November, 2019, Part 11, Political Class Insanity: Corrupt Mayors and Elizabeth Warren's Idiocy of A Tax Plan

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) One would hope that those running for office and getting elected to that office were the best, the brightest, and had high levels of integrity. But all that is is an elusive hope as the vast majority of the time those elected are not bright, not the best, and have very low levels of integrity combined with serious self enrichment and greed issues. 

We have illustrated these types of low life behavior before, A Georgia Congressman actually thinks the island of Guam can physically tip over. A Texas Congresswoman thinks that the Constitution is 400 years old and wonders out loud if one of the Mars Rover vehicles will be driving past the Moon area where Armstrong landed. Just about every Illinois governor from the past few decades is in prison or was in prison. The list goes on and on.

And now, we can possibly add the former mayor of Baltimore to that list:

• According to November 20, 2019 article by Zachary Evans on the National Review website, the former mayor of Baltimore could be facing 20 years in prison for corruption.
• Former mayor Catherine Pugh was recently indicted on Federal charges including fraud and tax evasion.
• According to the article: “In March, federal authorities began investigating allegations that Pugh made $500,000 from selling her children’s book Healthy Holly to the University of Maryland Medical System (UMMS) while she was serving on the UMMS board. It was then revealed that health-insurance provider Kaiser Permanente had paid Pugh $100,000 for 20,000 copies of the book, at the same time the company was seeking a contract to insure city employees.”
• Federal agents raided her home back in April in search of evidence which led to her resignation on May 2.
• While Pugh had at first has called the investigation a witch hunt, her resignation letter kind of admitted to the fraud and corruption she put forth for the “harm that I have caused to the image of the city of Baltimore and the credibility of the office of the mayor.”

Another day another potentially corrupt American politician. No wonder that Trump and others have chastised the local politicians for letting Baltimore degenerate into a miserable place to live and work for its residents, the mayor was possibly too busy lining her own pockets to pay attention. 

2) But wait! Pugh is not the only city politician to get caught possibly breaking the law:

• Muncie, Indiana mayor Dennis Tyler was arrested early one recent morning at his home as it was raided by FBI agents.
• This raid was the result of a four year FBI investigation.
• In 2018, one of Tyler’s associates, Craig Nichols, pleaded guilty to wire fraud and money laundering.
• The investigation of Nichols led to the investigation and arrest of Tyler.
• According to the news reports, “Others charged in the probe include Nikki Grigsby, the Muncie Sanitary District administrator; Tracy Barton, another official with the Muncie Sanitary District; and local businessmen Jeffrey Burke, Tony Franklin and Rodney Barber.”

The good news is that if Tyler and Pugh are guilty, than it is great that they will face justice. The bad news is that we have no idea how many other corrupt mayors, governors, and Congress people are also as greedy and as corrupt. 

3) We have often made the case that most politicians are totally ignorant when it comes to basic math and economic principles. Democratic Presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren showed she has neither of these simple traits when she recently announced her latest tax plan to tax the rich to unheard of heights: 

• Warren obviously did not do the basic math underlying her tax the rich to death plan since with one simple example the Wall Street Journal showed that it was easily conceivable that some Americans would end up paying over 100% of their annual earnings in taxes.
• Think about this lunacy for a moment: for every dollar one earned in wages, interest, dividends, etc. you could end paying more than a dollar in Federal taxes BEFORE state and local taxes are layered on top.
• This is basically slavery, a government taking everything you worked for in any one year.
• Warren would get to this economic idiocy by raising the top Federal tax rate to 39.6%, she would impose a new 14.8% Social Security tax, she would tax an American’s individual total wealth by 6% on people worth more than a billion dollars, and she would raise the capital gains tax to match the income tax rates.
• Let’s do the math as outlined by the Wall Street Journal: let’s assume that a billionaire had a $1,000 investment that gained him or her an annual 6% return.
• That would be a $60 investment gain for them.
• But between the increased Federal income tax rate, the additional of a new Social Security tax, and an increase in capital gains tax, the Federal government under Warren would take 58.2% of that $60 gain in Federal taxes or about $35.
• But she would also hit him or her with a 6% tax on the total investment or an additional $60 in taxes.
• Thus, the total Federal tax hit on that $1000 investment and the resulting 6% return would be $95, which is an effective tax rate of 158%.
• In other words, for every $1.00 this investment made for the billionaire, they would have to pay $1.58 in Federal taxes.

