Tag Archives: big government

October 18, 2014 · 1:01 pm

Dozens of police agencies report loss of Pentagon-supplied military weapons

Published September 01, 2014

Missoyri2_riots.jpg

FILE: Aug. 18, 2014: Police in suburban St. Louis after the shooting of Michael Brown by a police officer started rancorous protests in Ferguson, Mo. (AP)

Images showing high-powered military rifles in the hands of law enforcement in Ferguson, Mo., after the police shooting of an unarmed black man focused attention on a controversial Pentagon program that supplies that kind of weaponry to local police departments. Now reports reveal how some of those guns have been lost by law enforcement officials who received the weapons.

Take Huntington Beach, Calif., which was given 23 M-16 rifles and has reported one missing.

“Bottom line is the gun is not here and we were suspended from the program, haven’t received anything since 1999,” Huntington Beach Police Department Lt. Mitchell O’Brien told ABC News Friday.

O’Brien told the network the lost weapon could have been melted down, but that’s uncertain.

“Bottom line is the gun is not here and we were suspended from the program.”- Huntington Beach Police Department Lt. Mitchell O’Brien

“Probably, [it was] one of those things where we used it for parts and the spare parts probably got discarded at some point — but again, it’s inconclusive,” he said. “But we are pretty confident nobody got into our armory and took it.

The program O’Brien was referencing is the Pentagon’s 1033 program, which gives away surplus military weapons to local police departments. In a report Friday the Cox Washington Bureau said Huntington Beach is one of 145 local law enforcement agencies across the country that has been suspended from the program.  Three states — Alabama, North Carolina and Minnesota — also have been suspended.

Cox named some of the banned agencies.

The Daytona Beach Police Department was suspended after reporting a lost M-16 in January.

“We still have not been able to find it,” Daytona Beach Police spokesman Jimmie Flynt told Cox.

The Napa County Sheriff’s Office was banned after someone stole a rifle from an employee’s personal vehicle.

“If I knew where it was, I’d go get it,” Undersheriff Jean Donaldson told Cox. “It’s equipment we can obtain at no cost to our budget, so the taxpayers don’t get taxed twice.”

KARK-TV in Arkansas said three law enforcement agencies in the state have been suspended for losing weapons or having weapons stolen: the Lawrence County Sheriff’s Office, the Woodruff County Sheriff’s Office and the Judsonia Police Department.

James Ray, who oversees the 1033 program in Arkansas, told the station officials are worried the missing weapons could end up in the wrong hands.

“I have no reason to believe that, but if we don’t know where they are then hopefully we can get them back,” he said. “I mean they’ve been reported stolen by the law enforcement agencies….”

“It just appears that the Pentagon’s not minding the store, that once the inventory is gone, it’s out of sight, out of mind—and we can’t afford to have weapons of this type walking around the streets,” Steve Ellis, vice president of Tax Payers for Common Sense, told ABC.

A Pentagon spokesman told the station that 8,000 law enforcement agencies participate in the 1033 program and that 98 percent remain in good standing.

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May 12, 2014 · 11:16 am

IRS Spends Nearly $100 Million on Office Furniture

Just remember, you don’t pay enough in taxes, you are greedy to want to keep your own earnings, and you can’t deduct legitimate home office use without getting audited… But if you are the government, you can buy chairs for $1,209 each, then go to Congress and tell them you don’t have any money to “support the taxpayer needs.”  Big government is the problem, not political parties.

Obama’s IRS Spends Nearly $100 Million on Office Furniture

Spending on furniture outnumbers Bush administration

Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew / AP

BY:
May 12, 2014 9:59 am

The IRS has spent $96.5 million on office furniture under the Obama administration and is now claiming it has insufficient funding to adequately serve taxpayers.

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew testified before the House two weeks ago about the IRS’ need for additional funding for the upcoming fiscal year. The IRS is currently seeking an increase of $1.2 billion—a 7 percent raise over its FY 2014 $11.29 billion budget. It would bring the agency’s FY 2015 budget to $12.48 billion.

A review of contracts by the Washington Free Beacon shows the IRS in the past five fiscal years has spent $96.5 million refurbishing IRS offices across the country. Those contracts include fiscal years 2010 through 2014.

