Monthly Political Class Insanity - February, 2012

For the past several posts, we have laid out detailed  plans on how the United States Of Purple Presidency would address, analyze, and solve the major issues of our times. By approaching each plan from a root cause perspective, using data and not politics to identify solutions without any political baggage to bias the analyses, we can finally develop some coherent plans that have a real chance of succeeding. Compare this approach with the meager solutions the political class has developed in the areas of energy policy, illegal immigration, escalating health care costs, etc. all of which have been abject failures. 

Before we finish laying out our detailed United States Of Purple plans, including our solutions to the crises of Social Security, government program fraud, and a few others, let us take a one day break and remind ourselves why our current politicians probably still have no chance to resolve any issue, large or small. Every month we review the antics and insanity that emanated out of the American political class over the past four weeks or so. It can get depressing when we do this review since it reminds us of a famous quote from Dante, "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here."

However, we would modify the quote to read something like this: "Given the antics, insanity, waste, and ineffectiveness of the American political class, abandon all hope, ye who think our politicians have any kind of clue on how to resolve the major issues of our times." The politicians of our time focus only on the small issues that they think they understand, if they even do that.

They are generally more focused on protecting their personal enrichment and their perpetual reelection, that is needed to ensure that continued personal enrichment. Lord forbid they do any analysis, focus on major/difficult issues, or possibly enrage a few voters for the good of the country.

Thus, review this insanity from the past month of so and then ask yourself: do these people really have an ability or the willingness to tackle the rough issues of our times, given their behavior below, or are you willing to give the United States Of Purple a chance:

- Reason magazine is a great monthly magazine that provides thorough analyses of the issues of our times, focusing on how the American political class not only does not know how to resolve those issues but how the insanity of their actions continually reduce the amount of liberty and freedom in this country. The current month of Reason is full of robust examples of the insanity put forth by our political class:

* Congress passed legislation in November that contained updated guidelines for Federally subsidized school lunches. The guidelines proclaimed that pizza would count as a vegetable since it contained tomato sauce. This line of reasoning continued in January when the Obama administration proposed changes to school rules which would reduce the amount of salt in school lunches while increasing the amount of whole grain offerings.

Earlier in 2011, the administration had addressed the tomato issue by proposing changes to how tomato sauce, and the resultant pizzas, should be treated. Seems like a lot of Federal government resources are being spent on the daring issue of pizza and tomato sauce. A lost war on drugs, which affects many of our kids, a skyrocketing national debt that affect all of our kids, a non-existent energy policy that will affect all of our kids, and many other major issues lay unattended while our so-called leaders debate if pizza and its sauce is a vegetable.

And the real absurdity, according to Reason: only about 20% of the schools in the country follow the Federal guidelines to begin with. A waste of time, energy, resources, and pride.

* Up until last November, it was illegal in the state of Washington for any retailer outside of state government operated stores to sell distilled liquors and spirits. In other words, the state government granted itself a monopoly on a lucrative part of the retail market, something that would have gotten any non-government entity thrown into jail for.

Starting last month, a new law allowed any grocery store to start selling hard liquor and also allowed distilleries to sell their products directly to retailers and vendors, bypassing the the previously mandated, fee collecting state government distributor. Everybody wins here: retailers get an enhanced, profitable product line to sell, distilleries have a freer market with less government fees, more jobs will be created (offsetting the loss of about 900 state government jobs that existed solely because of the monopoly), and consumers will probably see lower prices, now that the government monopoly has been broken, and competition takes hold.

So why is this insanity on behalf of the political class? Simple, why did it take so long and how dare the state political class of  Washington hoard a lucrative piece of the retail market for itself? The government, at any level, should not be both an overseer and a competitor in America.

* Many times government and government organizations get so large and so out of touch with reality that it is down right hilarious. Take the infamous Transportation Security Administration (TSA), those wonderful people that seem to always be in a surly mood at airport check in lines and who often pat down grandmothers and little kids for no apparent reason. Government should be providing an efficient, well needed service, not be an encumbrance to innocent citizens.

Which is exactly what it did, via the TSA, to 17 year old Vanessa Gibbs. it appears that Vanessa wanted to get onto a plane but was denied the ability to board, resulting in her missing her flight, because there was a pistol design on her purse.

There was not a pistol on her purse. There was not a pistol in her purse. There was not a pistol, or any other dangerous substance, on her person. There was a simple, flat, non lethal design of a pistol on her purse. How big and out of touch with reality has our Federal government become when style is now deemed to be a Federal terrorism offense?

* But this type of behavior from the TSA should not surprise us. The agency is only 10 years old but it already has the old age symptoms of most other, much older, ineffective Federal agencies. A House Of Representatives report from last November stated that "the agency suffers from bureaucratic bloat, cost overruns, high staff turnover, mission creep, and a lack of preparedness." Feel safer now?

Oh, the report also noted that there had been over 25,000 security breaches in those ten years. Rough math would find that, on average, there were about 2,500 security breaches a year or about SEVEN A DAY over those ten years. Feel really safe now?

These security breaches happen despite the fact that: 1) the agency is now four times larger than it was initially even though airline passenger volumes are only up about 12% over that same time frame, 2) the agency has spent over $2.4 billion in training over the same time period (mostly because more people have left the TSA since 2002 than currently work there) and 3) there are well over 14,000 TSA administrators and managers around the country that never check a passenger, more employees than what the entire agency had on staff just ten years ago.

