July, 2018, Part 1, I Am A Global Warming Doubter and A Believer In A Science: Forecasts That Went Horribly Wrong and The Massive Failure Of Paris

Every month we have enough material to return to a continuing theme in this blog, namely that “I am a global warming doubter AND a believer in science.” This became of interest because of people like Al Gore who fanatically and verbosely claimed that you had to be an idiot to not believe in manmade global warming. It has been my life belief that anyone that is that loud and that obnoxious is hiding something, that rather than argue facts and reality it is better to beat down and insult anyone who disagrees.

As we have dove into the whole issue of manmade global warming, or its new rebranded title of climate change, we found that Al Gore and people like him were guilty of a number of things:

• Ignoring science and realities that did not support their opinions and positions.
• Rather than have an adult conversation about climate, these types of advocates like Gore sank to the level of insulting those who dared look at ALL science by calling them a variety of names including racists, homophobes, terrorists, flat earth believers, and other slanderous names.
• Continuing to insist that politicians step up their intrusions into our lives with higher taxes, more regulations, and more control on our freedoms and standards of living based on a shaky theory at best.

To see the past posts and the multitude of evidence that we have compiled that showed it is perfectly okay to be a global warming doubter and a believer in science, enter the phrase "global warming doubter” in the search box above or go through the monthly historical post listed on the right side of this page.

Thus, let’s see the latest facts and science that prove you can be a global warming doubter and a believer in science, regardless of what Al Gore proclaims.

1) As a trained professional statistician, it comes natural to me to go back in time to see how well a forecast predicted reality. Given how good, or badly, your forecasts performed allows you to improve your forecasting skills and accuracy. According to a June 23, 2018 article by Shawn on the Fix This Nation website, that is exactly what some folks have been doing for the major climate forecasts of the past thirty years:

• The Wall Street Journal had climatologists Patrick Michaels and Ryan Maue compare climate forecasts from thirty years ago to today’s actual results.
• James Hansen of NASA back in 1988 started a lot of this climate change/global warming nonsense when he declared he found a “high degree of confidence” in the relationship between human-produced CO2 and the “greenhouse effect and observed warming” of the atmosphere.” 
• Most of Hansen’s predictions said that the Earth’s temperatures would increase steadily over the next thirty years as humans threw more and more CO2 into the atmosphere. 
• However, only his Scenario C was close to being true and that forecast said that the Earth’s temps would NOT increase substantially in the coming decades.
• Forecast models developed by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on average forecasted twice as much warming than what actually happened as did other major “expert” forecasts.
• Hansen also did forecasts that also lamely predicted that the number of hurricanes and tornadoes would increase as a result of CO2 that was going to be produced by mankind.
• Of course, those forecasts were also epic failures with Michaels and Maue concluding that not only were Hansen’s forecasts wrong the reality was “the opposite may be true.”
• Michaels and Maue also concluded that, “The list of what didn’t happen is long and tedious.”

The forecast failures were “long and tedious,” the predictions never came close to being accurate over the test of time. And yet, many liberals like Al Gore and Obama still insist that man made global warming and climate change is reality. When everything you claimed would happen did not happen when do you let go of the fantasy?

2) We have often discussed the reality that the infamous Paris Climate Agreement was a disaster and that, fortunately, Trump pulled the U.S. out of the agreement. The only people that were going to have to make sacrifices were Americans, that the big and growing polluters (e.g., China, India) and others had no fat in the climate fire. Obama sold the U.S. down the road to satisfy his own ego.

Trump took some serious heat from both inside and outside of the country for correctly pulling us out of the agreement but Nicolas Loris and Bryan Cosby, writing for the Western Journalism website on June 2, 2018, updated everyone on how well, really how badly, other countries were doing relative to their meager commitments within the agreement, one year after Trump’s withdrawal:

• Despite the claim of climate alarmists that coal is bad for the environment and climate change, worldwide coal usage actually went UP 1% in 2017 despite the effort of the Climate Agreement signees to reduce coal usage.
• A lot of this coal usage increase was because Asian countries’ increase in coal fired electricity.
• World wide there are 1,600 coal fired electricity generating plants under construction, plants that will burn enough coal to produce 840,000 megawatts of electricity.
• If the Paris agreement was any good I doubt that it would allow for the use of 1,600 NEW coal fired power plants.
• And it is not just China and India increasing their usage of coal, smaller countries like Turkey and Indonesia have also struggled to meet their Paris goals since they need the cheap and quick use of coal to meet their growing economy needs.
• Pakistan signed onto the Paris agreement but that agreement is quite useless: “Given the future economic growth and associated growth in the energy sector, the peaking of emissions in Pakistan is expected to take place much beyond the year 2030. An exponential increase of (greenhouse gas) emissions for many decades is likely to occur before any decrease in emissions can be expected.”
• But it is not just Pakistan who is contributing nothing to the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement: “Germany, a world leader on climate action, has failed to cut emissions and has actually seen emissions rise during the past two years. Germany may even have to buy its way out of a binding European Union agreement to lower emissions in the coming years.”
• Brazil expects its emission to continue rising until at least 2030, Japan will continue increasing its use of coal since nuclear in that country has a bad rep, and Poland and South Korea also plan on using more coal going forward.

