- Despite ever increasing expenditures and resources on our public school processes, the reading, math, and science scores of Americans kids have not increased in about forty years and our kids fail miserably in those categories when compared to kids around the world.
- Despite spending trillions of dollars and causing the Great Recession, the Washington drive to make it affordable for more families to own their own home as resulted in the percentage of home ownership to be right where it started during the Carter administration.
- Despite fighting the infamous “war on drugs” for over forty years, drug usage and prison incarceration for illegal drug use has never been higher, roughly ten times higher than when the so-called war was declared.
Let’s finish up our pictorial review of major political class failures today with a whole new set of disasters:
1) The Great Recession was, at its core, a collapse of the housing market due to any number of factors. These factors artificially inflated the price of housing in the country and when the pricing bubble collapsed, as all financial bubbles do, it rained havoc on banks, mortgage brokers, the housing industry, government housing entities, and the overall economy.
The following chart shows the historical average monthly price of homes in the U.S. over the past several decades, on both a real time value and an inflation adjusted value (click on the graph for a larger view):
Up until the late 1990s and into the early 2000s, the prices of homes in the U.S. were slowly going up on a lazy growth trend, especially visible if you look at the inflation adjusted prices. However, as we get into the 2000s, the average prices start to skyrocket due to cheap money from the Federal Reserve Board, faulty legislation from the political class in Washington, lax oversight of Federal regulators in the banking and mortgage industries, and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac going wild from lax oversight and political cronyism.
What we eventually see is a classic financial bubble that burst in 2008, spinning the country into the Great Recession. Which raises a critical question: given all of the money the American taxpayers pay in taxes in order for the Federal Reserve Board, the Treasury Department, the Federal Housing Authority, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Housing and Urban Development, Senate committees and housing and banking, House of Representatives committees on housing and banking, the FDIC, and other government organizations to manage the economy, how come not a single Federal analyst, statistician, or economist working for the government did not look at this chart in the 2005-2008 timeframe, say “Uh-oh!” and raise the red flag?
Pathetic economic oversight over the past decade or so, not even looking at a simple graph to see what was inevitable, the housing crash and the Great Recession.
2) It is no secret that health care costs are escalating quickly in this country, having been going up for decades. Obama Care was supposed to resolve this major issue, resulting in the infamous lie from the President that the average American household would see a $2,500 annual reduction in their health care costs.
Well, Obama Care was finally launched in late 2013 and look what happened:
According to real life data, quarterly growth in healthcare spending in this country over the past five years had its two largest quarterly increases in the first six months that Obama Care went live. In other words, we see the classic political class case of unintended consequences: pass a law to address a problem and the exact opposite happens, the law makes the problem worse, not better.
In this case, early results look like Obama Care, which was supposed to REDUCE health care costs and spending, has had the exact opposite effects in its first six months, actually INCREASING health care costs and spending. Thus, even when they try to fix something, the political class usually gets the solution wrong or makes the original problem worse.
3) Remember when the Democrats in Washington went bat crazy during the Bush administration when gas prices exceeded $3.00 a gallon, horrors! The following photo op picture shows their disgust with high gas prices:
What American would not kill to be paying $3.19 a gallon today? In some places in America, a gallon of gas, five and a half years after Bush left office, is over $4.00 a gallon and the national average is almost double what it was when Obama took office and the Democrats took over both houses of Congress.
This is another favorite and unproductive tactic of Washington politicians. Fake outrage over some major issue to make political and photo op points, and then ignore the problem, never resolving it, even when they have the opportunity and power to do so.
In either case, gas prices are far above the contempt level these politicians showed many years ago, indicating these Democrats, did not have the will, the smarts, or the creativity to resolve the energy crises in this country.
Two days of pictures and graphs, forty years of spending trillions of dollars with little resolution on the major issues of our times, and a set of current politicians that have shown no ability, will, or intelligence to break that decades long losing streak of failure. And still, we continue to throw good money after bad when it comes to the Federal government:

Federal spending has gone up twelve times faster than our income levels, leaving us poorer and less free to live our lives as we choose. It would have been one thing if increased Federal spending had won the war on drugs, fixed our failing public schools, prevented the Great Recession, put a strategic and comprehensive energy plan in place (as opposed as standing in front of a gas station), reined in runaway health care costs, monitored the economy for self induced bubbles, or resolved any other of the major issues of our times.
But alas, the increased in spending did none of these things except leave us with a $17.5 TRILLION national debt that grows by billions of dollars every week. That is why implementing term limits is so important. After forty years and trillions of dollars, isn’t it finally time to throw the incumbents out of office, many of whom have been in office for all or most of those forty years, and replace them with fresh minds with fresh ideas and less corruption? You can help do that at:
Failure to do so soon, will result in the following picture becoming our reality in the near future:

We cannot afford to wait another forty years to figure out that Washington still has not resolved any major issues, we do not have that much time.
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
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