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Sequestering And Washington’s Fiscal Incompetence

February 25, 2013 by 6 Comments

spending2 Sequestering And Washingtons Fiscal Incompetence

As many of you may know, if the political class does not get its act together by March 1, 2013, automatic Federal government spending cuts will kick in that will reduce government spending by over a trillion dollars over the next ten years. This “sequestering” of budget dollars was agreed to by Congress and Obama in August of 2011 in the debt ceiling negotiations.

While this is a decent first step in reining in government spending, it is still pretty meager. Overall government spending will still increase in the baseline budget view, it will just increase at a somewhat lower rate. Annual spending deficits will continue to mount up, increasing our national debt and burdening future generations of Americans with that debt.

How anemic is this effort at reducing spending? Let’s do some simple math:

  • Let’s assume that the ten year trillion dollar spending reduction averages out to about $100 billion a year.
  • According to the official White House website, the Federal government will spend about $4.5 trillion in 2017.
  • This $4.5 trillion is less than it spent in 2012 but is less than it will likely spend ten years from now, under baseline budget assumptions, so the 2017 estimate is a good ten year annual average.
  • $100 billion a year in spending cuts against an average spending budget of $4.5 trillion is only a meager 2.2% spending decrease.
  • According to the White House website  budget spreadsheet, in 2017, this $100 billion in spending cuts would still add over half a TRILLION to the national debt.

Despite this feeble attempt at expense reduction, many in the administration are choking on it. Retired Defense Secretary Leon Panetta claims our national defense would be endangered by a 2.2% reduction in spending. Secretary of State John Kerry asserted that we could not afford a meager 2.2% reduction in his budget since we needed to continue to butt into the lives of people in other countries around the world. President Obama has been spreading panic, claiming many vital government services would be slashed because of this meager 2.2% cut in spending.

Makes you wonder if these so-called leaders are 1) that out of touch with the real world, 2) want to protect their turf at any cost regardless of the impact on the fiscal integrity of the country, or 3) are just that fiscally incompetent that they do not know how to run an efficient operation and can only operate it by increasing their budget rather than decreasing their organization’s waste, redundancy, and incompetence.

To help these politicians understand why this 2.2% reduction is a very easily attainable goal, let’s point out via just a HANDFUL of examples of how wasteful, redundant and incompetent their organizations are today:

- Medicare and Medicaid lose over $100 billion a year to waste, inefficiency, and criminal fraud.

- Social Security loses over $100 billion a year to waste, inefficiency, and criminal fraud.

- The IRS admits that it is so incompetent that it fails to collect over $380 billion a year from tax evaders.

- The U.S. Navy, one of Panetta’s former organizations, spent $300 million to build two Navy ships almost to completion before spending another $10 million to turn them both into scrap metal without ever using them.

- The State Department, John Kerry’s organization, recently spent $80 million to build a consulate building in northern Afghanistan that will never be used since the $80 million is not defensible from a terrorist attack and was built by bypassing the State Department’s own building guidelines relative to terrorists.

- The Transportation Safety Agency recently bought over $180 million worth of airport security equipment that it will never use, storing it in a warehouse in its original packaging.

- Employees in the General Services Administration threw themselves a Las Vegas bash at taxpayer expense, resulting in the dismissal and resignations of GSA employees and executives.

- The Obama administration recently made the inane, indefensible decision to give Egypt over one billion dollars worth of F-16 fighter planes and tanks, weapons that could eventually impact both Department of Defense and State Department operations in the future.

- And last but not least, consider some new findings relative to the President’s economic stimulus plan, as recently reported by the Independent Journal Review. Unfortunately, these types of expenses are no confined to the stimulus program, they happen every day in every Federal government department and entity.

These insults to the taxpayer occurred even though when President Obama signed the $831 billion stimulus into law in 2009, he stated that “tough choices smart investments” needed to be made. So ask yourself: if these are the “smart investments,” you can only wonder what the dumb expenses were:

  • $250 was sent to a woman in Maryland who died in 1967.
  • $840 was spent to disassemble and assemble three desks.
  • The Lincoln Center in New York City was paid to host a “tango salon.”
  • $10,000 was spent replacing light fixtures at a fish hatchery.
  • $425,000 was spent in $250 increments to 1,700 prisons inmates for social security checks.
  • $426,000 was spent to rebuild a bridge that is used by a average of ten cars a day.
  • $500,000 was spent in subsidies for rain barrel installation.
  • $600,000 was sent to a school district in Kansas …that no longer exists.
  • $1 million was spent in New York on road signs advertising stimulus projects.
  • $1 million was used to build 250 bike lockers.
  • $1.25 million was used to use electric fish to study animal sensory information.
  • $1.75 million was spent on energy-efficient garage doors.
  • $2.2 million was spent to install skylights for a liquor store in Montana.
  • $2.8 was million spent installing toilets in New Mexico’s national forest.
  • $15 million was spent to build an airport in Ouizinkie, Alaska …a town of 165 people.

Disgraceful wastes of money. Which gets us back to our central question: Are Kerry, Panetta, and Obama out of touch, protecting turf or just fiscally incompetent? Or possibly all of the above?

Filed Under: Commentary Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Hillary, What Difference Did You Make?

February 11, 2013 by 4 Comments

Hillary Clinton on the Hill Hillary, What Difference Did You Make?

