, New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, are the three worst areas for prosecuting the breaking of Federal gun control laws. I can hardly wait to see what today’s insanity brings.

1) The city of Detroit’s story is certainly a pathetic one. It has lost a large percentage of its population over the past few decades. Many parts of the city have turned into vast urban wastelands where there are not even abandoned houses. The unemployment rate is embarrassing high. Some street lights are not turned on or their burned out bulbs not replaced since the city cannot afford these repairs. The governor is likely to impose a state controlled city manager to take over the city government.

How could all of this happened? Well, one reason might be because of a story in the March 22, 2013 issue of The Week magazine. It reported that former Detroit Democratic Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick was found guilty of racketeering, extortion, bribery, and fraud. According to the charges, the former mayor steered more than $83 million worth of municipal contracts to a friend who then kicked back money to the former mayor.

According to the local U.S. Attorney, Barbara McQuale: "Kwame Kilpatrick didn’t lead the city, he looted the city." He faces a maximum prison term of 20 years. $83 million could have fixed a lot of street lights and a lot of other problems with this distressed city.

2) The March, 2013 issue of Reason magazine had some interesting analyses of Amtrak, the distressed, Federally operated national train system:

• Amtrak is the most expensive way to transport oneself from city to city, on average costing consumers twice as much than commercial airline travel.
• The average American travels 15 miles a year via Amtrak but 15,000 miles a year via car.
• Amtrak per-passenger miles subsidies are more than nine times higher than subsidies paid to airlines and 20 times more than subsidies paid to car drivers.
• In 2012, Amtrak needed about $1.4 billion from the American taxpayer to run its operations.
• Only three of its twelve routes are profitable without taxpayer subsidies.

This financial insanity has been going on for decades, with no politician willing to fight the right battle to fix this disaster. Sell the assets off, let a private company worry about running a profitable railroad since it is obvious that the Federal government is not capable, and save $1.4 billion a year, a government expense that benefits only a tiny, tiny portion of Americans.

3) That same issue of Reason also carried a crazy story about a crazy public servant in Nevada City. City police chief James Wickham wants to control the city’s homeless population by having the town council pass a law that requires that homeless people pay for a permit to set up a tent.

His rationale for such a law is pretty silly: “The goal is to start managing the homeless population in this city. It just basically means that you cannot set up a tent. You can’t live in your vehicle. You can’t live in the woods in Nevada City.”

Did this brainiac ever think that the reason many of these people are homeless is because they do not have a lot of money? What little money they do have is not going to be spent on a permit, it will be spent on food and other life essentials. Does he think they will not sleep in a tent, car, or the woods because the town council says they need a permit?

The article goes on to say that if you are homeless in the city without a homeless permit, you could go to jail. That might be a better option for these unfortunate people than spending their very limited funds on a piece of paper for the privilege of sleeping in a tent, a car, or the woods.

Maybe the chief and the town council should be working on some compassionate ways to take care of these people rather than criminalizing them.

4) The Hill reported on March 28, 2013 that President Obama’s official Federal government budget proposal will be presented on April 10, 2013. According to existing law, this makes the budget presentation two months late.

This will be the fourth time in five years that Obama’s White House has been late in developing and presenting his official budget, meaning he has broken the law four out of the past five years.

This is not to be confused with the law that the U.S. Senate has broken every year since 2009 when it went four years without developing and presenting a detailed official Senate budget.

To my knowledge, Obama, any of his budget executives, or any Senator has gone to jail for not meeting the lawfully established budget guidelines. However, you can bet you will get prosecuted if you do not submit your tax returns on time by April 15. Apparently laws and their guidelines apply to you and I but not politicians.

5) A national debt fast approaching $17 TRILLION. About 23 million Americans either unemployed or underemployed. Anemic national economic growth. Sky rocketing health care costs. Continued under educating of our nation’s kids. Gas prices that are about twice as much as they were the day Obama took office.

So what are our Washington politicians worrying about these days. According to a March 20, 2013 article from The Hill:

A group of House Democrats on Wednesday introduced a bill that would prevent the term "Redskins" from being trademarked, a move intended to put pressure on the Washington football club to change its name.

