Episode 207 Show Notes- The Current Failures of Government Reveal Its Astonishing Incompetence
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Episode Description
There is no shortage of crises facing the government and this administration, and with every crisis, they’ve proven themselves to be thoroughly incompetent. The fact that not a single government official has been fired or forced to resign illustrates the lack of accountability within the system and the mediocre leadership we have. It’s time we rethink the practice of a big government apparatus. The larger the government grows, the more incompetent it becomes and its failures hurt every American.
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Show Transcript- The Current Failures of Government Reveal Its Astonishing Incompetence
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Intro
Welcome everyone to The P.A.S. Report Podcast.
I hope everyone is doing well. I have to say, there are no shortages of crises we are currently facing. Last week, I released an episode striking an optimistic tone. I explained why I see signs of hope for the United States and We the People.
But there is no denying the fact that the last several days have been a difficult period for all Americans. From Afghanistan to the hurricane that hit Mississippi and Louisiana, thousands of lives have been changed.
There are no shortages of crises facing the government and this administration. Unfortunately, those who hold the power have proven just how inept and out of touch the government has become. The fact that not a single government official has been fired or forced to resign illustrates the lack of accountability within the system, and there is no denying that the current leadership is mediocre at best.
One of the mottoes we consistently tried to hold up is that we leave no American behind, at least until now.
There are still hundreds of Americans who remain in Afghanistan and essentially the Biden administration has abandoned them. It’s pathetic. Even worse is how the administration and those in leadership positions continue to deflect blame. They don’t take any accountability for their failures.
And the world is watching. We have witnessed a void open on the world stage in real-time, and we will see increasing international instability as nations compete to fill the power vacuum that now exists.
One thing is clear, the larger the government grows, the more incompetent it becomes. The more the bureaucracy is ideologically weaponized, the more damage we witness being inflicted on our institutions. That’s going to be the focus for today.
Before I jump in, make sure to visit The P.A.S. Report website, sign up for the newsletter, and follow the podcast so you’ll never miss an episode.
The Beast of the Bayou
Before I get into the main topic, I just want to focus on a couple of important things going on. First, I want to start off with prayers to all those being impacted by Hurricane Ida. This storm was a beast, and they dubbed it the Beast of the Bayou for good reason.
The scale of the destruction and devastation won’t be known for weeks, but there is no doubt, it will be months, years before the hardest-hit areas can recover. As someone who has been involved in emergency management, I can tell you the coordinated response effort is in full swing, and the emergency management officials have a big job ahead of them.
However, the one thing I can say with certainty, is that after an event like this, the American people, regardless of political ideology, come together to help their fellow Americans in need. We see this all the time, and it represents the best this country has to offer.
Right now, as we speak, thousands of Americans are going down to the hardest-hit areas to assist with recovery. Millions of Americans are donating food and money to help those in need. This is what we are all about.
In times of crisis, the American people have proven themselves to be the most generous and kind-hearted people, and so do what you can to help those who are in need.
One of the things to pay attention to is gas prices. Apparently, this hurricane knocked 91% of the oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico offline. Who knows how damaged they are and how many weeks it may take to get them up and running? I suspect we will see an increase in gas prices that’s going to hit many ordinary Americans hard, and they were already struggling with the rising cost of energy.
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Afghanistan Debacle
Moving to the next topic, while the American people have proven themselves, so to have many of our senior leaders within the bureaucracy. The only difference is they have proven themselves to be thoroughly incompetent.
Just look at what happened over the last week. We had 13 brave men and women lose their lives due to a suicide bombing at Kabul airport. These individuals were killed because they were saving the lives of other Americans and Afghanis.
They too represent the greatness of America, and they are the backbone of America. They paid the ultimate sacrifice to help others, and you should know their names.
