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It’s the time of month again where we review all of the political class insanity, idiocy, and destructive behavior from the past month or so. It used to be that this feature would only take a day or two each month to cover. However, as the insanity seems to have increases exponentially over just the past few years, it is no longer possible to get everything reviewed in a day or so.
The record number of days to cover all of the insanity was attained this past August when we needed nine full days of posts to cover one month’s worth of politicians screwing up. Given that the Washington political class has been back in session for several week, there is a very good chance that the nine day record will fall this month. The excitement builds.
1) From the “you cannot make this stuff up” folder. Ohio State University’s public safety force has a brand new toy: an armored fighting vehicle known as a MRAP or Mine Resistant Ambush Protected troop transports. The university acquired the transport as free military surplus.
Apparently, MRAPs are used by the Army and the Marine Corps to give troops cover and concealment during recon missions and combat patrols. They can also survive a direct hit from an Improvised Explosive Device or land mines.
Does the university know something that the rest of us do not know? Is it bracing for an influx of IEDs or land mines? Why would the Federal government give a university such a vehicle is beyond my comprehension. Especially since the Ohio State police and all other Ohio local police forces do not have MRAPs or any military-grade equivalent. Wouldn’t they be better owners of such a device rather than campus police? Makes no sense at all.
2) Since 1972, Gallup polling organization has polled Americans with the following question: “How much trust and confidence do you have in our federal government in Washington when it comes to handling [international problems/domestic problems]--a great deal, a fair amount, not very much, or none at all?” If we look at some historical and recent results of their findings we see that:
- In April 1974, during the dark days of Watergate and four months before Nixon resigned as result of the scandal, 24% of Americans told Gallup that they had a great deal of trust and confidence in the federal government’s handling of international problems and 49% said they had a fair amount of confidence, for a combined 73% who said they had a great deal or fair amount of trust and confidence in the federal government in its ability to handle international issues.
- In that same survey fielded in the turbulent Nixon era, 9% said they had a great deal of trust and confidence in the federal government’s handling of domestic problems and 42% said they had a fair amount of trust and confidence—for a combined 51% who said they had a great deal or fair amount of trust and confidence.
- On September 2007, during the administration of President George W. Bush, the percentage of Americans having a great deal or fair amount of trust and confidence in the federal government’s handling of international problems hit 51%, 22 percentage points less than Nixon during his crisis time, and the percentage who had a great deal or fair amount of trust and confidence in the federal government in the handling domestic problems hit 47%, four percentage points below Nixon‘s ratings.
- Gallup published their analysis of that 2007 survey with the headline: “Low Trust in Government Rivals Watergate Era Levels.”
- So if faith in government was low in Bush’s second term relative to the dark days of Watergate, how would one describe the latest Gallup results during Obama’s second term: the most recent Gallup question on this issue found that only 49% of Americans had any faith the federal government could handle international issues and only 42% of those polled had any faith that the federal government could handle domestic Issues, both are all time LOWS from Gallup’s continuing survey.
- Those numbers are record breaking lows and trending downward.
All time lows. Just more data and realities to prove our hypothesis that we are suffering through the worst set of Washington politicians in the history of the United States.
3) Speaking of falling numbers, every year the Heritage Foundation, in cooperation with the Wall Street Journal, creates and publishes the Economic Freedom Index which measures the impact of liberty and the free market in different countries around the world. The index has historically shown a strong connection between prosperity and economic freedom, with measurements related to government spending, trade freedom and the rule of law.
Their latest analysis shows that the United States has fallen to the lowest level of economic freedom since the year 2000. This deteriorating performance now places us behind nine other countries that scored higher on economic freedom over the past year.
Other findings from their analysis include:
- Hong Kong received the highest economic freedom rank, followed by Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, and Switzerland.
- The U.S. score has been declining for five consecutive years in terms of economic freedom.
- Only Ireland has posted a similar decline the past five years.
An old saying goes as follows: “You cannot have political freedom without economic freedom.” As our economic freedom shrinks in this country, so does our political and overall freedom. Not a good trend.
4) Several years ago, New York Congressman Charles Rangel got into some serious tax evasion and House of Representative ethics issues. His behavior was so bad that the House actually stripped him of some committee assignments, one of which was the powerful House Ways and Means committee. Nevertheless, he did not go to jail or even get kicked out of Congress for acts that would have gotten most other Americans jail time.
Well, it looks like the Congressman did not learn as lessons as reported in a recent New York Post article:
A Harlem political club, which benefits from taxpayer money and boasts Rep. Charles Rangel and Councilwoman Inez Dickens as district leaders, has received more than $200,000 in donations since 1999 but didn’t report the income or even register with the state, officials said.
Dickens also happens to be the Martin Luther King Jr. Democratic Club’s landlord, collecting monthly rent.
Want to bet he survives this scandal also, with no major financial impacts and no jail time at all? It must be great to be above the law.
5) Speaking of being above the law, this type of political class behavior does not happen just in Washington with Federal officials. According to a recent post on the excellent website, www.againstcroniyism.org, Washington state government politicians headed to work can't get speeding tickets, according to the Washington State Patrol (WSP) and at least one local Washington police department.
Washington lawmakers are apparently state constitutionally protected from receiving noncriminal traffic tickets during a legislative session, as well as 15 days before the session begins (come on, it might be a big state but unless you are taking a mule to a legislative session, 15 days is too long!)
State Patrol spokesman Bob Calkins says the privilege not only applies to moving violations near the state Capitol in Olympia, but potentially anywhere in the state.
The logic? Detaining lawmakers on the road, even for the short time it takes to issue them a speeding ticket, and even if the legislature is not yet in office, may delay them from getting to the Capitol to vote. Never mind that their needlessly speeding and other traffic antics might kill or maim their own constituents.