How stupid is this?! Nobody is going to work, invest, and manage their assets in order to pay this high of a tax rate BEFORE paying state and local income taxes. Did nobody on her staff do this simple calculation to show how stupid this is? Or is she that stupid to think that this is actually a good idea, because it is not:

• Almost always when politicians raise taxes they get far less than what they think they will get.
• For example, when Maryland raised state income tax rates on its residents earning over a million dollars a year, very, very shortly they found that despite higher tax rates they were getting LESS total tax revenue from million dollar earners despite higher tax rates.
• When Philadelphia raised the tax on soda sold in the city, they actually ended up getting far less in soda tax despite the higher soda tax rate.
• When France jacked up the tax rates on its billionaires, those billionaires simply left the country and took their billions with them.
• The same type of disasters will happen with this idiocy. People will stop working so hard, hurting the nation’s productivity and competitiveness with the rest of the world, because it makes no sense to try and earn that extra dollar when you will pay more in taxes than that dollar. 

Billionaires have resources that most people do not. They will simply take their wealth and move out of the country where their wealth and talents will be more than welcome by just about every other country in the world. The wealth that they have and the investments and the growth in the economy that wealth produces will be lost, making us a poorer country in the process.

Even Steve Rattner, former economic advisor in the Obama administration thinks this is stupid: “I would say it’d be disastrous for the American economy.” 

And think about this reality, that usually goes unnoticed: do we really think that Warren and her cohorts in Congress will do anything good with whatever money they can bilk out of Americans with this plan? As we stated above, one current Congressman thinks that the island of Guam can actually top over in the middle of the ocean. A Congresswoman thinks the Constitution is over 400 years old. A New York Congresswoman has no concept of how the basic unemployment calculation is made and also thinks the three parts of the Federal government are the Presidency, the House,and the Senate. These are the types of people we should be giving our current taxes to, never mind giving them a lot more of our wealth.

And if you are not a billionaire and think you personally are going to get any of this wealth theft, forget about it. Washington politicians will find a way to waste while destroying the economy, driving highly productive citizens out of the country, and eventually causing ALL of his to pay higher taxes once the billionaires either move or go dry.

Again, why did not someone on her staff do the simple math and apply basic economic principles to this fallacy? Surely, if she is this ignorant on this simple stuff there is no way this country should put her in charge of anything more complicated. Raising taxes almost always results in LESS tax revenue, see Maryland and Philadelphia examples above. 

That will do it for today’s insanity: unbelievably stupid tax plans from Elizabeth Warren and two potentially corrupt and criminal mayors of U.S. cities get arrested for their possible criminal deeds.
This will also do it for this month’s political class insanity. Unfortunately, it took us 11 posts to get through just the typical stupidity, greed, corruption, and incompetence of the American political class. We did not even tap into the farce that is the impeachment proceedings and most of the other Presidential campaign idiocy. 

Gets depressing, doesn’t it? How did we get to this point where we pay more and more in taxes and get less and less integrity, intelligence, and production from the political class in this country?

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:

https://www.amazon.com/Walter-Bruno-Korschek/e/B002KYU08Q/ref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share

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

November, 2019, Part 10, Political Class Insanity: Legal Idiocy From A Congressman, Pensions Funds' Dire Financial Straits and Hillary Clinton's Delusions

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 will classify this first instance of political class insanity as “are you that stupid?” When prosecutors want to prosecute a potential criminal, they usually cannot rely on hearsay testimony and evidence. Why? Because the person giving the hearsay evidence could just be making it up for whatever reason they want. 

For example, let’s say I don’t like my neighbor so I am going to say my neighbor tortured and killed a dog. Police cannot find any evidence of the dead dog’s remains, there is no video proof of the torture, there is not a long record of animal abuse, no one reported a missing dog, etc. All the police have is my hearsay word that my neighbor is so evil that he killed a dog. This case would never see the light of day in a courtroom since there is no direct evidence.

