Submitted by Michael Snyder of The End of the American Dream blog [16],
There has always been a substantial level of incompetence at federal agencies, but under the Obama administration incompetence has risen to unprecedented levels. This year the incompetence of the Secret Service, the Veterans Administration, the Department of Homeland Security and the CDC have all made national headlines. And it is hard to forget how the launch of Obamacare was such a failure that it became a global joke. We live at a time when our government officials can’t seem to do anything right. When Americans complain about the government, most of the time they focus on how corrupt and wicked our politicians have become, and that should not be downplayed whatsoever. But just replacing those politicians is not going to fix what ails our government. The quality of the workers throughout the government bureaucracy has fallen so dramatically that our federal agencies can no longer be depended upon to perform even the most basic governmental functions competently. The following are 10 examples of the extreme incompetence that now pervades the federal government…
#1 The Secret Service
Once upon a time, the Secret Service was considered to be one of the finest security organizations in the entire world. But these days, they seem to be too busy partying and chasing prostitutes around [17] to do their jobs properly.
For instance, multiple intruders have recently been able to cross the White House lawn and walk right into the White House without being stopped by anyone. Here is just one example [18]…
An intruder made his way across the White House lawn and through the building almost to the Obama living quarters before being stopped by a Secret Service officer who was off duty: This chilling news is more than just a kind of melodramatic movie scenario come true.
Next to the military, the Secret Service is probably the most highly regarded institution within the executive branch. Or it was.
Now we learn its agents can’t catch a guy running across the White House lawn; can’t stop the guy at the front door; can’t get to him before he gets to the stairs that lead to the rooms where the president’s daughters sleep.
#2 The Obamacare Website
The launch of Obamacare overall has been a complete and total disaster, but the launch of the Obamacare website in particular was such a dramatic failure that it is hard to put into words [19]. The Obama administration spent more than 2 billion dollars on healthcare.gov and trumpeted it as the future of healthcare in America, but the website was a technical nightmare. The following is how one news outlet [20] described it…
Healthcare.gov has shutdown, crapped out, stalled, and mis-loaded so consistently that its track record for failure is challenged only by Congress.
#3 Dropping Weapons To ISIS Terrorists
It is well known that ISIS is using captured U.S. vehicles and weapons [21] to take over vast stretches of territory in Iraq and Syria.
So what do we do? U.S. planes drop even more weapons into the region to aid in “the fight against ISIS”, but ISIS is ending up with many of those weapons too [22]…
At least one bundle of U.S. weapons airdropped in Syria appears to have fallen into the hands of ISIS, a dangerous misfire in the American mission to speed aid to Kurdish forces making their stand in Kobani.
An ISIS-associated YouTube account posted a new video online Tuesday entitled, “Weapons and munitions dropped by American planes and landed in the areas controlled by the Islamic State in Kobani.” The video was also posted on the Twitter account of “a3maq news,” which acts as an unofficial media arm of ISIS. The outfit has previously posted videos of ISIS fighters firing American made Howitzer cannons and seizing marijuana fields in Syria.
ISIS had broadly advertised its acquisition of a broad range of U.S.-made weaponsduring its rampage across Iraq. ISIS videos have showed its fighters driving U.S. tanks, MRAPs, Humvees.
There are unconfirmed reports ISIS has stolen three fighter planes from Iraqi bases it conquered.
#4 The Immigration Crisis
The Obama administration has refused to secure our borders and has openly encouraged [23] mass illegal immigration from Central and South America.
As a result, our border patrol is absolutely overwhelmed. Tens of thousands of women and children [24] are turning themselves over to border patrol agents and asking for asylum. They expect to be taken care of and given a new life in this country. As a result, “processing centers” along our southern border are packed to the gills with women and children living in absolutely deplorable conditions as the federal government figures out what to do with them.
#5 The VA Scandal
Under the Obama administration, military veterans have been treated like human garbage [25]. For years they have been denied the care that they need, and many Americans were absolutely shocked when they learned that countless veterans have died waiting to get an appointment at one of our VA facilities. Needless to say, this scandal has greatly shaken [26] the confidence that the public has in the Veterans Administration…
The Veterans Administration was viewed favorably by 68 percent of those polled last year. But it too has since been swept up in a scandal over long wait times for veterans seeking care and records that were falsified to camouflage the problems. In the CBS poll, just 30 percent rated the VA as doing a good job.