When recently testifying in front of Congressional committees investigating the fatal disaster that happened at the U.S. Consulate at Benghazi in Libya, former Secretary of State famously shouted, “What difference does it make?” when asked detailed questions regarding the inferior and shoddy security at the consulate. Maybe America should ask a slightly different question of Ms. Clinton if given the opportunity: “What Difference Did You Make?”

News reports and poll results show that Ms. Clinton has very high favorability ratings among Americans. To be honest, many of us don’t see it or get it. When we look at her record as Secretary of State, we see a string of failures, missed opportunities, and management shortcomings that culminated in the unnecessary death of four Americans, including a U.S. ambassador in Libya.

One cannot say that someone else could have done better in this role in this tumultuous times. But it is difficult to see why she is getting this much love for just showing up for work with no discernible success stories or accomplishments to her credit:

1) Iran is four years closer to having nuclear weapons, and no diplomatic efforts from this administration and this former Secretary of State have come close to terminating this growing danger.

2) North Korea is four years closer to having nuclear weapons, and, more importantly, four years closer to having the rocket delivery capability to put one of those nukes into the West Coast of the United States. No diplomatic efforts from this administration of this former Secretary of State have come close to terminating this growing danger.

3) This administration and this former Secretary of State were caught completely by surprise and off guard by the so-called Arab Spring and the ramifications from these uprisings. Once caught by surprise, they never got out in front of the changes and problems associated with these earth moving political shifts.

4) This administration and this former Secretary of State apparently did not anticipate and have no plan to cope with the civil war in Syria, showing no leverage to get the violence to stop or to contain the various types of weapons, including chemical, from falling into the wrong hands.

5) Four years of this administration and this former Secretary of State has gotten us no closer to resolving the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Now, granted, not much progress has been made since the whole conflict started in 1948 so this was a tough issue on which no progress was made.

6) Late last year, the Associated Press reported on the disaster that was to be a U.S. consulate facility in the northern part of Afghanistan. After $80 million of taxpayer wealth had been expended, the State Department decided to abandon the facility since it was basically indefensible, wasting $80 million. Existing State Department procedures and protocols were ignored or overwritten that would have prevented this wasting of $80 million. This calls into question of how well the State Department functioned administratively under Clinton’s direction, especially on high profile, expensive spending initiatives like this consulate.

7) Four years of this administration and this former Secretary of State resulted in no leverage with China, a nation that bullies its neighboring countries, sponsors cyber attacks on other countries’ military, infrastructure, and private businesses, manipulates its currency to our detriment,  and which is the biggest polluter and emitter of greenhouse gases in the world.

8) She was either unaware or stood by quietly as this administration violated any number of laws and treaties by allowing the Fast And Furious gun running operation to ship thousands of illegal weapons to Mexican drug cartels, weapons that ended up killing a U.S. border agent and dozens of Mexican civilians without contacting Mexican authorities ahead of the operation.

9) And worst of all, the death and destruction from the terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate at Benghazi:

  • Despite many, many warnings ahead of the attack regarding the weak consulate security operations, no attempt was made to successfully beef up security in one of the most dangerous places in the world.
  • Security was so bad that a badly injured ambassador received medical treatment not from U.S. resources but was driven to a local hospital by Libyan citizens. There Libyan doctors treated him without even knowing who he was. In other words, security operations were so bad we physically lost track of a U.S. ambassador‘s whereabouts and body.
  • It is still unknown the real reasons behind the attacks: was it a botched kidnapping attempt, with the Obama administration’s involvement, to trade the ambassador for the “blind sheik?” Was it to cover up an illegal gun running operation to the Syrian rebels and shut down the operation and those that were involved? Or was it just gross incompetence?
  • These questions do make a difference and it is her responsibility to come clean with America, she was in charge.

So, yes Hillary, it really does make a difference. But more importantly: What difference did you make in the four years you served as Secretary of State? To be honest, there seems to be no positive difference or international relations progress between now and 2009 when you took over the difficult job of managing our international affairs.

Filed Under: Commentary, Featured Stories Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

It’s Official: Political Donors More Important Than Constituents

February 2, 2013 by 1 Comment

Congress Its Official: Political Donors More Important Than Constituents

Many Americans had long suspected that Congress and other Washington politicians were not working very hard for the good of the country and the good of their constituents. The war on drugs was declared over forty years and is still a lost cause. In the 1980s, a Reagan commission on pubic education showed how poorly our schools were educating our kids. Three decades later, that situation has gotten even worse. In the 1970s, the nation’s economy was shocked any number of times by oil shortages, exposing the fact that the country did not have a long term strategic plan for energy independence and stability.

What have Congress and the politicians been doing for the past four decades? We know that they do not work 40 hour weeks, 50 weeks a year. In fact, Congress will only be in session about 115 days this year. What do they do during these less-than-robust working hours? They obviously are not coming up with solutions to the major issues facing the nation.

Well, thanks to a January 8, 2013 Huffington Post article, it is pretty obvious why they have not resolved any major issue: they really are not working on them, being far more concerned with raising money for their next election and their political party. Details from the article include the following disgraces:

The writers of the Huffington Post article got hold of a presentation that was given to freshmen Congressmen and women by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

The presentation outlined how a typical member of Congress should spend their days when actually in Washington.

This prototype daily schedule laid out by the Democratic leadership expects a nine or 10-hour day while in Washington, of which four hours are to be spent in “call time“ (i.e. calling people in order to get them make a political campaign donation.)