Just like Obmaa Care and just like tax evaders (e.g. Charles Rangel), the political class in this country, at the Federal and state level, continually carve out special exemptions for themselves at the financial and possibly life expense of the people they should be serving, not screwing.
So, are off to a rousing start and just scratching the surface of what our political class has been doing to us lately. Exempting themselves from laws but subjecting us to those same laws, reducing our political and economic freedom at a drastic rate, and most disturbing, destroying the confidence that we have in their ability to resolve any domestic or international issue and crisis. At least they had one accomplishment: the students and staff at Ohio State University are now safe from IEDs and land mines (sarcasm).
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:
Term Limits Now:http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w
Yesterday, we took a first cut at examining our hypothesis that freedom and integrity of the press have been replaced by blatant conflict of interests on the part of our news outlets. We examined the family relationships that exist between high ranking officials in the Obama administration and their relatives, spouses, etc. who hold high ranking positions in news organizations that have generally given the Obama administration failures a free pass.
We discussed how many career journalists have forsaken their careers in journalism to take high ranking positions int he Federal government and how all of these former journalists came from news organizations that were almost always easy on and sympathetic to the Obama administration's many failures and shortcomings. In both areas. we raised the question of whether conflict of interest was becoming more important in today's press than integrity of reporting.
Today we will continue that loss of integrity question, starting with the old cover photo switcheroo tactics of Time magazine:
3) The September 16, 2013 issue of Time magazine in the United States had a picture of a football player and the question: “Is it time to pay college athletes?” Nothing suspicious there unless you find out what Time put on the cover of its non-United States covers for their September 16th edition:

Yes, the rest of the world got a feature article and cover that focused on the rise of Vladimir Putin and how he had rescued President Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry, and the rest of the world from a potential military fiasco if the U.S. had attacked Syria. We have already discussed what a mess the President had made of the Syria crisis in a series of posts starting with:
http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/09/political-class-insanity-special.html
We will not go into those Syrian details here. The real story is how the left leaning news organization, Time magazine, has protected the President’s foreign policy bungling by not carrying the same article about Putin’s rise to prominence at the expense of the United States in its U.S. edition.
The foreign covers acknowledge Putin’s triumph over Obama, telling foreigners that Putin “doesn’t care what anybody thinks of him.” Another example of certain news outlets protecting “their” guys rather than being true journalists and reporting facts and realities.
Oh, by the way, Time editor Rick Stengel was a managing editor of Time magazine over the summer but recently fulfilled his decision to leave Time magazine for a position …wait for it…of running the State Department’s public diplomacy mission. He will be working for none other than John Kerry, one of the Obama administration bumblers who totally mismanaged the Syria situation. He apparently received the offer early this summer and immediately accepted but not leaving Time until very recently.
Makes you wonder if journalistic integrity took a back seat to a new job in the State Department when Mr. Stengel got around to putting the latest Time magazine covers together, both domestic and foreign.
4) But apparently, this is not the first time that Time magazine has protected their guy on the left by having a different cover in the U.S. edition of Time magazine from the covers shown across the world. On July 2, 2012, the overseas covers featured China’s fast-growing manufacturing sector, while the U.S. cover was about “The History of the American Dream.” Wouldn’t America have been better served if we had a better understanding of how well China was doing vs. our shrinking manufacturing base?
The Dec. 5, 2011 cover featured an alarming picture of Egyptian street protests, while the U.S. cover told increasingly worried U.S. readers that “Anxiety is Good for You.” Wouldn’t America have been better served to learn all it could about the dynamics and forces going on in Egypt, a situation that the administration never saw coming, than worrying about how good anxiety was for us?
Yes, in both cases it would have been more beneficial and better journalism if these real world problems were presented to the American public. However, it would not have put the Obama administration in the best light so just like with the Putin/Syira cover switcheroo, Time magazine took the political way rather than the integrity way.
5) One last example of potential journalistic conflicts of interest. This one had baffled me for a while until I understood the underlying dynamics. To me, for the last five years, MSNBC has been nothing more than an extension of the Obama administration’s public relations arm.
Everything Obama did, no matter how much it blew up and failed, was either a success or the result of Republican or conservative sabotage. If you did not agree with the President’s policies, according to MSNBC you were a racist. Facts, realities, respect for a difference of opinion did not matter, you were a racist or an idiot. Hardly the stuff of unbiased news reporting.
The nadir of MSNBC’s reporting occurred during the run up to the 2012 Presidential election. At that time, MSNBC put together a montage of movie scenes where buses exploded into a fiery death scenes. They billed the video as a wish that this would happen to the Mitt Romney Presidential touring bus.
At that moment it became abundantly clear to me that MSNBC, more than any other news source in this country, had lost all journalistic and human integrity when it wished a fiery death on a political opponent. The details of this disgrace and our contempt and disgust for their behavior can be accessed at:
http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2012/06/hated-and-vile-polticial-dialog.html
But I still wondered what would make a so-called news organization behave so disgracefully. And then it hit me. Up until relatively recently, MSNBC and its sister news properties had been owned by General Electric.
General Electric received hundreds of millions of dollars from Obama’s economic stimulus program. General Electric does a nice chunk of business with the U.S. government and the U.S. Military. The General Electric chairman sat on Obama’s economic development council. A council that accomplished nothing. But most importantly, General Electric generally makes billions and billions of profit dollars every year and usually gets a tax refund, rarely paying anything in U.S. business income tax. Details at:
http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2011/06/relationship-between-president-obama.html
Thus, there has been a very cozy relationship between General Electric and the Obama administration, one that likely extended into the world of journalism, given how rabidly MSNBC protects Obama’s image and interests, and how much, until recently, General Electric benefited from Obama’s policies and lack of any tax reform strategy.
