1) The Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) is responsible for overseeing the integrity of the accounting processes and accuracy of public companies’ financials. They were obviously asleep at the wheel when many of Wall Street’s largest financial firms, rapidly and without warning, either went bankrupt or dove into deep financial stress at the onset of the greatest financial collapse in this country since the Great Depression. How did this economic and financial fiasco occur with almost no advance warning by the SEC? A possible answer was published in an April 23, 2010 Associated Press article which reported on the findings of an SEC Inspector General analysis. The analysis found that more than two and half dozen SEC employees were found to have used their government issued computers to search the Internet for pornography during the time they should have been hard at work protecting the interests of Americans who invest in public companies. As examples of their findings, one SEC attorney spent up to eight hours a day downloading pornography, burning his findings to CDs and DVD discs once his hard drive filled up with the pornographic material. An SEC accountant was blocked over 16,000 times in one month (or about 800 times a day, 10 times an hour) from visiting pornographic websites yet he was able to eventually collect a collection of pornographic material on his government computer by using a method to bypass the SEC filters. Seventeen of the pornography seekers at the SEC were considered “senior level” employees, earning salaries up to $222,000 a year. These government employees were obviously too busy to help protect the interests of the American investors, people who lost untold billions of dollars as a result of the financial crisis that the SEC staff never saw coming.

2) In January of this year, the Department of Health and Human Services issued a report that concluded the $150 billion that the Federal government had spent on the Head Start program since 1965 has no long lasting benefits to the children that had been enrolled in the program. Another analysis, this one conducted by the Heritage Foundation found similar results: “Head Start has little to no effect on cognitive, socio-emotional, health, and parenting outcomes of children participating in the program.” Thus, rather than delivering the benefits that Head Start is supposed to deliver, we are left with an annual multi billion set of early education government programs that are little more than a government subsidized baby sitting service.

3) In the April 26, 2010 issue of Newweek magazine, an article by Dan Stockman exposed the fact that the Environment Protection Agency (EPA) is not doing a lot of protecting, at least relative to the Clean Air Act. According to research done by Mr. Stockman, his analysis of the EPA’s public database of enforcement records showed that on a national basis, more than 750 companies have been in continuous violation of clean air laws since 2007. Included in these 750 companies were over two hundred companies defined as high priority because of the severity of their offenses. What good is having a law and identifying offenders if there are no consequences or changes in behavior? Not very helpful.

4) In the April 9, 2010 issue of The Week magazine, there was a short article about how shoddy the work at the Energy Department is relative to classifying products as deserving of a high energy saving appliance rating within the EnergyStar program. A company who gets an EnergyStar rating can market the energy efficiency of their product, as approved by the government, and theoretically sell more products and/or sell them at a higher price. Consumers look for the EnergyStar designation with the assumption being that these are good deals from a cost of energy perspective. One problem though. The article reported on a sting operation by Federal regulators that sent bogus designs to the people running the EnergyStar testing program. These bogus products included a gasoline powered alarm clock (certainly not a very efficient way to tell time) and a feather duster attached to a space heater that had been called an “air filter” by the regulators. Unfortunately, both of these bogus products and most of the others were awarded the EnergyStar status by the Energy Department. Obviously, the Energy Department is not here to help you distinguish energy efficient products from those that are not if these somewhat outrageous fake products can pass the current energy efficiency standards in the inspection process.

5) Most people probably know that Toyota has been having a spate of safety problems with it’s cars over the past few months, with accusations that these safety problems have resulted in traffic fatalities. What most people do not know, as reported in the March 1, 2010 issue of Businessweek, the government had opened, and shortly thereafter closed, eight inquiries into the problem with Toyota products, starting back in 2003. In all eight cases they found no significant problems and closed all probes with no action taken. It was not until the past year or so that the government finally recognized that maybe there is a problem and Toyota was finally forced to take remedial action on its vehicles. The article points out the fact that the two government interface executives at Toyota used to work for the very government agency responsible for automobile safety, implying that the government might have gone easy on their former co-workers. Given that upwards of a hundred Americans may have died as a result of faulty Toyota products, it does not look like the government is helping anyone here either.

