We all know that our government is not the most efficient entity on the planet. In fact, it sets the classic example on how to waste money without even trying.
Recently, there was an article that I read written by Emily Goff who is a researcher at The Heritage Foundation. She entitled her article, “10 ways the federal government has wasted your money”. Her ten are good examples but I added 2 more that will take the cake.
We know that our politicians negotiate over how much to spend on government operations or the government’s borrowing limit. We always hear that there is absolutely no room to cut federal spending.
Let’s see – millions were spent on the Bridge to Nowhere. Then, competing with the “Theater of the Absurd”, the federal government spent millions of dollars promoting the eating of caviar. Who in their right mind would even consider eating Russian fish eggs? Ugh!
Despite the government wasting our tax dollars like that, it doesn’t even come close to the following:
>> In 2010, the IRS (Incredible Retard Service) spent $4.1 million on a conference for over 2,600 employees who received payoffs worth $64,000 in free meals, cocktails, and hotel suite upgrades what to speak of the $50,000 spent on line-dancing.
>> Our beloved government spends $800,000 a year just to keep almost 14,000 empty bank accounts open. That breaks down to roughly $65 per year, per account.
>> The National Science Foundation spent $500,000 on developing a video game that simulates a high school prom. I guess that will make it so that kids that do not attend a prom can just make believe in the comfort of their homes.
>>While a good wine or a painting done by a renowned and past away artist will increase in value over time, unused TSA equipment does not. The TSA left 5,700 pieces of security equipment, such as baggage screening machines, sitting idle in a warehouse for months, and in some cases, years to the tune of $3.5 million a year to lease and manage the facility.
>>Even though the TSA spends $1.8 million a year to lease 440,000 square feet of storage space in three warehouses in Texas, it left 72,074 square feet unused. That’s more square footage than a football field.
>>Oh yeah, the amount spent to encourage caviar consumption in 2012 was $300,000. I wonder what it cost to clean up the diarrhea?
>>Amtrak, the federally subsidized passenger rail service, only earned 44 cents on the dollar for the food and beverages it offers on long-distance routes. Those routes are also money losers, which poses an interesting question: would McDonald’s or Starbucks sustain such losses and stay in business?
>>Poor oversight resulted in 1,000 prisoners in Pennsylvania collecting weekly unemployment benefits over a four-month period to the tune of $7 million.
>>The Department of Health and Human Services awarded $340 million in loans to Freelancer’s Insurance Co. to establish health care co-ops. Regulators ranked the company dead last among New York’s insurance companies.
>>The Office of Navel Research spent $450,00 on a study that concluded that unintelligent robots cannot keep a baby’s attention. Why couldn’t they put that money toward sustaining current defense capabilities and modernizing the military?
Compared to the country’s $16.7 trillion debt, these waste examples may seem like petty cash. But cutting waste would build momentum for reforming Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, which are programs that make up the lion’s share of the federal budget and drive the nation’s spending.
Take a look at the Washington politicians. They do not contribute to social security, they receive free medical care after retirement, their retirement pay is at least $250,000 a year, and the live happily ever after. Imagine the savings to us and the country if they, like the rest of us, collected social security when they were done with politics, collected what they contributed to a pension plan, and had to enroll with Medicare and Medicaid?
In a government of, for, and by the people, when politicians are elected to serve, it is still a job. Why can’t it be treated as such?
In the months ahead, these “hookers’ will have multiple opportunities to debate over government spending as to whether increase or decrease government spending and have the opportunity to scale back government spending on both small and big-ticket items.
Inaction would only mean that more debt would be piled onto the shoulders of our kids and grandkids.
Isn’t it about time for them to get their s**t together, pass on the lip service, and give up on the same ol’ tired excuses?
I can’t resist adding this classic: In Hawaii we thought we got rid of shithole of a Governor, Neil Abercrombie, who served for years as one of our Representatives (ha ha ha) in Washington. He did nothing in Washington and less in Hawaii and was booted out after serving one term. He was the first guy in Hawaii’s history to get the bounce after one term.
Enter David Ige (pronounced e gay), the mild-mannered reporter from the Daily Planet.
