Government Incompetence
It was obviously the signature effort of the Obama administration, but it was a flop. Forget launching to the moon; we can't even launch a website now. What does that tell us?
-Glenn Harlan Reynolds
America's spy agencies continue to debase themselves in an effort to appear "woke." The Office of the Director of National Intelligence recently published its annual demographic report for fiscal year 2020 to assess the "hiring and retention of minorities, women, and persons with disabilities in the United States intelligence community."
An astute social media user observed that the report's cover page featured a stock photo titled, "Portrait Of Multi-Cultural Office Staff Standing In Lobby." In an apparent effort to enhance the intelligence community's performative display of diversity, a blind man and a wheelchair-bound woman were sloppily added via Photoshop.
One should never underestimate a government employee's capacity for half-assing a meaningless task.
-Andrew Stiles 
"It seems plausible to wonder if government can build a nation abroad, fight social decay, run schools, mandate the design of cars, run health insurance exchanges, or set proper sexual harassment policies on college campuses, if it can't even fix a 232-foot bridge competently."
-Larry Summers
The website failure gives credence to those who warn that government can’t be trusted to get big things right, and that the market, not bureaucrats, should fix health care.
It’s not just the crazies who doubt government now.
According to the Pew Research Center, the competence of officialdom is on shaky ground, with only 19 percent of Americans saying they trust in government “just about always” or “most of the time.”
-Margaret Carlson
The nitrates travel down rivers and into the Gulf of Mexico, where they boost the growth of enormous algae fields. When the algae die, the decomposition consumes oxygen, leaving behind a zone where aquatic life cannot survive.
This year, the dead zone covered 5,800 square miles of sea floor, about the size of Connecticut. Larry McKinney, the executive director of the Harte Institute at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, says the ethanol mandate worsened the dead zone.
“The government is mandating ethanol use,” he said, “and it is unfortunately coming at the expense of the Gulf of Mexico.”
-Associated Press
“Nancy Pelosi should say that — we messed up…We have to take ownership,” Davis said, indicating that admitting fault is the first step to fixing the Affordable Care Act.
He added that the private sector should have had more of a role in developing HealthCare.Gov, which debuted Oct. 1 with significant glitches.
“We screwed up,” Davis said, advising Pelosi that she should admit that Democrats relied too heavily on the government to set up ObamaCare.
-Ed Morrissey
Government, Incompetence, Brilliance, Oops
By misconfiguring pages on Trello, a popular project management website, the governments of the United Kingdom and Canada exposed to the entire internet details of software bugs and security plans, as well as passwords for servers, official internet domains, conference calls, and an event-planning system...
Shortly thereafter, Pathak found 25 Canadian government boards that had even more sensitive information, such as remote file access, or FTP, credentials, and login details for the Eventbrite event-planning platform.
Government, Incompetence, Character, Oops
The federal personnel chief said Tuesday that she does not believe “anyone is personally responsible” for the massive hack of federal employee data and security clearance files and instead blamed the breach on old computer systems and the hackers themselves.
“We have legacy systems that are very old,” Katherine Archuleta, director of the Office of Personnel Management, told Senate lawmakers at a hearing on the intrusion. “It’s an enterprise-wide problem. I don’t believe anyone is personally responsible.”
Hypocrisy, Liberal, Hate, Government, Incompetence, Racism, Narrative
A top U.S. Forest Service executive told his employees to probe their own “unconscious bias” on everything from race and sexuality to the disabled and fat people, asking them to use an unproven assessment tool to explore their feelings...
Mr. Rice, in a March 11 email to his employees, also instructed them to read a New York Times piece titled “Straight talk for white men,” which argues that white men benefit from unconscious bias.
Government, Incompetence, Oops, Energy, Waste
The National Security Agency's $2 billion mega spy center is going up in flames. Technical glitches have sparked fiery explosions within the NSA's newest and largest data storage facility in Utah, destroying hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment, and delaying the facility's opening by one year. And no one seems to know how to fix it.
Government bureaucrats aren’t exactly known for spending taxpayer money wisely. Sadly, the pandemic has proven no exception—with new studies showing that local governments wasted millions on vaccine lotteries that accomplished…nothing...
Researchers examined the 19 states with vaccine lottery schemes and compared them to states that did not enact such programs. The authors conclude that the impact these lotteries had on increasing vaccination rates was “very small in magnitude and statistically indistinguishable from zero.”
-Brad Polumbo
Government, Incompetence, Funny, Oops
According to local reports, the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene headquarters, which cost taxpayers $316 million, is overrun by bed bugs.
The building is 21 floors, and five of those are home to a bed bug infestation. That’s no shock, since the city itself has been ranked the worst in the nation when it comes to bed bugs. This is the second time in under a year that bed bugs have been found in the facility, which is only three years old.