Another hour is supposed to be dedicated to “strategic outreach,” which includes fundraisers and press work (i.e. more fundraising time and effort.)

Another hour is to be blocked off for “recharge.”

And finally, three to four hours a day are to be used for the actual work of being a member of Congress — hearings, votes, and meetings with constituents.

So, not only do members of Congress not do a lot of real work (i.e. solving problems); there is an actual formal process that discourages that type of problem-solving behavior in favor of raising money to keep incumbents in office. No wonder nothing ever gets resolved, real budgets never develop, or fraud and waste is never wrung out of government operations; the political class is off taking care of themselves and their political careers.

Let’s do some simple math:

The average American works about 250 days a year,  five days a week for 50 weeks.

Congress will be in session about 115 days this year. Let’s assume that they will work another 25 days a year back in their home state or Congressional district, giving them a work year of 140 days.

Thus, relative to the average American, Congressional members work only 64% as long (140/250).

During the average workday, the average American works about 8 hours a day.

During an average workday, we now know from the Huffington Post that the average Congressional member only works about four hours a day on real work.

Thus, the average politician works half as hard on real work than the average American (4 hours a day/8 hours a day).

Since a member of Congress earns about $170,000 a year, given their work load and what we now know they spend their time on, their annual pay should be reduced to:

$54,400 = $170,000 X .64 (ratio of working days) X .5 (ratio of working hours per day)

This would be a truer measure of their value, not $170,000. And at $54,400, given their poor productivity, they still might be overpaid.

Consider some quotes from the article that prove how ludicrous and shameful this behavior is:

“You might as well be putting bamboo shoots under my fingernails. It’s the most painful thing, and they’re no sooner elected and they’re down there making phone calls for the election in 2014,” said Congressman John Larson.

“It really does affect how members of Congress behave if the most important thing they think about is fundraising. You end up being nice to people that probably somebody needs to be questioning skeptically. It’s a fairly disturbing suggested schedule. You won’t ask tough questions in hearings that might displease potential contributors, won’t support amendments that might anger them, will tend to vote the way contributors want you to vote,” said former Congressman Brad Miller.

“One thing that’s always been striking to me is even the members playing a leading role on specific issues actually could not talk about the issues. They didn’t have enough knowledge on their own issues to talk about them at length. I’m probably guilty of that,” said a current member of Congress who wished to remain anonymous.

So we end up with distracted members of Congress, members who do not ask the tough questions or make the tough calls because it could affect fundraising; and we have members of Congress who do not know the details and ramifications of what they are voting on and sponsoring. No wonder nothing ever gets resolved.

This behavior cries out for term limits on all elected officials. If these members of Congress knew that they could not run for office for a second term, they might focus more on doing the right thing and not hitting up the right political donor. How much worse could it get with term limits compared to the current process laid out in the Huffington Post article?

With term limits, which would remove “incumbent” from our political vocabulary, we might finally get back to representative government that is for the people and by the people as opposed to the current government.

Photo credit: Jessie Owen (Creative Commons)

Filed Under: Commentary, Floyd Reports

How To Painlessly Take $9 Trillion Out Of Our National Debt

January 25, 2013 by 6 Comments

Why Obama Isnt Concerned About The Debt SC How To Painlessly Take $9 Trillion Out Of Our National Debt

Sometime next month, the nation will hit its current debt ceiling limit, setting off a frantic, embarrassing, and last minute effort to avoid defaulting on some Federal government debts because the government’s ability to borrow money and continue living beyond its means will be in jeopardy. If the fiscal cliff fiasco is any indication, the nation’s debt ceiling will be raised at the last minute; taxes may go up; credit rating agencies will probably downgrade the quality of our debt status; and the needed restraint on government spending will be delayed again.

And again, our politicians would have proven to us and the world that they do not have the ability, the will, or the fortitude to make the necessary cuts in Federal spending that are driving the country to the brink of fiscal insolvency. They would rather continue to fund their political backers or not take the time to clean up the corruption, redundancy, and criminal fraud that pervades every Federal Department and program.

The very sad thing about the situation is that the heavy lifting, the in-depth analyses, and research of the Federal budget has already been done by a number of non-governmental and government entities. They have gone through the minute details of the Federal government’s excessive and unnecessary spending habits. These analyses have been done by the following organizations:

  • U.S. Public Interest Group
  • The National Taxpayer Union
  • General Accountability Office
  • Congressional Budget Office
  • Associated Press
  • Internal Revenue Service
  • Senate Reports
  • The Cato Institute
  • Housing And Urban Development
  • Federal government inspector generals

If you look at their detailed analyses in total, you will find that these people have already researched and identified almost $9 trillion worth of ways to reduce our national debt. And the best thing about it is that this debt reduction of $9 trillion does not involve tax increases on any American and minimal financial pain to the average U.S. household.

However, those companies that rely on crony capitalism to survive, those companies that continually get government favors in return for financing political election campaigns, those criminals who currently defraud the American taxpayer of hundreds of billions of dollars a year, and those Federal entities that do not fulfill any viable purpose would see their lives change dramatically.