As I said before, I am not making any accusations of conflict of interest, quid pro quo, etc. But I believe that we no longer have a free press in this country, we have a press that takes sides, distorts facts, ignores facts, and denies the American public the ability to make decisions based on the realities and facts of our issues.
And maybe that is one of the reasons why major issues of our times never get resolved. We are still losing the war on drugs after decades of failure. We are still under educating our kids relative to the rest of the world, a situation that Reagan identified as a problem thirty years ago. We still do not have a coherent national energy strategy, almost forty years after the Arab oil shocks.
Quite possibly, as the examples over the past two days have shown, our press has been too busy concealing and spending much less time help us correct: “No matter how imperfect things are, if you've got a free press everything is correctable, and without it everything is concealable.” Tom Stoppard
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:
Term Limits Now:http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w
“No matter how imperfect things are, if you've got a free press everything is correctable, and without it everything is concealable.” Tom Stoppard
We will use this quote from a Mr. Tom Stoppard as the backbone of our discussion today regarding freedom, democracy, and the continuing decline of an unbiased press in this country. It seems that many people believe that their source of news today is always correct, it is their political opponents’ sources of news that are biased and prejudiced and misleading.
If you are a conservative or Republican, CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times and others hate your views on life and politics and purposely show you and your opinions in the most negative light possible. If you are a liberal or a Democrat, Fox News, conservative talk radio, and others are the devil themselves and not to be believed.
As a result, we have ended up in a place in our history where reality is tainted by the news or press outlet from which you receive your news. Which is a dangerous place to be since if we all do not have a generally common sense of reality, there is no way that we can come together as a country to fix the major issues of our reality today. A favorite quote of mine goes as follows: “There is only one reality, it is just that everyone has a different perception of reality, that is the problem.” And the skewed reporting of our current news outlets makes those perceptions ever wider apart.
Growing up I do not remember such a disconnect across different sources of where you got your news and information from. Walter Cronkite was not much different in presenting facts and realities than Huntley and Brinkley. News and facts were just that, facts. On Sunday morning news shows there were differing viewpoints debated but you knew that was the case. Today, it seems that every day is a Sunday morning news show as different views and opinions are advanced under the disguise of just presenting the facts.
Consider some recent events that prove my point. It seems we have allowed the free “press” in this country to take sides and when the press in a democracy takes sides, truth and reality take a back seat to politics:
1) Consider some facts from a Washington Post article from June 13, 2013:
- ABC News President Ben Sherwood is the brother of Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, a top national-security adviser to President Obama.
- The news director at CBS, David Rhodes is the brother of Benjamin Rhodes, a key foreign-policy specialist in the Obama administration.
- CNN’s deputy Washington bureau chief, Virginia Moseley, is married to Tom Nides, who until earlier this year was deputy secretary of state under Hillary Rodham Clinton.
- White House press secretary Jay Carney’s wife is Claire Shipman, a veteran reporter for ABC.
- NPR’s White House correspondent, Ari Shapiro, is married to a lawyer, Michael Gottlieb, who joined the White House counsel’s office in April.
These are not low level political class/press and news organizations connections. These are people working in the White House at high levels who are related to executives and other high level people in the press. The opportunity for conflict of interest is high.
Now, I am not accusing anyone of anything here. But consider the scandalous environment that this administration has created:
- The Benghazi coverup.
- IRS targeting First Amendment rights of American citizens.
- Electronic eavesdropping, Fourth Amendment rights violations, and invasion of privacy by government snooping that would have been unheard of just months ago.
- Spying on members of the press by the current Presidential administration.
- Voting irregularities in the last election.
- Unparalleled cronyism.
- The unfolding of the Obama Care disaster, the worst piece of legislation ever written.
- The addition of over $5 TRILLION to our national debt in just over four years of this administration.
- The failure to write most of the rules and regulations for the Dodd-Frank legislation that was passed three years ago.
- Failure after failure of economic stimulus programs such as Cash For Clunkers.
- Fast and Furious gun running.
- Many, many other failures and scandals.
You get the idea, we are living in an era of unbridled government failure, economic idiocy, the trampling of personal rights, and other major scandals. Woodward and Bernstein would have had a field day if Nixon was doing all of these things.
But there apparently are very few Woodwards and Bernsteins in today’s press. From this buffet of scandals we get nary a peep from most members of the press. Instead, one is left to wonder if the stench of scandal is ignored because at the last family picnic or over dinner at home last night, conflict of interest became a reality. Just a thought.
By the way, for those of you are appalled that I would even suggest that family members in this administration are using family ties to suppress press coverage of the Obama scandals, ask yourself this:
if Obama was a Republican and there were high level family connections between his staff and executives at Fox News, Rush Limbaugh’s show, etc., you would be livid that the press was not doing its job of covering these scandals because of family conflicts. Right?
2) Let’s review another situation that was and is ripe for massive conflict of interest. The Atlantic recently wrote an article in which they identified 21 journalist professionals from the media that left their press industry jobs to work for the Obama administration, a sample of which are listed below:
- Linda Douglass, who was once a spokesperson for Obamacare, was a former Congressional correspondent for CBS and ABC, as well as a writer/editor at National Journal. She was also a traveling press secretary for the Obama campaign.
- Rick Stengell was the former Managing Editor of Time until he became the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs in the State Department.
- Shailagh Murrau, of the Washington Post, left the Post to join the Obama administration as Vice President Biden’s communications director.
- Warren Bass was once Deputy Editor of the Washington Post’s Outlook section is now a top official in the State Department.
- Geoff Morrell gave up a career in journalism at ABC News to work as a spokesman at the Defense Department.
- The Washington Post’s Stephen Barr left his position as writer of the Federal Diary column to join the Labor Department as a high ranking public affairs official.
- Rosa Brooks was a former Los Angeles Times op-ed columnist who advised Michelle Fluornoy at the Defense Department before becoming a professor at Georgetown.