The Non-Disparagement of American Indians in Trademark Registrations Act of 2013 is co-sponsored by Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.), and comes days after a federal trademark panel heard arguments over whether the team name was a slur. The panel could potentially overturn the team's trademark, which would erode profits by allowing other businesses to sell apparel and goods featuring the Redskins name.

Talk about bad priorities. When you cannot prevent the Titantic from sinking, you rearrange the deck chairs. When you cannot resolve the major issues of our time facing Americans, you spend time and resources on the name of a football team.

The incompetence, bad priorities, and wasteful spending from politicians just keeps on coming. And more of the same will come tomorrow.

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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.reason.com/
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

 

January, 2015, Part 2, Political Class Insanity: Twelve Wastes Of Taxpayer Wealth and Over Regulation Nation

It is the beginning of both another year and another month which means it is time to review the latest political class insanity from the American political class. For regular readers of this blog, you know that as 2014 progressed, the insanity, stupid quotes, ineffective governing and legislating, and general incompetence of our politicians seemed to accelerate as the year grinded on. 

No major issues got addressed, never mind resolved. Obama Care’s implications across the entire country and entire economy continued to unfold in disaster after disaster. Our foreign policy, or what was passed off as a foreign policy, was in tatters. Terrorism was on the march across the world. Veterans were dying because the Federal government could not fulfill the medical and health care promises those brave veterans were promised. 

The national debt hit a mind boggling $18 TRILLION. And our President continued to play golf and go on political campaign swings like no other President ever did. Congress narrowly missed becoming the least productive Congress of all time. Billions were spent and wasted on the November elections to elect people that did not deserve the time of day never mind billions of dollars. Racial division spread across the country, a division that was fomented and spread by those in office with something to gain. 

And guess what? Over the next week or so, starting with yesterday’s post, you will see nothing has changed except the calendar. The political class is still out of control, the government entities that they rule over are bloated and ineffective, and the quality of life and freedom in this country continues to deteriorate. Hang on, it is going to be a bumpy next seven days or so. 

1) The Heritage Foundation in an article by Romina Boccia recently listed out twelve ways that the Federal government wasted your tax dollars last year. Even though we have already covered a few of them, I include all twelve here today in case you missed the previous mentions: 

 - NASA spent $237,205 to study how rainfall affects the red crab’s annual migration to Christmas Island. Vital information for …no one. - Medicare Part B paid $132.9 million for the same medical supplies for cancer treatment that Medicare Part D paid $22 million to receive, a difference of six fold. Not very efficient sales bargaining. don’t these people working in the same organization ever talk to each other? 

 - The United States Postal Service lost or cannot confirm receiving 37 trailers from a leasing company. The United States Postal Service purchased the titles of the missing trailers and paid $287,000 for the trailers yet they cannot be found anywhere. So not only does the Postal Service lose our mail on a semi-regular basis they also lose vehicles. Who knows, find the missing trailers and we might find the missing mail. 

 - The Defense Department overpaid by $3.3 million for radios for the Afghan army because the Defense Department failed to follow contracting procedures. Same lack of purchasing skills as the Medicare Part B people. 

 - The Federal Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) paid an informant working for Amtrak, an actual AMTRAK employee, $854,460 over 20 years to get hold of Amtrak passengers’ names. However, the DEA could have received this information for free since the Amtrak Police Department will share this information with other law enforcement agencies. You cannot make this stuff up, it would be too unbelievable for fiction. 

 - The National Institutes of Health spent $484,000 to study whether hypnosis can reduce hot flashes in postmenopausal woman and breast cancer survivors. A self-help book entitled “Relief from Hot Flashes” describes a session as “You go to a place in your mind that’s going to cool you off. It’s almost like your body is cooling itself off.” 

 - Federal agencies paid close to $50 million to the Department of Commerce’s National Technical Information Service for information that is almost always available online for free. 

- Paralegals at the Patient Trial and Appeal Board were paid $5.1 million over four years as they watched Netflix, shopped online and used social media while on the job. Nice work if you can get it. And you can bet the paralegals were not the only Federal employees doing such nonsense, they were just too stupid and got caught, which does not say much for the government’s legal eagles. 