He was a Hawaii State Representative for eons. Soft spoken, unassuming, and as close to Jimmy Dolittle as you can get. It turns out that three of the people Jimmy picked to head major state agencies were registered lobbyists for companies, organizations or clients whose interests likely will intersect with the departments they were nominated to oversee.
Last but not least is Hawaii’s rail system. The choices were Maglev at $65 million a mile or Steel-On-Steel at $500 million a mile. Guess what the picked? Yup, the $500 mill one. Gee, how did that happen?
Honolulu has a Councilman affectionately known as “Pinocchio” Anderson. He achieved that name by the following: In a hearing, a year before Hawaii signed the Federal agreement for funding of the project, “Pinocchio” said that the Feds would take their money back if we changed their venue. Yes, but that would only happen after we signed the agreement. Why didn’t he say that? Why didn’t he inform the people of that so they could vote on a venue change? Easy – In God we trust. All others pay cash!
I’m sure he would love to hear from everyone – [email protected]
Sometimes payback can be a real bitch!
Aloha!
Sources:
www.heritage.org
www.dailysignal.com
www.thefiscaltimes.com
Just to put things in perspective, after I graduated from Weequahic High School and before going to Seton Hall University, I had a part-time job working for a butcher. I was the delivery guy and occasionally had to go to the slaughterhouse to pick up products for the store. Needless to say, I had no consciousness nor awareness, as change never came then despite the horrors I witnessed on an almost daily basis.
After graduating with a degree in accounting from Seton Hall, I eventually got married and moved to a town called Livingston. Livingston was basically a yuppie community where everyone was judged by the neighborhood they lived in and their income. To say it was a "plastic" community would be an understatement.
Livingston and the shallowness finally got to me. I told my wife I was fed up and wanted to move. She made it clear she had to be near her friends and New York City. I finally got my act together and split for Colorado.
I was living with a lady in Aspen at the end of 1974, when one day she said, " let's become vegetarians". I have no idea what possessed me to say it, but I said, "okay"! At that point I went to the freezer and took out about $100 worth of frozen, dead body parts and gave them to a welfare mother who lived behind us. Well, everything was great for about a week or so, and then the chick split with another guy.
So here I was, a vegetarian for a couple weeks, not really knowing what to do, how to cook, or basically how to prepare anything. For about a month, I was getting by on carrot sticks, celery sticks, and yogurt. Fortunately, when I went vegan in 1990, it was a simple and natural progression. Anyway, as I walked around Aspen town, I noticed a little vegetarian restaurant called, "The Little Kitchen".
Let me back up just a little bit. It was April of 1975, the snow was melting and the runoff of Ajax Mountain filled the streets full of knee-deep mud. Now, Aspen was great to ski in, but was a bummer to walk in when the snow was melting.
I was ready to call it quits and I needed a warmer place. I'll elaborate on that in a minute.
But right now, back to "The Little Kitchen". Knowing that I was going to leave Aspen and basically a new vegetarian, I needed help. So, I cruised into the restaurant and told them my plight and asked them if they would teach me how to cook. I told them in return I would wash dishes and empty their trash. They then asked me what I did for a living and I told them I was an accountant.
The owner said to me, "Let's make a deal. You do our tax return and we'll feed you as well". So for the next couple of weeks I was doing their tax return, washing their dishes, emptying the trash, and learning as much as I could.
But, like I said, the mud was getting to me. So I picked up a travel book written by a guy named Foder. The name of the book was, "Hawaii". Looking through the book I noticed that in Lahaina, on Maui, there was a little vegetarian restaurant called," Mr. Natural's". I decided right then and there that I would go to Lahaina and work at "Mr. Natural's." To make a long story short, that's exactly what happened.
So, I'm working at "Mr. Natural's" and learning everything I can about my new dietary lifestyle - it was great. Every afternoon we would close for lunch at about 1 PM and go to the Sheraton Hotel in Ka'anapali and play volleyball, while somebody stayed behind to prepare dinner.
Since I was the new guy, and didn't really know how to cook, I never thought that I would be asked to stay behind to cook dinner. Well, one afternoon, that's exactly what happened; it was my turn. That posed a problem for me because I was at the point where I finally knew how to boil water.