Gross Incompetence...
Here’s a question everyone should be pondering: If the federal government can’t keep the President’s bodyguards from drinking and whoring on duty, how likely is it to be able to run anything competently?
Government, Guns, Incompetence, Oops
U.S. Park Police couldn’t account for hundreds of weapons in its inventory, according to a new Inspector General report, which found that the agency’s firearms could be vulnerable to “theft or misuse.”
Investigating an anonymous tip alleging the USPP couldn’t account for military-style rifles and its weapons program, the Interior Department’s inspector general made unannounced visits to weapons storage facilities in Washington, D.C., New York, California and Georgia, according to the report released Thursday.
Environmentalist, Government, Incompetence, Oops, Metaphor
A vehicle emissions reduction device, which is mandated by the Environmental Protection Agency, forced an ambulance to shut down while carrying a suspect who was shot by Washington, D.C., police.
The EPA mandated device is meant to reduce diesel emissions and is required to be placed on all newer model diesel vehicles. The device can burn off diesel toxins automatically or manually, but if neither of those happen during the “re-generating cycle,” warning lights pop on and the vehicle is eventually forced to shut down.
... there is always a well-known solution to every human problem: neat, plausible, and wrong.
Government, Incompetence, Oops, Waste, Theft
Precious historical artifacts like the Wright Brothers airplane patent, the bombing maps for the nuclear attack on Japan, the original eyewitness radio report of the Hindenburg disaster and photos taken by the astronauts on the moon are just some of the items stolen from our National Archives.
I think that Obamacare may be discrediting Big Government generally among Hispanic voters. They may have assumed that government in the United States was competent and functional.
They have been finding out that Obamacare has been about as competent and functional as government in Mexico.
-Michael Barone
Violence, Government, Character
Getting into a barroom fight with the men who guard Vice President Joe Biden would likely get someone locked up -- unless the brawlers also happen to be on the very same security team.
That's just what happened in a bloody, booze-fueled brawl that spilled out of Nantucket’s Rose and Crown nightclub while Biden and his family were spending last Thanksgiving on the island, according to police logs, notes and reports obtained by FoxNews.com.
It was one of at least two fights police in and around Martha’s Vineyard have investigated involving Secret Service agents and other members of President Obama's and Biden’s security details in the last year as the leaders and their families vacationed nearby.
Government, Incompetence, Waste
When midnight rolled around and flight traffic thinned out, air-traffic controllers guiding planes in the busiest U.S. corridor whipped out laptops to watch movies, play games or gamble online.
Controllers on break inflated air mattresses and napped on the floor. Some left before their shifts were over. They cursed at managers, refused to train new controllers, and flouted rules requiring them to pass on weather advisories to pilots.
Crime, Government, Fraud, Greed, Corruption, Convict
James M. Woosley, former Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) intelligence chief, pleaded guilty on Tuesday to an elaborate scam over several years involving false travel expense reports totaling nearly $600,000.
Woosley must surrender more than $180,000 he made in a scheme that also included several other ICE employees and contractors, federal prosecutors said. The former federal employees all pleaded guilty to submitting false receipts and vouchers for reimbursement of travel expenses and time worked, according to court documents.
Election, Government, Incompetence
The video, a sequel to O'Keefe's "Primary of the Living Dead" in New Hampshire, shows a Veritas agent entering various voting places around the state of Vermont, giving a different name each time.
Each time, he is given a ballot without showing an ID, to his disbelief.
"The team is operating with private sector velocity and effectiveness."...
CHUCK TODD: Okay, that is an acknowledgement that, "You know what? If this was a government operation for a long time and it failed, now we're bringing in the private sector folks."
I mean, that is an indictment on the whole idea of government as a solution...
Election, Government, Incompetence
An Albuquerque man says he successfully registered his dog to vote in Bernalillo County.
The dog owner said he saw a voter registration booth on the University of New Mexico's campus a few weeks ago and decided to see how easy it would be to register his dog to vote.
Government, Incompetence, Energy
Range Fuels, the failed wood-to-ethanol factory in southeastern Georgia that cost taxpayers $70 million, was sold Tuesday for pennies on the dollar.
Its buyer is a company that is backed by the same man who bankrolled and helped secure government loans for Range Fuels before it went bust last year.
Government, Incompetence, Financial, Funny, Oops
Even as he finds himself the public face of a bankruptcy and admitted to lawmakers that he had no idea how client funds disappeared, Congress and the administration have voiced no public concern about Mr. Abelow’s role advising the $8.6 billion government agency on its finances.
Government, Incompetence, Financial
Nearly $19 billion in state unemployment benefits were paid in error during the three years that ended in June, new Labor Department data show.
The amount represents more than 10% of the $180 billion in jobless benefits paid nationwide during the period. The tally covers state programs, which offer benefits for up to 26 weeks, from July 2008 to June 2011.