But according to a current U.S.Congressman, hearsay evidence without any direct evidence is a pretty good deal:

• According to Ryan Saavedra, writing for the Daily Wire website, a Democratic Congressman, commenting on the lack of hard proof that Trump committed any impeachment offense, said that “hearsay evidence can be much better evidence than direct evidence.” [my emphasis added.]
• This is the nonsensical opinion of Democratic Congressman Mike Quigley relative to the impeachment witch hunt currently underway in D.C.
• Specifically: “And, if gets to closed primer on hearsay, I think the American public needs to be reminded that countless people have been convicted on hearsay because the courts have routinely allowed and created, needed exceptions to hearsay. Hearsay can be much better evidence than direct … and it’s certainly valid in this instance.”
• Hearsay evidence is NEVER better than direct evidence regardless of his stupid assumption on criminal acts and behavior.
• In our dog example above, in Quigley’s world the word of an irate neighbor would be better than having video, forensic, or other direct proof that the neighbor killed the dog.
• And why is hearsay evidence so much more “valid in this instance” vs. any other instance?
• Fortunately, real Americans realize what stupidity this is and reacted accordingly: “Can you believe this insanity? ‘Hearsay can be much better evidence than DIRECT EVIDENCE’ according to Democrat Mike Quigley: "Are you fricken kidding me? 3rd and 4th party info better than hearing it yourself?”
• “From a reliable 4th party source according to other Democrats like #FullOfSchiff the best evidence is (is) shit you just make up for political gain as that appears to be what they have been doing all along.”
• "Uh?"
• “So not only are the Democrats ADMITTING their entire impeachment sham is based off of hearsay, but now they're trying to defend it. What a joke!”
• “Sounds exactly like what someone would say when they’re desperate and have no actual evidence…”
• “Just want to add that these lawmakers who say “hearsay can be much better evidence than direct” are the same ones who want to subject you to a due process-less red flag system. I’m sure that will just stop with guns, right? You still cool with that?”

This kind of nonsense and stupidity would be funny if it was not so serious and dangerous to our democracy and liberties. In this Congressman’s eyes, if someone does not like you, that is reason enough to subject you to criminal investigations and punishment even though there is no actual direct evidence you did anything wrong. As someone who took an oath to uphold the laws of the land he plays fast and loose on what has been a historical and successful road map for justice.

2) We have previously discussed the horrid financial condition of many public servant pension and retirement programs that local and state politicians have grossly mismanaged over the years. These pension programs have been severely underfunded with future unfunded liabilities totalling billions and billions of dollars.

Eventually these unfunded liabilities will become due and there will not be enough money to fund them, resulted in some or all of the following consequences:

• Pension and health benefits of public servant retirees will be drastically reduced.
• Taxes of all citizens will be drastically raised to fund the shortfall, resulting in stunted economic growth and financial freedom.
• Local and state governments will file for bankruptcy with unknown but certainly negative consequences.

How badly have politicians screwed up these funding policies? Consider some numbers from a recent Wall Street Journal article:

• Current state and local government pension programs have about $4.4 TRILLION in assets to payout future liabilities.
• That sounds like a lot of money until you find out that these programs actually have $8.6 TRILLION in future liabilities.
• Thus, under current economic trends and assets, state and local government have just over half of the amount of wealth they need to keep their pension programs solvent.
• And even these paltry numbers might be too rosy a picture since the average assumption across the country is that annual pension returns on investments will be about 7%, a very high and probably unrealistic assumption given that any future recessions could make the annual investment returns to be much less 7%.

The reason for this is very simple: politicians do not care about tomorrow or long term planning, they only care about their own, short term careers. Thus, rather than save for the future to fund these pension programs, politicians would rather spend that money today on wasteful programs and projects that help them get reelected over and over, the future welfare of government workers and their retirements be damned.

3) Margaret Thatcher was one of the most famous and strongest women leaders in the past fifty years. In fact, outside of possibly Mother Teresa, I cannot think of another woman who was as strong and as much of a leader than Thatcher in recent decades.

Compare Hatcher to Hillary Clinton:

• Hillary protected, abetted, and defended a sexual predator husband for decades, a predator that allegedly groped, had sex with, and possibly raped an untold number of women over the years.
• She publicly went after those alleged abused women to publicly discredit their stories of sexual harassment and abuse at the hands of husband Bill.
• She used the the Clinton Foundation as a money laundering operation to enrich herself and her family. 
• While a U.S. Senator, her legislative record is almost non-existent, since only three bills she was the sponsor of got enacted.
• And those three bills were underwhelming: one sponsored bill renaming a post office in a New York town with less than 2,000 residents, sponsoring bill renaming a portion of a highway outside of Buffalo, New York and the third named an existing brick house in Troy, New York as a national historic site which honored a 19th century female union leader.
• She was involved in so many scandals including, but not limited to, Whitewater, Vince Foster’s suspicious death, cattle futures fortune, White House furniture theft, Benghazi cover up, use of a private and illegal computer server in her home, etc.
• She has been caught lying so many times including the reality that she did NOT land under sniper fire in Bosnia like she claimed, all of her grandparents were NOT immigrants like she claimed, she knew the Benghazi attacks were NOT caused by an obscure video like she claimed, etc.