That amount already exceeds what the agency spent during the entire eight years under President George W. Bush, fiscal years 2002 through 2009.

The purchases during the current administration show contracts are for various amounts. They range from several millions to hundreds of thousands of dollars for each agency office.

The first fiscal year budget for which President Obama was responsible was FY 2010 and it was a banner year—when the agency spent the most on new furniture. Records show $44.4 million was spent that year.

The Free Beacon found in a total of 3,777 contracts he IRS has purchased various types of furniture. The contracts include new chairs, showcases, partitions and shelving, and wood furniture.

A sampling from the volume of contracts includes the agency’s Lowell, Mass., office, which spent $5.04 million on showcases, partitions and shelving. The contract was signed in 2012 was completed on April 30, 2013.

The Philadelphia IRS office spent $2.8 million for “furniture systems.”  That contract was signed in 2011 and the work was completed in 2012.

Other IRS offices also had multi-million dollar makeovers.  A contract in 2011 shows the “purchase of systems furniture” in the amount of $2.67 million for the Colorado office. The Washington, D.C., office received $2.6 million in “new system furniture/service” and the work was completed in 2012.

Still another contract shows the Iowa office had a $1.08 million makeover. The contract did not detail the type of furniture purchased.

Michigan, which has six IRS offices, has spent the most on furniture of all the states during this time frame.  Its contracts include $1.57 million in taxpayer funds spent for its Leeward office, and another $1.36 million on its Zeeland office.

While it is unclear what type of furniture was purchased for the IRS office in Jasper, Ind., records show two large purchases were completed just four months apart. One contract for $689,719 was completed in November 2010.  Another contract for $805,515 was completed in March 2011.

Contracts also revealed that hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent solely on chairs for the IRS’ office in Haverhill, Mass. The contract shows $618,881 was spent on “Task Chairs Phase II.” That work was completed on Dec. 31, 2012. Due to the volume of contracts, the Free Beacon could not find the amount spent for Phase I of the task chairs project or if there were any additional phases after this second one.

Another contract shows the agency’s offices in Seattle and Austin received over $1.1 million in new furniture. One contract for $810,200 and another for $327,908 were both completed in February 2013.

The top three prime award contractors were Knoll, Herman Miller, and Haworth International. While some records did not give detailed information on the types of furniture purchased, the high-end retailers’ websites do give taxpayers a sampling of their products and costs.

Herman Miller has chairs that cost $1,209, and storage units that cost $1,749. Knoll’s chairs retail for $659. Another company awarded several contracts claims on its website it partners with “best interior products manufacturers” in the industry.

In his testimony, Lew said, “The IRS continues its commitment to carrying out its responsibilities, providing quality service to taxpayers and preserving the public’s faith in our tax system, but the lack of sufficient funding in recent years has made it difficult to provide the kind of services American taxpayers deserve.”

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April 19, 2014 · 11:11 pm

Why the Big Fight Over the Cattle?

For most people, the whole stand-off over cattle in Nevada does not make much sense.  As a person who grew up in the west, I would like to explain the problem.  When America finished the Civil War, most of the western side of the continent were territories, not states.  Unlike the East, and the Mid-West, the federal government insisted that these Western states turn over most of their land to the federal government in order to become states.

The difference in federal land ownership is amazing, as shown by some following maps.  However, in my state of Arizona, if you add State, City and County property, only about 10% of our state is open to private ownership.  The federal government promised the people living here they could lease the land for various rights, such as grazing, mining, and forestry.  The proceeds were to go for setting up schools and higher education universities.  These promises were not kept on revenues, and increasingly the federal government has restricted usage.

In the case of the recent flare-up, the cattle rancher’s family has lived and grazed on that federal land for over a hundred years.  There was a dispute over money.  So, the federal government went in with military vehicles, SWAT teams and actually stole all his cattle, as well as now putting liens on the land that he owns privately.  The reason?  To protect a desert tortoise.  The same desert tortoise the federal government debated exterminating as a pest less than ten years ago, and for which there is no example of a cow ever stepping on or disturbing one.