6) Several years ago the government belatedly pulled a series of imported toy products from China off of the shelf because the products were made using lead based materials that could seriously hurt a child if the the child put a toy in their mouths and the lead entered their systems. While the good news is the government safety organization finally got the products off of the shelves, it would have been much better if they had never entered the country in the first place, Even worse, according to a May 20, 2010 Associated Press article, the overseas producers simply replaced their lead laced products with cadmium laced products which are just as dangerous. One would have thought the government would have been a little more alert to these types of products since they had just gone through the lead based experience. Alas, they were no better the second time around as the cadmium products came ashore.

7) A May 17, 2010 Associated Press article reported on the many oversights and incompetence of Federal employees of the Minerals Management Service (MMS) Federal agency, the agency responsible for overseeing the safety of oil rigs in the Gulf Of Mexico. According to the article and an internal report, not as many inspections were done as required, many MMS employees received hunting and fishing vacations along with other gifts from the same companies they were supposed to keep in line from a safety perspective, some MMS employees were inspecting oil rigs of companies at the same time they were in negotiations for employment by those companies, and some MMS employees admitted being addicted to illegal drugs while being responsible for safety inspections and compliance. These Federal employees were obviously little help in preventing the devastating Gulf oil spill.

The Department Of Homeland Security has certainly not been helpful. This past December, a would be terrorist traveled from Somalia to the skies over Detroit and would have blown up the airliner he was in if his underwear bomb had not malfunctioned. In the spring, another would be terrorist almost blew up a car bomb on the streets of Time Square which failed to explode only because of a defective bomb. Unknown numbers of illegal aliens and drugs, and who knows what else, continue to flood over our southern border with Mexico. Are we feeling secure yet?

9) In a related non-helpful effort, an article in the June 11, 2010 issue of The Week magazine recalled a resolution from the House of Representatives in 1986. At that time, the House demanded that the Pentagon seal our borders within 45 days against illegal drugs. Looks like they missed that deadline.

10) The No Children Left Behind legislation from the Bush administration has proven to be unsuccessful in raising the lower than expected learning levels of American children relative to the education of children in many other countries. Thus, nothing has changed since the Reagan administration issued its scathing report on American public schools in 1982, “A Nation At Risk.” Thus, the American political class and its government processes have been unhelpful for at least twenty eight years in raising education standards and output of the country.

11) On the foreign affairs front, government and the political class have not been very helpful either. Two renegade countries, North Korea and Iran, with economies and populations that are just a small fraction the size of the United States, will both soon have the ability and intention of creating and stockpiling nuclear weapons. Unstable leadership in these countries is not a long term formula for safety and security.

12) In the face of all of these failures, what have the politicians been working on during the past year that might eventually help all of us live a better life? A California Congresswoman and her staff worked on legislation that would establish Federal regulations for the sound volume of television commercials, another Congressman was working on legislation that would prevent male dysfunction commercials from airing on television, another Congressman and his staff worked on legislation to give pet owners a tax deduction in these hard economic times, and many Washington politicians were involved in the debate on how to get a national college football playoff system in place. How many of these items would fall in the top 20 issues facing most Americans today? Probably not many. Politicians spend time on these small, insignificant issues while the big issues of public education, energy policy, leaky borders, high health care costs, skyrocketing national debt levels, and high unemployment continue to grow unabated.

13) Finally, the biggest and most widespread non-help in the past sixty years was obviously related to the financial crash and economic downturn of the past few years. Numerous government agencies were absolutely no help in foreseeing and managing the housing and banking crisis that caused the so-called “Great Recession.” These Federal government entities include Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, SEC, Treasury Department, Federal Reserve, House of Representatives housing and banking committees, Senate housing and banking committees, the FDIC, the FHA, the Bush administration, the Obama administration, and any number of other unhelpful government organizations. If these agencies and politicians could not see this great, historic economic crisis coming until it was way too late to do anything, what makes us think they have any chance in successfully managing the smaller, more subtle aspects of the economy?

