- According to a blurb in the July 16, 2010 issue of The Week magazine, a recent public opinion poll from the Marist Institute reported that 26% of Americans do not know that we as a nation won our independence from the English. Some respondents within this 26% cited France, China, Mexico, and others as the country we gained our independence from. This is both an indictment of our public education system and a threat to our freedom going forward if we have so many citizens that do not have even a basic knowledge of our history of freedom and liberty.
- An Associated Press article from July 23, 2010 reported that while the government was paying tens of billions of dollars to various financial institutions, those same institutions were paying out $1.6 billion in compensation to the institutions' executives that got those companies in trouble in the first place. Plus, the Obama administration will not try to recover any of that taxpayer money because the administration's pay czar thought shaming the financial institutions was punishment enough. Yeah, right. They were so ashamed that they all still cashed the checks. This just provides another example of how poorly constructed and how poorly executed the whole bailout/TARP process was and how unprepared the political class was once the financial situation deteriorated so quickly.
- Elizabeth Warren, who is one of the few people in Washington that knows how to analyze and solve a problem and who is not bashful of telling the truth, no matter how ugly it is, is being considered to head up the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that the latest financial regulatory overall law establishes. Regardless of what you may think of the law, Alabama Senator Richard Shelby does not want Warren to head up the organization because she is "trying to change everything." Better we should change nothing and stay in the mess we are now? Excuse me Senator, but keeping the status quo is actually going backwards (The Week magazine - week of August 6, 2010).
- According to an article in the Washington Post, as summarized in the The Week in the August 6, 2010 issue, 75% of the lobbyists who work for oil and gas companies previously worked for the Federal government, more than twice the rate than other industries. The lobbyists for these oil and gas companies include eighteen former members of Congress and dozens of their former Congressional aides. I am not saying that the BP oil spill would not have happened if government officials, both past and present, had not been so chummy with the same companies they are supposed to be regulating, but in the future, Step 40 from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" would prevent even the faintest hint of favoritism since it would prohibit politicians from going to work for any lobbyist organization for ten years after the politician's term expired.
- According to a Wall Street Journal article that was summarized in the July 23, 2010 issue of The Week magazine, the late Senator Robert Byrd funneled more than $4 billion in pork expenditures to his home state of West Virginia over the years. What did these billions of dollars accomplish? According to the article, this dependency
on money from Washington may have actually made the state worse off since during Byrd's tenure, the state actually got poorer relative to other states, falling from 39th to 48th in the measure of per capita income. It also resulted in the creation of a modern highway, Route 50, that is as economically useless as the Alaskan bridge to nowhere would have been. More taxpayer money wasted, no lives improved. - By now, most people should be aware that there may be a House Of Representatives trial in the fall to consider thirteen charges that have been leveled at Congressman Charles Rangel by a House ethics committee. These alleged infractions include misusing his office resources and tax and disclosure violations. What makes me mad here, but does not surprise me, is that regardless of what party is in charge, the corruption goes on and on. Nancy Pelosi said she would drain the swamp of corruption when the Democrats took over, but apparently that may not be the case. Given that the charges were made by the peers of Rangel, I am assuming they must be very strong, too strong to ignore. What I dread is that political sniping that will go on in the fall, elections season, while this trial is underway. You can bet no substantial issues will be debated, no problems solved, no solutions put forth. Pure, unadulterated political in fighting serving no one's purposes accept the politicians.
- Not to be outdone, the same ethics panel will be putting forth ethics charges against Congresswoman Maxine Walters for violating a House rule that members not exert improper influence that results in a personal benefit, that members not grant or accept special favors for themselves or family members that could be viewed as influencing official actions, and a rule that member's conduct must reflect creditably on the House. The sad part of these charges, if true, is that others in the Congress have not been reprimanded for similar actions. Senator Daniel Inouye did the same type of influence peddling in the bank regulation arena that Walters is accused of doing and nothing has happened to him. At least one member of the House was actively trading bank and other financial institution stocks in her personal portfolio while serving as a member of a Congressional committee that was deciding what banks would get bailout money and how much they would get. This is called insider trading and certainly falls under the special favors violation but nothing happened to these people either. Thus, while I am sad that at least two members of Congress allegedly traded off of their positions for personal gain, I am also disappointed that other known members of Congress did the same but have not been punished. Makes me continue to question Pelosi's claim of draining the swamp of corruption when so many are still knee deep in that corruption swamp.
- Let's close on a happy note. According to a report in http://www.politico.com/ and summarized in the August 6, 2010 issue of The Week magazine, Senator John Ensign is fighting a legal and ethics battle as a result of having an affair with an aide's wife. He felt the need to start a legal defense fund to help in this battle, which was established in May. So far, the defense fund has accumulated a grand total of $10, and that $10 came as a result of a contribution from Ensign himself. Thus, maybe this is a first sign that Americans are getting fed up with the poor performance and unethical behavior of the leaders in Washington.
Our new book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at www.loathemygovernment.com. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.
Also visit the following sites for freedom:
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
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