We could go on but you get the idea. She has been a vindictive, lying, and ineffective first wife , Senator, and Secretary of State.

And yet despite all of this trash that has followed her or been caused by her, she has the nerve to bad mouth Margaret Thatcher:

• In a recent interview she said that Thatcher did not even try to “make a positive difference” for women.
• Clinton and her daughter, Chelsea Clinton, had recently released yet another book, called “The Book of Gutsy Women: Favorite Stories of Courage and Resilience,” and was being interviewed on BBC radio.
• The book did not include Margaret Thatcher as one of her gutsy women because Thatcher did not meet the criteria of “knocking down barriers for others” and “did not make an effort to help other women.”
• Specifically: “She does but she doesn’t fit the other part of the definition — in our opinion — which really is knocking down barriers for others and trying to make a positive difference. I think the record is mixed with her.”

Seriously? One of the most successful and strongest political women in the past decades and Clinton does not think that Thatcher was gutsy enough to exist and thrive in a man dominated field? That she does not even make it into Clinton’s book of gutsy women? 

Unreal. Just another example of an American politician being so out of touch, being so petty, and so vain. It was not Thatcher’s job to open doors for other women, It was her job to serve her country and EVERY citizen in that country. She did it well, for a long time, and honorably. Given the list of Clinton’s misadventures listed above, Hilary Clinton is NOT the right person to judge Thatcher.
So today’s insanity includes a former first woman who has no concept of what honor is, politicians have no idea how to manage pension systems, and a politician who has no concept of basic legal principles.

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:

https://www.amazon.com/Walter-Bruno-Korschek/e/B002KYU08Q/ref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share

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

November, 2019, Part 9, Political Class Insanity: Tlaib May Have Broken The Law, The Bidens and Kerrys Are Knee Deep in the Ukraine Muck, and Elizabeth Warren Goes All Stupid

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) Rashida Tlaib is a freshman Congresswoman from Michigan. She has made quite a name for herself in a short time by being vehemently anti-Israel, calling Trump a Motherf****, spouting socialistic ideals, and generally being crude and rude. And she now be in deep trouble for abusing campaign finance laws:

• According to Ryan Saavedra, writing for the Daily Wire website, she may have asked for campaign money for use for her personal expenses.
• As a result of messages that have surfaced from her, the House Ethics Committee has launched an investigation.
• These messages including asking her campaign manager for the use of campaign money which could be a criminal violation of campaign finance laws.
• The Office of Congressional Ethics alleges: “Rep. Tlaib’s campaign committee, Rashida Tlaib for Congress, reported campaign disbursements that may not be legitimate and verifiable campaign expenditures attributable to bona fide campaign or political purposes. If Rep. Tlaib converted campaign funds from Rashida Tlaib for Congress to personal use, or if Rep. Tlaib’s campaign committee expended funds that were not attributable to bona fide campaign or political purposes, then Rep. Tlaib may have violated House rules, standards of conduct, and federal law….“because there is substantial reason to believe that Rep. Tlaib converted campaign funds from Rashida Tlaib for Congress to personal use or Rep. Tlaib’s campaign committee expended funds that were not attributable to bona fide campaign or political purposes.”
• Keep in mind that Democrats control the House so Tlaib cannot claim that Republican racists are out to get her as she is wont to do
• Text and emails show that Tlaib was frantic to get financial support from members of her staff and from her campaign and there were copies found of checks made out to her from her campaign.
• The campaign checks totaled thousands of dollars.
• In her own words, requesting money from her campaign coffers: “I am just not going to make it through the campaign without a stipend. With the loss of a second income to lean back on, I am requesting $2,000 per two weeks but not exceeding $12,000. The cost of living stipend is going towards much needed expenses due to campaigning that includes car maintenance, child care and other necessities.”

