July, 2017, Part 6, Political Class Insanity: Clueless (And Gross) In Seattle, Overreaching In D.C., And Still Poor In California

As we do every month, we review the latest idiocy, lunacy, ineptness, and general insanity from the American political class. The members of the political never cease to amaze us with their greed, idiocy, gumption, and criminal activities. And just when we think there is no new way to disappoint us and tick us off, they manage to find a way to do it, wasting our tax dollars and destroying our freedoms in the process.

The political class has been very busy this month so let’s get right to it:king county,

1) Sometimes politicians are so idiotic, inane, and weird that it is difficult to even begin to argue with their position it is so stupid. Consider a recent National Review article describing the position of a Seattle councilman:

• Seattle sits in King County in the state of Washington and near its Superior County county courthouse is a homeless shelter and other social services organizations.
• According to the the Seattle Times, the area around the courthouse has become an “unsanitary and potentially frightening” scene , one “that reeks of urine and excrement.”
• Too fix this very nasty and more importantly, unsanitary condition, two of the judges who serve at the courthouse have asked the city of Seattle to power wash away the excrement, urine, and associated smells and unhealthy conditions, which seems like a reasonable and simple solution.
• But even a simple solution is usually at odds with the warped mind of some politician somewhere, even when citizens’ health is involved.
• According to the Seattle Times,  Council member Larry Gossett “said he didn’t like the idea of power-washing the sidewalks because it brought back images of the use of hoses against civil-rights activists.”

You cannot make this idiocy up. Seriously? A simple solution to a very dangerous situation from a health perspective and this is what an elected official is worried about, that somehow power washing down excrement from a street is equivalent to fire hosing civil rights demonstrations from over 60 years ago? As always, it does not appear this politician has an alternative solution, he is just insulted that that the proposed situation is somehow offensive to him. In his mind apparently, walking around and avoiding human excrement and the smell of urine is preferable to washing down the area and making it safe for people. Totally, totally insane.

2) The Convention of States website recently listed the three worst abuses of power that the Washington political class has heaped upon the country. We have reviewed these abuses many times before but let’s do it again quickly, using the Convention of States article as a template:

1. Although the current national debt is about to hit a whopping $20 TRILLION, there is another $100 TRILLION that the Washington political class has promised to pay out over the coming years that currently cannot be funded for Social Security, Medicare and other programs. Even if you confiscated every American’s wealth in an extreme tax program, you still could not fund the $100 TRILLION in unfunded liabilities. Spending must be cut, increase taxation cannot fix this dreadful problem, a problem made doubly worse by the Obama administration which basically doubled our national debt during its tenure.
2. Not only are Americans and American businesses over taxed to fund the overspending of Washington, the Washington political class has created a government bureaucracy that is overwhelming and stifling. According to research from the American Enterprise Institute, since 1949 Federal regulations, most of which are unnecessary, have lowered annual real GDP growth by 2% and made America 72% poorer.
3. The Constitution set up the American government system as a minimal national government that was supposed to have minimal powers and pass most of the governing power to the states. But as the Washington bureaucracy and craving for power has grown, it has changed our governing system from one in which states were mostly sovereign to one in which state governments are more and more subservient to the whims and wishes of distant Washington politicians and bureaucrats.This has greatly diminished the rights and freedoms of all of us. Or as the Convention of States says, “The Founders believed that the structures of a limited government would provide the greatest protection of liberty. Not only were there to be checks and balances between the branches of the federal government, power was to be shared between the states and federal government, with the latter only exercising those powers specifically granted in the Constitution. Collusion among decision-makers in Washington, D.C., has replaced these checks and balances. The federal judiciary supports Congress and the White House in their ever-escalating attack upon the jurisdiction of the fifty states.”

Insanity and why the Convention of States effort is so necessary to reign in the out of control Washington political class.

3) For some reason, this month’s political class insanity has had a lot to say about how more and more political power (i.e. more and more socialism) usually results in less and less freedom and less and less economic upside for citizens. We have discussed the reality that high taxation and meddling by politicians in Denmark has made life much more rigid, less wealthy, and more depressing for citizens of Denmark. We have shown that socialistic countries like Sweden and Germany would be some of the poorest states if they were part of the United States. We have reviewed how the most socialistic state in the union, California, has the highest poverty rate in the union, some of the worst schools, and that its biggest city has made its citizens so poor that 40% of them qualify for Medicaid’s low income levels.

Let’s continue this discussion today, returning to socialistic California for our example of how life gets worst as politicians’ reach gets longer:

• According to the American Outlook website, 33% of the nation’s welfare recipients live in the state of California.
• Given that only about 13% of the country’s citizens live in California, something is very out of synch.
• Almost 25% of the state’s residents live below the poverty line.
• Could it be that having an intrusive, overreaching, over taxing, and socialistic political class reduces the economic opportunities and living standard of citizens in that state?

But let’s not jump to conclusions. Maybe California socialism and its ruling politicians have created a paradise in the state in other respects. Maybe the obscenely high taxation and the loss of individual freedom in the state has been made up in other ways.

Ah, nice try but not even close if you are to believe a recent article by the Investors Business Daily website:

• 62% of the state’s roads are currently rated poor or mediocre.
• There are huge cost overruns on the state’s high speed train line before the first mile of track has even been laid.
• One third of Bay area residents in a recent poll stated they are hoping to leave the area soon.
• Despite high taxation rates, California schools and infrastructure status ranks near the bottom of the fifty states.
• California residents pay some of the highest rates in the country for gas and electricity.
• The unfunded liabilities of the state’s pension funds are sky high.

So what did we learn, again, from all of this: the more that politicians meddle in our affairs, our economic well being, and our freedoms the poorer, less free, and more difficult life is with lower economic growth, higher poverty, worse roads, horrendous schools and a high degree of overall pessimism on life.

Pretty depressing stuff, as it always is when discussing our out of control political class. One more political class update for this month to follow but you can be sure that next month we will be back with more.

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