Did we leave anyone out? We need to get over the myth that government is somehow an efficient and effective ally in our lives. The above examples should be proof of that. Many Americans still think that once a law is passed or a program established that the battle is over and everything will be great: government workers and agencies taking care of things in a super efficient manner at a reasonable cost. Given the above list of incompetencies and the record, sky high national debt levels we have, we are getting the worst of all possible combinations – high cost, low quality.

We need to start a long term, systematic downsizing of government in order to reduce our national debt and get government smaller and more focused on just the important, major issues of our times, which does not include the sound volume of television commercials. The logic is if the political class and government agencies have less to worry about, they may actually get good at a few things rather than being incompetent in a wide range of things. It makes no sense to continue to support a government bureaucracy when all we get is the low performance or non-performance described above. Drastically downsize and focus, that is what must be done to get us out of the high cost/low quality zone into the low cost/high quality zone. Then, and only then, might the myth “I’m from the government and I am here to help you” actually become a reality again.

Our new book, “Love My Country, Loathe My Government – Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom and Destroying The American Political Class” is now available at http://www.loathemygovernment.com and online at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Visit our blog at http://www.loathemygovernment.blogspot.com for our nealry daily dialog on American freedom.

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I actually stopped writing about politics in Nigeria for an internet blog and publications recently, when I discovered that the people in question refuse to turn a new leaf. But the recent happenings in the country for over two months now have woken my pen in this regard. The question is what is the constitution? Why do we have it? Is it that we don’t have competent hands to handle it anymore? Or we are simply playing politics? The worst of the scenario is that the national assembly is like a paper tiger. I may not really place the blame on them because they are more or less extractions of the “business as usual mentalities” that would preferred to trade the sanctity of our constitution for paltry crap! Most of them I believe are only opportunist, they do not really understand the essence of the mandate they enjoy even those that can still be vouched for have long sacrificed their integrity on the altar of greed. There is really no difference between these so called lawmakers and drunken brats.

The situation of Nigeria has complicated into a hydra headed issue in which one may not know how to approach it. For over two months now, the nation that boasts of over 150 million people has been without a substantial head. This was due to the fact that the ailing president went under the knife with no regards for constitution and the fate of over 150 million people. This illegal act on behalf of the president has since been condemned by all and sundry. The question that is making wave is why did it take so long for the needed change to be effected as regards a substantial president? Some group of people condemned the resolution of the national assembly that recently empowered the vice president as the acting president that it was illegal and unconstitutional in the sense that two wrongs cannot make a right that the infringement on the constitution still exists.

I still do not understand why our leaders cannot get things right in the proper manner it should be done. Imagine the attorney general of the federation, the number one law person that is supposed to protect the integrity of the constitution even desecrating it in his own show of shame! Thanks to the new government for dealing with that in a timely fashion. It is high time we made a change in our leadership, even if it is going to be a revolution as it happened in neighboring African countries.

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One idea was to increase the payroll taxes by 2% and over a 75 year period, the deficit problem was expected to be resolved. However, the future deficits are growing so large that this modest tax increase will still leave a large shortfall. Social Security’s impending crisis cannot be resolved with this small tax increase.

Another idea, which is supported by President Obama, is to raise SS taxes on people who earn more than $97,500 per year. Currently, those who earn more than this cap amount of $97,500 do not pay Social Security. The Congressional Research Service says that if all earnings were subject to payroll tax, the Social Security trust fund would remain solvent for the next 75 years. Senator Clinton opposed increasing taxes for people earning more than $97,500 because she stated it hurts the middle class. On the other hand, both Presidential hopefuls were strongly against the privatization of Social Security because it leaves the system at the whim of the market.

Former-President Bush has been in support of a plan that allows Americans to invest a portion of their existing Social Security taxes in a personal account. This is sort of semi-privatization. Polls show that there are large numbers of supporters backing this plan.

Out of all the proposed ideas on how to face the impending crisis deficit, no one plan seems to be favored above all the rest and the deficit continues to grow. Hopefully new ideas keep coming forth in order to solve the deficit problem that Social Security will inevitably face.

So far, the Administration has been using special issue bonds from the trust fund to cover its financial problems. But by 2041, that trust fund will run out. At that time, a 26 % reduction in benefits for retirees has been planned.
So, what does all this add up to? Basically, current retirees are in the clear. Their full promised benefits will be paid to them. The Administration has enough money to cover everyone promised benefits until 2017. This even allows for annual cost of living increases.