- Peter Gosselin was an LA Times reporter who became the Chief Speechwriter for former Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.
- Beverley Lumpkin was a former Justice Department reporter/producer for ABC and CBS and a reporter at the Associated Press. She left journalism to work for the Project on Government Oversight and joined the Department of Justice as a Public Affairs Official
- Rick Weiss was a former Washington Post science reporter who joined the Center for American Progress. He is currently the communications director and senior policy strategist for the White House Office of Science and Technology.
- Anesh Raman was an international/Middle East correspondent at CNN who left to send mass emails for the Obama re-election campaign
- Eric Dash was a New York Times reporter before joining the Treasury Department’s public affairs division.
- MSNBC producer Anthony Reyes left to work for the U.S. Treasury’s public affairs/new media office.
Now, I am not accusing any of these people of slanting their previous news reporting, distorting facts, leaving out facts, etc. to promote this administration’s aims and policies. However, I do find it very interesting that all of the people listed in the article are from what we would call left leaning, Democrat party favoring news outlets: the Washington Post, the New York Times, MSNBC, CNN, etc. None of these people come from Fox News, Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity’s shows, conservative blogs, etc.
Again, there is no evidence of actual conflict of interest. However, as we have said many times in this blog in previous posts, the appearance of conflicts of interest are just as bad as actual conflicts of interest and you cannot help but think that there was a quid pro quo on behalf of the left leaning news outlets, their former employees, and this administration, giving the results above.
This ends the first half of our discussion on the hypothesis that today's news outlets' integrity has been replaced by conflict of interests. More to follow tomorrow including the scandalous cover switching of Time magazine.
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:
Term Limits Now:http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w
Yesterday we explored the inner workings of the latest farm subsidy bill being cooked up in Washington. The bill continues the ugly tradition of using taxpayer wealth to serve the political needs of both Democrats and Republicans in Congress. This perversion of what was supposed to be a temporary government program during the Great Depressions has morphed into a corrupt, take form the poor and give to the rich government redistribution of wealth.
As we reviewed yesterday, struggling farmers are no longer the primary beneficiaries of the government's farm subsidies. Most of the money goes to giant farming companies whose revenue streams are in the billions of dollars annually.
Individual millionaires in America who just happen to own what the government considers farm land get paid hundreds of thousands of dollars and in some cases, millions of dollars, to not farm. These rich Americans getting farm subsides include rock and rollers Bruce Springsteen and Jon Bon Jovi, former Presidents like Jimmy Carter, media magnates like Ted Turner, and thousands of people who live in NYC, hardly prime farm country.
Today we will consider the reasons why these egregious examples of enhancing the rich continue to take place. Consider Archer Daniels Midland. According to the Open Secrets website that tracks campaign contributions, in 2012 Archer Daniels Midland-related campaign contributors forked over $864,374 to political campaigns and politicians. This ranked them 472 of 21,023 companies which contributed campaign funds, which put them in the top 2-3% of all political donors.
They also spent over $1.4 million in government lobbying expenses in 2012, which ranked them 350 of 4,374, which put them in the top 8% of lobbying entities. Is there any surprise then that they are a major recipient of taxpayer farm subsidy wealth when they funnel this kind of money to the Washington political class for the benefit of their bottom line?
Springsteen, Turner, and Bon Jovi have been major supporters of the Democratic politicians in Washington over the years. The Rockefeller family has historically been involved in politics on the Republican side. You scratch my back with subsidies, I will scratch you back with political campaign funding, and together we can both screw the American taxpayer.
Disgraceful and pathetic. Which gets us back to our original set-up: Should the Federal government continue to support a very small number of wealthy American companies, wealthy American celebrities, and wealthy American farmers with billions and billions of taxpayer dollars every year or should the money be repurposed to serve a much wider array of American citizen interests such as debt control, tax relief, job retraining, or disease prevention and cure research?
To me, that answer is simple and has two parts. First, farm subsidies, while they may have had a purpose seven decades ago in the midst of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression, they have no role today for the vast amount of the American farm industry since most of the American farm industry is no longer small American farms. This is a political fundraising front, nothing more.
If society thinks it is a good idea to support family farms, than that is what the program should be about. But it should be for active farmers, not celebrity farmers, it should be for non-millionaire farmers, and it should not be for farming entities that have tens of billions of revenue dollars flowing to it annually.
Second, given that seven decades worth of American politicians have not had the gumption, integrity, and intelligence to stop this rip off of the American taxpayer, the need for term limits is even more obvious. We must find a away to eliminate the perpetual incumbent reelection cycle that needs the farm subsidy program to help fund and finance the perpetual reelection campaign. Term limits would go a long way to ending this needless waste of taxpayer money.
You can join this term limit effort at:
www.howmuchworsecoudlitget.com
Because really, today we are already unnecessarily giving our taxpayer money to larger corporations, rich musicians, rich farmers, wealthy New Yorkers, bankers, and doctors, how much worse could it get if we had term limits for all Washington politicians?
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:
Term Limits Now:http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w
Before we talk about the latest example of how the Federal government and Washington political class take from the poor and middle class and give to their wealthy political connections and supporters, let’s review a few background realities:
- The national debt is fast approaching $17 TRILLION, or over a $50,000 debt burden for every man, woman, and child in the country. Given the debt situation, no tax dollars should be wasted in any form whatsoever.
- There are over 20 million Americans who are either unemployed or under employed in the country. Given this horrid employment situation, any tax dollars that could retrain Americans for work would be a societal benefit.
- While the average household income for all American households has dropped considerably SINCE THE RECESSION ENDED, the household income of the wealthier households in this country has risen over the past several years.
- Major diseases such as cancers and aging diseases in our aging population still take a horrific toll on our citizens. Any tax dollars that could stem the medical and personal suffering costs of these Americans would be both humane and pay dividends down the road from decreased national health care costs.