But all of this proves how bad the whole agreement process was from the beginning: although many countries are falling short of the commitments they made just a few short years ago there are no ramifications or penalties. Even infamous NASA scientist James Hansen, see above discussion, called the whole process “a fraud” in 2015, claiming that, “There is no action, just promises.”

Commitments already being missed, the widespread and increasing use of coal across the world, and no penalties for failure. Trump got this one right.

Still a good thing to be a global warming doubter and a believer in science. More to follow.

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

The Horrors and Destruction that Donald Trump Has Imposed On America...Just Kidding! Part 10

Before we start today’s discussion, let’s review my voting history: 

• I have never voted for a Republican for President in my life. 
• Thus, I did not vote for Trump. 
• I have rarely voted for a Republican for national office in my life. 

About 18 months ago, many liberals, Democrats, and millennials were besides themselves with grief and fear because their pre-ordained queen, Hillary Clinton, was not elected President. Instead, Donald Trump was elected, an individual that these same people despised, hated, and feared, an individual they felt would endanger and possibly destroy the country and our democracy. For the past year and a half they fretted, worried and lashed out at anything or anyone that even remotely smelled of Donald Trump.

Given that Trump has been in office for about 18 months, I thought, that as someone who did not vote for him, it would be a good idea to review the horror, trauma, and terrible things that Trump has subjected the country to in just eighteen month’s time. This is obviously a very sarcastic comment when you take an unbiased look at what has happened during the Trump Presidency. The many previous posts we did on this topic identified over 120 good things that have happened to America and Americans since Trump became President:

https://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-horrors-and-destruction-that-donald.html

https://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-horrors-and-destruction-that-donald_31.html

https://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-horrors-and-destruction-that-donald.html

https://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-horrors-and-destruction-that-donald_27.html

https://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2018/02/the-horrors-and-destruction-that-donald.html

https://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-horrors-and-destruction-that-donald.html

https://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2018/04/the-horrors-and-destruction-that-donald.html

https://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2018/05/the-horrors-and-destruction-that-donald.html

https://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2018/06/the-horrors-and-destruction-that-donald.html

https://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2018/06/the-horrors-and-destruction-that-donald_21.html

- According to a recent Wall Street Journal/NBC opinion poll, Trump’s approval rating is at its highest level yet at 45%, putting his approval rate at or above Obama’s, Clinton’s, Carter’s and Reagan’s at the same time in their Presidencies.

- According to that same survey, his approval rating among Republicans is at a very high 88%.

- Although liberals and Democrats would like you to believe that Trump is only popular among uneducated white guys, his approval rating among white/college educated voters has gone from 39% in October 2017 to 48% today.

- In another recent poll, this one from RealClearPolitics.com, Trump’s approval rating is also measured at 45%.

- According to analysis of photo surveillance photos, North Korea is actively taking apart important nuclear weapons facilities, hopefully a first step to stopping its nuclear weapons development effort as agreed to at the Trump/Kim summit meeting.

- North Korea recently fulfilled the promise it made to Trump at the summit meeting to return the remains of U.S. soldiers killed in the Korean war, actually returning the remains of 55 U.S. servicemen.

- According to polling by Rasmussen, Trump’s approval rating is even higher, at 48%.

- Americans are so confident in the Trump economy that a record number of Americans are voluntarily quitting their current jobs, assuming they can get a better job in this healthy economy. This so-called “quit rate” is at a 17 year high.

- And in the best economic news in years, the country’s GDP increased over 4% (4.1%) in the second quarter of this year, the highest economic growth performance in years.

- Trump’s toughness on trade resulted in the U.S. trade deficit dropping a remarkable $52 billion in the second quarter.

- The women’s unemployment rate is at the lowest level in over 60 years as the African-American, Hispanic, and Asian unemployment rates are still at or near their lowest level ever.

- The unemployment rate for veterans is at the lowest level in 18 years.

- The unemployment level for disabled Americans is also at a record low level.

- The hot economy has resulted in 3.5 million Americans getting off of the Federal food assistance programs because they now have jobs.

- U.S. manufacturer wages are growing at the fastest pace in 17 years.

- The Trump tax cuts have already led to U.S. companies bringing back $300 billion back into this country for investment in even more jobs and increased manufacturing.

Another sixteen reasons to add to the previous 130 or so reasons why the first year and a half of the Trump Presidency has not wrought disaster on the country.

