Obama’s America: Gun toting paper-pushers now outnumber US Marines

Tags

disarming America, Government spending

Conservative Firing Line by TK Whiteman

A combined force of 15,000 troops led by US Marines launched a pre-dawn assault on Marjah. (AFP: Patrick Baz)

Ronald Reagan once quipped that nine of the most terrifying words in the English language are “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.” Yet if The Great Communicator were alive today he very well may tack on four more words to his anxiety inducing salutation, “… and I’m heavily armed.” As reported by the Washington Free Beacon, there are actually more armed federal bureaucrats than US Marines. Citing a report issued by a taxpayer watchdog group, of the nation’s 182,100 Teufelshunde, they are actually outnumbered by 200,000 paper-pushers with guns.

According to a report entitled the Militarization of America commissioned by the citizens advocacy group “Open the Books,” just one of the few but disconcerting totals coming to light are raising eyebrows. Federal agencies have, for example, spent $8.2 million on buckshot; $1.6 million on unmanned aircraft; and a curious $4 million on grenades and grenade launchers[…]

Continue Reading — Obama’s America: Gun toting paper-pushers now outnumber US Marines

Open the Books.com

THE MILITARIZATION OF AMERICA

OpenTheBooks Oversight Report

Click Here to Download a PDF copy of our Report

OpenTheBooks Oversight Report – The Militarization of America:

Non-Military Federal Agencies Purchases of Guns, Ammunition, and Military-Style Equipment

Fiscal Years 2006 – 2014

See the line-by-line transactions (raw data) for the Administrative Federal Agencies purchase of guns, ammunition and military-style equipment, click here.

See the line-by-line transactions (raw data) for the Traditional Law Enforcement Agencies purchase of guns, ammunition and military-style equipment, click here.

The Militarization of America

By Dr. Tom Coburn and Adam Andrzejewski | June 17, 2016

Click Here to read our Wall Street Journal column

We quantified $1.4 billion in non-military federal agencies purchase of guns, ammunition and military-style equipment during the last nine years.

We estimate that federal non-military agencies now employ more officers with arrest and firearm authorization than there are U.S. Marines. There are 182,000 U.S. Marines and over 200,000 plus officers employed within the rank-and-file federal agencies.

 

Special Agents at the IRS equipped with AR15 military rifles?

Health and Human Services ‘Special Office of Inspector General Agents’ being trained by Army’s Special Forces contractors?

The Department of Veterans Affairs arming 3,700 employees?

KEY FINDINGS (FY2006-FY2014) – THE MILITARIZATION OF AMERICA

1. Sixty-seven non-military federal agencies spent $1.48 billion on guns, ammunition, and military-style equipment.
2. Of that total amount, ‘Traditional Law Enforcement’ Agencies spent 77 percent ($1.14 billion) while ‘Administrative’ or ‘General’ Agencies spent 23 percent ($335.1 million).
3. Non-military federal spending on guns and ammunition jumped 104 percent from $55 million (FY2006) to $112 million (FY2011).
4. Nearly 6 percent ($42 million) of all federal guns and ammunition purchase transactions were wrongly coded. Some purchases were actually for ping-pong balls, gym equipment, bread, copiers, cotton balls, or cable television including a line item from the Coast Guard entered as “Cable Dude”.
5. Administrative agencies including the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Small Business Administration (SBA), Smithsonian Institution, Social Security Administration, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, United States Mint, Department of Education, Bureau of Engraving and Printing, National Institute of Standards and Technology, and many other agencies purchased guns, ammo, and military-style equipment.
6. Since 2004, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) purchased 1.7 billion bullets including 453 million hollow-point bullets. As of 1/1/2014, DHS estimated its bullet inventory-reserve at 22-months, or 160 million rounds.
7. Between 1998 and 2008 (the most recent comprehensive data available) the number of law enforcement officers employed by federal agencies increased nearly 50 percent from 83,000 (1998) to 120,000 (2008). However, Department of Justice officer count increased from 40,000 (2008) to 69,000 (2013) and Department of Homeland Security officer count increased from 55,000 (2008) to 70,000 (2013).
8. The Internal Revenue Service, with its 2,316 special agents, spent nearly $11 million on guns, ammunition and military-style equipment.
9. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) spent $3.1 million on guns, ammunition and military-style equipment. The EPA has spent $715 million on its ‘Criminal Enforcement Division’ from FY2005 to present even as the agency has come under fire for failing to perform its basic functions.
10. Federal agencies spent $313,958 on paintball equipment, along with $14.7 million on Tasers, $1.6 million on unmanned aircraft, $8.2 million on buckshot, $7.44 million on projectiles, and $4 million on grenades/launchers.
11. The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) spent $11.66 million including more than $200,000 on ‘night vision equipment,’ $2.3 million on ‘armor – personal,’ more than $2 million on guns, and $3.6 million on ammunition. Veterans Affairs has 3,700 law enforcement officers guarding and securing VA medical centers.
12. 12. The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service spent $4.77 million purchasing shotguns, .308 caliber rifles, night vision goggles, propane cannons, liquid explosives, pyro supplies, buckshot, LP gas cannons, drones, remote controlled helicopters, thermal cameras, military waterproof thermal infrared scopes, and more.