I put forth these realities in the context of the Federal government’s farm bill. The August 16, 2013 issue of The Week magazine put forth a scathing and fact filled review of the farm bill and farm subsidies and how waste, stupidity, and political cronyism are all at work with this bill.
As you read through the following facts, as laid out in The Week’s weekly Briefing column, think about whether the farm bill’s funding is better spent making the wealthy wealthier or if that taxpayer wealth should be repurposed back into the wallets of poor and middle class families to increase their shrinking household income, used to relieve our overbearing national debt burden, retrain Americans for employment, or be diverted into medical research for the pressing diseases of our time. I will tell you ahead of time, based on The Week’s research, any of these efforts would certainly be more worthwhile than what the Washington political class is doing with our money today relative to the farming industry.
The following facts, realities, and disgraces is what the article, along with other data from cited and related sources, found out to be true:
1) In the past 10 years, the Federal government has given the farm industry $168 billion of taxpayer wealth, used to theoretically protect farmers from the fates of weather, price, and economic conditions.
2) Thus, the average American family annually gives farmers and farming companies/conglomerates about $1500 over that time frame.
3) But this money does not typically go to small, family farms. 75% of the $168 billion payout went to just the biggest 10% of farm-related companies such as Riceland Foods, Inc., Pilgrims Pride, Inc., and Archer Daniels Midland, all hardly quaint, small family farms.
4) As a background fact, in 2012, Archer Daniels Midland’s financial statements show a gross operating revenue of about $89 BILLION and a profit of over $3.4 BILLION. Makes one wonder why every American taxpayer needs to pay taxes to subsidize payments to a mega-profitable company like this.
5) But it is not just big companies that receive taxpayer farm support. The Week article points out that Bruce Springsteen, Jon Bon Jovi, former President Jimmy Carter, and media mogul Ted Turner also get paid handsomely for the “farm property” they own.
6) Some quick research from the Celebrity Net Worth website estimates that Springsteen is personally worth $200 million, Bon Jovi is worth about $125 million, Carter is worth about $5 million, and Turner is worth about $2 billion. Which raises the same question that we posed relative to companies like Archer Daniels Midland: why are these fabulously rich people getting taxpayer money under the farm subsidy program?
7) Over the past ten years, farm subsidies have been paid out to over 1,500 residents of Manhattan in New York City. 374 of these payouts have gone to people living in the wealthy and posh Upper East Side of Manhattan, hardly a poverty area or a farming mecca. A sample of those in NYC who have gotten taxpayer farm money include:
- Mark F. Rockefeller (yes, of those Rockefellers) was paid $342,634 NOT to farm his land in Idaho.
- A managing director of Wells Fargo bank.
- A neurologist.
“Payments are going to people in Manhattan who have simply invested in farmland and are about as far away from farmland as you can imagine. That should really make people wonder what on earth has happened to the farm program,” Craig Cox of the Environment Working Group.
8) All farmers have seen double digit growth in the value of their farmland in each of the past three years despite droughts and high temperatures.
9) The average annual household income of farmers is about 60% higher than the average household income of all American families.
10) “The typical American farmer has literally millions of dollars of wealth,” according to Dan Sumer, an agricultural economist at the University of California at Davis. You cannot make that statement for the vast majority of American households who actually pay the farm subsidies.
11) The farm subsidy bill actually pays some farmers NOT to grow crops into order to keep crop prices high, i.e. you reduce supply and prices go up. Thus, the American consumer not only pays for farmers not to grow crops but they then get whacked again with higher prices at the supermarket.
12) As with many Federal government programs, the farm subsidy fiasco was meant to be a temporary short term fix to the problems facing farmers during the Great Depression. Over 70 years later, what was supposed to be temporary is now pretty permanent.
What a disgrace. Higher prices for consumers, more wealth for the wealthy. If any program was ripe for getting terminated in these times of high taxes and higher national debt, it would be the entire farm subsidy infrastructure.
So why hasn’t it been killed for the good of the country? As The Week correctly points out, the only reason it exists is politics. Many of the farmers and farming conglomerates that receive taxpayer wealth are in states that lean Republican. Historically, the food stamp and food assistance Federal programs were hidden in the farm bills of the past, a key aspect for Democrats.
Thus, the farm bill ensures that major constituents of both parties get wealthy at our expense while incumbent Washington politicians get continual funding for their perpetual reelection campaigns. Everybody wins except the poor and middle class taxpayers in this country who fund this circuit of corruption. We will explore this corruption more fully tomorrow and why it persists.
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:
Term Limits Now:http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w
We have been pretty hard on Obama Care over the past month or so. It has failed in so many ways, financially, operationally, logically, etc. It deserves the mantle of worst piece of legislation ever enacted by the Federal government. To prove our point, let us refer you to the initial posts in two series of posts we did to cover the many, many failures of Obama Care, one series in August and one series in September:
http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/09/september-2013-obama-care-update-part-1.html
http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/08/part-1-august-2013-obama-care-update.html
But a recent article in the Independent Journal Review reminded us that while Obama Care is the worst piece of legislation ever, the Federal government also has a quite impressive (in a negative way) history of 13 failed other major pieces of legislation. All of these failures cost American taxpayers trillions of dollars without ever coming close to resolving the problems that led to the enacting of new laws. In many cases, the enacting of legislation to remedy a problem actually made the problem worse.
The first 14 failed pieces of legislation are from the original Independent Journal Review’s analysis and research. We have added a few of our own to this ignoble list that they did not cover or got to depressed to go on after doing the first 14. We covered the first nine failures yesterday. Today, we will review the second nine failures and provide a way to insure that these failures are eventually reversed and major issues are finally resolved
10) Banning DDT: The malaria-killing chemical (which saved 500 million lives in Africa) was banned in 1970 because it was believed to kill birds. Since then, subsequent research has shown that DDT, when used properly and prudently, can be a very effective, environment friendly pesticide that could have saved millions of lives. However, the United states and other Western nations refuse to admit they were wrong and the carnage goes on unabated.