For those of you that have hated on Trump since day one, and given your obvious gross error in judgment relative to Trump, let me ask that you to do us all a favor by implementing the following changes in your behavior and attitude:

• Chill out, tamp down your TDS affliction. No matter how much you hate Trump on a sexist, personal basis, get over it. He is the legally and duly elected President, he will be around for a while so refocus your hatred on more constructive issues and matters. You will live a lot longer if you take your hatred out of your heart and soul and devote it to something positive.
• I would really appreciate it if some of you would apologize to the Trump voters you have disrespected in some of the grossest terms possible over the past year. You have called millions of voters racists, ignorant, stupid, Nazis, KKK members, and other horrible names simply because you disagreed with their voting choice. No American should be called such disgusting names simply because they exercised their Constitutional rights to the best of their abilities. Plus, slandering over 60 million Americans is no way to unite the country and get it focused on the real issues facing us all.
• More personally, I would like, no I am demanding, an apology from some of you for your slanderous and disgusting name calling because in doing so, you insulted and disrespected my sister, my family members, my friends, and my co-workers who simply voted their conscience. I will defend their right to vote anyway they wanted and will no put up with your childish and vicious venom and bile directed at them, very important people in my life.

And finally, I challenge you to read the following blog post, a post that shows quite clearly that it was hateful people like some of you and your silence during the Obama years that actually caused Trump to be elected. Thus, the people you hate for voting for Trump are actually looking back at you in the mirror:

https://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2016/03/how-american-liberals-and-washington.html

If you were silent in the dozens of instances listed in this post then you were responsible for the very thing you hate: a Trump Presidency. Or put another way, a so far successful and productive Trump Presidency. Over 140 accomplishments in a little more than a year is not too shabby despite many of you wanting both Trump and the country to fail.

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

July, 2018, Part 7, Political Class: Economic Ignorance In NYC, Rats Gone Wild In Chicago, and The Non-Threat From Russia

It is another month which means it is again time to review the latest political class insanity from Washington and around the world. Political class insanity takes many forms including the wasting of taxpayer wealth, criminal fraud within government programs, inane and stupid political quotes and actions, the inability to create and implement effective and efficient government programs, stupid and ill performing economic policies and strategies, and other forms of insanity that continue to evolve and surprise and shock us.

Let’s get started:

1) Sometimes you cannot believe what comes out of a politician’s mouth, it is that inane. Such is what happened recently to a co-called”rising star” of the Democratic party, a young lady from NYC, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez recently had a huge upset in a Democratic primary, beating a long time Congressman from that district.

This got a lot of liberals and Democrats all excited: a young woman, Hispanic, camera friendly, a millennial, all of the Democratic hot buttons pushed. She was dubbed by some as the future of the Democratic party which seemed a little premature since her only accomplishment was to win one primary.

It got really premature when she opened her mouth during a friendly interview that she granted. Keep in mind as you see what she said, that she supposedly has a degree in economics, which seems really hard to believe based on her understanding, or non-understanding, of a simple economic calculation, the unemployment rate:

• The host lobbed a softball question to her, citing the reality that the nation’s unemployment rate is very low, record setting lows in some places.
• The host then made the correct assertion that this was good news for working Americans.
• At which point Ms. Ocasio-Cortez made a complete fool of herself and her economics degree: “Well, I think the numbers you just talked about is part of the problem, right? We look at these figures and we say, ‘Oh, unemployment is low, everything is fine,’ right? Well, unemployment is low because everyone has two jobs. Unemployment is low because people are working 60, 70, 80 hours a week and can barely feed their kids.”
• She somehow thinks that if a person has two jobs, that helps drive down the unemployment rate which, of course is nonsense. 
• The unemployment rate is simply the number of people who are without a job and who are looking for a job divided by divided by the the size of the workforce, it has NOTHING to do with whether or not someone has two or three or more jobs.
• This from a supposedly college graduate with a degree in economics who cannot understand a simple high school economics class principle. Makes you wonder how bad her university's economic program is.

But her ignorance and/or lying gets worse:

• She says “everyone has two jobs” which of course is more nonsense.
• According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, fewer than five percent of the U.S. labor force currently has two jobs, which means that more than 95% of American workers only have one job, hardly close to her assertion that ”everyone has two jobs.”
• What’s more, the percentage of Americans holding down two jobs has been steadily trending downwards over the past two decades.
• As far as “barely feeding their kids,” Michelle Malkin puts that nonsense to rest also: “As for starving children, government statistics show that hunger has dropped to its lowest levels in a decade as unemployment and food inflation have declined. Federal food stamp usage has also plunged to historic lows.”

Is she a liar, pushing her point of view on an unsuspecting public or is she really that ignorant of the realities of our times regarding how to calculate a simple, very basic economic statistic and does not know the realities of declining hunger levels and multiple job holders in the country? In either case, a liar or ignorant, hardly the future any political party should want for their future.

As a final note, Ms. Malkin does a better job of explaining this nonsense coming from Ms. Ocasio-Cortez than me: “The unemployment rate, which stands at a historically low 4 percent, is calculated by extrapolating and dividing the number of people out of work by the total number of individuals in the American workforce.