However, by 2041 the Administration will be in trouble. The trust fund will have run out and so the situation for younger workers looks dire. Anyone born after 1974 will reach retirement age after the trust fund is totally exhausted. At this time, it is estimated that these younger workers will have paid fully into throughout their careers, but will only get 74% of the benefits that have been promised to them.

There is one solution has little to do with politicians and taxes. It involves starting a personal retirement account. When President Franklin D. Roosevelt originally created the Social Security Administration, it was never intended to be the only source of retirement income for anyone. It was established as a supplemental income system. Therefore, younger workers need to think ahead and began looking for other ways to ensure a safe retirement for themselves.

Shaneela Khan is an expert on Social Security Law and has been working in the Field for the past 15 years. For more information on Social Security Benefits please visit: http://www.socialsecuritylaw.com.

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New Mexico is facing a $600 million shortfall for the current fiscal year. A special session of the state legislature was called to make decisions about the budget. An agreement was hammered out on the last day of the session and forwarded to Governor Richardson for approval.

Governor Richardson delayed signing until the last day, then vetoed some provisions while accepting others. He and his advisors then produced their own program which was published as an executive order, rather than bringing the legislature back to produce acceptable legislation.

The purpose of having an Executive Branch, a Legislative Branch, and a Judicial Branch in our state government is to prevent excessive power being concentrated in one group or person. By issuing his executive order, Bill Richardson has usurped the legislatures authority to make the budget go his own way, thereby in effect negating all the votes of the citizens those legislators represent. They each represent smaller constituencies, and thus their decisions should be more representative of the people’s desires.

Unfortunately, he is not the first politician to use a crisis to set aside legal restraints. George Bush did so several times using the 911 attack as an excuse. The CDC has used numerous health threats to se aside legal protections of businesses and individuals in the guise of resolving a health crisis. The Treasury Department has used the same principle in handing out bailout money without obeying congressional guidelines.

As state shortfalls increase, these types of over stepping authority are likely to become more common. It will be easy for constitutional authority to be usurped, in many cases unintentionally, but also deliberately. If such actions are ignored, we may well find most of our freedoms and protections taken away.

The book, The Tyranny of The Urgent, describes the pressure to take action on seemingly urgent affairs. As a result, people neglect more important issues in an effort to relieve the pressure. Claims of crisis produce a similar sense of urgency, and people become so focused on the crises they ignore other issues. It really doesn’t matter whether the crisis is real, as long as people believe it to be. Con artists find it easier to invent crisis than to find a real one.

Former President Clinton said it would be better to pass even a bad bill than to do nothing in encouraging congress to pass the Healthcare reform bill. He failed to take into account the results of the Creditors Rights bill Congress just passed. Less than a month after passing, many credit card users found their interest tripled or more. Fees on almost all accounts were increased and new fees were imposed. A defective bill made the problem much worse.

The old saying “if you don’t have time to do it right the first time, How will you ever get time to do it again?” is even more important in legislation than in many other areas, because it affects more people. Allowing a sense of urgency to rush into ill-conceived legislation is dangerous.

Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin and many others have used Crises to gain power. To avoid losing our freedoms, we need to periodically step back and observe the other things that are happening, things which most people seem not to see because they have become equally focused. People, including reporters and politicians, find it easy to follow the crowd, but sometimes the crowd is wrong.

An example is the focus on Global warming. The media reported that two years ago farms in Sweden were discovered that had been covered with ice since the early 1700’s. The so called “proofs” of Global warming actually showed that during the 1600’s temperatures were warmer than they had been until the present time. The claims of urgency have distracted people from checking out the facts. If it continues, it will result in serious problems due to misguided decisions.

One principle is to follow the money. If Al Gore will make one hundred million Dollars by convincing people that Global warming is real, he has a vested interest in doing so. His claims need to be supported by other research. The same is true with the H1N1 swine flu crisis. The medical establishment makes $25 per shot. That’s a lot of money if they can get half the population to get shots. It could well cause them to overlook evidence which doesn’t support vaccinations. Does this mean that there is no problem? Obviously not, but it does indicate we need to examine the crises more carefully to determine what the real problem is.