11) The War on Terror: Started under President Bush, we have spent uncountable trillions of dollars attempting to secure our borders and defeat terrorism. We have invaded and disrupted other countries, resulting in a massive loss of wealth, deaths and maiming injuries to our armed forces, and hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths.
We have shredded the Fourth Amendment with a Presidential administration and Federal security apparatus that collects and stores just about every bit of electronic communications we make. In addition to spying on ourselves, we have been shown to do extensive spying on other countries, both friend and foe, damaging our international reputation and relations.
The Federal government’s budget for anti-terror activities has skyrocketed but we are not much safer from terrorist attacks than we were years ago, e.g. the successful Boston Marathon bombing, the successful Fort Hood mass shooting, the unsuccessful underwear bomber (only because of a faulty detonator), the unsuccessful Times Square bomber (again, only because of a faulty detonator), and the successful terror attack at Benghazi.
12) The Assault Weapons Ban: Since the ban expired in 2006, the number of deaths from guns (assault weapons or not) has declined precipitously. Enough said.
13) Social Security: When it was started in 1935, Social Security was a tax of only one percent of income. Now it is over six percent and climbing. In the next 75 years, as America ages, Social Security will go broke. This is another government program that is quickly approaching financial insolvency with no remedial plans in sight from the dysfunctional Washington political class.
14) Obama Care: When he proposed the Affordable Care Act, President Obama assured Americans the plan would cost less than $1 trillion. The latest projection is the program will cost three times that:
Besides these dismal financial projections, check out the other myriad of problems with Obama Care as referenced to the two links above.
Pretty pathetic track record over the decades of failed Federal government programs. Programs that create permanent organized crime cartels and gangs. Programs that do not come close to hitting their original budget projections. Programs that make existing problems worse.
But I think that the Independent Journal Review research, while excellent, left out a few other major disasters:
15) Head Start: Two extensive, major research studies that have been developed and published by the Obama administration have found that nearly fifty years after the Head Start program was started, kids that go through the program are no smarter, wiser, or better off than kids that do not go through the program. In fact, one of the studies found that some kids in some areas are worse off because of Heat Start.
It appears that for almost fifty years we were not helping our kids get a “head start,” we were just using Federal taxpayer dollars to run a massive, nation wide baby sitting service.
16) National Energy Strategy: About forty years after the oil shocks of the 1970s, we are no closer to having a coherent, doable, and intelligent national energy strategy that minimizes the cost of energy while maximizing the protection of the environment.
Gasoline prices are about double what they were just four years ago or so. We still import a lot of our oil for out energy needs, making us vulnerable to international political events. The Department of Energy costs us tens of billions of dollars every year without any noticeable societal benefit in return or any noteworthy breakthroughs in energy research.
17) Budget Management: The Federal government debt is fast approaching a mind boggling $17 TRILLION. This puts a debt burden on every American, adult and child, of about $54,000 per person. Thus, a family of four would have to pay out over $200,000 just to cover their share of the national debt. Pathetic financial management skills.
18) Foreign Affairs: Ramsey Clark once said, “The biggest crime since World War II has been U.S. foreign policy.” He was quite possibly right. We have helped overthrow legitimate governments (e.g. Iran in the early 1950s), we have probably been involved in more wars and military actions than any other government on earth (e,g,, Korean War, Vietnam, Bosnia, Somalia, Iraq/twice, Afghanistan), we use drones to launch missiles into many countries (e.g. Yemen, Pakistan) to kill terrorists but often end up killing civilians, we have supported oppressive tyrants because they pretend to be friendly to our needs and our wealth (e.g. the Shah in Iran, Mubarak in Egypt), we failed to anticipate the “Arab Spring” until it was well underway, and we have and continue to station armed forces all over the globe.
All to get us to the dangerous and volatile position we find ourselves in today relative to the rest of the world.
These disasters have happened regardless of what branch of the political class sat in the White House or controlled Congress. These are eighteen failures of the Washington political class, not just one or two Presidents or a handful of Senators. This is systemic risk and failure throughout the entire system.
We proposed many solutions to these problems in our book, “Love My Country, Loathe Our Government.” From campaign finance reform to Congressional district gerrymandering reform to a brand new, fresh look at many of our major problems (lost war on drugs, high health care costs, failing public education etc.). However, the most important step of all, if we are to breakthrough to real solutions to real problems, is to install term limits on all Washington politicians.
While many of these failures and failed programs have happened over decades, a large number of people currently in Congress were in office over that timeframe and were responsible for all 18 failures. They need to be removed from office so that we can get the old, ineffective ways of doing things replaced with new people with new ideas.
You can help make that transformation possible by joining our cause for term limits at:
www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
Because really. Given the 18 major failures/disasters listed above, how much worse could it get if we started over with new people in Washington?
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:
Term Limits Now:http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w
We have been pretty hard on Obama Care over the past week or so. It has failed in so many ways, financially, operationally, logically, etc. It deserves the mantle of worst piece of legislation ever enacted by the Federal government. To prove our point, let us refer you to the initial posts in two series of posts we did to cover the many, many failures of Obama Care, one series in August and one series in September:
http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/09/september-2013-obama-care-update-part-1.html
http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/08/part-1-august-2013-obama-care-update.html
But a recent article in the Independent Journal Review reminded us that while Obama Care is the worst piece of legislation ever, the Federal government also has a quite impressive (in a negative way) history of 13 failed other major pieces of legislation. All of these failures cost American taxpayers trillions of dollars without ever coming close to resolving the problems that led to the enacting of new laws. In many cases, the enacting of legislation to remedy a problem actually made the problem worse.