Staff Sgt. Darin Hoover, 31
Sgt. Johanny Rosariopichardo, 25
Sgt. Nicole Gee, 23
Corporal Hunter Lopez, 22
Corporal Daegan Page, 23
Corporal Humberto Sanchez, 22
Lance Corporal David Espinoza, 20
Lance Corporal Jared Schmitz, 20
Lance Corporal Rylee McCollum, 20
Lance Corporal Dylan Merola, 20
Lance Coporal Kareem Nikoui, 20
Navy Hospitalman Maxton Soviak
Staff Sgt. Ryan Knauss, 23
These individuals deserve our respect and praise. More importantly, their families deserve our prayers. I can’t imagine what their families are going through.
We need to honor their sacrifice.
There are those who will attack me for making this political, and I get that. These soldiers that paid the ultimate sacrifice shouldn’t be used as political pawns, but after listening to President Biden speak last week really annoyed me.
The loss of these soldiers made me angry. I know at times you want to strike a somber tone, but in this case, I wanted to see the President have the same anger I had.
Also, why the hell would the President bring up the loss of his son when he was talking about the loss of these soldiers especially when Beau Biden didn’t die in combat. He died of brain cancer.
Now I feel for President Biden. No parent should have to bury a child, let alone two children. No matter how you feel about the President, he has faced enormous personal tragedies in his life.
At the same time, it bothered me that he tried to inject his personal losses with those of the 13-service members. It’s about them, not him. And call me crazy, but I find it bizarre how much he injects his son’s death into speeches, including stump speeches. It really makes me uncomfortable.
Another thing that annoyed me about his speech was when he said that we will not extend the withdrawal date unless something “exceptional changes.” (Transcript of Joe Biden Speech) Seriously, I would think that the deaths of 13 servicemembers is pretty exceptional. I would say getting all Americans out is exceptional enough to extend our withdrawal operations.
You’re the friggin’ President of the United States. If I was advising the President, he should have said that the Taliban doesn’t get to dictate when we leave. That we will leave when all the American people are safely out of Afghanistan. We will leave when we are ready to leave.
This withdrawal has been nothing short of a complete debacle from start to finish, and our officials, both elected and appointed, have failed us and our soldiers.
President Biden is the one who is ultimately responsible. He is the one in charge, and he is the one that gives final orders. It’s clear that there was no strategy. There was no plan. He keeps trying to blame former President Trump, but this was on his watch, and he owns it.
Bungled From Start to Finish
Unfortunately, it didn’t have to be this way. We could have kept Bagram Air Base. It would have been far easier preventing any attacks than it was to secure Kabul Airport. I mean, common sense dictates that we should have made Bagram a green zone like in Iraq where it also houses our embassy. Instead, we built an $800-million embassy in Kabul that now sits empty.
And you don’t need to be an expert military strategist to understand that first, you evacuate the American citizens, then the Afghani’s that helped us, then the military. That’s simply common sense. My 10-year old son has more sense than that.
What’s worse, we are now learning that when Kabul collapsed, the head of the Taliban’s political wing, Abdul Ghani Baradar, warned CENTCOM Commander, General McKenzie, about security.
According to a Washington Post report, Baradar said, “We have a problem,” when it comes to securing Kabul. He went on to say, “We have two options to deal with it: You [the United States military] take responsibility for securing Kabul or you have to allow us to do it.” (Washington Post)
According to the article, President Biden stated that our mission was to leave Afghanistan, essentially giving the blessing for the Taliban to run security operations for us. This is so pathetic that it makes me sick to even say it. I would like to know if any of the General’s pushed back on the President. I’m sure we will find out sooner or later as people try to cover their own butts.
Instead of covering our own security. Instead of securing Afghanistan. We allowed the Taliban to run security operations, and we allowed them to dictate when we need to leave by.
And this feckless administration, because they are sticking to a Taliban imposed deadline, left hundreds of Americans behind. Hundreds of Americans have had to rely on private security companies to get them out. Others are still trying to get out, and the administration’s response is that those individuals will have to find their way out of Afghanistan through land means as opposed to being airlifted out.
