While America Burned, The Political Class Fiddled (With Nothing Of Importance)

Consider the current burning issues facing America and Americans:

1. Unemployment is stubbornly stuck at around 9% with about 400,000 Americans filing for first time unemployment benefits every WEEK.
2. This 9% translates into about 14 million Americans and does not include those Americans who have given up looking for employment or who are underemployed.
3. We continue to wage a lost war on drugs with a lawless narco state evolving just south of our borders, a state controlled by violent drug cartels.
4. Our kids continue to be under educated vs. much of the rest of the world.
5. Our borders still leak and we have no effective or compassionate plan on how to deal with the millions of illegal aliens already in the country.
6. Our national debt is fast approaching $15 TRILLION, or about $132,000 per American household.
7. Health care costs continue to increase unabated, rising about 9% in 2010, with no relief or solution in sight (including the ill written, ill designed, and doomed Obama Care).
8. Gas prices are still up about 100% from a few years ago with no relief in sight along with also no national energy strategy in sight.
9. Corporate, union, PAC, and other organized big money sources continue to pervert and subvert our democratic and political processes, with the blatant cronyism of President Obama's failed alternative energy loans just the latest example of rampant government corruption.
10. Our political processes are so broken that incumbent politicians start running for re-election over a year before the election, about the same time when the resolution of our nation's issues become secondary in these incumbents' eyes.

This list probably includes most of the pressing issues that Americans would put on their personal list as being the biggest challenges and fears in their lives. However, while the country seems to be burning down, what have the Washington politicians been working on or fiddling with recently:

- This week, three members of Congress sent a letter to a fourth member of Congress, Fred Upton, who is the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The letter urged Mr. Upton to hold a Congressional hearing on the use/abuse of human growth hormone in the National Football League, according to an October 25, 2011 Daily News article.

Let's do some simple math. There are 32 NFL teams with about 50 players on their roster at any one time. Thus, there are only about 1,600 members of the NFL at any one time. There are 14 million unemployed Americans.


So now at least four members of Congress, and more if hearings are actually held, are preoccupied with and will be investigating the potential of HGH abuse by a very small set of rich Americans rather than focusing on the generally non-rich 14 million unemployed Americans. Fiddling around while millions struggle economically.

- College football is undergoing a lot of changes lately, with conferences looking to expand and pick off schools from other conferences to expand the number of schools/teams in their own conference. The primary driver to the reshuffling of these conferences is the potential for increased television revenue. Bigger college football conferences usually equates to more revenue flowing to the schools already in the conferences.

One of the subplots to this whole situation is the competition between Louisville University and West Virginia University as they compete for one opening in the Big 12 Conference. Rather than work on reducing the onerous national debt of $15 TRILLION, Kentucky U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell reportedly personally called the Big 12 conference's officials to lobby for Louisville and West Virginia U.S. Senator Jay Rockefeller is reportedly to also be involved, according to an article in the October 27, 2011 issue of the St. Petersburg Times. Fiddling with college football while the nation burns.

- In the October 18, 2011 issue of New York Times, the following news blurb occurred:

The Senate stood up Tuesday for the humble white potato and rebuffed an effort by President Obama to limit its consumption by millions of schoolchildren around the country. The administration has proposed limiting the amount of potatoes and other starchy vegetables that can be served in school lunches to one cup per student per week, and banning them from school breakfasts.


The Senate on Tuesday moved to block the proposal by adopting an amendment to the 2012 spending bill for the Agriculture Department. The amendment, approved by unanimous consent, prohibits the department from setting “any maximum limits on the serving of vegetables in school meal programs.”

So let's review. At least four House members are worried about whether rich football players use HGH and now we find out that all 100 members of the Senate and major members of the executive branch are heatedly debating what should be the weekly ration of potatoes should for our kids. Our kids are going to school to be under educated while our so-called leaders debate about what the kids should eat while they are being under educated. Fiddling around in the cafeteria while they should be working to fix what goes on in the classrooms.


- The Obama administration recently declared that it will aggressively start to shut down and prosecute the owners/operators of medical marijuana clinics in California. Even though the clinics are legal under California state law, they are illegal under Federal law. The original purpose of the clinics was to provide marijuana pain relief to people suffering from various ailments and sicknesses, ailments and sicknesses that most medical authorities agree can be eased by smoking marijuana.


While a strong case can probably be made that the process has been subverted in some cases to get marijuana to people that really do not need it for pain relief, at least some Americans' lives are eased and made more bearable because of the clinics. By shutting down the clinics, there is no doubt that this Obama administration drive to shut down the clinics will add significant physical pain to the lives of many ailing Americans.


While the administration fiddles with some marijuana clinics, it has no plan in place to deal with the overwhelming violence, reach, and drug operations of the Mexican drug cartels. Seems the administration would rather hassle and persecute some small shop owners and medical marijuana users, entities that pose no threat to our national security, then deal with the real drug abuse problem, namely the Mexican cartels.


- Recent news reports indicate that Obama's economic stimulus initiative paid out about $230 million to various entities to  run anti-soda ads. The purpose of the ads was to address the obesity problem in the country by demonizing the drinking of sugary soda drinks such as Coke and Pepsi.

No one can doubt that we do have an obseity problem in this country, a problem that directly contributes to disease and increases our health care costs. No argument there. But solving the obesity problem should be a long term, strategic, coordinated public health effort, not a one time set of anti-soda television ads.

Again, just another example of the Obama administration's blatant inability to think strategically, it only can develop short term tactical programs that seldom work without an overarching  strategic framework.

The point of the stimulus program was to immediately help create jobs and the conditions for an economic recovery. The stimulus plan has obviously failed, as witnessed by the 14 million Americans currently unemployed. Maybe it failed because the political class was on a sugar high and did not realize that another quarter million taxpayer dollars was not being used for its intended purpose, i.e. create economic recovery as soon as possible. Telling people to stop drinking soda does not create jobs and does not attack the obesity problem, it just fiddles away millions of taxpayer dollars.

Giving this inability to set priorities straight, always dealing with insignificant issues vs. our nation's most pressing issues, we must find a way to reform our political processes so that we start getting smart people in office that can resolve our economic, drug abuse, education, and other major issues.

Many of these processes are laid out in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government," with the most important process being a way to implement term limits for Federally elected officials. As a nation we deserve better than the fiddlers we currently have in Washington, fiddlers that would make Nero proud but who do nothing to stop the burning down of America.










Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available, at http://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.


Please visit the following sites for freedom:


http://www.loathemygovernment.com/
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment.com/