Source: http://www.openthebooks.com/

Permission to republish with attribution granted by OpenTheBooks.com, a project of American Transparency.

The Disastrous New Urban Agenda

Tags

cities, fail, Government spending, Government Waste, over-regulations, Progressive bureaucrats, Progressives, social engineering, social-justice, urban blight

Downtown Brooklyn, NYC – Source: Google Earth.

New York City mayor, Bill de Blasio gets no credit for downtown Brooklyn, New York as it is today.  What you see in the above photograph came about because of Michael Bloomberg, building fever throughout the City.

What Commie de Blasio can take credit for is the transportation mess he has created downtown Brooklyn and throughout the City of New York with his over-regulated Vision Zero agenda.

Downtown Brooklyn has always experienced traffic jams 24/7 but that last thing any New Yorker would have imagined is that the congestion could get worse.

Enter de Blasio and Progressive bike lanes where they need not be and the over-regulation of everything that breathes or moves in the City.

Commentary Magazine by Stephen Eide

Unable to spend their way into a progressive future, Democratic mayors have turned to regulation as a panacea.

Democrats currently govern most major American cities and face no serious Republican challenges in any of them. Of the 50 largest cities in the United States, only 13 have Republican mayors. Surprisingly, while urban areas have been turning deep blue, Democratic city governments have not been increasing their spending as much as most people think. Massive debt and poor revenue growth have forced urban Democrats to find a more austere pathway to satisfying their progressive ambitions. They have found it in regulation. By legislating how businesses can conduct themselves, whom they can hire, what they must provide, and much else, Democrats in local governments are transforming the new urban progressive agenda into a regulatory agenda.
 
Because of this, even as these politicians tout their imposed correctives for sluggish growth and inequality, we should expect increased stagnation and growing inequality in the coming years. If Democrats continue to expand regulations, the urban economy will be even less accommodating to small businesses and entrepreneurs than it is alread. And as these economic engines stall, opportunities for the poor and immigrant classes will dry up. The liberal appetite for the imposition of local regulation, like the appetite for spending it has supplanted, will usher in a new chapter in the history of unintended policy consequences. And, once again, the worst-off among us will pay the highest price.[…]
 
Continue Reading — The Disastrous New Urban Agenda

H/t Manhattan Institute.

Charity Backs off $50 Million Plan to House Illegal Alien Children in Luxury Hotel Resort

Tags

Government spending, Government Waste, Illegal Immigration

Fox News, Todd Starnes

A plan to house hundreds of illegal immigrant children at a multimillion-dollar hotel complex in Texas was scuttled after the prospect of taxpayers footing the bill for luxury lodging proved too much of a public relations obstacle.

BCFS, previously known as Baptist Child and Family Services, which has a contract with the Department of Health and Human Services to run camps at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio and Fort Sill in Oklahoma, had a deal to buy the Palm Aire Hotel in Weslaco, Texas, for $3.8 million….

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So much for BCFS’ plan to hire “650 workers – some making upward of $45 per hour – to staff the facility.”

I am certain that their buddies in the Congressional Hispanic American Caucus, White House and HHS will do something on the down low to make up for this setback.