Not only are we leaving some Americans behind, but we are also leaving an enormous amount of military equipment behind. We now have some specifics of what the $83-billion in military equipment looks like. We know over 600,000 weapons were seized, 75,000 vehicles, and 200 aircraft. Breaking it down further, over 60k Humvees, 634 M117 armored military vehicles, 8k military transport trucks, 169 M113 light tanks, 358k assault rifles, 162k radios, 16k night vision googles, 33 Blackhawk helicopters, 3 C-130’s, and so much more. (Reuters)
We should have taken all these things out or destroyed them on our way out, but because of failed leaders, none of that happened. And so, if we ever have to go back into the Taliban, consider that they will be far better equipped than they were 20 years ago.
How They Got it Wrong
This failure can not be underscored. It is epic and will go into the annals of history to teach future militaries what not to do when withdrawing from conflict.
But the real question becomes why did the administration get it so wrong? Who contributed to these failures? We have all these people who went to the finest schools and had years of experience, and by every metric, they’ve failed.
Here’s what they’re not telling you. They never anticipated the Taliban would take over and the Afghan government would collapse so quickly. They knew the Afghan government would collapse and that the Afghan military would most likely dissolve without our support. However, they believed the Afghani government would be able to remain intact for at least six months. That was the plan they relied on. As we are withdrawing, Afghan security forces would provide security cover allowing us to get out Americans.
After we left, they didn’t care if the country collapsed. They know the media would provide cover and would largely ignore Afghanistan, and it wouldn’t matter to most of the American public because we would have already been out.
And this brings us to the bigger point. The President isn’t the only one who needs to take responsibility. There are a whole host of senior leaders in the military, in the intelligence community, and at the State Department, that also need to take responsibility. The fact that we haven’t seen one termination or forced resignation is disgusting. Where is the character? Where is the integrity?
In fact, the only person that’s been fired has been Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller who dared to call out his superiors and demand accountability. Imagine that, we fire the one guy who probably should be a General leading the military.
We don’t have generals that fight to win wars anymore. Consider that over the last 70-years, we have definitively won one war. I’ll say it again. Over a 70-year period, we had one war where clear objectives were established, and we met those objectives. That was Desert Storm in 1991. Our mission was to repel Saddam’s forces from Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. We met those objectives. Victory was declared, and that’s the only war we won.
Now think about how many conflicts we’ve been engaged in over the last 70-years, and it’s clear that too many of our senior military leaders and the pencil pushers in the Pentagon don’t know how to win wars anymore. It’s clear that they’ve rather be politicians than actual leaders. That they would rather play politics and push political agendas, rather than develop real objectives and battle plans intent on winning these types of engagements.
If a private doesn’t make his bed right, he gets a reprimand, yet our leaders could be abysmal failures, and there are no repercussions. It’s an embarrassment and it’s unacceptable.
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International Ramifications
And all this has real-world ramifications. Our reputation is in tatters, and do you think any of our adversaries really fear this administration in any way?
The Afghanistan debacle has made us look so week that our allies are rethinking their dependence on the United States, and our adversaries are plotting their next moves. A void has been opened, and a power vacuum exists to fill that void.
Nations will compete with each other in hopes of filling the void, and they hope to increase their power and influence. This will lead to growing instability throughout the world.
Consider that one of China’s long-term strategic objectives is to recapture Taiwan. They have a 100-year plan to become a superpower by 2049, and Taiwan is part of that plan. What would happen if China decided to recapture Taiwan tomorrow? Do they really fear the United States at this point? Will they make the calculation that America and Americans don’t have the stomach for conflict right now?
I said it on a previous podcast episode, and I’ll say it again. Do you think China will be more aggressive now or less? Do you think Russia is going to become more aggressive or less? What about Iran? Do you think they will be more aggressive or less? North Korea? You know how this goes.
America’s adversaries are emboldened, and they will certainly take advantage of what they view is a weak and feckless America. This administration will try to talk tough, but do you think any of these countries will take this administration seriously? Do you think they have any fear of a Biden administration?
And then you have to worry that this President will try to overcompensate for his perceived weakness, which is a whole other story.