The owner of the ranch is misplaced in his arguments, but the outrage that the West is owned by the federal government and we all live subject to their whims is growing.  The embassy in Benghazi, Libya can be attacked, people killed, and have no military response.  The Secretary of State can testify “who cares why it happened?”  But want your cattle back, and you are faced with hundreds of troops in body armor with automatic weapons.  Show up to express your first amendment rights, and they try to huddle you into a square without restroom facilities or water.

The federal government spends more money taking away your freedom, monitoring your life, controlling you and your property and has a larger domestic armed force than our national defense spends on foreign threats.  While the Department of Defense is reducing to 300,000 troops, the lowest since 1940, we have added 120,000 domestic troops armed with the same surplus weaponry for FEMA, game and fish, land bureau, ATF, Park Services, Wildlife services and a host of other agencies that would shock you.

My fear is that the continual federal overreach will spark a violent confrontation similar to Waco where it becomes clear that defying our government will result in armed force.  After such an event, it will be an excuse to further disarm honest citizens and give federal agencies military equipment.  What are the “rules of engagement” for the Land Bureau?  Are we crossing the threshold from freedom to simply doing what the government tells us or face armed force?

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February 18, 2014 · 1:18 pm

Russian ban on lacy lingerie meets cries of panty persecution

Russian ban on lacy lingerie meets cries of panty persecution

Published February 17, 2014

Associated Press
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    Feb. 16, 2014: Women protest against the ban of lace underwear  in Almaty, Kazakhstan. (AP)

MOSCOW –  A trade ban on lacy lingerie has Russian consumers and their neighbors with their knickers in a twist.

The ban will outlaw any underwear containing less than 6 percent cotton from being imported, made, or sold in Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan. And it has struck a chord in societies where La Perla and Victoria’s Secret are panty paradises compared to Soviet-era cotton underwear, which was often about as flattering and shapely as drapery.

On Sunday, 30 women protesters in Kazakhstan were arrested and thrown into police vans while wearing lace underwear on their heads and shouting “Freedom to panties!”

The ban in those three countries was first outlined in 2010 by the Eurasian Economic Commission, which regulates the customs union, and it won’t go into effect until July 1. But a consumer outcry against it already is reaching a fever pitch.

Photographs comparing sexy modern underwear to outdated, Soviet goods began spreading on Facebook and Twitter on Sunday, as women and men alike railed against the prospective changes.

“As a rule, lacy underwear … is literally snatched off the shelves,” said Alisa Sapardiyeva, the manager of a lingerie store in Moscow, DD-Shop, as she flicked through her colorful wares. “If you take that away again, the buyer is going to be the one who suffers the most.”

According to the Russian Textile Businesses Union, more than $4 billion worth of underwear is sold in Russia annually, and 80 percent of the goods sold are foreign made. Analysts have estimated that 90 percent of products would disappear from shelves, if the ban goes into effect this summer as planned.

The Eurasian Economic Commission declined to comment Monday, saying it was preparing to issue a statement about the underwear ban.

While consumer outrage may force customs union officials to compromise, many see the underwear ban as yet another example of the misguided economic policies that have become a trademark of many post-Soviet countries.

Sunday’s panty protest in Kazakhstan followed a larger demonstration the day before against a 19 percent devaluation of the country’s currency, the tenge.

Other people laughed off the panty ban, seeing it as yet another attempt to add regulations and controls to an already byzantine bureaucracy in the three countries.

“I think (the girls)… will still have the opportunity to wear it (synthetic underwear) whether you can buy it in Russia or not,” said 22-year-old Muscovite Trifon Gadzhikasimov, noting that most of his friends travel abroad regularly. “I think this is just another silly law that shows the ineffectiveness of our government.”

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July 22, 2013 · 3:07 pm

The Future – Part One

I plan to write about the future for a few blog posts – I’m not sure how many.  This is not so much to predict the future as to extrapolate it.  With a graduate degree in Economics, it is hard not to employ that training to other things, like the future.  In Economics we use the latin term ceteris paribus, meaning “all other things held equal.”  For instance, if you change the monetary supply but everything else stays the same, what happens to the economy?  The thing is, nothing ever stays the same, but you have to pretend it will to isolate various factors.  It is also true that no economic model can consistently beat the ‘no change’ scenario.  If you simply predict things will be the same next period as they are this period, you will be correct most of the time.  A group of economists, making predictions and taking the mean results can beat this curve, even though individuals cannot.

