The incompetence and mismanagement of taxpayer dollars and government programs, be it Covid, voting, or over staffing continue to waste taxpayer dollars while never resolving any major issue facing the country. We call it political class insanity so here is today's dose of recent insanity:
1)We have often opined that the country can survive less than stellar politicians and Presidents, e.g. Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Joe Biden, and other less than outstanding politicians. Our freedoms and history of democracy have survived these folks.
But it is also our opinion that our freedoms will not survive a biased, failed, or lazy journalism profession. Journalism should be a bastion of truth and diligence that holds politicians and others to high standards of integrity and honesty. Because if journalism does not, who will?
But lately the journalism industry and those operating within it have not done a good job of protecting our freedom against the selfish motives and incompetence of the American political class. Consider:
During the George Floyd riots in Minneapolis, a CNN reporter said that there were “fiery but mostly peaceful protests” while standing in front of a building that was burning to the ground.
A deceptive editing of a CBS “60 MInutes” report showed Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, in a negative light during the Covid years but never showed the larger context of the situation which would have shown a completely different story than the heavily biased editing that showed up on the show.
ABC News paid out $15 million in a defamation suit brought by President Trump for inaccurate and biased reporting.
We could list many other biased reporting by today’s journalism industry but you get the idea. Corporate news directors often seem more interested in advancing a political angle or viewpoint even if it meant cutting corners on integrity.
But the trend of biasness continues:
Nationwide strikes, riots, and attacks have spread across France in the past couple of weeks.
Hundreds of businesses have been looted and burned to the ground.
Government buildings have also been burned to the ground including many historical buildings that have survived world wars and natural disasters but not the current riots.
Thousands of people have been arrested and hundreds of police officers have been injured.
CBS News took a look at the massive destruction and rather than accurately show and describe the carnage, violence, and destruction, they referred to the situation as “scuffles” with “small groups.”
Not riots, not mass destruction, not violence, not arson, just “scuffles” as if a few guys were pushing each other around on the street corner after having a few beers.
After getting immediately crucified online for this ridiculous characterization they took down the article.
Someone, somewhere in the CBS News hierarchy had a reason for down playing the situation, something a real journalist would never do. And if the journalism industry cannot accurately report on what is obvious to everyone with a brain, it makes you wonder what other news they are reporting in a distorted manner.
And this bias and lack of integrity undermines their responsibility of reporting the truth and keeping the country’s politicians under control.
2)Just when you think that the politicians in the country cannot have worse priorities, you are amazed what they believe they should focus on:
JoCasta Zamarripa is running to become the secretary of state for the state government of Wisconsin.
A secretary of state of any state is responsible for maintaining accurate public records and archives, modernizing and streamlining archives processes, managing election processes and integrity, and overseeing state trust funds, four critical state government functions.
But apparently Ms. Zamarripa has different priorities: "My number one priority is to see the governor sign driver's licenses for undocumented Wisconsinites into law."
Forget the traditional and well defined roles of a secretary of state, her number one priority is to take care of illegal immigrants in her state.
Obviously, a primary manner for illegal immigrants to vote illegally is to present a state issued drivers license when registering to vote, i.e. shenis using government resources to push a non-government political objective.
Her defense of such nonsense is ridiculous: "Driver's licenses for undocumented Wisconsinites is going to improve the public safety of all Wisconsinites," which obviously make no sense.
Another example where the welfare of Americans is a secondary priority of another American politician.
3)Several years ago we loved talking about in inane comments of New York Congresswoman, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez:
Despite having a business degree, she did not know how the most basic government unemployment rate is calculated.
She openly stated that the three branches of our government were the Presidency, the House Of Representatives and the Senate, the Supreme Court be damned.
Her inability to understand tax policy and terms caused Amazon to abandon her Congressional district as a candidate for a secondary headquarters operations, a decision that would have brought billions of dollars of value to her Congressional district.
We dialed back our observations of her inane comments since they actually got boring after a while. But in a retro manner, let’s discuss her most recent idiotic statement and observation of life:
Elon Musk recently demonstrated a prototype Tesla car that also flies.
The prototype demonstrated how it could hover above the ground, perform aerial flips, and go from 0 to 60 mph in one second, truly remarkable technology.
Musk told the crowd: “This will be an actual car that’s on the roads. You know, I’m not sure it’s necessarily legal in all jurisdictions. But there will be such a car that someone can own, so it’s going to be pretty wild.”
Musk is obviously one of the great innovators of our era, Tesla electric cars, Space X rocketry, and other breakthrough technologies.
But despite this outstanding record of innovation, the ex-bartender Congresswoman once described Musk as follows: “This dude [Musk] is probably one of the most unintelligent billionaires I have ever met or seen or witnessed.”
First of all, not sure that using the word “dude” is becoming a member of Congress. But given her proven insane ignorance in her background compared to the mammoth accomplishments of Musk, not sure she should be calling anyone, never mind, Musk, unintelligent.
4)We have previously discussed the atrocity and failure that the Obama Presidential Library had become:
First off, it is ugly as sin, a giant gray monolith with no style or personality at all.
Its construction costs went way over budget, going from the original estimate of $300 million to $850 million.
The powers behind this disaster insisted that many minority owned businesses be involved in the construction, which is fine, but those same minority owned businesses then got stiffed and their services were never paid for.
One minority owned plumbing company that worked on the library had to lay off 25 workers when the owner never got paid.
Locals in the area around the library were not happy that local parkland, 19 acres, was destroyed to make room for the library.
And adding insult to injury, despite all these problems, it is really not a true Presidential library since it contains only copies of Obama administration papers, the original documents are stored with the National Archives in Maryland.
But the insanity continues:
The library foundation bought the 19 acres for a mere $10 but with an agreement that a $470 million endowment would be created to fund any future problems associated with the library.
But the endowment now contains only $14.2 million.
Since the annual cost of operating the library is estimated to be about $40 million, a ridiculous number for a building that has already been built, unless tens of millions of dollars are raised every year to fund the library operations, the city taxpayers may soon find themselves in a difficult financial situation since the current endowment level, $14.2 million, is not going to cover half of one year's operating budget.
What a mess: cost overruns, timeline overruns, contractors not paid, valuable city parkland destroyed, a grossly ugly end product, and a financial liability that might soon hit city taxpayers. Not sure you could do a worse job if you actually tried to fail.
5)One funny and telling closing discussion point today:
Obama spent over $800 million to build his library.
It has an annual operating budget of about $40 million.
So far, Biden has collected about $4million to build his Presidential library.
It is said that he had wanted between $200 million and $300 million to build his Presidential library, meaning that he is a whopping $196 million short of the low end of his intentions.
Looks like his effort to build a decent Presidential library for himself is going to be just as unsuccessful as his tenure in the White House. Given he has been out of office for almost two years, it does not seem like a burst of donations and funds are going to be coming his way anytime soon, a big indictment of his failed Presidency.
That will do it for today: a Presidential library effort that may never get fulfilled, a Presidential effort that failed on so many levels, a Congresswoman still entertains us with inheritance of the world, another politician that favors illegal immigrants over Americans, and another big journalism integrity failure.
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If you agree that we need to deseat every member of Congress for their lack of success and accomplishment, then please consider going to the following petition link to help the cause:
https://www.change.org/p/deseat-congress-reset-freedom
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