What about our allies? Do you think our allies have more faith in the United States or less? Do you think they will trust us more or less? The fact that so many European leaders came out openly and blasted the United States, questioning our commitments around the world. And then you have members of Parliament in the United Kingdom issue utterly devastating critiques of America, and it seems we are in this alone.
You can say what you want about former President Trump. They may have despised him, but at least they respected him, and our adversaries walked a fine line.
Big Government Has Led to Big Failures
However, all this brings me to the main point and it’s the bigger our government has become, the bigger the failures have been. The larger it grows, the more incompetent it is.
Our government has grown so large and disjointed it has become an abject failure. Some argue that the size of the federal workforce hasn’t really changed. According to the United States Office of Personnel Management, the government had 699,000 federal employees. That number includes 443,000 civilian employees and 256,000 military personnel. In 2014, which is the last year I can find, the number was a total of nearly 2.1 million people. 1.35 million civilian employees and 723,000 military personnel. (OPM) This number does not include reserve military personnel.
Some will say well that’s not that big of growth when you consider the increase in population, and if it was just about those numbers, I would agree. However, there is much more to the story. There are millions of people reliant on the federal apparatus that aren’t included in these numbers. The federal government contracts out an enormous number of positions, and they also grant fund an enormous number of positions. This is something that wasn’t really done in the 1940s.
If we factor in those numbers, the total number is more like 9.1 million.
Here is a scary thought, no one can say with any certainty how many federal agencies really exist. Consider that these agencies have an enormous amount of power. While Congress passes law, and the President enforces the law, there is a middle part to that equation. Congressional laws require interpretation, and the federal agencies will interpret and implement these laws. The federal agencies will be the ones to develop the regulations.
That’s pretty important, and so it should be really important to know how many federal agencies exist. Here’s another interesting tidbit. In doing some research for this episode, I came across a federal government website called the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS). The web address is www.acus.gov.
According to the website, “ACUS is an independent federal agency charged with convening expert representatives from the public and private sectors to recommend improvements to administrative process and procedure. ACUS initiatives promote efficiency, participation, and fairness in the promulgation of federal regulations and in the administration of federal programs.”
They wrote a report in 2012 about the federal apparatus. According to this report, “there is no authoritative list of government agencies. Every list of federal agencies in government publications is different.” They list examples of how if you try to determine the scope of government, you’ll find different answers from different government sources. For example, FOIA.gov says there are 78 independent executive agencies and 174 units throughout the executive departments. The U.S. Government Manual lists 96 independent executive units and 220 components of executive departments. USA.gov lists 137 independent executive agencies and 268 units in the Cabinet departments. The report also states there are more than 1,000 federal advisory committees that are attached to specific departments and agencies. (ACUS)
Holy crap. Think about this for a second. Our own government doesn’t even know how big it is. Our own government doesn’t even know how many agencies exist within it. If that doesn’t tell you that we have a problem, I don’t know what will open your eyes.
It’s clear, the bureaucracy has grown so large that it’s completely unmanageable.
The Three E’s
Not knowing how many federal agencies there exist is a problem. An even bigger problem goes to the failures of the bureaucracy. In my classroom, I talk about the benefits of bureaucracy and the drawbacks of our all-encompassing bureaucracy.
It’s easy to point out how expensive the bureaucracy is. It’s easy to look at the waste, fraud, and abuse that regularly occurs. Just to put that the fraud into perspective, the Government Accountability Office estimates that 15-30% of Medicaid claims are fraudulent. Understand that this is a program that costs us over $600-billion a year. If 15% of claims are fraudulent, that’s over $90-billion a year of taxpayer dollars being wasted due to fraud, and I can assure you the number is much higher, but that’s just one program. (Government Accountability Office)
Then you look at all the bureaucratic red tape when it comes to the federal government, and it’s almost impossible to navigate the bureaucracy.
But the biggest problem is what I call the three E’s. Equality, Efficiency, and Effectiveness.
Equality
The government only looks at superficial BS when it comes to equality. I’m actually going to use New York as an example. In New York, we have something called the Excelsior Program where is you graduate in 2-years or 4-years, and work in New York for a few years once you graduate, you can potentially have the government pick up your college bill if you attend a state school.
