1) According to an article from The Atlantic, that was summarized in the December 27, 2013 issue of The Week magazine, while homelessness has fallen 4% nationwide over the past year, it has risen 13% in New York City and Los Angeles. In fact, one out of every five homeless persons in this country lives in either New York City or LA.
Thus, it appears these two big city mayors, who have been traveling around the country preaching gun control, have failed to take care of the people they were elected to take care of, the citizens of their cities. Maybe a little more time in the office and a lot less time traveling for by these two mayors would have resulted in a little less suffering of their hometown homeless.
2) We have often reviewed the reality of how we have lost the war on drugs long ago. We spend an inordinate amount of taxpayer wealth locking up, feeding, and tending to low level dealers and recreational users of drugs, we have seen many lives destroyed by drugs since we spend much of our drug-related wealth on detention and law enforcement rather than treatment, we have seen our rights violated in the name of drug control, our idiotic drug policies have created wealthy and violent drug cartel crime syndicates around the world, etc.
But most of the political class at the Federal, state, and local levels of government continue to fight the losing battle against drugs, a losing battle that may be at odds with what most Americans want. According to a CNN report that was summarized in the January, 14, 2014 issue of The Week magazine, 55% of Americans now favor the legalization of marijuana, a level that is up from 18% in 1987. Only 35% of today’s Americans oppose legalization.
Thus, the majority want to legalize at least marijuana, a majority number that seems to be trending higher while the politicians in this country want to continue down the losing path of a war on drugs. Just another example of the major disconnect that today’s politicians have with reality and common sense.
3) One of the American political class’s most tragic screw ups over the past several decades is the recent news out of Iraq that al Qaeda terrorists have gained physical control of a 400 mile swath of land in western Iraq. This area includes the Iraqi city of Fallujah.
For those of you that do not remember Fallujah, it was the scene of major fighting for U.S. forces when they were in Iraq, fighting that accounted for about 1,500 U.S deaths out of the 4,400 U.S. deaths of the entire U.S. Iraqi military operation. It is impossible to calculate how much taxpayer wealth was spent to free that area of terror elements, but given that 1,500 U.S. service personnel lost their lives, you can bet the cost was in the tens of billions of dollars.
And now we can safely say that 1,500 lives and billions of dollars were spent for nothing, given that their sacrifices have left the area right where it was ten years ago, a hotbed of terrorist activity and control. We never should have gone into Iraq in the first place but once there, it would have been nice to have left behind some permanent good and change, a wish that the American political class has screwed up from day one.
4) According to a report from Slate.com that was reported in the January 24, 2014 issue of The Week magazine, for the first time ever, most members of Congress are millionaires. This finding comes from the Center for Responsive Politics.
At least 268 of the 534 members of Congress appear to have a net worth of over $1 million. Makes you wonder: 1) how many of them were not millionaires before they entered Congress but could then dip into the corruption treasure chest of Washington, 2) how many politicians are richer after they leave Congress than when they entered Congress, and 3) do we really think that rich politicians have any idea how regular Americans are suffering in these dire economic times and also have the compassion, drive, and intelligence to resolve the economic plight of ordinary Americans?
5) Fifty years ago, Lyndon Baines Johnson launched the “war on poverty,” a “war” that appears to be just as unsuccessful as the lost “war on drugs.” Since that day fifty years ago, the Federal government has spent $16 TRILLION, almost the equivalent of our current national debt, to try and get rid of poverty in America. How well have Washington politicians done in this drive:
- Today, almost 50 million Americans need Federal government food assistance every month, up almost 50% just in the past few years.
- There are over 20 million Americans who are unemployed or under employed as a result of faulty and idiotic economic policies coming out of Washington, policies and failures that contribute to poverty.
- About 15% of Americans are living below the government’s poverty line, a percentage that while it has varied over the years is still not to far away from what it was 50 years ago.
- Government anti-poverty programs are so bad that in 2012 alone, all levels of government threw about $1 TRILLION at the problem, or about $20,620 for every American living in poverty.
Thus, if the “war on poverty’s” goal was to substantially reduce or eliminate poverty in the richest country in the history of the world, it has been an unadulterated failure. As Robert Samuelson said on the subject in a recent Washington Post article, “Government is fairly good at handing out money, it’s less good at changing behavior.” I would paraphrase his quote to read: “Politicians are really good at spending money, they are less good in achieving a positive result when spending that money.”
Einstein once said: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” So it must be insane when the American political class does the same thing over a fifty year period, constantly expecting a different result but getting the same result: money constantly spent, poverty constantly remaining.
6) Speaking of U.S. poverty, consider a related article that was in a recent issue of Business Week magazine. Despite spending about a trillion dollars a year on all anti-poverty programs, the percentage of U.S children living in households with incomes below the 50% national median level of income is 23.1%. In Germany and France that percentage is 9.5%, in Canada that percentage is 14%, and in Britain that percentage is 10%.
Something is terribly wrong in how we operate our country’s financials and tax streams when U.S. politicians can somehow take a trillion dollars and still have almost quarter of U.S. kids living in households earning less than the median income level while other countries can do so much better. I do not have the answer but I am smart enough to realize that we need to change what we are doing and better manage our money to get better results in the anti-poverty game.
We somehow need to take Einstein’s advice and either force our existing politicians to get more creative and intelligent in this area or dump them out of office and find some smart people to do the job. How much worse could it get for a trillion dollars worth of wealth that today gets us via little the useless yet expensive programs the existing political class continue to operate?
That’s enough insanity for today, it can get very discouraging doing these reviews. There is so much suffering so much lost potential, so much waste that if someone, somehow had a stitch of intelligence, will, and leadership, I truly believe that the many problems facing this country cold be resolved. Unyielding poverty levels, high, chronic unemployment, under education of our kids are solvable problems. They are just not solvable by the current class of politicians running the country, most of whom do not have the intelligence, the will, and the leadership to do things differently as recommended by Einstein.
If you feel the same way, please consider joining our drive to impose term limits on current Washington politicians. Let’s get the long standing, long failing incumbents out of office because really, how much worse could it get if we replaced every member of Congress with new blood and new ideas:
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 comments:
Post a Comment