Take about waste, turnover, ineffectiveness, and most of all, the danger we are all in when we travel by air. At seven security breaches a day, seven that the TSA knows about and will admit to, it does not appear that we are getting the safety we are paying for as taxpayers and as Americans. However, those pistol design purses are being stopped.

* Why not go for a triple play on the TSA? According to another short article in Reason this month, a TSA agent was arrested for stealing $50,000 worth of electronics equipment from the luggage of airline passengers in the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood, Florida International Airport. Fortunately, he was caught in the act of taking an iPad out of the suitcase by another employee. This was not to be confused with a case a few months ago where a TSA employee was caught taking money of of travelers' luggage.

Any wonder why we have seven security breaches a day, some of the TSA employees are too busy imitating our politicians, i.e. using their government position solely for their personal enrichment.

* Back to Washington state. According to another Reason blurb this month, the state political class of Washington state has established its own little Orwellian world when it comes to your personal medicine usage. Under a new drug monitoring program, just about anyone with a pulse can get access to your drug and medicine history, without your permission, including state, local, and Federal law enforcement officials, doctors, pharmacists, health licensing agencies, regulatory agencies, medical examiners, coroners, Medicaid officials, state workers who work with worker's compensation programs, Department of Corrections employees, health department officials, and other government entities.

Freedom and liberty always take a hit when any American's privacy is ravaged like this. Any government entity should have to go through a stringent review process, the exact opposite what appears to be happening here, before it can intrude on anyone's private medical records.

* A study released last November by Citizens For Responsibility and Ethics In Washington (CREW) found that chairmen and ranking members of Congressional committees receive plenty of campaign contributions from the industries affected by the work and responsibilities of each committee. The study also found that as a Congressional member gets more and more senior on a committee, they receive more and more campaign contributions from the affected industries and companies.

One of their measures was that from 1998 to 2010, industry campaign donations to chairmen and ranking members went up almost 600% while overall contributions went up only 230%. Disgusting.

That is why Step 6 from "Love My Country, Loathe my Government" is so important. Step 6 would allow only individual Americans to contribute to election campaigns. PACs, businesses, unions, lobbyists, etc. would be banned form contributing to any Federal politicians. The conflict of interest and the subordinating Americans' needs to the need of a politicians to constantly get reelected  needs to be squashed once and for all. Otherwise, we need up with the disgraceful conflict of interest situation that CREW has found, but which probably surprise no one.

But political class insanity does not only come from Reason magazine:

- A recent Associated Press article reported that the Washington political class recently passed a law that increased the criminal penalties of using ultra light aircraft to smuggle illegal drugs into this country. Now ask yourself: do we really think that this law will inhibit the actions of Mexican drug cartels in their ever growing, ever more violent, and ever more lucrative drug trade?

Do we really think that the drug lords, who preside over tens of billions of dollars in money and assets, who sit on piles of weapons, who have corrupted much of the government functions in Mexico are now worrying about what to do, given the passage of this law?

These are the same people who cleverly developed catapults to launch illegal drugs over the fence the political class built along the U.S./Mexican border. These are the same people that have been building submarines in the jungles of Central and South America to deliver illegal drugs to the U.S. 

Increasing the penalties for using ultra lights in the drug smuggling portion of our lost war on drugs will have absolutely no impact on the drug cartels' ability to do their business. Rather than dealing with the larger, more complex  issues of illegal drug demand, treatment, and prevention within this country, we have the entire Federal legislative machine worrying about ultra light aircraft and the small amount of drugs each one of these aircrafts could smuggle into the country. Insanity.

- According to an article in the February 10 , 2012 issue of The Week magazine, Joe Biden, second in line of succession to the most powerful political office in the world, recently embarrassed every American  and insulted the the entire population of India, one of our strongest allies. While giving a speech at a manufacturing plant in New Hampshire, he "slipped into an Indian accent" while talking about U.S. job losses to call centers around the world.

This is not to be confused with the time last year when the Vice President stated: "You cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accident." Making us proud everyday, Mr. Vice President.

- In the same issue of The Week magazine was an article about electronics manufacturers in China. While our so-called leaders were debating the merits of whether pizza sauce should count as a vegetable serving, China's schools and universities are graduating 600,000 engineers every year, American schools and universities are turning out about 70,000 engineers.

Now granted, our engineers might have eaten healthier than their Chinese counterparts, particularly if they ate a lot of pizza. But seriously, how screwed up are the priorities of our politicians when they waste time and effort on salt content while our main economic competitor is turning out more than four times the type of university graduates we need to compete in the world of high technology?

Just a few examples of what our politicians have been up to the past few weeks and months. Hopefully, their bad priorities, selfish, greedy enrichment activities, overall embarrassment, and general ineffectiveness will at least encourage you to check out the United States Of Purple effort at http://www.unitedstatesofpurple.com/.

We will resume with our solutions to today's pressing national issues tomorrow.


“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” Albert Einstein

We invite all readers of this blog to visit our new website, "The United States Of Purple," at

http://www.unitedstatesofpurple.com/

The United States of Purple is a new grass roots approach to filling the office of President of The United States by focusing on the restoration of freedom in the United States, focusing on problem solving skills and results vs. personal political enrichment, and imposing term limits on all future Federal politicians. No more red states, no more blue states, just one United States Of America under the banner of Purple.

The United States Of Purple's website also provides you the formal opportunity to sign a petition to begin the process of implementing a Constitutional amendment to impose fixed term limits on all Federally elected politicians. Only by turning out the existing political class can we have a chance of addressing and finally resolving the major issues of or times.

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