For the first time ever, the combined efforts of the above organizations have been tabulated to prove that taking trillions of dollars out of our national debt is possible and painless:

1) Annual taxpayer wealth lost to waste, inefficiencies, and criminal fraud in the following Federal programs:

  • Medicare: $60 – $90 billion
  • Medicaid: $30 – $40 billion
  • Social Security: $100 billion
  • One Federal Unemployment Program: $19 billion
  • One Federal Food Stamp Program: $2 – $3 billion
  • Total: $211 – $252 billion, midpoint = $231 billion
  • Savings over ten years = $2.3 Trillion
  • Savings if only 50% of the fraud and waste was cleaned up = $1.16 Trillion

2) Annual uncollected taxes due to the Federal government but not collected from tax evaders:

  • $325 Billion
  • Savings over ten years = $3.25 Trillion
  • Savings over ten years if you just reduce the illegal tax evasion by 50% – $1.625 Trillion

3) The U.S. has about 84,000 combat troops unnecessarily stationed in Europe, about 30,000 combat troops unnecessarily stationed in South Korea, and about 25,000 combat troops unnecessarily stationed in Japan, serving defense purposes that were obsoleted decades ago. The Obama administration is about to unnecessarily deploy about 2,500 troops in Australia. If 75% of these troops were brought home, the country would save about $212 billion over ten years.

4) If we cancel the production of the V-22 Osprey aircraft because it is over budget, likely to under-perform, and has been designated as not critical by the Sustainable Defense Task Force, we would save $6.2 billion over the next five years.

5) If we cancel the production of the F-35 jet fighter, which, according to the Sustainable Defense Task Force, “may represent all that is wrong with our acquisition process” and “would provide a capability that is not warranted considering emerging threats,” we would save $22.5 billion over the next five years.

6) If we cancel the military Space Tracking and Surveillance System, which can be replaced with lower cost and more reliable options, we would save the Pentagon $5 billion over the next five years.

7) If we cancel the outdated, unreliable, and unneeded Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle (because the General Accountability Office has cited the program’s history of cost growth, schedule misses-14 years late-and performance failures as reasons for terminating the program, we would save $16.3 billion over the next five years.

8) The General Accountability Office found that the Army, Navy, and Air Force are wasting billions of dollars a year by purchasing items that were either never used or were never required. The GAO identified purchasing reform processes that could save $36.9 billion a year (or about $369 billion over ten years.)

9) Terminating various unneeded corporate welfare programs would produce substantial savings. These programs include the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, the Market Access Program, trade association subsidies for foreign marketing, subsidies to large agriculture business and wealthy farmers, tax credits for the blending of ethanol, the ultra-deepwater natural gas and petroleum research program, public timber sales subsidies, and the Southeastern Power Administration. Ending these corporate welfare programs would save about $12 billion a year or about $120 billion over ten years.

10) The Federal government owns more than 55,500 buildings that are either not used or are underused. If 50% of these buildings were eliminated over the next five years, savings in the area of $48 billion would be realized.

11) Government audits of Housing and Urban Development found the Federal government wastes about $4.5 billion a year due to bad accounting and billing processes. Fix this problem, and save about $45 billion over ten years.

12) Annual earmarks, which are usually nothing more than thinly disguised ways for incumbent politicians to fund their re-election campaign with taxpayer money, cost the Federal government about $16 billion a year in unneeded expenses. Eliminating earmarks would save $160 billion over ten years.

13) According to the General Accountability Office:

  • The Federal government has 15 different agencies overseeing food safety laws.
  • It has more than 20 programs helping the homeless.
  • It has 80 programs to help economic development.
  • It has 82 agencies working on improving teacher quality, few of which are working if you see how poorly American kids are being educated vs. the rest of the world.
  • It has 47 agencies working on job training.
  • It has 18 programs working on food and nutrition assistance.

A formal Senate report and analysis of the situation estimates that between $100 billion and $200 billion a year could be saved by consolidating and downsizing these functions. If we take the mid-range of the estimates, we end up with $1.5 trillion in savings over ten years.

14) An extensive Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report identified detailed savings in many areas of government spending:

  • Science, Space, and Technology savings over ten years – $25.26 billion
  • Agriculture – $3.87 billion in savings over ten years. This does not include the termination of unneeded ethanol subsidies and other farm support programs that are no longer needed.
  • Natural Resources and Environment savings over ten years – $32.23 billion. These savings are concentrated in programs that support corporations, not endangering basic government environmental programs.
  • Commerce and Housing savings over ten years – $5.42 billion. This does not include the savings that could be found by cutting back on the widespread fraud and mismanagement in government housing programs.
  • Transportation savings over ten years – $141.64 billion
  • Community and Regional Development savings over ten years – $21.94 billion
  • Education, Training, Employment, and Social Services savings over ten years – $45.42 billion
  • Income Security savings over ten years – $68.83 billion
  • Veterans Benefits and Services savings over ten years – $21.50 billion
  • Allowances savings over ten years – $2.54 billion
  • Administrative of Justice savings over ten years – $10.26 billion
  • Social Security savings over ten years – $388.52 billion.
  • General Government expense savings over ten years – $5.21 billion

15) Since 2009, the Federal payroll has grown by 231,000 civilian. Since most would agree that we have not seen a corresponding rise in the quality of government service since these people have been hired, getting rid of them, like most efficient businesses would do, would not result in a degradation in Federal government services.

If we conservatively estimate that the weighted taxpayer cost (wages, benefits, and retirement costs) for these newly hired employees is $80,000 a year, than letting them go would result in annual savings of about $18.48 billion a year or $184.8 billion over ten years.