If you have one job, two jobs, three jobs or more, you don’t count as unemployed. Whether you are working 40 hours or 80 hours or 120 hours a week, if you’re working, that has no effect on the unemployment rate, either. The number of workers moonlighting and the number of hours they moonlight have zero, zip and nada effect on the unemployment rate.

Ocasio-Cortez’s claim that “everyone has two jobs” is more fake-o-nomics. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the number of Americans holding down multiple jobs is less than 5 percent and has been declining for nearly 30 years. Pew Research adds that both “in terms of raw numbers and as a share of all employed people, fewer Americans are working more than one job than in the mid-1990s.”

2) We have recently discussed the reality that San Francisco has a human feces problem in its city, getting thousands of complaints a week of human feces showing up on the city streets because of the high number of homeless people in the city. Pretty disgusting stuff, but Chicago is not far behind San Francisco in disgusting health situations, as reported by Angie Leventis Lourgos in a recent article from the Chicago Tribune:

• A recent study by an organization called RentHop rated Chicago as the “rat capital” of the country.
• This dubious award went to Chicago based on the number of rat complaints registered in 2017 in four major U.S. cities.
• Chicago had over 50,000 rat complaints filed, Boston had almost 2,500, New York had just over 19,000 and D.C. had just over 5,000 rat complaints.
• Thus, the “contest” was not even close with Chicago have twenty times more complaints than Boston, ten times more than D.C. and two and half more than NYC.
• Even when adjusted for population size, Chicago is still the clear “winner.”
• Now to be fair, the Chicago Department of Streets and Sanitation said it actually received only 42,670 requests for rat complaints from residents in 2017 in Chicago.
• However, I doubt that made Chicago residents feel any better since the number is still huge and more than double the nearest competitor, New York City.
• Despite what the city says, the article quotes a Chicago veterinarian, Dr. Dylan Frederickson, who claims he has lived in other cities like Minneapolis and Madison, but has never experienced such a dense rat population before: “I’ve never seen anything like the rat infestation that we have in Chicago.” 
• He claims that he has had to treat pet dogs for leptospirosis which is a rat caused disease.

We mention this disgusting situation in Chicago to prove a point we have made often. Given that the city’s rat population is exploding, the south side of Chicago is a murderous place to be any day of the year with hundreds of innocent citizens gunned down in the streets every year, the city school system stinks, and the city is going bankrupt, just what do the local city politicians bring to the table as far as serving their constituents? It does not appear like they bring much except for high taxes.

3) We have often argued that today’s American politicians are more concerned about their careers and self enrichment than being in touch with Americans’ worries, issues, and concerns. This self centered approach to life and politics often has the political class totally out of step with what Americans what to see get done and resolved.

The following is just another example in a long line of examples of being out of touch. If you were to believe the mainstream media, liberals and Democrats, you would think that our relationship with Russia was the biggest crisis in the history of the Republic. They are actually out of control trying to find a way to prove that Russia is the ultimate enemy, in cahoots with Trump.

But is that the reality out in the country, away from D.C.? Are Americans also viewing Russia as the top issue in their lives? According to Gallup, not quite:

• Gallup recently asked Americans what was the most important problem facing America today.
• Not unexpectedly, economic issues were very important to Americans.
• But Gallup also listed out in rank order important issues in Americans’ mind that did not include economic issues.
• The top two issues, by far, in Americans’ lives are Immigration/Illegal Aliens (22%) and Dissatisfaction With Government/Poor Leadership (19%).
• No other non-economic issues garnered double digit results, Race Relations/Racism (7%) and Unifying the Country and Lack of Respect for Each Other, both at only 6%, coming in next.

And where did big, bad Russia come in relative Americans’ fears? The concern about Russia finished at less than one half of one percent, with 26 other issues ranked as more important than Russia. And yet, if you listen to the media, Democrats, and liberals it is by far the biggest threat to our country. So out of touch with the reality in America today.

That will do it for today’s and this month’s political class insanity. Washington still out of touch with Americans, rats going crazy in Chicago, and a totally ignorant and/or lying New York City politician. More insanity next month.

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:


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

July, 2018, Part 6, Political Class Insanity: Fiscal Insanity In Stockton, NYC Politicians on the Take, and More Disasters Form The Iranian Nuclear Deal

It is another month which means it is again time to review the latest political class insanity from Washington and around the world. Political class insanity takes many forms including the wasting of taxpayer wealth, criminal fraud within government programs, inane and stupid political quotes and actions, the inability to create and implement effective and efficient government programs, stupid and ill performing economic policies and strategies, and other forms of insanity that continue to evolve and surprise and shock us.

Let’s get started:

1) In our last post we discussed the idiocy of a Chicago city government proposed pilot program that would give $500 a month to 1,000 city households with no strings attached. This is a program under the theory of a universal income that somehow people are entitled to get money without doing a darn thing for it. 