Liberalism has spent the better part of the past century attempting to prove that it could competently and responsibly extend the state into new reaches of American life.
With the rollout of the Affordable Care Act, the administration has badly injured that cause, confirming the worst slurs against the federal government.
-Franklin Foer
Government, Guns, Incompetence, Oops
I see what turns out to be eight uniformed, armored, armed officers – four of which are pointing guns through the window at my face.
Government, Incompetence, Bigbrother
Should it be any surprise that six years after the horrible landmark Supreme Court's 2005 case Kelo v. City of New London, which brought about the decision that governments could seize private property for the sole reason of "economic development," the Fort Trumbull site in question is today a total dump, where "economic development" by the local government has ceased to ever happen?
Democrat, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Obama, Energy, Regulation, Jobs
In 2009, Obama dedicated $7.2 billion of stimulus funds to build "clean tech" jobs. He vowed to create 5 million jobs over the next decade. So far, that effort has "created or retained" just 7,140 jobs, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. That's about $1 million per job. The number is actually down from last year, when the EPA claimed 16,605 green jobs.
Democrat, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Obama
A federal stimulus grant of nearly $500,000 to grow trees and stimulate the economy in Nevada yielded a whopping 1.72 jobs, according to government statistics. In 2009, the U.S. Forest Service awarded $490,000 of stimulus money to Nevada's Clark County Urban Forestry Revitalization Project, aimed at revitalizing urban neighborhoods in the county with trees, plants, and green-industry training.
The most fundamental fact about the ideas of the political left is that they do not work. Therefore we should not be surprised to find the left concentrated in institutions where ideas do not have to work in order to survive.
You know, one of the lessons -- learned from this whole process on the website -- is that probably the biggest gap between the private sector and the federal government is when it comes to I.T. ...
Well, the reason is is that when it comes to my campaign, I'm not constrained by a bunch of federal procurement rules, right?
-Obama on Healthcare.gov
Government, Incompetence
Cornelius Osborne may not seem like baby-sitting material. He was convicted of raping two women. A succession of felonies, from robbery to failing to register as a sex offender, repeatedly sent him to prison, state records show. But over more than two years, the state paid Osborne nearly $5,000 to baby-sit two children, before his latest conviction — for dealing drugs — put him back behind bars.
Democrat, Environmentalist, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Obama
Some top Congressional Democrats are losing faith in President Obama's signature employment initiative, the promotion of so-called "green jobs." They've lost so much faith that on Thursday one liberal Democratic member of Congress called the president's green jobs program "a lot of talk."
Government, Incompetence, Financial
WASHINGTON — After examining hundreds of combat support and reconstruction contracts in Afghanistan, the U.S military estimates $360 million in tax dollars ended up in the hands of the Taliban, criminals and power brokers with ties to both.
Government, Incompetence, Waste
They are the two ships no one wanted, almost constantly embroiled in one dispute or another for the past 25 years. The two Navy behemoths have never gone on a mission, were never even completed, yet they cost taxpayers at least $300 million.
It was obviously the signature effort of the Obama administration, but it was a flop.
Forget launching to the moon; we can't even launch a website now. What does that tell us?
-Glenn Harlan Reynolds
Democrat, Liberal, Crime, Government, Guns, Incompetence, Obama
The strategy was supposed to lead ATF officials to drug cartel leaders, but agents admitted they never followed the weapons to see where they went. As a result, they testified, hundreds of weapons are now on the streets in the United States and Mexico, in the hands of criminals. On Thursday, watch ABC15 News at 10pm to see the official documents that prove guns connected to the ATF strategy are in Valley neighborhoods.
Democrat, Government, Guns, Incompetence, Obama
The lethal fallout from a botched operation by the US Department of Justice which allowed almost 2,000 illegally purchased firearms to be transported from the streets of Arizona to drug gangs in Mexico has been laid bare in a scathing Congressional report, which concludes that it resulted in countless deaths. A mixture of arrogance, over-confidence, and staggering ineptitude by the Department's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives [ATF] was outlined in a 51-page investigation by two Republican members of a House panel charged with getting to the bottom of what went wrong during a two-year operation called "Fast and Furious".
Government, Incompetence, Narrative, Economy
On Feb. 17, 2009, Congress passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 at the urging of President Obama, who signed it into law four days later. A direct response to the economic crisis, the Recovery Act has three immediate goals: Create new jobs and save existing ones, Spur economic activity and invest in long-term growth, Foster unprecedented levels of accountability and transparency in government spending
Government, Incompetence, Oops, Education
We’ve been adding staff by the truckload for decades without improving achievement one bit. Since 1970 (see the charts below) public school employment has increased 10 times faster than enrollment, while test scores have stagnated.
