http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2014/04/april-2014-political-class-insanity_8.html
Previous posts on the insanity can be accessed at the beginning of previous months by the menu on the right side of this page.
1) President Obama and his political allies claim the economy is doing well. That obviously is either a delusion or a deception since we know that over 20 million Americans are either unemployed or under employed, almost 50 million Americans receive government food assistance every month, and the number of long term unemployed Americans continues to set records.
Another marker of a bad economy comes from the Wall Street Journal that was summarized in the March 7, 2014 issue of The Week magazine. According to a new household survey, almost one third of American households are not saving money. Just 68% of Americans save more than they spend, down from 73% in 2010. The number of households with emergency funds also dropped to 64% from 71% in 2010.
Thus, a large majority of American never recovered from the last recession despite the claims and economic programs of this administration. And this pathetic economic performance has occurred in a non-recession environment. Imagine what is going to happen to these struggling American families when the next recession hits the economy, a recession that is overdue, based on historical trends.
The continued economic ignorance of the current set of Washington politicians has set us all up for some severe heartbreak because of their continued mismanagement of the economy.
2) According to a recent Bloomberg Business Week article that was summarized in the March 28, 2014 issue of The Week magazine, Americans spend $109 billion a year on illegal marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamine, and heroin. These estimates come courtesy of a new RAND Corp. study.
That is more than Americans spend at all of the country’s electronics and appliance stores. This comes out to almost $1,000 a year on average for EVERY American household.
I think based on these estimates, we can now feel fully secure that after more than four decades, the war on drugs the political class has been waging for so long has been a miserable failure. The money we are wasting on trying to eliminate drug addiction via law enforcement and imprisonment is not working. Not if the market in this country for illegal drugs is over $100 billion a year, over $2 billion a week.
However, given that the political class hardly ever puts a failing program or policy to bed, how long do we think it will take for them to humble themselves, admit the war on drugs has failed, and come up with a more compassionate, efficient, and less oppressive answer to the nation’s drug addiction problem? Hint: don’t hold your breath.
3) Obama ran on a plank of government transparency, promising to be the most open and transparent Presidential administration in the history of our country. However, according to a recent Associated Press report, that was summarized in the March 28, 2014 issue of The Week magazine, his administration has cited national security reasons for denying freedom of information requests a record 8,496 times in 2013. This was a whopping 57% increase in the number of denials over 2012 and another whopping 100% increase over the number of denials in his first year in office.
I would hate to see what he considers a non-transparent Presidential administration if he is denying lawful and legitimate access to government information at the rate of about 33 requests for every business day of the year. Pathetic performance or an outright campaign lie? In either case, another instance of a politician and this President being out of integrity in a big way.
4) USA Today rightfully complained in a recent article about the antics of the President and his administration when it comes to promoting Obama Care. The President has appeared in any number of pop culture settings, e.g. the online faux news show “Between The Ferns,” been interviewed by Jon Stewart, etc., to promote Obama Care. However, he has not given an interview to the Washington Post since 2009, he has not talked to a New York Times reporter since July, 2013, and hardly ever takes questions from White House press corps.
He is the President of the United States, he should be willing and able to answer difficult and challenging questions from real news organizations and real journalists. Ducking them in favor of non-journalists, who are no more than comic entertainers, reduces his status and leadership to a pathetic Richard Nixon “Sock It To Me” Laugh-In antic from the late 1960s.
Comparisons to Richard Nixon are probably not the associations this President would like to see for himself but until he shows that he can stand up to American journalists, who really thinks that he will be able to stand up to Russia’s Putin, Syria’s Asaad, and the other tyrants around the world?
5) Political class insanity is not restricted to American politicians and government figures. Consider a Canadian government regulator who recently ruled that three Toronto based erotic television channels were not in compliance with government regulations. Their offense? They fell short of a govenrment requirement of having at least 35% of their programming be of Canadian content.
Yes, some government official was actually responsible for tracking the pornography content of three Canadian pornography channels. That is the job I want, making sure that the domestic pornography industry is adequately represented on different pornography channels, a job that is financed with taxpayer money. You cannot make this stuff up it is so insane, government tracking and measuring pornography origins.
The second foreign instance of political class insanity is a job that I do NOT want. Naples, Italy is very close to bankruptcy. Given their dire financial straits, one would think and hope that they would be extra careful, frugal, and precise with how they spent their scarce funds.
That would be a wrong assumption because according to a short blurb in the March 14, 2014 issue of The Week magazine, the city government of Naples recently began DNA testing of dog feces on its public sidewalks so the city can somehow match that to city dog owners who do not pick up after their dogs. A pathetic use of limited taxpayer money, especially for a city near bankruptcy.
The article made no mention of how this matching process would be done. Will it require each dog owner to submit a throat swab of their dog to be DNA cataloged? Who will actually test and catalog the DNA of the dog feces that is picked up on the streets? Worse yet, who gets the task of going around and picking up the dog feces? A whole bunch of good questions for a very bad idea and bad government program.
The article does quote a city official who spoke about the program: “I know some people find it funny that with all of the problems the city has, we would focus on dog poop.” Well, yeah. Funny and pathetic.
6) Speaking of bad political priorities, let’s move the insanity back to America, specifically up in Massachusetts. The Massachusetts state government has taken time out from important matters to pass a law that makes it a crime to take photos or videos up someone’s skirt.
Yes, rather than worry about failing schools, drug addiction and dealing, state transportation projects and infrastructure, heath care costs, unemployment, etc. these state politicians are worried that someone might try to take a picture from underneath someone’s skirt. Very bad priorities and wastes of time.
Even worse, this legislative effort is based on a single case of Michael Robertson who was arrested in 2010 and accused of using his cell phone to take photos and videos up the skirts of women riding on the Boston trolley. One instance of the actions of a pathetic loser and the state government then takes four years to pass legislation in response.
I cannot decide what is worst, the fact that they took the time to work on such a minor issue or it took them four years to complete their actions on such a minor effort. Insane no matter how you cut it.
That will do it for today but rest assured there are many more days to follow, all of which are needed to cover all of the political class insanity from the past month or so.
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