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.

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www.loathemygovernment.com

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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