The charity only backed out after word got out and the outrage that followed.

See my original post: Obama to Spend Millions $$$$ on Transformation of Texas Luxury Hotel & Resort for Illegal Alien Children (REVISED)

 

LINKS:
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/07/16/feds-to-house-illegal-immigrants-at-multimillion-dollar-hotel/

Obama to Spend Millions $$$$ on Transformation of Texas Luxury Hotel & Resort for Illegal Alien Children (REVISED)

Tags

Government spending, Illegal Immigration, Obama Administration

 

H/t to Now the End Begins for its report that the Obama administration will spend millions of taxpayer dollars to transform the Palm Aire Hotel and Spa Suites into housing for illegal alien children.

KRGV News-Texas

BCFS Health and Human Services secured a multi-million federal contract to house young illegal immigrants at the site of the current Palm Aire Hotel and Suites on FM 1015.

Representatives with BCFS said the Palm Aire will undergo a multi-million dollar transformation.

BCFS runs a temporary detention center for young illegal immigrants at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio.

BCFS began as an orphanage for Hispanic children in San Antonio in 1944

‘Children … who weren’t able to go into other orphanages. They weren’t allowed at the white orphanages, they weren’t allowed at the African-American orphanages,’ said Krista Piferrer, with BCFS external affairs….

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Facilities at the Palm Aire, a three-star hotel and resort include indoor and outdoor pools, Jacuzzi, tennis court and health club facilities.

So Obama is going to fork up $50 million (at least) to transform this resort into a housing center for illegal alien children while poor American children who are homeless and/or hungry remain so.

 

 

LINKS:
http://www.nowtheendbegins.com/blog/?p=23445
http://www.krgv.com/news/hotel-to-undergo-transformation-into-immigrant-center/

Feds Wanted to Transform Hotel into a Refugee Camp for Illegal Alien Children But It’s Booked.

Tags

amnesty, federal property grab, Government spending, Illegal Immigration, incompetence

 

TheBlaze

Searching for places to house the “overwhelm[ing]” influx of Mexican and Central American children crossing the U.S. southern border without parents or guardians, government officials scouted out an abandoned hotel in Grand Island, New York on Friday.

Or at least the government thought the hotel was abandoned.

As it turned out, the 263-room Byblos Niagara Resort and Spa was fully booked.

“It looks like there’s been a mistake,” federal agents with the Homeland Security Department and the Border Patrol told the hotel manager, according to the Buffalo News.

“They were thinking the hotel was abandoned and closed,” the manager said….

A simple Google search could have saved the agents the trip the the hotel.

What is clear is that the feds were moving quickly, without giving local authorities much notice…..

Click here to view original web page at www.theblaze.com

Cannot help but wonder if the feds even gave a damn as to whether the hotel was abandoned or not.  Since they failed to give local authorities notice, they might have intended to bully the hotel owner out of his property.  Property grab anyone?  Even worse, Obama administration funding a summer camp for illegal alien kids because oh, they’ve gone through so much? On my tax dollar? Really?

If the federal government wants to fly illegals somewhere, fly them to the other side of the Mexican border.

 

LINK:
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/06/21/feds-try-to-move-quickly-to-place-illegal-immigrant-children-in-abandoned-hotel-then-they-find-out-the-hotel-wasnt-abandoned/

Sikorsky Wins Contract For Next Presidential Helicopter

Tags

Government spending, Government Waste, Marine One

 

Brittius.com

HARTFORD (CBS Connecticut) – Connecticut-based Sikorsky Aircraft, which has built the Presidential “Marine One” for the U.S. Navy since the 1950s has been chosen to build the next fleet of presidential helicopters. The company today announced a nearly one-and-a-quarter billion dollar contract to modify, test and deliver six dual-engine, medium-lift S-92 test aircraft helicopters and two simulators to the Marine Corps, the initial step toward a total of 21 operational aircraft. The aircraft will be assembled at Sikorsky’s Coatesville, Pennsylvania plant, and some specialized communications systems will be installed by Lockheed Martin in Oswego, New York, but the helicopters […]

Click here to view original web page at brittius.com

 

National Debt: $17,513,907,459,157 and Barack Obama is contracting new helicopters, Marine One to be exact.