"Obamacare's problem is larger than a website failure, and it will take more than a 'tech surge' to fix it. The website does serve as stark evidence that the federal government is ill-equipped to centrally manage our nation's health care." -Eric Cantor
Government, Incompetence, Character
Taxpayers have paid out nearly $1 million per year in settlements to congressional employees who have been harassed or otherwise treated badly by their political bosses over the past 14 years, according to records from the Office of Compliance.
Government, Incompetence, Obama, Science, Islam
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said in a recent interview that his "foremost" mission as the head of America's space exploration agency is to improve relations with the Muslim world.
Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Diversity
The CIA will measure its progress of recruiting minorities, LGBT individuals, veterans, and women by using an “inclusion index.” The agency will also track “Diversity and gender break-down of applicant flow data and recruiting trends.” CIA Director John Brennan said diversity and inclusion are “at the heart” of what the intelligence service is “charged to do.”
Government, Incompetence
In his first call to 911, Curtis Mitchell sounded calm, explaining to dispatchers that his "entire stomach [was] in pain." By the time his longtime girlfriend made a 10th call nearly 30 hours later, she was frantic. He wasn't breathing. He was cold to the touch.
The Vietnam War taught Boomers that governments lie. That was a bad thing. Obamacare is teaching millennials that government is incompetent. -Liz Peek
Government, Incompetence, Bigbrother
“Operation Protect Our Children” sounded great! The Department of Justice and Homeland Security‘s tag-team beatdown was supposed to seize ten criminal sites this past weekend. Instead, it shuttered 84,000 innocent domains. And replaced them with a banner labeling them as child porn traffickers. Whoops!
Democrat, Government, Incompetence, Obama
American officials said Mr. Panetta was basing his statement not on secret intelligence but on media broadcasts, which began circulating before he sat down before the House Intelligence Committee.
Democrat, Liberal, Government, Guns, Incompetence, Obama, Oops
Obama told Univision‘s Jorge Ramos that President Felipe Calderon wasn’t informed of the operation because he — the president of the United States — wasn’t informed either. When asked whether he knew of the weapon smuggling plan, Obama responded that it is “a pretty big government” with “a lot of moving parts.”
Government, Incompetence, Waste
NASA reports show $479,108 dollars worth of high-tech equipment simply vanished at Kennedy Space Center in 2010.
It looked bad last week, but it looks much, much worse now. The federal government has been spying and lying.
The only comfort is that, apparently, it's been largely incompetent at both: Nobody believes the lies, and the spying wasn't even able to catch the Tsarnaev brothers.
-Glenn Reynolds
Government, Incompetence
In a remarkable turnabout, federal health officials say many Americans are now getting too much fluoride because of its presence not just in drinking water but in toothpaste, mouthwash and other products, and it's causing splotches on children's teeth and perhaps more serious problems.
Cue the Jeopardy Music...
Here’s a fun test: can you name something – anything – major in the last two decades that our best and brightest have not screwed up?
Government, Incompetence
Discriminating against black farmers turned out to be a giant mistake for the US Department of Agriculture, with taxpayers now on the hook for settling tens of thousands of claims to correct an injustice that led to the demise of thousands of black farms across the heartland. Yet the only USDA official even remotely involved in the so-called Pigford II settlement to ever get fired, or even punished, was Georgia rural director Shirley Sherrod, who is black.
Democrat, Government, Incompetence, Obama
CIA Director Leon Panetta helped touch off an avalanche of erroneous expectations Thursday when he testified that there was a "strong likelihood" that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak would step down by the end of the day. Within minutes, senior aides to Panetta sought to tamp down the impact, saying he was merely referring to media reports.
Government, Incompetence, Abortion
"This doesn't even rise to the level of government run amok," Corbett said at a Capitol news conference at which he described his administration's actions in the month since Dr. Kermit Gosnell and eight employees of his West Philadelphia clinic were charged criminally. "It was government not running at all. To call this unacceptable doesn't say enough. It's despicable."
Progressivism Infects The United States Military
Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada recently hosted its first-ever drag queen show at one of its on-base dining and entertainment clubs, according a base spokesperson.
Hilarious Government Incompetence
"I’m on the computer and am in the Social Security death index, and I’m scanning down and all of the sudden, whoa!" she said. "There’s my name, Carol Combes, where I was born, when I died."
Government Pension Plans
"We’re beyond crisis," Katy Durant, chair of the Oregon Investment Council, said in an interview after last week’s meeting. "We should have been addressing this 20 years ago and it’s just been building. It’s a little bit like a Ponzi scheme. Sooner or later it’s going to catch up with you."
Social Security
A study by the nonpartisan Rand Corp. found that the rate of return for African-Americans was approximately 1% lower than that for whites. The result was a net lifetime transfer of wealth from blacks to whites averaging nearly $10,000 per person.