We easily showed how stupid that program could end being, theoretically adding over $5 billion to a city budget which is currently only about $8 billion. In other words, where are the city politicians going to get the money to roll out this program? And how long do we think that working, taxpaying residents are going to stay in Chicago when they are working so hard so that city politicians take their money and give it to people that are not working at all or as hard?

But politicians in Chicago are not the only idiots thinking this is a good idea:

• Politicians in Stockton, California have also proposed a similar program.
• Keep in mind as you read this that Stockton politicians have already driven the city to file for bankruptcy with their inept handling of the city’s finances but that bad experience is not stopping them from proposing this program of financial nonsense.
• The politicians hype that this program will guarantee that no one in Stockton, population of 300,000, “lives in poverty.”
• A hundred city residents will get $500 a month to do anything they want with it over an 18 month trial period.
• The city will then decide whether to rollout the program city wide.
• The program has the backing of a number of Silicon Valley billionaires who, of course, will not have to pay the tab for the program if and when it rolls out.

So many problems with this type of thinking:

• You already bankrupted the city by not having enough taxpayer money to cover city expenses, where are you going to get the type of money to pay for this program long term?
• If the money can be spent on anything then what stops a person from wasting it on drugs, booze, gambling, hookers, etc.?
• While anyone would enjoy getting $500 a month with no strings attached, this amount, $6,00, a year is not lifting anyone out of poverty as promised by the city advocates for this type of nonsense.

Let’s do some simple math and easily show how stupid this program is: 

• Assume that 10% of Stocktons’ population is eligible for the program after the trial, or 30,000 participants.
• At $500 a month, $6, 000 a year, the annual cost of just handing out the money would be $180 million a year without counting administrative expenses.
• The 2019 total revenue stream for the city is expected to be $704 million.
• Thus, this program would consume over 25% of the city’s current revenue stream which would mean more 25% more in taxes on those working and living in the city which would likely cause some productive people to leave and seek a place with less taxation which would reduce city revenues which would mean higher tax rates and we are now in a financial death spiral.

So we have a program that would never fulfill its primary objective, i.e. lift people out of poverty, would increase taxes causing outward migration which would reduce city tax streams which would require tax increases, etc. Idiocy.

Oh, one final note that Stockton and Chicago politicians should be aware of. Socialist leaning Finland has already tried a program like this. They ended up shutting it down and not rolling it out, leading one to assume that it was a financial disaster. Thus, if a socialist nation like Finland opted out of a socialist program like this, what makes you think you can make it work? 

2) Airbnb is a highly successful program what allows citizens to easily rent out their homes or apartments to strangers in order to maximize the value of their real estate. The rentals are usually short term, days vs. months. For example, if a person owns a home in a good beach town and is going to be away for a period of time, rather than allow that home to sit vacant, Airbnb facilitates that homeowner finding someone who would like to visit that good beach town for a short amount of time.

Everyone wins. The home owners gets rental money, the renter finds interesting places to stay that are often less expensive than staying in a hotel, and Airbnb makes a profit from setting things up. It is classic free market economics, a willing seller easily getting hooked up with a willing buyer.

Unless you live in New York City. According to a recent National Review article by Kyle Smith on July 19, 2018:

• Mayor Bill de Blasio and the city town council are putting together legislation that would make it more difficult for Airbnb to function in the city limits and force Airbnb to give the city the names of its city customers who rent out their homes vias the Airbnb service.
• According to the article: “Consider how viciously anti–New Yorker this law is: You’re going to be out of town for two weeks on vacation, or to look after a sick relative, or on business. You could make thousands of dollars renting out your home on Airbnb. But it’s illegal. It would be legal for you to host a guest while you yourself are still living at home for those two weeks — but how is City Hall supposed to monitor whether you lay your head down on your own pillow each night? It would take a Stasi-level surveillance regime to catch all of the violators. The law creates the predicate for massive government intrusion into private home-sharing transactions.”
• This type of over regulation caused Airbnb listings to drop a dramatic 50% in San Francisco when that city implemented a similar city ordinance, robbing that city’s residents the opportunities to earn extra money from an asset they own.
• De Blasio has increased his “Office of Special Enforcement” by four fold over the past several years to make sure that city inspectors can make sure that Airbnb customers toe the line which is forcing people to forgo the hassle of dealing with the city via Airbnb and thus losing out on extra income.
• The article points out how stupid this over enforcement is: “You might think that if an apartment is safe enough for a family of New Yorkers to live in it full-time, then it’s probably safe enough to rent out some of it for a few days.”

Now, you might try and make the case that de Blasio and the council are just trying to make sure that everyone stays safe and that is why there is such over regulation and enforcement. But you would be wrong since the article correctly points out that the mayor and council are beholden to special interest groups and that is why they are using their governmental powers to unfairly cripple one industry (Airbnb) that does not contribute to their election campaigns and favor an industry (the hotel industry and its union members) that does finance their election efforts:

• New York City average hotel room stay prices peaked in 2014 and have decreased since then, corresponding with the rise in Airbnb’s popularity.
• In response, the hotel industry paid out almost half a million dollars in campaign donations in 2013 and 2017 in an attempt to buy political influence.
• City council speaker Corey Johnson got $15,600 of that money and the anti-Airbnb bill sponsor Carlina Rivera got $33,800 of that money.
• De Blasio himself and his campaign organization, “One For New York,” received $400,000 from a hotel union related group.