Future

So, my prediction of the future is based on ceteris paribus and the no change scenario.  I simply continue the line with the same slope as we currently see it.  If you start back in 1800 and track technological innovations, absorption by society, and societal and political changes, we seem to be on a pretty steady line.  If we keep on that developmental line, then predicting the future is not as difficult as you might think.

To take one variable at a time – which never happens of course – I will address only certain aspects of the future, as I see it happening, in each post.  Here goes:

Religion – Religion is on a steady diminishing curve.  Even many religions themselves predict the eventual falling away of mankind from the path of righteousness.  These trends will lead to immense conflicts in the near future.  Those who are willing to die to restore faith will increasingly feel compelled to act to stave off atheism and moral relativism.  To be clear, I do not support such violence and conflict, I simply see it on the horizon.  The Arab Summer is a good example, where theologically based groups strive against secular groups for the control of Egypt, Syria, Libya and Turkey, even as a I write this.  There will likely be persecution of believers and persecution by believers.  Last year, over 100,000 Christians world-wide were killed for their beliefs.  If you look at all religions, millions are currently persecuted and jailed for their beliefs.  At the same time, theological groups like the Taliban torture and kill those who do not follow their version of belief.

believer vs non-believer

Government – Governments are increasing in size, cost and control daily.  Record amounts of the gross national product of countries go the government.  In the United States, in the last ten years alone, the government has taken control of banking, auto manufacturing, healthcare, student loans, welfare and education.  Increasingly the 10th Amendment is ignored and the “patchwork” of state laws are replaced by federal laws.  Internationally, the movement is to control people, resources and the economy through large centralized governments.  The private sector will get smaller and more regulated resulting in slower economic growth, higher unemployment and larger welfare roles.  Historically, these trends will continue until either an economic collapse, a war, or civil uprising.  I do not know how much longer the world can sustain rapidly growing central governments.  In this technological age, the new secret police to enforce government will are cameras, drones, email, electronic searches, phone records, gps and the fact that none of us have “real money.”  Our entire identity, wealth and liberty is kept in the hands of the government through our electronic signatures.

big government

Technology – Nothing we know now will count in twenty years.  People will have either a chip in their head, or a flexible plastic screen that has all phone, email, computing, movies and TV on it.  They can do virtually anything, anywhere.  That means they won’t drive to work, to theaters, to stores, to libraries or anyplace else they can access at home.  3d printing will allow them to produce their own products and even food at home.  They will only leave to be ‘live’ with others.  Any brick and mortar locations will be gone in the next generation.  Why have libraries?  Why have physical schools?  Why build anything if you can deliver the same product or service digitally?

When I was young there were no ATM machines.  You had to go to a bank between 10 am and 3 pm with a passbook.  If you lost your passbook, you were screwed.  We froze water and used ice picks to break it up for drinks.  There were no cell phones, no microwave ovens, no internet.  Computers came out while I was in junior high school and only us nerds could use them.  TV screens were heavy cathode ray tubes and there were three channels – ABC, CBS, and NBC.  Theaters had only one screen and one movie they would show for weeks.  Cars used leaded gasoline for 23 cents per gallon and you got savings stamps with them.  Cigarette ads were all over TV, magazines and billboards.  The number one selling magazine was TV Guide and people got their news at 6 pm or from the newspaper.  We burned leaves in our front yards, went shooting squirrels with shotguns unsupervised as children, and only the rich could fly by airplane.

future-tech-class-1

I bring up this nostalgic look because the world today with the power of a super computer in your smart fun or computer pad happened virtually overnight.  The trend for technology is to speed up, not slow down, in its advance.  Look for 3d printed organs, cloning, spare parts for human, and other ethic laden medical issues.  Half of us die from heart disease, another fourth from cancer.  As those are treated, the incidence of Alzheimers’ and dementia will grow astronomically.  What will the world be like when people live past 100 routinely?  What will the layered generations do with technology absorption issues?

Toddlers today can be seen tapping their coloring books and picture books and looking puzzled.  Why?  They are so used to I-pads and other devices being interactive that the concept of a book is strange to them.  At just two years old they have already grasped what many of us cannot.  Things are different.  They are going to get much MORE different and very quickly.

