Follow The Money (Or Try To)

An IG report released yesterday discloses the fact that during the tenure of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, $6 billion dollars went missing.  As the report states:  “The failure to maintain contract files adequately creates significant financial risk and demonstrates a lack of internal control over the Department’s contract actions.”

 While I understand that Mrs. Clinton was not personally involved in every contract, nonetheless she was in charge of the department during this period, and the blame must ultimately fall on her.  A larger issue, in my mind, is that if we can just lose this kind of money, then government is way too big.  Those who constantly refuse to cut anything in government use the argument that poor people or children will be hurt, yet there is fraud, waste and mismanagement throughout the whole government.  See my post on balancing the budget.  We're spending almost $4 Trillion per year, and I truly believe, based on all the reading I do, that there is at least 15% waste and fat in that figure.  This alone would trim almost $600 billion from our spending.
Going back to the IG report about State, it continues by stating that the situation “creates conditions conducive to fraud, as corrupt individuals may attempt to conceal evidence of illicit behavior by omitting key documents from the contract file.”  So it is being implied here that the missing money might be missing not by mistake, but by design.  Mrs. Clinton has been asked about this and has no idea where the money went. 
Hillary Clinton is the presumptive Democratic nominee for the presidency of the United States.  Her resume now includes a lot of missing money and the fiasco that is Benghazi.  When asked about that episode, during which two diplomats and two true heroes were murdered, her answer was (to paraphrase), "Oh, what the heck does it matter now anyway?"  Mrs. Clinton, at a women's forum on April 3rd, when asked about some of her successes while Secretary of State, could not provide any.  In fact, here is her answer:  “Well, I really see — that was good — that’s why he wins prizes. Look, I really see my role as Secretary, in fact leadership in general in a democracy, as a relay race. When you run the best race you can run, you hand off the baton. Some of what hasn’t been finished may go on to be finished, so when President Obama asked me to be Secretary of State I agreed.”  To that answer I can only say, "Huh?"
The United States is much bigger than just the State Department.  Yet I feel it's clear that not only have billions gone missing, but Mrs. Clinton herself can't name anything of note she's accomplished.  I certainly can't think of anything, although I can name several places that are now imploding that were relatively stable before the Obama presidency.  Egypt and Libya come to mind for starters.  In fact, I can't think of anything Mrs. Clinton did as a senator either.  So this leaves me with two questions.  First, why does anyone think Mrs. Clinton is ready to be president?  Second, where are the missing billions?

Illegal "Americans"?

Yesterday, Vice-President Joe Biden went on record as saying that the people in this country here illegally are already "Americans".  I'm sorry, but words have meanings.  In the United States the word "American" denotes somebody who is an American citizen.  The people here illegally aren't "Americans".  They are lawbreakers.  This same man and his party want to make eleven million people (minimum--it would be much higher when you factor in relatives who will become citizens by dint of family connections) legal, ostensibly so they can work and pay taxes.  However, anyone who's been watching and who has half a brain knows the real reason they want to make these illegal people legal is so their party will have eleven million or more new voters, thereby guaranteeing that their party will stay in power in perpetuity.

First of all, I have no problem with people who want to immigrate to America.  I say to those who dream of freedom and who are doing it legally, "Welcome!  I hope you find the freedom and opportunity you seek."  My ancestors were immigrants.  They came, they worked hard, and eventually made it possible for me to be born here and be a free man (although governmental power is challenging that freedom).  What I do have a problem with, however, is wanting to reward those here legally with the big prize--citizenship.  What could be a worse possible message--to make the first act creating a new citizen one which disregards the very law upon which this country is built?  So I say this.  Anyone here illegally needs to leave or be shown out the "door" and then they can get back in line.  We need to seal our borders.  Thousands are coming here each month--it is an actual invasion and it threatens our national security.  All those soldiers coming back from he Middle East with poor employment prospects could stay in the military and be used to secure the country. 
The last point I'd like to make is this.  The president and vice-president swear oaths to uphold the laws of the United States of America.  To give a speech saying that people who are here illegally are technically Americans is to make light of the very laws those people break.  This vice president needs to apologize to the American people and he and his boss need to get back to work securing the borders, ridding this country of those here illegally (perhaps creating employment opportunities for the millions out of work), and instead of issuing ludicrous rhetorical statements, begin to use the bully pulpit to do what they are supposed to--uphold the laws of this country.

Regulation, regulation, regulaton

I read today that the newest thing the Obama administration is getting ready to regulate is cow flatulence.  I'm not making this up.  There are all kinds of other things going on in the world such as Crimea, possible trade wars (including, most recently, India's violation of several trade agreements by requiring 50% of all their solar panel production be locally sourced), starvation, wars in Sudan, the ascension of those that hate us in Egypt and Libya (see Muslim Brotherhood), and the carnage in Syria, to name a few.  Here, we still have record numbers of people on long term unemployment, close to record numbers of people who are not counted in the unemployment numbers because they've left the work force (work force participation rate), hunger--we have record numbers of people on food stamps, problems in the military (22 soldiers per day are committing suicide) and so forth and so on.  Yet this administration finds it necessary to worry about cows farting?  So at first I said to myself, "Are you kidding me?"
After thinking about if for a while, however, I realized it has nothing to do with cows farting.  It has to do with control.  This administration seeks total control over the entire economy, and total control over people's lives.  The ACA (Obamacare) runs to about 2600 pages.  However, that is nothing compared to the regulations which have been written to enforce and tweak it.  We're now at about 60,000 pages and counting.  The administration recently issued new regulations, through the EPA, regulating coal fired plants' emissions.  Never mind that this will make energy prices skyrocket and put thousands of Americans out of work.  Never mind that China is putting a thousand coal burning plants on line per month.  This administration has written regulations on virtually everything under the sun, and I've become convinced that the purpose is to slowly but surely attain control over, well, everything in America.
America is a grand experiment.  Never before, with the possible exception of ancient Greece, has a democracy such as ours flourished.  I understand the need to have rules, for there are dishonest and greedy people who don't care about the quality of our air and water as long as they can make a buck.  But the regulation of our society down to the littlest detail has resulted in a world where we literally can't do anything without being affected in some way by government regulation.  The problem with regulations is that they never move towards more freedom.  They are always written to exert more government control over whatever it is that's being regulated.  So we have Obamacare.  This law, in one fell swoop, gave control over a sector of our economy worth about 1/7 of our GDP to the government!  Talk about a power grab!  Now, with the regulations written about coal fired powered power plants Obama has fulfilled his promise from 2008 when he said that anyone can open a coal fired power plant, but it will go bankrupt.  In the guise of saving the world from global warming, the president wants to regulate cow flatulence.  You see, cow's anal gas contains methane, which is a greenhouse gas.  In my opinion, however, this is just a further salvo in the battle by the state for control of the country.  They have health care.  They have regulated themselves into control of the energy sector of the economy, and now they're going after agriculture.  Combine that with a spy program that knows what people are doing every second of the day, and you can see that the government has slowly become too powerful.
America's democracy is at stake.  The land that is by the people and for the people has become the land of those that govern and those that are governed.  We need somebody who will be willing to do what is right for America, and not just for him or herself or his or her party.  We need somebody willing to cut back on the size and scope and power of government.  We need somebody whom we can trust when they say they will focus on job creation like a laser beam rather than someone who says that then focuses on everything but that.  We need someone who cares more about Americans having a job and less about how much cows are farting.