Just another instance where greedy politicians have stepped into people’s personal lives not to make those lives better but to protect and prosper form their positions of power. Disgustingly insane.

3) Let’s wrap up today’s insanity with a quicker hitter from Iran. Remember how Obama’s nuclear weapons deal with Iran was supposed to minimize the risk that an nuclear armed Iran would pose to the world? We have previously discussed how this was one of the worst international agreements that this country ever made: shoddy inspection requirements, backroom deals that were not disclosed to Congress or the American people, late night, secret shipments of cold cash worth over a billion dollars to the worst terrorist sponsoring nation in the world, an aborted illegal attempt to find a way to use the American banking system to funnel billions more to the Iran regime, and the refusal to shut down an Iranian-backed group’s heroin trade.

To this list of failures we add another. According to Alice Green, writing for the Punching Bag website on July 19, 2018, the Iranians now brag that they have stockpiled 950 TONS of uranium. Iran’s Nuclear Chief Ali Akbar Salehi recently made that pubic claim of 950 tons, adding that this is enough uranium to run 190,000 enrichment centrifuges. Even worse, he claims that 400 tons of that uranium stockpile was imported since Obama signed the nuclear deal with Iran back in 2015. Salehi also claimed that Iran has completed construction of a new factory to help build the rotor blades for those centrifuges.

Way to go Barack, much like Obama Care, the nuclear deal with Iran is nothing more than a continuing array of disaster after disaster.

That will do it for today’s insanity: Iran continues its march to atomic weapons, New York politicians are on the take, and fiscal insanity and stupidity in Stockton. One more set of insanity to follow.

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

July, 2018, Part 5, Political Class Insanity: Creating Poverty In California, Paying For Vacations For Pakistanis, and Fiscal Stupidity In Chicago

It is another month which means it is again time to review the latest political class insanity from Washington and around the world. Political class insanity takes many forms including the wasting of taxpayer wealth, criminal fraud within government programs, inane and stupid political quotes and actions, the inability to create and implement effective and efficient government programs, stupid and ill performing economic policies and strategies, and other forms of insanity that continue to evolve and surprise and shock us.

Let’s get started:

1) California is probably the most liberal state when it comes to the local political class and voters. It has the highest taxes and the most intrusions into citizens’ private lives than most, if not all, other states. And what has all of this taxation and oppressive actions and regulations gotten the citizens of that state:

• According to a recent U.S. Census Bureau study, California has the highest poverty rate in the country despite the riches of Hollywood and Silicon Valley.
• A whopping one in five residents of the state are now living in poverty.
• While about 12% of the U.S. population lives in California, 33% of the nation’s welfare recipients live in California.
• This level of poverty exists even though the state spent almost a TRILLION dollars on welfare programs from 1992 through 2015.
• And while 30% of the states citizens receive some type of welfare, 55% of immigrants in the state receive some sort of welfare, making immigration into the state from foreign countries not a good proposition for the state’s taxpayers, who, by the way, pay the highest state income taxes in the country.
• California lost more citizens who migrated out of the state in 2017 than any other state, and along with this outward migration went a high number of taxpaying citizens. 

So high taxes, high levels of regulations, and intrusive state politicians results in higher levels of poverty and higher levels of dissatisfaction with life. A real life example where more government, more politicians is a recipe for disaster, financially and quality of life wise.

Note: please see the following link where we described another, very gross example of what over active and inept politicians cause:

https://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2018/07/july-2018-part-3-political-class.html

2) While the following example of political class insanity involves a relatively trivial amount of taxpayer money, it raises two important questions: 1) why is the Federal government wasting taxpayer money paying out this type of money for any kid and 2) why is this money being spent on kids who live half a world away:

• In 2015, the State Department spent about a quarter of a million dollars to fly 24 kids from Pakistan to the U.S.
• Once the Pakistani kids got here they visited Space Camp, Dollywood, Tennessee and Washington D.C.
• Kentucky Senator Rand Paul stated the obvious: “I think we have so many problems here at home I think we need to address before we think about spending money on somebody else’s kids. I’m not against that at all if it’s your money. The problem is our government doesn’t have any money that they didn’t first take from someone else.”
• Again, in the overall scheme, a quarter million dollars is a nit. But Congress, the Federal government and American politicians spend a lot of “nits” which eventually lead up to billions and billions of wasted dollars which eventually lead to a $21 TRILLION national debt. 

Plus, how many kids living on welfare in California, or anywhere in this country, would have enjoyed such a trip, a respite from their life of poverty, rather than flying 24 kids in from Pakistan here to have a great, taxpayer funded vacation? Insanity.