#6 The SEC
Many wonder why the SEC never seems to go after the big Wall Street banks. Well, perhaps one of the reasons is because many SEC employees have been too busy watching porn all day long [27]…
One senior attorney at SEC headquarters in Washington spent up to eight hours a day accessing Internet porn, according to the report, which has yet to be released. When he filled all the space on his government computer with pornographic images, he downloaded more to CDs and DVDs that accumulated in boxes in his offices.
An SEC accountant attempted to access porn websites 1,800 times in a two-week period and had 600 pornographic images on her computer hard drive.
Another SEC accountant used his SEC-issued computer to upload his own sexually explicit videos onto porn websites he joined.
And another SEC accountant attempted to access porn sites 16,000 times in a single month.
#7 The Environmental Protection Agency
You know that things are bad at your agency when employees have to be told not to poop in the hallways [28]…
It appears, however, that a regional office has reached a new low: Management for Region 8 in Denver, Colo., wrote an email earlier this year to all staff in the area pleading with them to stop inappropriate bathroom behavior, including defecating in the hallway.
In the email, obtained by Government Executive, Deputy Regional Administrator Howard Cantor mentioned “several incidents” in the building, including clogging the toilets with paper towels and “an individual placing feces in the hallway” outside the restroom.
Confounded by what to make of this occurrence, EPA management “consulted” with workplace violence “national expert” John Nicoletti, who said that hallway feces is in fact a health and safety risk. He added the behavior was “very dangerous” and the individuals responsible would “probably escalate” their actions.
And just like the SEC, there has been a lot of porn watching going on at the EPA too. The following is from a recent Washington Post article [29]…
In May, the Environmental Protection Agency’s inspector general disclosed that a senior-level employee was caught spending as much as six hours of his day looking at porn. The IG found that the employee had downloaded and viewed more than 7,000 pornographic files. The Justice Department is investigating further for possible prosecution.
Four months later, the employee has not been fired and is still collecting government pay, Environment & Energy Publishing reported last week [30].
That prompted Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) to introduce a bill the day Congress left town to make it a uniform federal government law that employees cannot look at porn at work.
#8 NASA
Generally, NASA has been regarded as one of the more competent government agencies. That is why it is so alarming that a rocket recently exploded just before liftoff at a NASA facility in Virginia [31]…
An unmanned commercial rocket headed for the International Space Station to deliver supplies exploded just after launching Tuesday, filling the sky with a massive fireball.
The Antares rocket supplied by contractor Orbital Sciences blew up moments after liftoff at NASA’s space launch facility on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, the space agency said.
The explosion destroyed the rocket and spacecraft and immediately raised questions about the future of NASA’s reliance on private commercial ventures to carry vital payloads into space to supply and support the orbiting space station.
#9 The Federal Reserve
The Federal is NOT a government agency [32], but it claims such a close relationship with the government that I have added it to this list.
Since the Federal Reserve was initially created, the U.S. dollar has become more than 20 times less valuable, and the U.S. national debt has gotten more than 5000 times larger.
More recently, the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing program has been an unmitigated failure. The Federal Reserve created 3.5 trillion dollars [33] out of thin air and pumped it into the financial system, but all of that money has done next to nothing for the real economy. The percentage of Americans that are employed is about the same as it was during the depths of the last recession [33], the homeownership rate in this country has been falling for seven years in a row [33], and half of all Americans now make less than $28,031 a year [34].
#10 Ebola
This is the one area where the incompetence of the federal government could be the most dangerous. Originally we were told by the CDC that Ebola could only be spread by “direct contact” with the bodily fluids of someone else. But now we have learned that the government believes that Ebola is “aerostable [35]“, and we have also learned that researchers have discovered that Ebola can remain on surfaces for up to 50 days [35]. If Ebola does start spreading widely in this country, giving people bad information could accelerate the spread of the disease.
And Barack Obama continues to refuse to ban all non-essential air travel [36] between the United States and the nations in West Africa where Ebola is raging out of control.
As far as Obama is concerned, incompetence is the best case scenario. There is absolutely no excuse for not protecting the American people from what could become the greatest health crisis that any of us have ever seen. If a major Ebola pandemic does erupt in this country, the blood of countless numbers of Americans could potentially be on his hands.