 

That ends part one.  I hope you enjoyed it and it proved to be thought provoking.  I will do part two soon…

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June 11, 2013 · 3:22 pm

What Have You Got to Hide?

Welcome to our future of world totalitarianism.  As Defined by Merriam-Webster:

to·tal·i·tar·i·an·ism

noun \(ˌ)tō-ˌta-lə-ˈter-ē-ə-ˌni-zəm\

Definition of TOTALITARIANISM
1: centralized control by an autocratic authority
2: the political concept that the citizen should be totally subject to an absolute state authority
What have you got to hide?  Don’t you want to be safe?  Those are the justifications for an ever growing immense government oversight of our every day lives.  I will answer with the same questions – What did the Jews have to hide in Nazi Germany?  What did the intellectuals and religious figures have to hide in China under Mao?  What did people have to hide in Cambodia from Pol Pot?  What did the Chinese have to hide from the Japanese in prior to and during WW2?  The list of atrocities that started with gathering information on citizens in a database or file system under the guise of national safety is endless.  Did any of those people end up safer as a result of their government’s efforts?
total
Freedom means having your own privacy and decision making, irrespective of whether you have “something to hide” or not?  The United States was founded on the priniciples that government derives its power from the people, not the other way around.  As in the Declaration of Independence, the Federalist Papers, or Thomas Paine’s rallying cry in Common Sense, that government must serve the people.  When it stops, we not only have the right, but the obligation to rise up and stop it.
In America every phone call, financial transaction, movement or communication you have is monitored.  It is increasingly difficult to hide your location, your activities or even your image.  Cameras are everywhere.  GPS in your phones, cars, even credit cards or grocery store discount cards often track your location.  The IRS has been caught targeting people who disagree with the government philosophically.  Private information was released by the EPA on farmers and their families to environmental groups that hate them.  People with guns had their locations printed in the paper and online.  The NSA maintains a data base of every electronic imprint you have, including social media and phone calls.  All financial transactions are tracked electronically.  Satellites, even civilian ones like Google Earth, can watch you in addition to traffic cameras.
hate speech
It is not just the United States.  In other countries women are not allowed to appear in public, to get an education, drive a car, or even claim rape.  Children are turned into soldiers for their governments.  100,000 Christians are killed each year for their religious beliefs.  The high hopes of writers like Star Trek’s Gene Roddenberry of a utopian future are nowhere in evidence.  I am a positive person, yet increasingly I see very little way to turn back the hands of time as we march inexorably to totalitarian world government.
I am tired of hearing about the evil private sector or the rich, who have to “give their fair share” to the government.  Government should be limited and serve the people, but instead, we all serve to provide taxes for ever growing bureaucracy.  Government is like Jabba the Hutt, growing immense in fat while we serve as slaves for its amusement.  Government wastes money then blames a lack of funding for poor oversight.  It lies to us, but then tells us not to worry, that there are secret safe guards in place – to trust them.
I never thought in America the President would be able to kill any American without trial or due process with a drone strike.  That any American suspected by the government of being a danger can be arrested and held offshore in secret for life with no review or appeal.  That all our personal information is taken and in some cases used against us or given to our enemies by our own government, even though we are not the subject of a valid investigation.  That reporters and their families and friends would be subjected to wire taps and investigation based on doing their job.  That terrorists would attack on a military base and it would be called “workplace violence.”  That people in our embassy would ask for help and we would stand down for an entire day and let them all die.
total 2
I served proudly in the military but I am ashamed of our country today.  We spend more time and resources spying on our own citizens than we do real threats.   We spend more time and resources helping countries who hate us than we do helping our own citizens.  For the first time in my life, I am publicly ridiculed for my religious beliefs.  The IRS is asking people to justify what they say in their own prayers, asking them why they pray, and exchanging tax approval for curtailing freedom of speech.  They are now running ads on TV for seniors to “keep watch and inform on each other for Medicare fraud.”  Wow.  Never thought I would see the government asking for us to watch each other and inform.  It is starting.
Absolute power brings absolute corruption.  People are imperfect, especially in government spending other people’s money, and they have to be reined in from time to time to limit abuses.  Instead, the “Arab spring”, the resurgent nationalism in Russia, the rampant flood of immigrants to Western Europe and America where they do not share common values, and other moves all are leading to more government control, not less.  We used to see the proletariat rise up against abuse.  Now they rise up to seize power so they can do the abuse themselves.
I hope that this trend reverses.  As a futurist, I can only imagine the dark future mankind faces if governments grow too powerful and control all resources, and labor.