I was desperate, clueless and basically up the creek without a paddle. Fortunately, there was a friend of mine sitting in the gazebo at the restaurant and I asked him if he knew how to cook. He said the only thing he knew how to cook was enchiladas. He said that his enchiladas were bean-less and dairy-less. I told him that I had no idea what an enchilada was or what he was talking about, but I needed him to show me because it was my turn to do the evening meal.
Well, the guys came back from playing volleyball and I'm asked what was for dinner. I told them enchiladas; the owner wasn't thrilled. I told him that mine were bean-less and dairy-less. When he tried the enchilada he said it was incredible. Being the humble guy that I was, I smiled and said, "You expected anything less"? It apparently was so good that it was the only item on the menu that we served twice a week. In fact, after about a week, we were selling five dozen every night we had them on the menu and people would walk around Lahaina broadcasting, 'enchilada's at "Natural's" tonight'. I never had to cook anything else.
A year later the restaurant closed, and somehow I gravitated to a little health food store in Wailuku. I never told anyone I was an accountant and basically relegated myself to being the truck driver. The guys who were running the health food store had friends in similar businesses and farms on many of the islands. I told them that if they could organize and form one company they could probably lock in the State. That's when they found out I was an accountant and "Down to Earth" was born. "Down to Earth" became the largest natural food store chain in the islands, and I was their Chief Financial Officer and co-manager of their biggest store for 13 years.
In 1981, I started to do a weekly radio show to try and expose people to a vegetarian diet and get them away from killing innocent creatures. I still do that show today. I pay for my own airtime and have no sponsors to not compromise my honesty. One bit of a hassle was the fact that I was forced to get a Masters Degree in Nutrition to shut up all the MD's that would call in asking for my credentials.
My doing this radio show enabled me, through endless research, to see the corruption that existed within the big food industries, the big pharmaceutical companies, the biotech industries and the government agencies. This information, unconscionable as it is, enabled me to realize how broken our health system is. This will be covered more in depth in the Introduction and throughout the book and when you finish the book you will see this clearly and it will hopefully inspire you to make changes.
I left Down to Earth in 1989, got nationally certified as a sports injury massage therapist and started traveling the world with a bunch of guys that were making a martial arts movie. After doing that for about four years I finally made it back to Honolulu and got a job as a massage therapist at the Honolulu Club, one of Hawaii's premier fitness clubs. It was there I met the love of my life who I have been with since 1998. She made me an offer I couldn't refuse. She said," If you want to be with me you've got to stop working on naked women". So, I went back into accounting and was the Chief Financial Officer of a large construction company for many years.
Going back to my Newark days when I was an infant, I had no idea what a "chicken" or "egg" or "fish" or "pig" or "cow" was. My dietary blueprint was thrust upon me by my parents as theirs was thrust upon them by their parents. It was by the grace of God that I was able to put things in their proper perspective and improve my health and elevate my consciousness.
The road that I started walking down in 1975 has finally led me to the point of writing my book, “A Sane Diet For An Insane World”. Hopefully, the information contained herein will be enlightening, motivating, and inspiring to encourage you to make different choices. Doing what we do out of conditioning is not always the best course to follow. I am hoping that by the grace of the many friends and personalities I have encountered along my path, you will have a better perspective of what road is the best road for you to travel on, not only for your health but your consciousness as well.
Last but not least: after being vaccinated as a kid I developed asthma, which plagued me all of my life. In 2007 I got exposed to the organic sulfur crystals, which got rid of my asthma in 3 days and has not come back in over 10 years. That, being the tip of the iceberg, has helped people reverse stage 4 cancers, autism, joint pain, blood pressure problems, migraine headaches, erectile dysfunction, gingivitis, and more. Also, because of the detoxification effects by the release of oxygen that permeates and heals all the cells in the body, it removes parasites, radiation, fluoride, free radicals, and all the other crap that is thrust upon us in the environment by Big Business.
For more, please view www.healthtalkhawaii.com and www.asanediet.com.
Namaste!
