April, 2015, Part 4, Political Class Insanity: Lying, Economic Ignorance, Mistrusting The Government and Staying Alive

Every month we do a regular series under the theme, “political class insanity.” We look at the many, many different, and often original, ways that the American political class wastes our tax dollars, undermines our freedoms, and generally act in the most idiotic ways possible, via their quotes, actions, and laws. For past examples of hundreds of instances of political class insanity, just page through the historical listings on the right side of this page at the beginning of each month or enter “political class insanity” in the search box above.

This should our last insanity post for this month but as always, we should be back strong again next month with the next installment of political class insanity.

1) Yesterday we discussed the example of the Baltimore mayor making a statement one day and claiming two days later that she never made that statement despite the fact that the statement was caught on video tape. We raised the issue of how politicians think we are too stupid to remember when they say conflicting things for political expediency or to further their goals.

Another relatively recent example of that two faced type political trickery came out of the mouth of New York governor Andrew Cuomo. Speaking at his father’s funeral he stated: “It’s time to stop the negative energy and move forward. And that’s just what we’ll do, I promise you that, pop.” 

But earlier in 2014 Cuomo had this to say about New York citizens that did not share his political views: “Who are they? Right to life, pro-assault weapons, anti-gay — if that’s who they are, they have no place in the state of New York because that’s not who New Yorkers are.” So which is the truth governor? Stop the negative energy and move forward or tell those that have different views to screw off and leave the state, a throwback to the old “love it or leave it” rhetoric of the 60s? 

That is why the vast amount of Americans do not trust the American political class. Whether it is the President telling us if you like your current insurance plan you can keep it or a governor calling for an end to negative energy while piling it onto his own citizens or a mayor saying I never said that when it is obvious she did say that, the lies and the insanity of their gall continues to sow mistrust in the country.

2) Continuing on this theme of mistrust of today’s politicians, consider a compilation of public opinion polls that appeared in the May, 2015 issue of Reason magazine [the sources of opinion polls include Gallup and Pew Research]:

• 72% of those recently polled viewed big government as the number one threat to the U.S. in the future.
• This result has been trending upwards from less than 40% in 1965 and the upwards trend has accelerated during the Obama administration.
• Only 21% view big business as the largest threat, a level that has been relatively constant since 1965, and only 5% view big labor as the largest threat, a level that has been trending down slowly.
• Only 18% of those polled said government does the right thing almost always or most of the time while 82% said government does the right thing some of the time or never.

The number of Americans that consider themselves independent voters has increased from 33% to 43% since 1988 while those that consider themselves Republicans or Democrats have declined, inferring a growing dissatisfaction with the established political class.

It is insane that in a democracy such as our we have devolved to such a sad state that we fear the government far more than other factors, we rarely trust the government to do the right thing, and we are fed up with the established political class which operates the government we fear and feel does not do the right thing often.

3) At the height of the recession, Nancy Pelosi made the inane comment that unemployment benefits were one of the top ways to grow the economy. Taking this stupid opinion to the limit, the more people that are unemployed and collecting unemployment benefits, the greater the economy will grow. You cannot make this stuff up.

The statement is insane on its surface and insane statistically, especially when you consider a recent analysis done by economists Marcus Hagedorn and Iorii Manovskii that looked at this question and had their results published in the National Bureau of Economic Research. They wanted to see if state that had shorter unemployment benefit eligibility periods did better or worst than states that had extended.longer unemployment benefit periods, an approach that once and for all answer Pelosi’s claim.

Their analysis focused on the Federal cut in unemployment benefits that happened in 2013. Their conclusion: “1.8 million additional jobs were created in 2014 due to the benefit cut. Almost 1 million of these jobs were filled by workers outside of the labor force who would have not participated in the labor market had benefits extensions been reauthorized.”\

The details fo their study, their test and control approach,is discussed in detail in the May, 2015 issue of Reason magazine and will not be reviewed here. But assuming that their in-depth analysis is true, then Pelosi’s inane quote is indeed inane and ridiculous. As we have discussed many times in this blog, is you give people free money, they will take it even if they do not need it. 

We saw it in Britain when they tightened their government disability, which resulted in a large drop in people drawing disability without a hardship on those that truly had a disability. We saw it in the state of Maine recently when a work requirement was added into food stamp eligibility and those drawing food stamps dropped by about 80%. Same thing here. Stop giving people free money, i.e. unemployment benefits, and they actually go out and find a job to survive.

Sounds pretty simple and logical for most people but is an elusive comment for people like Pelosi who often speak without proof or any economic sense.

4) We often talk about the incompetence of the IRS. They readily admit that they cannot collect upwards of $400 billion a year from tax evaders. This past week we have reviewed how inept the organization is when it comes to providing taxpayer support during tax filing season, answering less than 50% of the calls coming into it customer help lines and when the call does get answered it is often after at least a 30 minute wait.

But underneath these numbers,which are bad enough, is the human side of their ineptness. According to a short article in the May, 15, 2015 issue of Reason magazine, American citizen Siegfried Meinstein is officially dead. He really is not dead but the IRS claims that he is.

It seems that when Mr. Meinstein filed his income tax return in 2014 the IRS refused to accept it since they were certain he was already dead. Even after several efforts to prove to the IRS he was still alive,the agency still refused to change his dead status. The IRS blames the Social Security Administration (SSA) for the foul up since it claims the SSA told them that Meinstein was dead but the SSA says it never told the IRS that IRS was dead. 

In the meantime not matter how much Meinstein invokes an old Monty Python line, “I’m not dead yet,” the IRS still refuses to acknowledge that he is alive. Insanity.

So what did we learn today? We have a politician that talks out of both ends of his mouth, we have an economically ignorant politician who should not talk at all, we have a nation that does not trust what politicians and the Federal government says and does, and we have a poor citizen trying, unsuccessfully, to prove to the Federal government that is is indeed still alive. More and varied insanity brought to you by the worst set of American politicians ever. More insanity next month.

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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.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w