Political Class, Insanity, Antics, and Stupidity That Leave Me Scratching My Head

As I have said many times, writing this blog so easy since the American political class always provides new material that is so easy to ridicule, bellittle, and bemoan. The nation's politicians continue to demonstrate why the many steps to fixing the country, as outlined in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government," are needed as soon as possible. We are dealing with a growing government buruearcracy at all levels of government that continues to squander taxes, resources, and time on idiotic or trivial matters while major issues and problems go unattended.

So, without further adieu, the latest from the political class that encompasses the insanity, antics, and stupidity of the people we have elected (with the except of the first two points, the remaining events/actions were all reported in the past few issues of The Week magazine):

• About a week ago, an Oregon seven year old girl, with the help of her mother, decided to set up a lemonade stand at a community event. Simple enough, kids have been setting up lemonade stands for decades. According to the news reports I read, the little girl was very meticulous in the her preparation, wiping her hands with santitary wipes and keeping her raw material protected from being contaminated. Shortly after having set up her stand, an employee of the county board of health came over and told the child that she either had to purchase a $120 temporary restaurant license or close down immediately. If she did not close down her stand, she would face a $500 fine. Thus, I find this to be just stupid government run amok, we actually hire and pay people with nothing better to do than to hassle a lemonade stand. Now, some folks might say that the health inspector was just doing her job and protecting the public's health. But, what if the girl had purchased the $120 temporary restuarant license? Do we really think that the government would have made the public any safer as a result of that license purchase or is the license just a shake down of a little girl to feed the government bureaucracy? I guarantee you that the product served from that lemonade stand would not be any different in quality or safety if the license had been purchased, defeating the argument that the public's health is protected by this law.
• Within the last week, a firefight broke out between the Lebanese army and the Israeli army when members of the Israeli army tried to trim a tree on the border of Israel and Lebanon. Who was at fault could be debated forever but a short Associated Press follow up story revealed the fact that the United States and other western nations provide military equipment and arms to the Lebanese government and army. This is supposed strengthen the Lebanese government against the terrorist Hezbollah forces that exist throughout Lebanon. But think of it: our foreign policy has gotten so insane and twisted that we may actually be arming the very people that will attack and exchange gun fire with our ally, Israel. Unbelievable.
• Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, who is one of the welathiest people in the Senate and possibly the country, has been cited by a story in the Boston Herald for intentionally berthing his $7 million, 76 foot boat in Rhode Island, not Massachusetts, in order to avoid $430,000 in Massachusetts sales tax and a $70,000 annual excise tax. This is the same guy that wants to raise taxes on the rich while he tries to avoid taxes that exist in the state he represents in Congress. According to the Herald, Kerry said he never intended to avoid Massachuseetts taxes (he has written a check to the state for the full amount owed while not admitting he did anything wrong). Yeah, and Charles Rangel never intended to incur thirteen alleged ehtics violations and Maxine Walters never intended to incur three alleged ethics violations and ex-Senator Tom Daschle never intended to avoid paying over $100,000 in owed taxes and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner never intended to avoid paying his back taxes... How stupid to they think we are?
• The Washington Post has reported that journalists in Nuevo Laredo in Mexico on the United States border have stopped reporting on that city's drug wars and violence in order to not get themselves killed. As an example, the article cites a recent 12 hour gun battle between drug gang members and soldiers that left 12 people dead but did not get mentioned by any local news media. One reporter cited in the article said that "we are under complete control" of the drug gangs which tell the reporters what to report and what not to report. How insane is this, the violence and problems related to our drug policies and situation get more and more dangerous every day and nothing seems to be done by the political class to address the situation. Maybe the President should have passed on his meeting with the NFL champion New Orleans Saints team members this week to work on a real problem.
• Congress is about to pass another mini-stimlus bill this week to help out those states with deep state budget woes. However, a recent CNNMoney.com report indicated that Connecticut has the largest debt burden, averaging out to almost $4900 per Connecticut citizen while Nebraska's debt burden averages out to $15 per citizen. The difference? Nebraska lived within its means from a state government perspective, as did some other states, while Connecticut and states like Califronia spent taxpayer money like drunken sailors and are now facing bankruptcy. The stupidity is why do the citizens in states that did the right thing, i.e. spent money they had not money they could borrow, have to bailout out their drunken brethren, allowing the debt stupid states to get off the hook for their outrageous wasteful spending? Seems both stupid and unfair.
• One of the most stupid and hypocritcial laws passed during the Bush administration was the one that outlawed online gambling. The Bush rationale was that online gambling was detrimental to society in that it resulted in increased addictive gamblers. However, if that was the case, why didn't Bush outlaw horse race betting (both off track and at track betting), politically sanctioned casino betting, and state lotteries since they obviously could have the same affect as online poker and other forms of gambling? What happened as a result of the law? According to an article in the Chicago Tribune, millions of Americans have still found a way to do online betting, spending about $6 billion a year on offshore gambling Internet sites, making the United States the "largest betting market on the planet." In other words, the law did nothing to curb online gambling and thus ,was just an antic by the political class to shut down a competitor of horse race betting, casinos, etc., probably at a cost of campaign donations for those politicians that voted to shut it down., Would it not be better to recognize reality, decriminalize the behavior and tax the winnings of online gambling?
• On a final note, apparently U.S. polticians are not the only ones that are stupid, insane, and wasteful. The last article from The Week we will disucss today concerns Nicolas Sarkozy, the President of France. According to the article, Sarkozy has always envied Air Force One and wanted his own version, which he now has. His version has a full bedroom, a special air filter system so he can smoke cigars on board and has a wingspan two feet longer than Obama's Air Force One. I believe that France has the problems that we face from an economic perspective, high debt, high unemployment, etc., but at least Sarkozy' plane envy problem has been neutralzied. Nice priorities, Nicolas.

There you have it, just a few weeks of political class insanity, antics, and stupidity, both domestic and foreign. Notice that issues like failing public schools, the war on drugs, insecure borders, lack of a national energy policy, rising health care costs, etc. never seem to get the high priority vs. politicians trying to avoid paying taxes, looking for new sources of re-election campaign funds, busting up lemonade cartels, etc.

That is why November is so important. We need to dump the current set of politicians and get a set that will work on a much smaller set of higher priority issues in a smaller, less wasteful government structure. Longer term, passage of term limits is critical in order to keep new blood and new ideas coming into government as well as removing the stench that funding re-election campaigns creates. These new people must know how to prioritze the most pressing issues and then solve the problem by identifying the root causes of the problem, not use the problem to their own personal benefit. To do otherwise, is just insane and stupid on our part.



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/