16) In any measure of education attainment, U.S. kids usually fare very poorly when compared to the education received by kids in other countries. Usually, the U.S. is bested by a dozen or more countries when it comes to comparing standardized test results. The Department of Education has been around for about thirty years and has done nothing to change this low performance.

Given this anemic and failing performance by the Department of Education, the job of educating our kids should be sent back to state and local governments. Phasing out this Department over the next few years would reduce Federal spending by about $900 billion over the next ten years.

17) Much like the Department of Education, the Federal Department of Energy has done nothing to get us to a coherent national energy strategy and policy and has not funded any breakthrough energy technologies. Terminate the entity and let the private market research and develop new energy technologies. 10 year savings according to Cato – $382.8 billion.

18) Cato has done similar analyses on just about every other Federal organization, coming up with the following expense cuts independent of everything listed so far:

  • Commerce Department – 10 year savings of $21.2 billion if you assume only half of what Cato identified is attained.
  • Department of Transportation cuts – 10 year savings of $424.4 billion if you assume only half of what Cato identified is attained.

These cuts alone would save the Federal government just under $9 TRILLION in expenses and costs over the next ten years with minimal impacts on needy Americans and ordinary American citizens. The $9 trillion does not include additional savings that would come from the following areas:

  • More non-vital military cuts not listed above.
  • Reining in Medicare and Medicaid costs beyond the fraud and waste savings listed above.
  • Deny Social Security payments in retirement to any American who had a net wealth of over $3 million and raising the retirement age to 70 years, with a hardship exception.
  • Savings from interest payments not paid because the Federal government took almost $9 TRILLION of debt out of play.
  • The termination of the Federal Housing Authority, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac government agencies and the associated hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies they are likely to consume in the next ten years.
  • Elegantly privatize some government functions such as what Canada and other European countries have successfully done with their national air traffic control processes and postal systems and allow private contractors to do the TSA screening function at all U.S. airports since we know from experience that they can do a far better job for less budget money than government employed TSA screeners.

People far smarter than me can determine the value of these additional efficiencies in government operations. In fact, Cato has already done all of this work and summarized it at their Downsizing Government website. Their comprehensive analysis found a way to reduce annual Federal government spending over time by about $1.16 trillion a year, creating a debt reduction of $11.6 trillion-also without raising taxes and with minimal pain to an average American.

Most of these cost cuts would have a minimal impact on the average American. More importantly, it would reduce government expenses (allowing more Americans to keep more of their personal wealth), it would increase our personal freedom, it would help clear up the uncertainty that the Obama administration has injected into the economy, and it would keep the social programs that many Americans rely on (e.g. Social Security, Medicare, etc.) viable and fiscally solvent.

Given the history of the Obama administration and the rest of the political class, this solution appears to be beyond their capabilities, comprehension, and attention spans. Otherwise, they would have taken these steps towards fiscal responsibility long before we reached a national debt in excess of $16 trillion. Einstein identified this our dilemna decades ago:

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.

Apparently, we also cannot solve our problems with the same politicians that created them.

Filed Under: Commentary, Floyd Reports Tagged With: , ,

How About Some Hate Control Before More Gun Control?

January 17, 2013 by 8 Comments

Nancy Pelosi SC How About Some Hate Control Before More Gun Control?

As most informed people know, there was a tragic and senseless school shooting incident in Newtown, Connecticut last month that left defenseless children and adults killed by an obviously deranged young man. It is inconceivable to most people how a young man can go so astray that he murders random people for no obvious reason.

As a result, certain elements of the political class in Washington have taken advantage of this tragedy to advance their own personal agendas relative to gun control, with the idea that controlling or eliminating gun possession by all of us would have somehow prevented the Newtown tragedy.

Rather than trying to understand the root causes of such abhorrent behavior, these politicians simplistically look at the “what” of the situation (guns were used to kill) rather than the “why” of the situation (what causes such behavior.) By not understanding the root causes, the chance of resolving the problem is next to nothing.

Maybe there are other causes of such behavior, not simply gun possession. Rather than more draconian gun control rules and laws, we should do a little “hate control” before we recklessly and senselessly go off on a gun control tangent, a tangent that will likely increase crime and gun play, not reduce it and shred the Second Amendment in the process.

Let’s be honest; there is a lot of hate and venom circulating in our country today. Much of it is fomented by the political class as they try to incite their supporters and degrade their opponents in the most dehumanizing ways possible.

The more we dehumanize others, the easier it is to see them as less worthy of their opinion and their life. Maybe if we started respecting each other a little more and taking some of the hate and venom out of our politics, thought processes, and speech, incidents like the shootings in Newtown, in south Chicago, in the ghettos of Detroit, etc. might become a little less frequent if we respected each other a little more.

This increase in respect and humanizing of other human beings should start with our so-called leaders, However, these so-called leaders are a big cause of the problem, not the solution. They have had a busy and disgraceful past couple of years degrading and abusing the opinions, lives, and very existence of the citizens they are supposed to be serving:

  • Democrat Speaker Of The House Nancy Pelosi called citizen opponents to ObamaCare unpatriotic for simply having a difference of opinion with many politicians in Washington.
  • Democrat Charles Rangel slandered millions of Americans who opposed ObamaCare by calling them racists for simply having an honest difference of opinion with many politicians in Washington.
  • Democrat Shelia Jordan Lee slandered Americans who opposed ObamaCare by associating them with the Ku Klux Klan.
  • Union boss and Democratic supporter Jimmy Hoffa, Jr. stated that his union was at war with the Republicans and Tea Party citizens and that these people “need to be taken out.”
  • Democratic Congressmen Mike Doyle and Henry Waxman and Vice President Joe Biden slandered American citizens opposed to unfettered and destructive government spending and debt by calling them terrorists (those people who bomb and kill innocent civilians).
  • When ordinary Americans objected to the building of a Islamic mosque near the World Trade Center property because of the sad memories of 9-11, Democrat Nancy Pelosi said THEY should be investigated for simply having a passionate opinion on the mosque.
  • Democratic Congresswoman Maxine Walters said all Tea Party American citizens can go to hell simply for having a difference of opinion with her.

