We started dong these updates several years ago, usually taking one or two days every month to get all of their insanity covered. Unfortunately, over time, the insanity has seemed to accelerate almost exponentially, causing us to now have to take six or seven posts each month to get it all in. This month will be no different. As our foreign policy implodes, the economy stagnates, and the midtem elections approach, the insanity levels are intensifying daily.
To check out past instances of political class insanity in this post, simply go to the first week of each month and check out the posts that begin, “Political class Insanity.” For the latest insanity, read on:
1) The Tax Foundation recently published the first ever global statistic called the “International Tax Competitiveness Index.” Details about this latest index measure include the following points and facts:
- This index measures two financial criteria, competitiveness and neutrality, by examining “the extent to which a country’s tax system adheres to”, these “two important principles of tax policy”.
- To do the calculation, the index than analyzes 40 tax positions and policies in each nation studied.
- The United States does not come off well at all, relative to other countries, finishing an obscene 32nd out of the 34 nations analyzed.
- Two of the most damaging reasons for ranking the United States near the very bottom of the list include the highest corporate tax rate (39%), as well as the “rare demand that money earned overseas should be taxed as if it were earned domestically”.
- Thus, the United States outranked out only Portugal and France out of 34 industrialized nations.
Thus, one reason for the tepid/anemic economic growth over the past five years could be the fact that heavy taxation is forcing companies to move their operations and focus to other countries or not investing in U.S. markets since anything they earn will be taxed at very high levels relative to the rest of the world.
How bad and oppressive are U.S. business tax rates and policies? According to analyses done by the accounting firm KPMG, only one country in the entire world has a higher overall corporate tax rate than the U.S. The United Arab Emirates’ 55% rate is an exception, however, because it usually applies only to foreign oil companies.
High taxes = lower economic growth, it is not a hard concept that has been proven over and over, both at the state level in this country and at the country level around the world. Everybody gets it except…. for the Washington political class. And that is likely a main reason why the real unemployment rate is still over 10%, why about 17 million Americans are unemployed or under employed and why we have not annual economic growth over 2% for what seem like forever.
2) It has been a recent, continuing news stories that both the Bush and Obama administration have been providing military grade weapons and armored vehicles to local police forces. This so-called “militarization of American police forces” has created concern and opposition from people throughout the political spectrum.
But according to a recent article by the Education Action Group EAG), it is not just police forces that are getting military grade weapons and armaments. According to a recent EAG article by Victor Skinner, almost two dozen legal, civil rights, and education advocacy organizations have sent a letter to the U.S. departments of Defense, Justice and Education to plead with Federal officials to stop sending military equipment, weapons and armored vehicles to public schools.
It seems that many of school districts across the country have taken part in the Department of Defense’s Excess Property Program, commonly known as the 1033 program. The Huffington Post reported that at least 20 schools have taken in military-grade equipment, from grenade launchers to laptops, since the program started in 1997. The equipment is given to schools, public university police forces and local police agencies free of charge.
This story hits quite home for me since as a resident of Pinellas County, Florida, the article documented the fact that Florida’s Pinellas County School District, received almost two dozen M16 rifles under the program. Really? M-16 rifles for a school system that is responsible for educating kids from kindergarten through high school?
What possible situation could arise that would require school district personnel to break out M-16 rifles? Shouldn’t that be a job for local police and local SWAT teams, not art teachers? Possibly even worse, American tax dollars were used, and wasted, to provide armored personnel vehicles capable of withstanding mine explosions to San Diego and Los Angeles school districts.
I do not get it. I doubt any personnel in any school system is properly trained to handle M-16 rifles and armored personnel carriers. I can think of not situation in my entire lifetime where a school principal lamented that if only they had had a dozen or so M-16s on site they could have better handled the situation.
I have yet to hear a teacher complain that the lack of an armored personnel carrier resulted in lost lives. The probability that these situations ever arise is too small to measure since they have never happened before. Wasting of taxpayer money, endangering of our kids.
3) Connecticut legislators recently passed state legislation that bans chocolate milk in the state’s cafeterias. The bill was passed in response the Michelle Obama-driven Federal standards for healthy lunches. Supposedly, those who supported the ban said chocolate milk isn’t suitable for children because of high levels of sodium.
Really? Chocolate milk has too much sodium which makes it a health danger? What happens when kids that only like chocolate milk no longer drink ANY milk and start having calcium deficiencies: “What concerns me is that if chocolate milk is not one of the available options, then students will decrease consumption of milk overall,” said Lonnie Burt, the head nutritionist in Hartford’s school district.
Fortunately, the governor has repeatedly said he will not sign this bill into law. Do state legislators have nothing better to do in this difficult economic times than worry about chocolate milk? Especially since their remedy is to deny kids access to a great and nutritious option at meal time? Political class insanity is not restricted to Washington.
4) The Obama administration recently started bombing suspected terrorist sites within the sovereign country of Syria. The sales job included the fact that ISIS terrorists within Syria could attack other countries including our own and that is why they needed to be destroyed now even if it meant attacking another country.
This is very serious stuff. It involves endangering the lives of U.S. military personnel and probably billions and billions of dollars of American taxpayer wealth in this pursuit to destroy a perceived enemy. One would hope that the Obama administration had all of its ducks in a row in order to do the best job possible.
But it seems that hope of any kind left this administration long ago. Despite the gravity and seriousness of the situation, during a recent press briefing, a senior Obama administration official, who was not identified by name under well-established rules, was speaking on a conference call with reporters about ISIS when he made the geographic screw up when he said: “ISIL has been, I think, a galvanizing threat around the Sunni partners in the region. They view it as an existential threat to them. Saudi Arabia has an extensive border with Syria … So what we have here is a galvanizing threat from ISIL that is, I think, leading our Sunni partners in the region to join us along the range of potential capabilities that my colleague mentioned.”
The screw up is that Saudi Arabia does not have an extensive border with Syria, in fact it is NO border with Syria:

If you are going to lead your country into a war, don’t you think you would have a better grasp of basic geography of where you are leading the country to? Leaves a big doubt in one’s mind that the administration knows what it is doing if it has no concept of where we are doing it.
Steven Bucci, who knows his way around the Middle East as a former Army Special Forces officer and who now oversees foreign and defense policy at The Heritage Foundation, called the senior official’s comment “embarrassing” as the White House prepares for military action in the Middle East” “It is not reassuring when the leaders of the Obama administration, on the day of a huge address by the President, make a gaffe this embarrassing.”
That will do it for today. Chocolate milk as a priority, failing grade in geography, excessive taxation, and armaments in schools. The scope and variety of political class insanity never ceases to amaze us. And rest assured, you will be amazed even more over the next week or so as we have only scratched the surface of the latest insanity from Washington and elsewhere.
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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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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