This is the third in a series to review the latest insanity, lunacy and antics from the American political class. The first two posts were quite depressing. We saw politicians getting richer, fraudsters getting richer, bridges ready to collapse around the country, and more. As a warning, the insanity today and in subsequent days will be as bad, as wasteful, and as depressing as the insanity we have covered this month and in the years leading up to this month. The number of politicians stays the same but the idiocy they come up with, the ineptness they exhibit, continues to grow exponentially.
1) Over 20 million Americans are unemployed or under employed. The average/median household annual income in this country has dropped substantially since AFTER the recession ended and is now about $50,000. The price of gas is up about 80% since Obama took office. Food stamp recipients now total over 47 million Americans, an all time record by far.
And what does a current member of Congress think about his salary, currently about $172,000 a year with outstanding benefits to boot? According to recent Politico article, one lawmaker, Congressman Phil Gingrey, said he’s “stuck” making $172,000 a year, while Congressional aides will go on to make in big bucks lobbying on K Street, according to a National Review report. Staffers “may be 33 years old now and not making a lot of money. But in a few years they can just go to K Street…and make $500,000 a year. Meanwhile I’m stuck here making $172,000 a year,” Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.) said, according to the National Review.
He is “stuck making $172,000” while tens of millions of Americans cannot even find a job or need help putting food on the table. He is “stuck” making three times more in salary than what the typical American family makes. And it is not like the Congressman is poor. According to Politico, quoting the National Review reports, his net worth is about $3 million.
We are truly living in a “Hunger Games” country when the country is suffering dire economic stress and a Washington politician complains about only making $172,000.
2) The U.S. healthcare industry can make you shudder. According to Aetna, in the United States, we spend over $2.3 TRILLION a year on health care. No other country in the world spends more but 32 other countries in the world have higher average life expectancies.
This comes out to over $10,000 a year for every single American citizen but we still rank 33rd in the world. And Obama Care is likely to make us spend more and fall further down the rankings since the legislation never looked at the root causes of the $2.3 TRILLON expense.
3) According to a recent article from the New York Post, that was reviewed in the September 30, 3012 issue of The Week magazine, in just 2001 alone former Congressman Robert Kennedy, Jr. had sexual trysts with 37 different women. He tracked and categorized these trysts, along with annotations, in a diary that the Post had obtained.
Kennedy, whose wife committed suicide last year, is just another politician whose respect for his spouse, his word of honor, his constituents, and his public office is no better than the politicians who came before him, e.g. Weiner, Spitzer, Edwards, MacGreevey, Sanford, Ensign, his uncle JFK, etc. If you are having affairs with 37 different women, it is a lot tougher focusing on the government work of the people.
4) An article in the December, 2012 issue of Reason magazine gave a stunning example of how government spending and mismanagement of taxpayer wealth is so out of control, using the Chicago city government as an example:
- While trying to get its out-of-control budget tamed, between 2003 and 2012 the city of Chicago eliminated more than 8,000 city jobs, about 20% of its workforce.
- However, according to a recent analysis from the Illinois Policy Institute, the cost of health care for the remaining employees’ jumped 29% in 2012.
- Additionally, from 2003 to 2012 the annual cost of a city employee on the city payroll jumped from $58,299 per employee to $96,082.
- Thus, with 20% fewer employees compared to 2003, the city is paying out $700 million more a year for 20% fewer employees vs. 2003.
- Far fewer employees and far more costs, you cannot make this stuff up.
- But it gets worse since on the current budget trend, the city must find a way to increase its annual contributions to the employee pensions fund by almost three fold, from $476 million a year to $1.2 billion a year by 2015.
Needless to say, unless some drastic cuts are taking soon, the city is going pull a “Detroit” in the next few years despite cutting a fifth of its workforce. This is the poster child for out-of-control government spending when you slash staff but increase your staffing budget.
5) I get a little sense of relief when I find out that at least our politicians are no different when it comes to politicians around the world in wasting taxpayer money. The latest issue of Business Week has some information on how the Chinese government has gone overboard building infrastructure in China and has allowed loose credit policies (are you listening, Federal Reserve board) to result in the building of new towns and special zones that have gone unused and unoccupied because while the government said to build and encouraged building. The immutable forces of the market said there was no need or demand for the build outs.
One of the most glaring examples of taxpayer wealth wasted is the building of a new airport in a far flung city in the western Chinese hinterlands in the Xinjiang province. The new airport has four check-in counters and handles a grand total of two flights a DAY. Thus, wasting taxpayer money does not appear to be a uniquely American political talent.
6) On January 21, 2010, President Obama stated: “I’m proposing a simple and common sense [financial] reform, which we’re calling the Volcker Rule, after this tall guy behind me.” The Volcker rule that he proposed was to ensure that banks could not make investment bets and investments that would stick American taxpayers with the bill if the banks ended up failing, much like what happened in the Great Recession.
Simple enough. When the Dodd-Frank financial industry reform legislation was passed, the Volcker rule encompassed 12 pages of the final bill. Three years later, the rule has still not been written into formal, enforceable regulations. The unfinal, unapproved regulations now run 530 pages long and we still do not have an answer of how to do this simple thing.
Deadlines for enforcement continue to be missed and you can be sure that many lawsuits will ensue since translating 12 pages of law into well over 500 pages of regulations is going to tick off some people regarding the intent of the original 12 pages and the effect of over 500 pages.
Whenever something can be done simply, you can be sure that our political class will make longer, more difficult and less effective.
7) Speaking of financial matters and the Great Recession, a graphic from a recent issue of Business Week showed how much taxpayer money that the Federal government gave to bail out the firm AIG actually passed through AIG and directly into the hands of foreign banks:
- Canadian banks got $1.4 billion of American taxpayer wealth
- French banks got $20.8 billion
- British banks got $2.6 billion
- German banks got $10.8 billion
- Swiss banks got $3.8 billion
- Netherlands banks got $.6 billion
- Total = $40 billion of American taxpayer wealth ended in the vaults of foreign banks.
Which obviously raises the question of why were foreign banks relieved of the responsibility for their stupid decisions in the marketplace? And why were American taxpayers forced to pay for their stupid decisions?
That $40 billion could have been used to:
- Give every American household a $350 tax rebate.
- Could have kept the White House tours operating for 40,000 years.
- Could have put a trained, armed police professional in every U.S. school for about five years to prevent future Newtown like shootings.
Never underestimate the ability of the American political class to take care of bankers and itself from a financial backer and donor perspective. And now they have expanded to take care of overseas bankers also.
Enough insanity for today but tomorrow brings another day and another batch of lunacy from our 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:
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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
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