The first 14 failed pieces of legislation are from the original Independent Journal Review’s analysis and research. We have added a few of our own to this ignoble list that they did not cover or got to depressed to go on after doing the first 14.
1) Prohibition: For 14 years, the United States was officially “dry.” Problem was, it wasn’t. The black market flourished, as did crime, the Mafia and rampant violence. Enacted in 1919, it was finally repealed in 1933. But not before many people needlessly died, much taxpayer wealth was wasted, a permanent organized crime underworld was established, and many government entities and police departments were corrupted by bootlegger wealth. And we ended up right back where we started in 1919.
2) No Child Left Behind: Under President George W. Bush’s education program, Federal spending for schools more than doubled …and student test scores didn’t budge. We still lag behind much of the industrialized world. In most standardized international student tests, we usually rank some where between 20th and 30th in education effectiveness despite spending far more per student than any other country in the world.
It didn’t used to be that way though, before the Feds poured all the money, regulations, and rules into local schools, we were at the top of the list as far as educating our kids. For this miserable performance, we still pay out tens of billions of dollars every year to a useless Federal Department of Education.
3) Medicare: When Medicare began in 1965, it was estimated that it would cost $9 billion per year by 1990. However, by 1990 the annual cost was $67 billion. Missed that forecast by just a bit, say being off by more than a factor of seven!
In 2013 the annual cost of Medicare is $390 billion. And are we that much healthier than we were 50 years ago despite paying more than 40 times what we paid as a nation in 1965? On an inflation adjusted basis, the GDP of the country in 2012 was less than four times the size of the GDP in 1965. 40 fold rise in Medicare costs vs. a less than four fold rise in the size of the economy. Something has gone terribly wrong.
Needless to say, this program is quickly approaching financial insolvency with no remedial plans in sight from the dysfunctional Washington political class.
4) Medicaid: Same deal and disgrace as Medicare. It was estimated to cost $100 million, now it costs $211 billion or more than two thousands times as much. Needless to say, this program is quickly approaching financial insolvency with no remedial plans in sight from the dysfunctional Washington political class.
5) Immigration reform: The number of illegal aliens entering this country has more than tripled since Reagan was President. Whether we should increase or decrease the flow of immigration, it’s clear the Federal government has no idea what its doing when it comes to securing our borders. Israel has secured its borders, making frequent terrorists attacks within their borders a thing of the past. It can be done, it just cannot be done by the Washington political class.
6) The War on Drugs: Since Nixon, we have spent over $1 trillion and incarcerated millions of Americans over relatively minor drug charges. This is one of the most spectacular failures of our government.
And just like the establishment of a permanent domestic organized crime underworld during Prohibition, our failed war on drugs has created massive, violent, well financed, and efficient drug cartels in Mexico and beyond, cartels that threaten legitimate governments and corrupt police, judges, and government officials worldwide.
7) Farm subsidies: Paying farmers not to grow crops? And many times we are not even paying real farmers. The August 16, 2013 issue of The Week magazine pointed out that in the past, millionaires like Bruce Springsteen, Jon Bon Jovi, Ted Turner, Jimmy Carter, a number of Rockefellers, and other millionaire non-farmers were able to collect taxpayer wealth because of how farm subsidies work in this country. Insanity.
8) Ethanol: Over the last 30 years, the Federal government has given out almost $45 billion in taxpayer wealth to support the ethanol industry. The original purpose was to save the environment by having cars and trucks use ethanol in their vehicle gas tanks as a surrogate for oil. Problem? It’s inefficient, more polluting in several other ways, and raises the price of corn and makes food more inaccessible for the world’s hungry. Genius.
9) “Green Jobs:” When he was elected, President Obama launched an all-out campaign to kick start the Green Economy. I think at last count the administration had handed out nearly $40 billion to dozens of “green companies,” many of which were owned by people who had made substantial financial donations to Obama’s election campaigns.
End result of this cronyism? $40 billion or so given out with virtually no societal benefit in return and a sorry trail of bankrupt or near bankrupt companies such as Solyndra, Spectra, Evergreen, A123, and probably dozens of others.
This is the first half of the 18 worst failures of the Washington political class. Pretty depressing, wouldn't you say? The bad news is that we will cover the other half of the 18 biggest failures tomorrow. The good news is that we provide a potential solution to finally turn failure into success in time for our kids and our grandkids.
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:
Term Limits Now:http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w
After a short diversion to cover the latest crises in Syria and Obama Care, this our fifth post this month covering the latest stupidity, insanity, and antics of the American political class. You do enough of these posts and the associated research and it makes you realize why these politicians have never resolved a major issue facing Americans over the past few decades. They are either unwilling, unable, or to wrapped up in their own personal careers and personal enrichment to care if an issue ever gets resolved.
The continuing saga of political class incompetency and embarrassments starts here:
1) According to a New York Times article that was summarized in the August 30, 2013 issue of The Week magazine, banks, insurers, and other financial institutions have ponied up $10 million to members of the House of Representatives Financial Services Committee. Pretty disgraceful show of business cronies supporting their political cronies for favorable government treatment.
The really embarrassing part of this bribery scheme is that there are a whopping 61 Congressmen and women that actually sit on this committee. 61 members is about 14% of the entire House of Representatives. These 61 obviously know where to go to get the money they need to stay in office. You can bet if this committee had something to do with an insignificant part of the economy, unlike financial services, there would NOT be 61 members clamoring to get on the committee. Disgraceful.
2) In a related set of insanity involving the financial services industry, consider an article from the latest edition of Business Week. The Dodd-Frank legislation that was supposed to fix all of the problems in the financial services industry so that another “Great Recession” never happened again, was passed into law three years ago. We have shown numerous times how the tenets of this law are already proving inadequate to stop financial services misdeeds with the collapse of MF Global being just one glaring example.