When proposed actions ignore the constitution or peoples rights, they need to be especially closely examined as their effects are so serious, and difficult to undo once in place.

For information on what the Bible teaches about various situations by the author go to http://BeingChristianToday.Blogspot.com.

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If all these countries are calling on the United States to quickly put together and maintain a new world order that will be the merging of many countries into a single governed body over which there will be a single leader to call the shots, maybe the people should be told why and to whom they will have to answer to. People of the countries who are a part of this ‘new world order’ seem to be mostly uneducated as to the transparency of this entire plot by these hosting countries. The seemingly opaque walls around the possible emergence of a new world government that will eliminate the sovereignty of the individual countries and form a single governed body, are high and not being given the exposure needed to keep the average citizen informed.

When government acts secretly the people are left to follow the acts of their governments without question and without say. Is this the loss of democracy or the actions of a rouge state that the people are afraid to question? When people are silenced by the actions of their governments, such as the loss of the American right to speak freely and assemble peacefully by the enactment of the permit; requiring all Americans to ask ‘permission’ by obtaining a purchased permit, that is when the people are intimidated into not saying much under the assumption that there is a large watchdog in place.

While these covert government actions are eroding the rights of their citizens in the individual countries the larger picture is coming into focus. The people are being lured into a huge cage where their opinions and their worth have no value. “A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.” (Edward R Murrow quote). “I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman’s club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave.” (H.L. Mencken quote).

People should start to discuss the current events that are unfolding before their eyes. People are in need of a collective untouched media outlet giving only facts and those reporters points of view. A human point of view is a sharply written and well-researched idea where opposing views could only promote discussion and debate on the true issues of the current global crisis all global citizens are faced with. Talk to your friends even if they don’t want to hear it, demand an opinion.

I, Derek Nelson born 1970, have spent the past eight years studying global economics and global politics. I believe that the current global community needs truth and a media outlet that is not built on politics or owned by large corporations. Truth in news can only create a larger and more advanced society built on the reality of what is, rather than built on what corporations what you to buy.

About the Author

Derek Nelson

He speaks as if moved by a higher purpose, guided by a divine light. His vision far exceeds the vision of most other politicians on the world stage today. He spoke about a world tolerant of other races, other beliefs, about politicians who have the courage to break the mould by inviting their enemies to enter into dialogue. Above all he made it clear that, although wars are inevitable, the route to peace does not always have to be military. He did not start the two wars America is presently involved in, but he is committed to seeing them through. For the future, he envisions more stringent pressures being applied by a global marketplace, where each country depends economically on every other, with effective, honed, fiscal incentives and punishments in place to deter rogue states from misbehaving. Not a single life need be lost.

As always with Obama, there is the moral undercurrent, which tentatively suggests we ought to take responsibility for our own actions before throwing stones at someone else’s glass house. The political cliche is “get your own house in order first” before you can be a model for the rest of the world. Some may interpret this softer, more inward looking approach as indicative of a crisis of confidence for the once supreme superpower, but although this is a break from the jingoism of America’s imperial past, macho posturing these days is not cool, and nowhere near as important as it once was. In some ways the financial crisis has done us all a favour by opening up our minds to new possibilities. What people want now from government is concern not coercion; concern for the environment, concern for the impoverished, concern for each other. Americans have always been good Christians; perhaps it’s time for a little Christian tolerance. Nation states, no less than individuals, have a duty to forgive and repent, in other words to let go of the past and dream of a better future.

Obama gives the impression that he fully understands that, which is what makes him the perfect recipient of this award in the first place. And who knows, once the “enemy” realises that the threat of nuclear obliteration at the hands of “greedy Americans” has at last gone away, the rallying cry from terrorists will go away too. This is foreign policy based on wisdom not aggression, and a beacon for the rest of the world to follow.

Milton Johanides is a retired businessman, church elder, writer and artist. He has been featured on BBC TVs Songs of Praise, owned numerous art galleries and once ran an award winning picture framing business in Scotland. The views expressed in these articles are his own. email: miltonjohanides@yahoo.co.uk

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