When you viciously and unfoundedly associate ordinary citizens with racism, call them terrorists, question their patriotism, wish they would go to hell, and then threaten to take them out/exterminate them, you have dehumanized them in the eyes of your political supporters, making it easy to imagine them actually going away permanently.

Maybe this type of hate, venom, and dehumanizing goes through the head of a young man when he decides to go off and actually follows the advice that those people “need to be taken out.” When your so-called leaders call for this type of behavior and language, it can’t be wrong, can it?

But our political class and their direct supporters also direct their hate and venomous words towards other politicians:

  • The campaign manager of Democrat Jerry Brown’s gubernatorial campaign called his Republican opponent, Meg Whitman, a whore.
  • White House czar Van Jones publicly called all Republicans a**h****s.
  • Democrat Alan Grayson called all Republicans knuckle-dragging Neanderthals.
  • TV host Montel Williams publicly hoped that Republican Congresswoman Michele Bachman would commit suicide by decapitating herself.
  • Ed Schultz, an on-air commentator for the Democratic-leaning MSNBC news channel, called Laura Ingraham of Fox News a slut.
  • HBO TV host Bill Maher, a major donor to Obama’s 2012 Presidential Super PAC, said on air that Republican Sarah Palin “would f*** Rick Perry if he was black.”
  • Bill Maher also called Palin a disgusting and derogatory name that I will not repeat here.
  • Playboy magazine’s online website offered a detailed analysis on why and how each of ten Republican women in politics should be hate raped.
  • Democratic Congressman Steve Cohen likened Republican critics of Obamacare to the Nazis and their propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels.
  • A rap artist gave a Minnesota concert that was billed as the “F*** Michelle Bachman” concert (spelling out the entire f-word).
  • A Democratic operative insulted Ann Romney (and millions of other American women) by slandering and demeaning her as a stay-at-home mother.
  • Martin Bashier of MSNBC News showed a video of Mitt Romney’s campaign bus that was interspersed with video clips of buses blowing up in balls of fire, explicitly wishing that the Romney bus also blow up and that those inside die a fiery death.

When you label others as “sluts” and “whores” and suggest they should be raped or be killed, either by themselves or a fiery bus explosion, you set another stage for dehumanization. If you political opponents are just “sluts” and “whores”, no big deal if they go away, right?

This type of disgusting, hateful behavior is an influence in our society and not an influence for good. It infects the undertone of how we view others. It reduces the amount of respect we have for others, making it easier to abuse others, possibly violently.

It usually does not cause someone to go off and actually start killing others, but it certainly cannot help. It also cuts short the ability to listen to each other and appreciate the diversity of opinion each brings to a potential solution of a problem.

If I have allowed the political class and their ardent supporters to frame you as a racist or a slut or a terrorist, I am unlikely to consider any good you can bring to my life or to a solution of a problem. If I think it is a good thing that you self-decapitate or die in a bus explosion, you will probably not get my attention when it comes to working towards a better society.

As a result of this hateful divisiveness the political class has driven into our society, we despise others who have opinions different from ours. Major issues, such as failing public schools, a lost war on drugs, skyrocketing national debt, high health care costs, illegal immigration, etc. never get resolved. The hate prevents us from listening to each other and calibrating our view of the world with others’ views of the world.

And possibly in the case of Newtown, we go beyond not listening, and we start shooting. Not because guns are legal, but because we have allowed the political class to desensitize us to each other as human beings.

But it is not only politicians who spew the hate and venom, hate and venom that others take to heart, hate and venom that their children take and internalize. Consider just some recent examples that have appeared in the news:

- Consider the hateful speech and intentions of Professor Richard Parncutt of the University of Graz regarding other human beings who are global warming deniers, those daring to have a different opinion than his: “In this article I am going to suggest that the death penalty is an appropriate punishment for influential GW [global warming] deniers… They [global warming deniers] are already causing the deaths of hundreds of millions of future people. We could be speaking of billions, but I am making a conservative estimate… With high probability it will cause hundreds of millions of deaths. For this reason I propose that the death penalty is appropriate for influential GW deniers.”

Different opinion; therefore, you should die. If you have a different opinion than Professor Parncutt, he deigns that you do not deserve to live.

- Pulitzer nominated newspaper columnist Donald Kaul recently wrote an article for the Des Moines Register where he called for the killing of gun owners and “dragging legislators who disagree with gun control behind pickup trucks until they get the message.” Don’t agree with my opinion? Thus, we should have more killing and more torture for those who dare to have a difference of opinion. How does this stop the cycle of hate that starts with the political class?

- Erik Loomis, PhD, assistant professor of history at the University of Rhode Island, decided he needed to get into the hate and venom game also when he recently stated on Twitter that he wanted the death of National Rifle Association (NRA) CEO Wayne LaPierre, branding the gun rights group he heads as a terrorist organization””[I] want Wayne LaPierre’s head on a stick.” A little hateful, a little violent?

