Obscene Government Waste

[Draggingtree]

Canada Free Press:

 

Citizens Against Government Waste, Debt, Deficit, Sequester, Pig List

 

Obscene Government Waste

 

- Alan Caruba (Bio and Archives) Sunday, March 3, 2013

 

 

The one thing the “sequester” did was to get people asking why government spending could not be reduced. Adding to the drama of the automatic cuts was the sky-is-falling, government-services-will-stop, and comparable lies the President and his cabinet secretaries told until it became obvious that the public was not buying it.

 

What the President did not talk about was the incredible, obscene waste of taxpayer’s money that goes on every day in every department and agency of the U.S. government. Americans are so accustomed to hearing everything described in the billions and trillions, they have lost sight of what these numbers really mean and this is particularly true in light of the nation’s huge, growing debt and deficit.

Even a casual bit of research turns up item after item that, were Americans not so apathetic and indifferent to government waste, it would result in huge rallies in Washington, D.C. calling for change. There is none.

Here are some examples, a mere handful from the many anyone can discover by simply Googling “government waste.”

 

The government spends $1.7 billion for maintenance on empty buildings it owns, although some sources put the figure at closer to $25 billion.

[Draggingtree]

How Much Land Does the Federal Government Own?

 

 

 

 

courtesy of strangemaps.wordpress.com

 

 

 

This data was originally published in Stanford Magazine. It demonstrates what percentage of the land in each state is owned directly by the federal government. Many of the western states contain substantial percentages of federal land, which takes up 84.5% of the land in Nevada, whereas in the east, federal land occupies as little as .04% of the state, such as in Rhode Island and Connecticut.

Government land is used comprised mainly of military bases, testing areas, nature and wildlife reserves, Indian reservations, or commercial leasing for mining or agriculture. Administrations that oversee these lands include the US Army Corps of Engineers, the US Department of Defense, the US Forest Service, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Park Service, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, among others. Altogether, government land makes up about 30% of the entire territory of the United States.

Notably, Washington D.C. is excluded from the data. The territory can most accurately be described as "under the tutelage of the federal government." snip