- The Department of Agriculture’s Market Access Program provided $400,000 to the liquor lobby, which used part of those funds to transport foreign journalists to different breweries and distilleries in the southeastern United States. I am sure we can all drink to that. 

- The Department of Agriculture granted $500,000 to provide start-up materials for butterfly farming to Native Americans in Oklahoma, which included butterfly eggs and vehicles to transport them. Butterflies, really? 

- The National Institutes of Health has granted more than $10 million towards the creation of “Escape from Diab,” which is a video game about five children who must get healthy enough to escape from a town full of obese people and their evil king. Yes, those obese people can really be mean and evil. 

- Employees at the Environmental Protection Agency used government credit cards to purchase $79,300 worth of “prohibited, improper and erroneous” goods and services. Included in the purchases were gym memberships for EPA employees and their family members, DVDs and academic memberships. 

Disgraceful abuse of taxpayer wealth. And to add insult to injury, I would be that few if any of these abusing Federal employees were disciplined, fined, or terminated for their inability to perform their jobs or for basically stealing from the American taxpayer. 

Just these twelve programs alone unnecessarily cost the American taxpayer almost $85 million. When you multiply twelve by thousands and thousands of other abusive Federal government spending insults, you really get a good picture of how careless the political class and Federal employees are with your money. 

And even if this money never made it back to the taxpayer, imagine how much better the country would be if that $85 million was used instead to: 

• Feed the homeless. 
• Shelter the homeless. 
• Treat drug addiction victims. 
• Train the unemployed. Repair infrastructure. 
• Increase cancer, aging, and other major disease research. 

The payoff for humanity and American citizens would be so much higher rather than subsidizing butterfly farming, video games and other such nonsense. 

2) Just before Thanksgiving, the Obama administration secretly introduced over 3,000 new regulations into the Federal bureaucracy. This averaged out to about nine new regulations every DAY of the year in 2014. 

At that time, we questioned and still believe that such over regulation is a waste of time and only happens as bloated Federal government entities try to justify their continued existence and worth. It is difficult to believe that all previous Presidential administrations were so lax that this administration needs to introduce nine new regulations a day within a single year. 

Over regulation, especially regulations that do usually nothing except support government bureaucracies, burden business owners and workers with excessive and needless paper work and costs, it bogs down the growth in the economy and employment as resources and time is diverted to meaningless government conformance and not growing the market and economy. This is likely a driving reason why the economy has been such a laggard and poor performer under Obama, even years and years after the recession ended. 

But despite the overwhelming regulation wave in late November, according to an article by Onan Coca writing for the www.freedomforce.com website, the regulation tsunami is not over yet: Just before 2014 ended, the Obama administration burdened the country with another 1,200 regulations. 

This brings an average daily total of almost twelve new regulations every DAY. Energy and environment rules are the biggest category, with 139 published by the Federal government in the last 15 days of 2014. Just one of those regulations, the coal ash rule, is expected to burden the economy with a cost of $20.3 million or about $176 for every household in the country. 

According to the article, 2015 will see more and more regulations form this administration, regulations that could add at least tens of billions of dollars in regulatory costs to the economy and American households. Many of these regulations are seen as unneeded and politically motivated and will likely face court challenges. 

I am not an expert on environmental or any other kind of regulations. But again, I find it difficult to believe that things are so bad, that past Presidential administrations were so delinquent in their duties, that this administration has to add so many regulations to the economy with seemingly little direct or indirect benefit to Americans. 

Add in the fact that these regulations are announced during light news coverage periods rather than being upfront with the American people raises suspicions that there is something seriously amiss. This administration and this President for once ought to be a man and be upfront with these types of actions rather than acting like a typical Chicago politicians, always working in the shadows. Very little good and very little trust get transacted in the shadows. 

Only two topics of insanity today but they are big ones, Government entities and government employees abusing taxpayer wealth in so many original and disgraceful ways and the Obama administration sneaking out thousands of regulations that are likely unnecessary but are overly secretive and destructive to the economy and economic well being of American workers. 

More insanity tomorrow, many forms and many shapes and many disgraces.

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