- Karen Lewis, head of the Chicago Teachers’ Union, recently had some violent rhetoric of her own to share: “Do not think for a minute that the wealthy are ever going to allow you to legislate their riches away from them. Please understand that. However, we are in a moment where the wealth disparity in this country is very reminiscent of the robber baron ages. The labor leaders of that time, though, were ready to kill. They were. They were just – off with their heads. They were seriously talking about that.”

And this person is associated with educating young minds and kids. Don’t like someone or are jealous of their wealth (that in all probability was garnered via hard work and sweat? Then just off with their heads.

You cannot have such hate and disrespect and venomous speech floating around and not have a negative impact on how we treat each other, how it dehumanizes others. You cannot say the Newtown shooting was directly caused because of this poisonous environment, but it certainly did not help. Was the shooter seated around his dinner table through the years when slurs and demeaning things were said about others, how others different from him were worthy of being “taken out“?

And it certainly does not allow us to sit down and go face-to-face with others to leverage everyone’s knowledge and skills to confront all of our problems from school shootings to high debt, high illiteracy levels, failing public education, a failing health care system, etc.

But if we solved all of our problems, on what issues would our politicians run on? And that, my friends, is the root cause of most of our problems from school shootings to the lack of a national energy problem; our shameless politicians need the hate and venom to frame and finance their continual reelection effort.

So tonight, when you are sitting around the table with your family, how about a little more hate control and a lot more respect for others in front of our kids? Again, it couldn’t hurt.

And when you come across such people in life, those who want others to die simply because they have a different opinion, walk away. These people are part of the problem; do not join them in spreading their venom and hatred. There is an old saying that goes as follows: “Never mud wrestle with a pig. You both get dirty, and the pig likes it.” Stay clean, reduce the hatred, and maybe save the Second Amendment in the process.

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You Are Not Living In A Free Country If…

January 3, 2013 by 8 Comments

Dont Tread on Me1 You Are Not Living In A Free Country If...

As we start the new year, one would hope that we could look forward to better times and better lives. However, in the U.S. Republic, that might be a tall order, given the obscene growth and reach of the Federal government in this country and the politicians that operate it.

Read the following and then decide if you think you are still living in a free country:

- You are not living in a free country if your retirement medical care, via Medicare, is dependent on the actions and whims of Federal government politicians.

- You are not living in a free country if a large percentage of your retirement cash flow, via Social Security, is dependent on the actions and whims of Federal government politicians.

- You are not living in a free country if your pre-retirement medical care, via the ramifications of Obama Care, is dependent on the actions and whims of Federal government politicians.

- You are not living in a free country if your ability to go to college, via student loans, is dependent on the actions and whims of Federal government politicians.

- You are not living in a free country if your ability to get a home mortgage, via Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, is dependent on the actions and whims of Federal government politicians.

- You are not living in a free country if almost a third of your annual earnings go to taxes to support all levels of wasteful, inefficient, and criminally-infested government programs and entities.

- You are not living in a free country if the Federal government’s executive branch can commit U.S. military resources and taxpayer wealth to foreign military actions (e.g. Libya, Yemen, Syria) without Congressional or Constitutional approval.

- You are not living in a free country if the Federal government’s executive branch can independently and arbitrarily designate any American for assassination and then actually commit that assassination without due process of law (e.g. Anwar al-Awlaki).

- You are not living in free country when the Federal government can hold a U.S. citizen in prison for an indefinite period of time without due process of law if that government arbitrarily defines that citizen as a potential threat to national security (National Defense Authorization Act – NDAA)

- You are not living in a free country when a President can seize control of all forms of communications when he alone decides it is in the national interest (Executive Order – Assignment of National Security and Emergency Preparedness Communications Functions)

- You are not living in a free country when the Federal government can collect and store every electronic communication any citizen makes (e.g. email, text messages) in massive data storage centers (e.g. Bluffdale, Utah) without due process, a warrant, or privacy protection.

- You are not living in a free country when the Federal government’s executive branch thinks it can affix a GPS tracking device to any citizen’s car without a warrant (see U.S. Vs. Jones decision).

- You are not living in a free country when the executive branch thinks it has the power to arbitrarily ignore judicial rulings and existing laws (e.g. Gulf Of Mexico drilling moratorium and DOMA).

- You are not living in a free country when government agents, via the TSA, are allowed to grope and grab U.S. citizens’ body parts in the name of national security.

- You are not living in a free country if government and political class spending has rung up trillions of dollars of national debt that will eventually have to be paid by you, your children, and your grandchildren.

- You are not living in a free country if you privacy rights can be almost arbitrarily violated by the Patriot Act.

- You are not living in a free country when crony capitalism wastes billions of taxpayer dollars every year without any redeeming societal benefits (e.g. Solyndra, Fisker, Tesla).

