Mad, Sad, And Been Had By The American Political Class - Part 2

This is the second article in a two part series that talks about various political class topics and actions that have made me mad, sad, disappointed, or make me feel like we have all been had by our politicians. Nothing ties them all together except for the fact that if these situations and events are allowed to happen, there is that much less time that is being spent on fixing the major issues facing the country today.

• Several months ago, Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State and someone who should have very little say in domestic economics, gave a speech where she pontificated that some Americans actually earn too much money in this country. Those ridiculous statements came to mind this past weekend where she and her husband spent between three million and five million dollars to marry off their daughter. I guess Federal employees and retired Presidents are not among those Americans who make too much money. If anyone can spend five million dollars on a wedding, I would think they would fall into Hillary's bucket of making too much money, unless, of course, the ones spending so much money are her and Bill. Makes me mad that politicians can be such hypocrites.
• The state of California has been flirting with state government insolvency and cash flow problems for several years now. This has resulted in dramatic cutbacks in state services, state aid to cities, and the laying off of state employees. Given the dire economic straits that every level of government faces in California, what is a San Francisco government commission proposing? The commission wants to outlaw pet shop sales within the city limits. Yes, they have proposed that you not be able to operate a pet shop in San Francisco. Regardless of where you stand on this issue, with the state hemorrhaging red ink, services being cut back, failing public schools, crime, etc., do we really think that studying the elimination pet shops issue is the optimal use of city resources and time? Should there even be such a commission in these hard times? Would it not be better and have a bigger impact on more people to take whatever effort and resources this commission is wasting and put them to better use? Makes me sad that government wastes so much effort and money on trivial issues.
• An article by Abigail Field on the AOL Daily Finance website from June 30, 2010 reported that government regulators were lax in their fiduciary duty regarding AIG. In testimony in front of a congressional panel, an ex-executive of AIG, Joseph Cassano, reported that the government bailed out AIG obligations at 100 cents per dollar amount demanded by the banks that AIG insured. Cassano testifies that the government did not have to pay full value since the terms of the AIG contracts with the banks allowed the government to negotiate substantially lower payments. As a result, the American taxpayer paid much more than was required to bail out AIG's commitments to banks such as Citi and Goldman Sachs. As taxpayers, we have been had.
• An Associated Press article from July 27, 2010 reported on the follow up investigation into what caused a fatal Washington DC Metro train crash last summer that killed nine people. While the investigation proved that a bad electronic circuit was at fault, the bigger finding was that the National Transportation Safety Board found and stated that the agency running the Metro had been warned about safety deficiencies for 15 years prior to the crash and that the Metro organization "fostered a culture of indifference to chronic safety issues." Great, not only is this government agency incompetent, they are also deadly, with Americans dying as a result of their culture and indifference to safety. Makes me mad that citizens' safety is put at risk by any government entity who should be protecting the public.
• A recent blurb in the July 23, 2010 issue of The Week magazine reported that the Federal government had ordered far too many flu shots last flu season, medicine that had now gone bad, requiring that 40 million does be destroyed. Makes me sad that the Federal government could not do a better planning job and been more efficient with their flu preparation since the cost of the destroying the 40 million does was over a quarter of a billion dollars ($260 million), money that could have been used so much more effectively, if only to start paying down the national debt.
• I came across a recent YouTube video of Congressman Peter Stark of California and his recent town hall meeting. Asked by a constituent where the power and limits of the Federal government started and stopped, the Congressman stated his view that the Federal government could do anything thing it wanted to do, i.e. the five hundred or so people sitting in Congress could do anything they wanted, the Constitution and Bill of Rights be damned. We have been had, we actually thought that our politicians took an oath to uphold the Constitution, guess that oath did not have much meaning, at least for Representative Stark.
• And finally, a July 30, 2010 article from the Associated Press reviewed a current issue in Washington regarding how much power the FBI should have in gaining access to Americans' online and electronic communications behavior in the fight against terror. Currently, the FBI can get access to anyone's records without a court or judge's approval, the agent in charge only needs to write up a national security letter. The interesting statistic in this area was the fact that from 2003 to 2006, there were 192,499 national security letter requests, or about 1234 every week. Are there that many terrorism threats that we need to access Americans' records over a thousand times a week? Makes me mad to think that we are quickly entering a George Orwell/1984 environment where the government can do just about anything it wants as long as it somehow works the word terrorism into its national security letters. Hey, maybe Congressman Stark is right after all.

There you have it, I'm mad, I'm sad, and I am tired of being had by the American political class. That is why November is so critical, we need to dump the incumbents out of Congress and start over with people that will focus on the top priorities and issues, will respect individuals' freedoms and liberty, will stop making ridiculous and hypocritical statements about Americans, and will take a strong and renewed interest in protecting the wealth of American taxpayers so that wasted flu doses and mismanagement of AIG type bailouts never happen again.

Peter Goodman of the New York Times, as reported in the July 30, 2010 issue of The Week magazine, summed up a lot of our feelings when he was writing about how the White House, scientists, engineers, and a multinational oil company could not control the Gulf oil leak: "After the Wall Street collapse, the intractable war in Afghanistan, and the bitter political warfare in Washington, Americans are rightly asking: Is there anyone we can trust?" Not if they all make you sad, mad and disappointed.


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http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/