However, according to the article, one reason why this legislation may not be working, besides the fact that is was a horrible piece of legislation, is the fact that less than 40% of the processes and regulations that are needed to implement Dodd-Frank have not yet been written. At this rate, it will take at least 7-8 years to implement the legislation, a time length that will likely render anything positive in the law, if there is anything positive, obsolete, as the world moves on.
How poorly is a piece of legislation written if it takes years and years to make it operational> In 7-8 years, the country will likely have gone through at least two more recessions, given historical patterns, any one of which could be caused by the same factors that caused the Great Recession.
Obama recently called a meeting to find out what the problem is and the attendees at the meeting are a good indication of why this is a snail-like process. At the meeting were people representing the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Consumer Financial Bureau, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the National Credit Union administration, and the Securities and Exchange Commission. Nine Federal bureaucracies are working on operationalizing Dodd-Frank and they cannot get out of their own way.
Nine Federal entities and less than 40% of the way there after three years. And many of these entities were the very ones that should have seen the Great Recession coming and were asleep at the wheel until the recession hit them in the face. What are the odds they can even operationalize the legislation, given their history of ineptness?
Thus, we have legislation written by people that probably never read it or understood what was in it which was then handed off to massive Federal bureaucracies that have to make it work even though they have not done their watchdog jobs in the past. Oh yeah, this is going to work out fine. Just like Obama Care, this is what happens when politicians pass bills that are well over a thousand pages long.
3) Staying with the financial services industry again, a recent article in Business Week reported on a Federal Reserve analysis and conclusion that five years after the Great Recession began, major U.S. banks are still not fully ready for the next economic disaster.
The Fed found that although these banks have increased their capital levels, recent financial stress tests indicate the banks have not done enough to test for and anticipate major changes and trends in the economy. This puts them on a par with the Washington political class and the nine Federal bureaucracies listed above who are also not prepared to protect Americans from the next economic blow up. Failure all around.
4) Over 20 million Americans are either unemployed or under employed. This pathetic situation has resulted in many, many Americans defaulting on their mortgages and losing their homes or putting them under intense financial pressure to make their house payments. A very sad situation as the dream of home ownership is shot down by the economy.
But, that has not stopped the Obama administration from spending $313 million of taxpayer wealth on mortgages …for Palestinian homeowners. Yes, American taxpayers are paying for the funding of $313 million in home mortgages for Palestinians living in the West Bank, according to a recently released Government Accountability Office report .
And to add insult to injury, the U.S. will also guarantee $110 million in loans to small- and medium-sized businesses located on the West Bank. The mortgage and business-loan activities will be managed by the Federal Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC). “OPIC is the U.S. Government’s development finance institution,” says OPIC’s website. “OPIC provides financial products, such as loans and guaranties; political risk insurance; and support for investment funds, all of which help American businesses expand into emerging markets.”
Home mortgages for Palestinians, the same people that hate us for our support of Israel? Small business funding for Palestinian businesses when small businesses in America are being smothered and stamped out by Obama Care and other onerous government regulations? Hundreds of millions of dollars going to the one of the most corrupt government entities in the world? Ridiculous.
These wastes of money could have helped some struggling American families and small businesses. These wastes of money could have helped pay down the debt or provided tax relief to American taxpayers. These wastes of money could have kept White House tours operational for over 400 hundred years. But no, it will be sent half way around the world to people that hate us and our country. Pathetic.
5) Former Speaker of the House and current Congressional member, Nancy Pelosi is estimated to be worth in excess of $35 million according to the website, Celebrity Worth. In a “60 Minutes” report that we reviewed in this blog:
http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2012/07/washington-corruption-train-keeps-on.html
it was shown that she participated in up to nine different corporate IPOs, getting special insider financial advantage not available to ordinary Americans. In the space of a few days, she made over $100,000 by participating in the VISA credit card IPO. According to the Celebrity Wealth website, including in her wealth of $35 million is a multimillion dollar winery in California.
Her husband is very active and very wealthy in the California real estate market. Her Congressional salary is less than .5% of her family’s net worth. In other words, Nancy Pelosi is rich beyond most Americans’ dreams.
But ask her to take a pay cut for the good of the country and she goes ballistic. Earlier in the year when the sequester was requiring the Federal government to reduce the overall Federal budget by a nominal amount, Ms. Pelosi had this to say: “I don’t think we should do it [cut the pay of Congressional members, people who earn more than three times the average U.S. household income]; I think we should respect the work we do. I think it’s necessary for us to have the dignity of the job that we have rewarded.”
Rather than cut their salaries, at least this member of Congress thinks it would be a blow to their so-called dignity. Apparently it is better, as a result of the sequester, to terminate White House tours, cut air traffic controller resources to inconvenience millions of America travelers, cut educational aid to native American schools, etc. than it is to ask a Congressional member worth over $35 million to give back a few thousand dollars to the American taxpayer in these times of economic stress.
Given the low performance of the current set of Washington politicians in Washington, there are many other words that I would use to describe their performance and results and none of them include the words dignity, respect, and reward. If these people were paid for the work they do in a merit based system, they would starve to death. The arrogance of these politicians is beyond disgraceful.
So, let’s review. Politicians that fight to be on the best Congressional committee to extort money for reelection purposes. Politicians that write cumbersome, inane laws that cannot be put into effect three years after they are passed. Politicians that fund home mortgage loans and small business loans for foreigners halfway around the world while American families and businesses suffer. And at least one politicians that thinks she is too valuable to have a pay cut despite being worth over $35 million. Pathetic is too kind of a word to describe these people.
And we are still not done for their insanity this month, more to follow at least through tomorrow.
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:
Term Limits Now:http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w