The case for unethical behavior seems pretty strong and again, the House is controlled by Democrats, those of the same political party as her. The good news is that she may have gotten caught illegally getting rich, as it is alleged. The bad news is that while she got caught, there are probably hundreds of other politicians who did not get caught.

2) Following up on that previous comment, it appears that Ms Tlaib may not be the only political operatives dealing in corruption:

• Documents recently released from the Ukranian General Prosecutor’s office show that complicated money transfers from foreign sources went into a slush fund that was controlled by Devon Archer, John Kerry, Sr., John Kerry, Jr. and Hunter Biden, Joe Biden’s son.
• The Latvian Department of Financial Monitoring tracked many of these financial shenanigans that involved the Urkanian energy company, Busima. 
• Recall that Burisma appointed Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, to its board of directors even though he was a foreign national and had no experience in the energy industry.
• Burisma also has strong ties to David Leiter, John Kerry’s former Senate chief of staff.
• As Time Magazine reports: “Leiter’s involvement in the firm rounds out a power-packed team of politically-connected Americans that also includes a second new board member, Devon Archer, a Democratic bundler and former adviser to John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign. Both Archer and Hunter Biden have worked as business partners with Kerry’s son-in-law, Christopher Heinz, the founding partner of Rosemont Capital, a private-equity company.”

Seems like a lot of Democrats have a lot of explaining to do relative to the Ukraine and yet, House Democrats remain focused Trump and stuff he never did relative to the Ukraine.

3) We have often covered the reality of how politicians often say the darndest, and most stupid things. But Democratic candidate for President Elizabeth Warren may have recently said one of the dumbest things to ever come out of a politician’s mouth. 

The liberal organization group Black Womxn For (which bills itself as “focused on creating intentional meeting spaces for Black Trans Women, Cis women and gender-nonconforming community leaders and activists to talk with each other about the Democratic primary and our impact on 2020 elections”) endorsed Warren for President: “There is one leader who has shown, through action, deed, and word, that a future of economic prosperity, racial justice, gender justice, and social and political equity is possible. She is a partner with a deep understanding of how racism and gender discrimination don't just compound income inequality but are actually central to maintaining the status quo.” 

It’s a free country and this group certainly has the right to endorse and support any candidate that they want. But it was Warren’s response that was so nonsensical: “Thank you, @BlackWomxnFor! Black trans and cis women, gender-nonconforming, and nonbinary people are the backbone of our democracy and I don’t take this endorsement lightly. I'm committed to fighting alongside you for the big, structural change our country needs.”

So a group of people that represent an infinitesimally small portion of the Americans in this country are “the backbone of our democracy?” I guess that means that the following people are NOT the backbone of this country:

• Our armed forces that protect the country and our democracy are not the backbone of our country.
• Our police officers who protect us every day are not the backbone of this country.
• People who go to work and pay taxes everyday are not the backbone of this country.
• Teachers who educate our kids to be productive members of society are not the backbone of this country.

Talk about pandering. Twitter user Quadratus summed up this nonsense quite nicely: “No - the backbone of our society are all those who get up each day and work, pay their taxes, take care of their families, and in their exhaustion at night wonder how irrational leaders like you [Warren] can possibly believe you can lead us to anything but emotional hysteria and anarchy.”

There you have today’s insanity: A Congresswoman who allegedly used campaign finance funds for her personal use, Ukrainian corruption that does not involve Trump but involves making political operatives and their sons rich, and just an insane comment from an out of touch politician which insulted most of America.

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:

https://www.amazon.com/Walter-Bruno-Korschek/e/B002KYU08Q/ref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share

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

November, 2019,Part 8, Political Class Insanity: Failed Soda Tax In Philly, Failed Understanding of Gun Basics, and Failed City Government in Denver

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) More times than I care to mention we have made the case that most American politicians are completely ignorant when it comes to even basic economic principles. They raise the minimum wage to help the working poor and jobs for the working poor disappear. Freshman Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasi-Cortez, a business/economic major in college, has no idea what the definition of the unemployment rate is. An economic professor is hired by Washington politicians to design Obama Care and it is a total failure.