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March 26, 2013 · 3:59 pm

Get the Government out of Marriage and Most Everything Else Too!

Get the Government out of Marriage and Most Everything Else Too!

I was at dinner the other night and someone, knowing my penchant for history and religion, asked me about monogamy and why the Bible teaches only one man and one woman.  They were shocked when I said that many in the Bible had multiple spouses and concubines.  The New Testament, through Paul, encourages you to dedicate yourself to God and not take a mate, but to be married if you would be carried away by lust without a spouse.  Better to have someone to mate with than to try to be celibate if you are unable.  For most of human existence, marriage was ONLY a religious institution.  I have tried in vain so far to see where it crossed over into a governmental regulation.

Getting government involved in anything we don’t have to always results in a loss of liberty.  Marriage should remain a religious only ceremony.  If your religion prohibits same sex marriage, so be it.  If your religion, or lack thereof, allows it, so be it.  That is real freedom.  People like me that are right-wing Christian fundamentalists should avoid having the government get involved.  If they can force a system of beliefs on some, they will do it to us as well.  We need to let people live by their choices, that is why God gave us free will in the first place.  Neither side should fun to Big Government to limit freedoms of others.

If government wants to pay for birth control, they should not force Catholics to pay for it.  I personally disagree with Catholics, but I don’t want them to lose their freedoms.  If same sex couples want to get married by a willing person with the proper paperwork to marry them, so be it.  I don’t want them to lose their freedom either.  I don’t want the government to take away our guns, tell us who we can marry, how we can worship, who we can hire, what we can pay them, what light bulbs we can buy, how much our toilet can flush, when we can use a fireplace, or a million other invasive things they do now.

We are the frogs in the pot, with the temperature slowly rising and we do not jump out before we are cooked.  When will we stop fighting through government to limit others, and wake-up and fight together to limit government power?  We need to return to a government OF the people, BY the people, FOR the people.  I have faith in my fellow men and women that we can live our lives the way we wish without a nanny government deciding everything for us.

I am for freedom, personal liberty, and your ability to make your own choices, whether I agree with them or not.  I want the same in return.  Neither of us will get it if a nameless, faceless bureaucrat decides for us.

 

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February 6, 2012 · 4:23 am

Our Increasing Lack of Freedom

I remember my old showers, the ones where the water pressure was nice and strong, and the water was hot.  Now, we have low flow devices mandated in our faucet heads and temperature turned down on the water heaters.  When I was a kid, I would walk around with my shotgun shooting at birds and squirrels and we would burn our trash in barrels in the backyard.  We would build our own sheds without a permit.  We would chop down trees and reclaim land without permission from the federal government.  All those things are felonies now.

We could flush our toilets once, because it had enough gallons to actually flush correctly.  I could even buy lightbulbs of my own choice.  It is a good thing that the benevolent government of unionized bureaucrats knows how to live my life better than I do.  They protect me from too much salt, from coconut oil on my popcorn, from grandmothers in wheelchairs in airports.  The same smart people you see when you go to the Motor Vehicle Department, the Post Office or any public agency are there to be smarter than you and protect you.  You don’t need freedom, you need protection.  You may do something unsafe or foolish.

There are never enough government programs to truly protect you, so you need to pay more and more in taxes so you can be better protected.  Ignore the fact that the average federal employee makes over $72,000 a year and over a third make six figures.  So what if the private sector pays less and usually around $40,000 on average?  The people in government are smarter than you and protect you, they deserve more.  When unemployment in the country reached over 10% and 500,000 people stopped even looking for work, take solace that the number of federal employees increased and most got substantial raises.

So, let’s not talk about cutting government, even though we would have no deficit if we went just to 2007 spending levels.  The government knows better what to do with our money and our lives.  Freedom is just unsafe because we don’t exercise it responsibly.  The following is a repost from my oldest sister, Penny:

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