- You are not living in a free country if your political leaders hold you and your opinions in contempt:

  • House Speaker Nancy Pelosi – those Americans that opposed Obama’s health care reform effort are un-American.
  • Congressman Charles Rangel – those Americans that opposed Obama’s health care reform effort are like the racists that opposed the civil rights movements in the 1960s.
  • Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid – American tourists that come to D.C. in the summer physically smell.
  • Congressman Alan Grayson – those Americans with a different opinion from his are knuckle dragging Neanderthals.
  • House Speaker Nancy Pelosi – those Americans against the building of a mosque close to Ground Zero in New York City needed to be investigated.
  • Congresswoman Shelia Jackson Lee – Tea Party members used to wear Ku Klux Klan white sheets.
  • Congresswoman Maxine Walters – Tea Party advocates “can go to hell.”
  • Czar Van Jones – those opposed to the President’s policies are a_ _ h_ _ _ s.

- You are not living in a free country if the executive branch can circumvent Constitutionally mandated government appointment reviews via a “czar” politburo.

- You are not living in a free country when politicians can use billions of taxpayer dollars, via earmarks, to finance their perpetual re-election campaigns.

- You are not living in a free country where politicians decide what private companies live (e.g. Citigroup) and what private companies die (e.g. Lehman Brothers.)

- You are not living in a free country when those in office can maximize their re-election chances with favorable gerrymandering of Congressional districts.

- You are not living in a free country if your selection of a Presidential candidate for the Democratic Party via the primary and caucus system can be overturned by a small cadre of insiders in the upper echelon of the party called “super delegates.”

- You are not living in a free country when sitting politicians can automatically grant themselves annual pay increases regardless of how poorly they led the nation during the past year.

- You are not living in a free country when sitting politicians cannot be removed from Congressional committee posts regardless of how poorly they performed their jobs on those committees (e.g. Intelligence committee members who did not foresee the 9-11 attacks, Finance committee members who did not foresee the coming of the “Great Recession”, Interior Department committee members that did not properly oversee the BP oil rig inspection process, etc.)

- You are not living in a free country when any level of government can seize your property for a supposedly fair price and turn it over to developers for a private sector development project.

- You are not living in a free country when perceived and actual voter fraud makes you question whether your vote actually counted and whether the political winners actually won the vote.

So let’s review. Politicians control our pocketbooks, our health care, our retirement funding, and who we vote for; invade our privacy; read our electronic communications; violate our property rights; and control our ability to get a mortgage or student loan while calling us names if we dare to disagree with them. Hardly sounds like the traditional definition of a Republic.

The beauty of this system that the political class has worked out for themselves is that they are able to keep us fighting among ourselves. This diverts our attention to the fact that our freedom and liberty have slowly been stripped away. We have reached a point in this country where a great portion of our lives is no longer controlled by our brains, our energy, and our initiative, but by about 600 people sitting in Congress and the executive branch of the Federal government.

We vehemently and fruitlessly fight among ourselves over relatively trivial issues while the political class strips us of our wealth and our liberty without ever solving a major issue:

  • We are no closer to a rational drug policy in this country since Nixon declared war On drugs in the 1960s, with this void allowing a narco-state to develop just south of our border with Mexico.
  • We are no closer to a rational and coherent national energy policy, despite the oil crises from the 1970s.
  • We are no closer to having world class public schools, despite the warning of failing public schools from early in the Reagan administration and the expenditure of trillions of dollars since then.
  • We are no closer to having a coherent and effective immigration plan and strategy.
  • We are no closer to having an effective strategy for containing escalating health care costs.
  • We are no closer to having a sane, balanced budget process for the Federal government with the political class spending trillions of dollars more than they bring in in revenue.

We no longer live in a free country, and we have allowed the politicians to do it to us. That is why it is so important to begin the cleansing process and the restoration of freedom with the implementation of the following steps:

  1. Step 1 – reduce Federal spending by 10% a year for five years in order to tame our out-of-control political class spending.
  2. Step 2 – implement specific and fair processes to eliminate the current gerrymandering process for Congressional districts.
  3. Step 3 – eliminate the “Super Delegate” process.
  4. Step 4 – strengthen eminent domain laws to prevent the arbitrary confiscation of private property.
  5. Steps 5 – Make the following changes to the Patriot Act to protect the privacy of citizens: review every section of the Act to see if each part is still really needed for national security, make it illegal to intercept any form of communications of a citizen without a judge-approved warrant, notify any citizen if they have been investigated and cleared by any government agency investigation, and finally appoint the members to the oversight committee of the Act, a committee that has never been staffed.
  6. Step 6 – repeal Obama Care, an atrocity that imposes thousands of rules and dozens of taxes on the nation without solving the root causes of our escalating health care costs.
  7. Step 7 – implement a citizen approval process that would remove politicians from Congressional committees for gross dereliction of duty.
  8. Step 8 – eliminate the Congressional process that automatically grants an annual pay increase to Congressional members, replacing it with a citizen satisfaction-based pay system.
  9. Step 9 – implement term limits for all Federal politicians in order to get some fresh thinking and problem solvers involved with the myriad issues facing America, “one and done.”
  10. Step 10 – Disband the czar process and restore the Constitutionally mandated checks and balances of our government processes.

Time is running out to fix what the political class has destroyed in this country from a liberty-based, privacy-based, freedom-based, economic, and Constitutional perspective. We have allowed this situation to arise, and we are the ones who need to fix it. Otherwise, some morning, we will wake up and realize that fifty years ago, Nikita Khrushchev got it right when he said:

You Americans are so gullible. No, you won’t accept communism outright; but we’ll keep feeding you small doses of Socialism until you will finally wake up and find that you already have communism. We won’t have to fight you; we will so weaken your economy until you fall like overripe fruit into our hands.

Photo Credit: marsmet 541 (Creative Commons)

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