We have previously discussed the economic failure in Philadelphia relative to its idiotic soda tax. For those that missed that discussion of another failed economics test for politicians, consider the updated status of this failure as laid out in a recent article on the Freedom Headlines website. “Soda Tax Backfires, Now Philadelphia Is Hurting For It:”

• In theory the soda tax that the city politicians enacted was supposed to force city residents to make healthier beverage choices and get healthier.
• But since these politicians have no concept of basic economics, the economics of this decision has been a disaster for the city.
• The tax was so high that consumers did not stop drinking soda, they just left the city limits to buy soda where it was not taxed, namely out in the suburbs.
• Simple economics: when the price of a product gets too high, consumers will shop around for cheaper alternatives, duh.
• A recent study found that there was not higher demand for healthier beverage alternatives in the city, i.e. consumers did not switch to bottled water or other healthier liquid options, they simply went elsewhere to buy less expensive soda.
• By not understanding the simple concept of price elasticity, the city politicians raised the city tax on soda 17% which resulted in a sales drop of 51%, wiping out the tax increase and more.
• The article does some simple economic math by assuming that one million ounces of soda was sold annually before the tax increase went into effect.
• It the amount of soda consumed had stayed the same, the city would have seen annual soda tax revenue go from $54.300 to $62,400.
• But with volume decreased under the concept of price elasticity the city only received about $31,200 in annual revenue despite raising the tax rate by 17%.
• Almost immediately after the soda tax increase took effect, Pepsi said it would have to lay off 80 to 100 workers at their Philadelphia distribution locations because of decreased demand. [Source: www.philly.com]
• Acme supermarkets had to reduce hours in its 16 city stores because of the increased tax: “The beverage tax fell on about 4,000 items. In Acme city stores, soda sales dropped as much as 80 percent. Sales of other items covered by the tax, such as juices, creamers and energy drinks, were down 30 percent, and the number of customers declined by 5 percent. Philly stores cut an average of 150 to 200 employee hours per week, resulting in lighter paychecks for employees.”
• As for the original purpose of the law, reduce the consumption of sugary drinks to improve citizens’ health, it was a bust, people just went elsewhere to get their soda fix at more reasonable prices.

So, because of a severe lack of understanding regarding economics, Philadelphia officials introduced an economic law that:

1. Did not improve the health of citizens.
2. Reduced the employment level of workers in the city.
3. Reduced the number of hours other workers had available to them.
4. Gutted an existing city tax revenue stream.

Nice job, four for four in getting things more screwed up! These politicians did not only not understand economics they did not understand the right approach to the problem of obesity: this is a public health issue and should be resolved with public health programs. It is not a tax or economic issue and treating it as a tax and economic issue is never going to resolve the underlying root causes.

2) Sometimes politicians say the darndest things. In fact, we have dedicated whole posts to some of the idiocy that they have said over the years.You can access those gems of nonsense by putting”darndest things” in the search box above. Unfortunately, much of the stupid things they say call into question if they really know what they are talking about.

Joe Biden recently fell into this category. At a campaign stop in New Hampshire, he voiced his opposition to gun magazines that hold “100 clips.” But it is physically impossible for a magazine to hold “100 clips,” that is just idiocy. A clip holds bullets together and a single clip holding multiple bullets is then loaded into a single magazine. 

So, Biden is talking about abridging Second Amendment rights and cannot even get the basics of the industry straight. How are we supposed to take him and other Second Amendment opponents seriously when they do not know the difference between a magazine, a clip and a bullet?

Now, apparently, Biden realized his mistake and corrected himself. But please understand what you are talking about before you start messing with the Bill of Rights.

3) We have previously talked about how cities like San Francisco have decided to not make it a crime to defecate, urinate, or shoot up illegal drugs in public. As a result, cities have had to create hazmat sanitation units to clean the streets of defecation and urination on a daily basis, the chances of disease and infections have risen dramatically previously dormant diseases such as typhus have made a comeback and there has been a significant negative impact on the environment as raw sewage is flushed down storm drains and into rivers and the ocean.

