Possibly the most overlooked fact about our government is also the most obvious fact: all government agencies need to find ways to spend the huge amounts of money they are given. If they don’t spend it all, then they receive less money the next year. That serves to lower their power and influence which is clearly not a fate any government agency wants to see thrust upon themselves. To that end, today the Environmental Protection Agency has been outed. They waste millions of dollars on silly projects without value, outright employee fraud, and everything in between. Take a look and decide for yourself if this is how you want your tax dollars put to work.
The No-Inspect Contracts
In keeping with its reputation of being wasteful and useless, the EPA assigns numerous contracts to any number of businesses, but then simply ‘forgets’ to come and do any inspections to ensure things are being handled in a proper and reasonable fashion. In one instance, a company went five years after receiving EPA funds before a single inspection was made.
When the EPA did finally come, they found all kinds of problems and issues. Apex was simply hired to manage a warehouse. Unfortunately, they ended up leaving it full of security, safety, and health hazards. According to the Office of Inspector General, this included unsecured personally identifiable information like passports being left in the warehouse. Plus, they found corrosion of the warehouse, mold, and even vermin feces.
As bad and wasteful as that may have been, it gets worse. The employees of the contracting company also learned they could take advantage of the situation and built hidden, unauthorized personal spaces that served as their own private hideaways. Couches, exercise equipment, televisions, and other personal items were found in these areas that were blocked from the view of security cameras thanks to the help of inventive partitions and boxes.
Health Research Conducted On Twitter
Social media is all the rage today and while it does have many interesting uses, not many taxpayers would agree that researching and combating the stomach flu would be one of them. Yet, this is another brilliant idea developed by the EPA to waste more of your hard-earned tax dollars. After all, use the money or lose it, right?
Starting in January 2014, the EPA purchased a number of tweets in order to help them conduct their ‘research.’ According to the agency, they are trying to help identify people in the United States who are suffering from the stomach flu.
This brilliant idea involves having EPA human health specialists looking through numerous tweets and diagnosing whether or not the person in question is actually suffering from the flu. They are then going to take the dates of those tweets (all of them, presumably) and cross check with actual epidemiological data obtained from the Centers for Disease Control in order to determine if those tweets do actually correlate to flu rates.
Whatever happened to a good old fashioned thermometer? Or simply asking people if they have the flu? Better still, why identify people with the flu at all…does this help anyone in any way, other than wasting public funds?
The CIA-EPA Agent Who Could
Have you heard about the EPA expert on climate change who thought he was also a CIA agent? This one involves actual fraud and may make your blood boil.
His name was John Beale, the highest paid employee at the EPA. This guy had the audacity to tell senior EPA officials he was a CIA spy working in Pakistan, which necessitated some lengthy absences from his duties at the EPA.
Never mind the fact that Mr. Beale never worked for the CIA, much less engaged in any covert spy or undercover work. The real story of waste here might be the fact that the EPA never even bothered to verify anything about his story. They simply never cared to look into this and continued paying the man a salary and bonuses, even during his long absences. He was regularly away from work while on these non-existent ‘missions’ for months at a time. His longest absence was 2 ½ years!
During this time away, Beale actually was doing the very normal activities of bike riding and hanging out at a vacation home. The poor man finally retired in 2011. After all, there is only so much of that type of covert work that one can handle before it really starts to affect you. Finally, the good old EPA discovered they had been played and John Beale went to prison for fraud. By the way, it was actually the Office of Inspector General that discovered all of this, not any EPA official, senior or otherwise, who technically had responsibility for investigating any outlandish claims like being a dual EPA-CIA agent.
EPA Spends Millions To Reduce Methane
Ever hear of the Global Methane Initiative? This is an EPA program with the grand goal of being able to recover methane gas cost-effectively and then use it as a clean energy source. Aside from being a ridiculous and probably unattainable goal, the agency has engaged in a program of giving grants to foreign governments, private businesses, and nongovernmental organizations to fund any number of programs with this or similar goals.
Sadly, they are no closer to achieving this laudable goal today than when they began back in 2001. Just as an example of some of the things the EPA considers to be a worthwhile ‘investment’ under this program include $700,000 to Thailand’s Department of Livestock and Cooperation to help reduce methane from swine farms. How do you stop a pig from expelling methane gas? We don’t know…and apparently the EPA still doesn’t know, either!
The agency also gave $100,000 to the International Institute for Energy Conservation in India to determine if methane could be captured from distillery and wine waste. The answer, in case you are in such suspense, is no. Another EPA pet project up in smoke, along with our tax dollars. All in all, the wonderfully helpful and responsible EPA has spent more than $180 million in their failed quest to reduce global methane emissions.
EPA Regulations
Of course, this doesn’t even get into the arbitrary and arduous regulations imposed by the agency upon all types of American businesses. When a government agency has too much time on its hands and too much money that they simply must spent, we get stupidity like this. They have nothing else to do, so they decide to write some more ridiculous regulations. And the rest of the government or Congress never seems together enough themselves to try and reign in this abuse of power and financial irresponsibility.
Your Future Sold Out
Look, this is your money being spent. You have the responsibility to invest retirement funds responsibly, unlike the EPA and other government agencies. As long as the EPA continues having money just shoveled at them, do you really expect anything to change in terms of their wastefulness?
Of course not. This is why it’s imperative to protect yourself and your loved ones financially; the government and its many agencies do not have your best interests at heart. Secure your independence today with a self-directed IRA transfer, and discover how empowering it is to control your financial future. Speak with a Janguard IRA transfer adviser by calling 800.571.6341 now.