In order to qualify for this program, your family must make $125,000 or less. Now let’s say you have someone from upstate New York and their family makes $124,000. They can qualify, but a family from Suffolk County, NY making $126,000 wouldn’t qualify even though the cost of living on Long Island is far more expensive. The reality is the family making $124,000 in upstate New York is making more money than the family making $126,000 on Long Island so how is that equality?
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Efficiency
But the bigger problem within the Bureaucracy is efficiency. There is no efficiency in government programs. Look at how long it takes to get permits and do major construction projects. You have projects that were issued 10-years ago that still haven’t broken ground or made any progress.
Look at how much it costs to run a school or government facility. They overpay on everything and the cost vs. benefit analysis doesn’t make sense.
The Government Accountability Office found that there are dozens of overlapping and redundant programs at the federal level. The government could save billions in taxpayer money by consolidating these programs. For example, 3 agencies conduct catfish inspections- USDA, FDA, & National Marine Fisheries Service under NOAA to look at the same catfish. (GAO)
Our use of resources to achieve an objective simply doesn’t make any sense. Let’s take what I focused on earlier. Let’s look at Afghanistan where we spent $1-trillion dollars in a 20-year period to build out an Afghan government and train an Afghan Army. Just look at the $85-billion of military equipment we left behind. Does that sound efficient to you.
All this money. All this investment and the Afghan government and military collapsed within a week. That doesn’t sound very efficient if you ask me.
Effectiveness
Effectiveness is the biggest problem though. See, we never review programs to see if they are meeting their objectives.
Take education. We continually hear that there is not enough money going into education and that’s why student performance has been declining. Yet, each year we increase spending on education. In fact, we spend more than almost every country combined. So rather than looking at it as a money problem, perhaps we need to examine to see what other factors are leading to poor student performance. Obviously, our education program is not all that effective. Obviously, they are not meeting their mission.
The War on Poverty is another great example. When announced by Lyndon B. Johnson, the poverty rate was 17.3%. After $22 trillion spent, the poverty rate hovers between 14-15% today. (Heritage) That doesn’t seem all that effective to me. For that type of investment, the poverty rate should be far lower.
The War on Drugs is another example. We have 76 drug prevention and treatment programs at the federal level, of which 56 overlaps according to the GAO. (GAO) This does not include all the state and local programs, as well as the nonprofit and for-profit programs. Yet, drug addiction is at its highest levels. (PBS) We witnessed a nearly 30% increase in opioid deaths last year alone. This shows inefficiency and ineffectiveness.
Einstein’s rule, doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result is the very definition of insanity, yet here we are.
In fact, can anyone name me one successful government program that achieved its objectives and was dismantled because the program was no longer necessary?
I mean how many of you out there like to deal with the bureaucracy? Have you ever heard anyone say after a visit to DMV, “Wow, that was a pleasant experience? I can’t wait until I have to go there again.”
Let’s face it, we despise it when we have to deal with bureaucracy. It’s never a pleasant experience.
Closing
What would happen if we did a complete forensic review of every government program that exists, and if the program was not meeting its objectives, the program would be dismantled? How many programs would end?
Maybe that’s why the bureaucracy never solves problems or achieves objectives. Maybe it’s job security.
Our government has grown so massive that no one has a clue what’s going on. This country began with 3 Cabinet-level departments. We now have 15, and within those departments, we have hundreds of agencies. We also have hundreds of independent agencies, regulatory commissions, counsels and so much more.
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Our founding fathers didn’t want a system where Congress creates law after law. They didn’t want a system where new bureaucratic agencies are constantly formed. They understood that as government expands, liberty contracts.
Our government is out of control and there’s no accountability within the system. We need to force elected officials to talk about this because the problem will continue to get worse. The government will continue to grow. The failures will become more impactful, and the incompetence of the government will continue to be on full display.
I’m going to stay on top of this and we will explore this issue further in the next few weeks.
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I want to thank you for joining me, I want you to stay safe, and I’ll be back next week.
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