Nasty stuff, crises that city politicians have no clue on how to manage or fix. Fortunately, at least for the rest of the country, this disaster has been confined to liberal run west coast cities such as Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. Unfortunately, these problems have migrated out of the west coast and are affecting other cities such as Denver. Consider the poor plight of a small business owner in Denver and how liberal/Democratic politicians have made his life and business a similar living hell:

• According to an article by Ryan Saavedra, writing for the Daily Wire website, a Denver business owner has been fined by the city for not picking human feces that constantly appears in front of his business on a public sidewalk.
• The business owner claims that homeless people defecate in front of his business every day but the city refuses to clean up after them and are now fining him for not cleaning up also.
• Thus, he is taking the city to court to force them to do their job and keep the streets clean, something a taxpaying business owner should expect.
• The business owner, Jawaid Bazyer, who operates an internet service provider company in Denver, describes the situation: “The wall [of his building] is a bathroom stall. They [homeless folks] lean up against it and let it rip. In downtown Denver, that’s nonstop now, just piles of poop.”
• He goes on: “There’s food, trash, drug deals. In the alley, we get the defecation, drug needles.”
• He says that he has employees chased and attacked by criminals operating in the area.
• He sometimes calls local police to get vagrants off of his property several times a day to no avail.
• Given that the city sanitation and police have been ineffective in helping him, he started to refuse to clean up the feces and used drug needles from the front of his business, which resulted in the city fining him for not doing so.
• He rightfully claims that the situation is a bio hazard and he should not require his employees to expose themselves to such a danger: “Because it’s a bio-hazard. It could be infectious. I didn’t hire these people to clean poop off the ground. I can’t, as an employer, just say, ‘Go and clean up the feces. I’m not the one doing this, and they won’t do anything about the people committing the crimes, but I’m the one who’s easy to find and easy to punish.”

Gotta feel sorry for the guy, trying to build a business, provide good jobs for his employees, and the city bureaucracy and the politicians that operate it are punishing him for their failures. The primary reason for government to exist is to protect citizens. In Denver, it apparently means letting public health go out the window and then blame innocent citizens for the mess that ensues.

Another day of political class insanity: a failed tax in Philly, a failed understanding of gun basics, and a failed city government in Denver that endangers the health and financial welfare of everyone in the city.

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:

https://www.amazon.com/Walter-Bruno-Korschek/e/B002KYU08Q/ref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share

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

November, 2019,Part 7,Political Class Insanity: The Hypocrisy of Michelle Obama and The Laziness of Bill de Blasio

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) As we have discussed previously, it is not only the lying, greed, ineffectiveness, and idiocy of politicians that make us mad but it is also the hypocrisy. Obama Care was good for Americans but politicians continued to get much more superior healthcare and insurance above and beyond what Americans got from Obama Care. It is a crime to do insider stock trading if you are not a member of Congress but perfectly okay if you are a member of Congress. Hypocrisy galore.

Michelle Obama is just the latest hypocrite to have one opinion for us but a totally different set of behaviors for her:

• She recently spoke out about how “white people” (which in itself is a racist term) moved out of city neighborhoods as minorities moved in, creating the term “white flight.”
• Specifically: “But unbeknownst to us, we grew up in the period — as I write — called ‘white flight.’ That as families like ours, upstanding families like ours … As we moved in, white folks moved out because they were afraid of what our families represented. And I always stop there when I talk about this out in the world because, you know, I want to remind white folks that y’all were running from us. This family with all the values that you’ve read about. You were running from us. And you’re still running, because we’re no different than the immigrant families that are moving in … the families that are coming from other places to try to do better.”
• Given this viewpoint, I am assuming that her and Barack have moved back into their old neighborhoods in Chicago, wanting to set an example of how bad “white flight” is.
• But wait, didn’t she and Barack just spend over $15 million to buy a luxury house on Martha’s Vineyard, a locale that is 95% white and only 2% black?
• And if this is not bad enough, the Obamas also own a home in the Kalorama neighborhood of DC which is 80% white and only 4% black, and they have a $5 million third home in Rancho Mirage, California which is 80% white and 2.5% black.

They had three chances to practice with Michelle is preaching, i.e. do not run away from minority neighborhoods like white people do and they chose in all three cases to be crass hypocrites of what they say vs. what they do.

People move their homes because they want a safer neighborhood, they want better schools for their kids, their jobs removed or they move for a better job, or they are retiring and downsizing. But if white people do any of these things they are acting like racists and causing “white flight” in Michelle’s eyes while she is allowed to move into high end white neighborhoods and she has no problem with that.

Hypocrisy galore from the former first lady. 

2) The other thing that bothers me and probably others from the previous set of paragraphs is how are the Obamas, who during his eight years in office made only $400,000 a year from his job while Michelle learned nothing from her time in the White House: able to afford a luxury home in exclusive Martha Vineyards, a luxury home in an exclusive housing enclave in D.C. and a luxury home in California? I believe I read somewhere that the D.C. house is worth $8 millions which puts the total Obama home investment over $28 million? 