3) We often go to the politicians in Chicago for good doses of political class insanity and the latest Chicago idiocy does not disappoint:

• Chicago is likely going to test the implementation a co-called “universal income program.”
• In such a program, the local government gives away taxpayer wealth to people for basically doing nothing, providing them a guaranteed monthly income.
• According to Fox News: “Chicago alderman Ameya Pawar recently proposed legislation that would provide 1,000 families with a $500 monthly stipend -- no questions asked. The bill already has the backing of the majority of city lawmakers, and Pawar hopes to soon work with Mayor Rahm Emanuel to implement the pilot program, The Intercept reported.”
• The alderman is quoted as saying: “Nearly 70 percent of Americans don’t have $1,000 in the bank for an emergency. UBI could be an incredible benefit for people who are working and are having a tough time making ends meet or putting food on the table at the end of the month.”
• Note: as we have previously reported, this 70% number is totally bogus so we have a welfare program being proposed that is based on a lie.
• The Chicago trial would give $500 a month to 1,000 Chicago families which comes to taxpaying Chicago citizens paying out a whopping half a million a month to a very small sample of locals who get the money with no strings attached.

The rock and roll band Dire Straits once sang about this: “Money for nothing…” What insanity, free money to spend it anyway these lucky 1,000 people want. Booze, drugs, soda, rock concerts, do what you like with it. But apparently the Alderman is not good at math so let’s do some for him:

• $500 a month people comes out to $6,000 a year.
• There are about 1.2 million households in the city of Chicago.
• If the Alderman is true to his pontificating about the number of people with less than a thousand dollars in the bank, that means that about 840,000 Chicago households would be entitled to this program of free money.
• Putting all of the above numbers together, $6,000 a year per household and 840,000 eligible households, then the city government would be giving out over $5 BILLION a year.
• Since the 2018 proposed Chicago budget anticipates only $8.58 billion in revenue, this program if blown out under the current parameters would be equivalent to almost 60% of the city’s current total budget.
• And this is a city that has major budget deficit problems and this alderman wants to add billions of dollars to the problem.
• Of course, you could cut back on the number of people that get the free money. But if this alderman’s PR number of 70% is right, how do you decide since there are a lot of people in the same economic condition if the alderman is right. 
• Plus, who thinks that the people paying for this idiotic program with their hard earned tax dollars are going to sit back and accept a theoretical 60% increase in what are already obscenely high taxes? The productive people are going to leave the city making this program even more infeasible and the city government tax shortfall even more pronounced. This would put the city in a tax and spend death spiral, spending money they do not have, raising taxes, causing people to leave (see California example above) resulting in lower tax streams resulting in raising taxes, etc.

And Chicago is not the only city proposing such nonsense. We will cover that idiocy in the next insanity post. So to summarize: we have California spending itself into poverty, we have the Federal government spending for free vacations for foreign kids, and Chicago spending money it cannot afford. Insanity.

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

July, 2018, Part 4, Political Class Insanity: Wasting Millions In Afghanistan and Shredding Constitutional Rights In Washington

It is another month which means it is again time to review the latest political class insanity from Washington and around the world. Political class insanity takes many forms including the wasting of taxpayer wealth, criminal fraud within government programs, inane and stupid political quotes and actions, the inability to create and implement effective and efficient government programs, stupid and ill performing economic policies and strategies, and other forms of insanity that continue to evolve and surprise and shock us.

Let’s get started:

1) We have previously talked about the U.S. effort in Afghanistan and how quite likely there has never been any other situation in the history of the Federal government where so much taxpayer wealth was spent for so little in return. But a recent article by Brian Doherty in the August, 2018 edition of Reason magazine brings us up to date on how very bad our tax dollars were misspent in the country:

• Special Inspector General for Afghanistan (SIGAR), John Sopko, recently announced that the U.S. taxpayer has spent an amazing $126 BILLION just for reconstruction projects in Afghanistan, i.e. exclusive of military costs, since 2002.
• If you adjust this 17 year effort for inflation, then we have spent more in this one country than what was spent for the entire Marshall plan after World War II.
• And while the Marshall Plan is generally hailed as a huge success for rebuilding Europe after the war, the same cannot be said for Afghanistan reconstruction.
• For example, $43 million was spent for a single single automobile propane gas filling station somewhere in the hinterland of Afghanistan.
• The Pentagon could never explain why such a single station cost so much in Afghanistan but only $500,000 for an identical station in Pakistan.
• And not only were the costs outlandish, there was no propane gas infrastructure to bring propane gas to the station so it was basically useless….for $43 million.
• The Pentagon also spent $500,000 to construct a typical Afghan village that was to be used to train Afghan police and military personnel “to conduct simulated police search and clearance exercises.”
• Unfortunately, poor construction and lack of oversight resulted in shoddy construction and the facility “began to disintegrate.”
• Despite this disaster, the contractor still got paid in full.
• The American taxpayer spent $60 million for what was supposed to be a brand new Marriott hotel in the downtown area of the country’s capital, Kabul.
• But when Senator Rand Paul toured the site he found out how badly this project went: “I walked the halls of this deserted, unfinished shell of a dream,” which had “barren rooms, empty elevator shafts, and no electric power” which “ left the entire site uninhabited and uninhabitable.”
• But it is not just the $60 million that got wasted since the the tall building skeleton is close to the American embassy which makes it an ideal point to launch attacks against the embassy which means that more money has to be spent every day just to secure this disaster from the Taliban and other terrorists.
• According to findings of those auditing the entire effort in the country, “Every day that we distribute money, people squander or steal it, and no one is ever held accountable."
• SIGAR recently found that an effort to bring electricity to the countryside wasted another $60 million since “mismanagement of the contract has resulted in the U.S. government spending almost $60 million on a power-transmission project that is not operational because land acquisition and right of way issues have not been resolved and because there is no contract provision to permanently connect the system to a power source,” i.e. we built a power transmission project that does not connect to any power source that would supply the transmission facility.
• In addition to probably never becoming operational, SIGAR found that three of the 18 power towers were shoddily built and could fall down onto villages along the path of the wires, endangering local villagers.
• U.S. taxpayers paid to build two schools in the country that were constructed so poorly that SUGAR concluded that one of the buildings “may be beyond repair or rehabilitation” and is “located in an area of high seismic activity: SIGAR believes it is likely to collapse in the event of an earthquake…”
• The U.S. government has spent about $8 billion to get rid of opium poppy crops in the country which has resulted in the confiscation of almost half a million tons of opium.
• While that half a million tons sounds impressive, it represents about 5% of the total opium going out of the country in just a single year.
• The Pentagon spent $28 million on camouflage uniforms for Afghanistan that were designed for a woodland environment even though only 2% of Afghanistan could be considered woodland.
• Also, in addition to ordering and paying for camouflage uniforms that are basically useless in the country, the Pentagon “used a proprietary pattern that involved extra fees and had not been shown to be any more effective than standard patterns.”
• Despite spending all of this money on reconstruction, and untold billions of dollars on direct military in country costs, the security of the country is still a disaster with the United Nations reporting that there are on average 65 “security incidents” per day in the country, i.e. despite our best efforts, the country is no more secure, safe, or built up than it was back in 2002 when this whole disaster of an operation was undertaken.

How much is $126 billion? It would be enough to give every American a check for just under $400, or a family of four a check for about $1,600. It could pay for about about a quarter of a million teachers or police officers at $50,000 a year for ten years. How many shelters for the homeless or drug addiction treatments could it have done for needy and suffering Americans? A lot. Instead, the Federal Government, two Presidential administrations, and the Pentagon wasted it away for nothing in return half a world away. Insanity.

2) We have often reported on how the Obama administration weaponized the IRS to harass, impede, and prevent non-profit organizations that were at odds with Obama’s policies to exercise their First Amendment rights. This is not a disputed fact any more, Lois Lerner and others in the IRS actively blocked Conservative, Tea Party, and Republican groups from attaining tax exempt status to exercise their free speech rights.

But now we find out that it was not just Obama’s Democratic administration that were at fault and violating millions of Americans’ Constitutional rights. According to government records obtained by Judicial Watch:

• A former staff member of REPUBLICAN Senator John McCain urged the IRS to target conservative and Tea Party groups for “financially ruinous audits.”
• These IRS conversations occurred on April 20, 2013 and included McCain staff member, Henry Kerner, and high ranking IRS employees including the infamous Lois Lerner, the director of the IRS exempt organization group.
• During the conversation, Kerner asked Lerner to “audit so many [organizations] that it is financially ruinous.”
• Despite this now documented and real conversation and meeting, Lerner is on record in front of Congress claiming that her blocking of groups tax exempt status were “absolutely incorrect, insensitive, and inappropriate.”
• But since Obama and his henchman wanted this to happen, Lerner faced no consequences for her illegal and unethical practices of denying Americans their First Amendment rights.
• But it gets worse from a timing perspective since shortly after this meeting, the Treasury inspector general released their report that found, “Early in Calendar Year 2010, the IRS began using inappropriate criteria to identify organizations applying for tax-exempt status.”
• This criteria included delaying the approval of the applications to the IRS until after the 2012 elections which means that many voices that would have likely opposed Obama’s reelection were blocked by Lerner and her IRS cronies. 

And thanks to Judicial Watch we now know it was not just the Democrat in the White House that wanted to squelch Americans’ First Amendment rights but also at least on Republican in the Senate that wanted the same infringement also. Which proves our long standing point: why there may be two major political parties in Washington, there is really only one political class, a class of arrogant, law breaking and self serving people that want their way even if it means shredding the Constitution and the rights laid out in it.

That will do it for today’s insanity: still wasting billions in Afghanistan and wasting First Amendment rights in Washington. More insanity to follow.

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:

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