Let’s do some simple math:

• The total value of their three homes is about $28 million.
• Let’s assume they put 20% down for their mortgages.
• Let’s assume they got a very favorable mortgage rate of 2.5%.
• Which means that their monthly mortgage payment is about $88,000 a MONTH!
• This doesn't include property taxes, homeowners insurance premiums, or any HOA fees they would have to pay.

Thus, it is not inconceivable that Obama's are paying over $100,000 a month to manage and hold these three properties.

They did not come into the White House as a very, very rich family. They did not earn enough money in their jobs during their eight years in the White House to be considered a very, very rich family. Are we to believe that their books and speeches have been so grand as to allow them to afford over $25 million in real estate properties and over $100,000 a month in housing expenses before taking into consideration their other assets and expenses? 

Gee, it must be great to be an American politician even if during your time in office you accomplished very little of any value to most Americans. What a great country...for the American political class at least.

3) We have often talked about how bad the homeless problem is out on the west coast. From Seattle to Los Angeles, liberal and Democratic politicians have turned once beautiful cities into dangerous eyesores: public urination and defecation without repercussions, tons of garbage littering the streets, no plan to help the thousands and thousands of homeless Americans get back on their feet or beat their drug addictions, explosion of the rat populations because of the garbage and the reviving of serious, long dormant diseases such as typhus, etc.

What had mystified me is that there were very few similar stories regarding the homeless-related problems in New York City. NYC has the same characteristics of the west coast problem-plagued cities but no reported public urination or defecation issues, no tons of garbage littering the streets, no large homeless encampments throughout the city, etc. Is it possible that NYC found a way to resolve homeless problems that the west coast cities did not despite having an overwhelming number of liberal and Democrats politicians?

Seems that is not the case, i.e. they did not resolve the issues and problems of their homeless problems, they found a rather unique way to sidestep what west coast cities did not:

• Rather than help homeless Americans in his city, the current mayor of the city, Bill de Blasio, has been working a program to export them to other parts of the country.
• Rather than spend city funds to find these folks shelter and feed them and help them get drug addiction treatment, he has been trying to dump them off anywhere that was not inside his city limits.
• De Blasio has been operating a program called the “Special One-Time Assistance Program” directed at his city’s homeless population.
• This was a top secret program within the city’s Department of Homeless Services organization.
• This organization spent $89 million of taxpayer money to send 12,482 homeless New Yorkers out of the city to other parts of the country.
• Those homeless folks that promised and actually did leave NYC received money for transportation, home furnishings, and a year’s worth of rent somewhere else.
• On average, this program spent $41,000 of taxpayer money on each homeless family.
• And to make the program even shadier and more disgusting, de Blasio and his city employees did not notify other hundreds of towns and cities around the country that they were about to receive the homeless folks that had been bribed to leave NYC.
• Now the burden of resolving the NYC homeless problem has been simply and quietly exported to other places around the country.
• When Hawaiian Democratic state representative John Mizuno found out that at least one homeless NYC family had been transplanted to Honolulu, he accused NYC of their homeless people “being dumped here” in Hawaii.
• The Democratic mayor of Mount Vernon, New York is demanding that de Blasio take back the homeless people that de Blaosio shipped up to Mount Vernon, that his town ”is not standing for it.”
• Of course, de Blasio’s people do not see it that way, saying that calling the program a “dumping ground” and “export” is offensive to those that are relocating which, of course, is hogwash.

$89 million properly spent within the city limits could have gone a long way to breaking the cycle of homelessness: building food banks, building homeless shelters, paying for temporary housing within the city, offering job training, offering day day care services, that $89 million could have done a lot of good. But no, de Blasio would rather have this cycle of homelessness not be resolved, just moved out of his domain.

This attitude of not doing you job to help those in need within your domain is lazy, selfish, and inhumane, providing a temporary self serving fix while not addressing or working to resolve the underlying root causes of being homeless. I find it beyond insane, I find it disgusting.

The hypocrisy of Michelle Obama and the inhumanity of Bill de Blasio, not a good review of the American political class.

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:

https://www.amazon.com/Walter-Bruno-Korschek/e/B002KYU08Q/ref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share

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