June, 2020, Part 9, Political Class Insanity: Wasteful Coronavirus Government Spending, More African American Death and Carnage in Chicago, and More Ineptness From The Michigan Governor

It is the beginning of another month which means it is time again to review the latest political class insanity from the American political class. Each month it takes us multiple posts to cover the wasteful spending, incompetent government organizations and employees, government programs that usually make a problem worse than resolving it, inane and idiotic politician comments, etc.

To review past posts on this insanity and idiocy, just click on the first few posts in each month listed to the right of this page. After reviewing just a handful of these insanity posts we think you will agree that we are currently being served by the worst set of American politicians ever to hold office in our entire history.

1) Over the years we have written so many posts on how government at all levels wastes untold billions of dollars of our tax dollars every year. From Medicare and Social Security fraud to Pentagon inefficiencies to outright criminal activities by elected officials, the American taxpayer has probably seen trillions of tax dollars lost with no return over the past few decades.

And that corruption and ineptness recently occurred again relative to the economic stimulus package that Congress passed in light of the coronavirus crisis:

• According to reporting by the Blaze: “The federal government’s $2.2 trillion coronavirus stimulus package was created and passed to support Americans in a time when the U.S. economy was taking a hit and millions of citizens were worried about how they were going to pay their bills.”
• It goes without saying that the funding and legislation was aimed at helping LIVING Americans get through the virus crisis.
• However, that principle does not appear to be part of the reality in Washington since the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that the Federal government sent over $1.4 billion to over 1 million Americans who were dead.
• The GAO research concluded that different government agencies do not share death records with each other so that one part of the Federal government knows that someone was dead but another part of the government does not know they are dead.
• Specifically, the Social Security Administration has a full set of death records but that information was not shared with the IRS and Treasury Department who were responsible for sending out the virus stimulus checks.
• Adding insult to injury for American taxpayers, the IRS has announced that if anyone got a stimulus check intended for a deceased relative they should return it but the IRS had no plans to go after those checks that were sent to dead people.
• Given the lack of follow up and the inefficiency and incompetence of the Federal government, it is a sure bet that a great many of those bad checks will be cashed and the money never returned to the Treasury.
• What is different from other cases of government’s wasteful spending is that a Congressman, Thomas Massie of Kentucky, actually warned the Federal government in April that stimulus checks were being sent to dead people and that this idiocy was “just the tip of the iceberg” of corruption in the stimulus spending.
• Unfortunately, no one in the bureaucracy listened to him and billions of dollars were probably lost to fraud and the stupidity of the Federal government.

The real shame of this is how many real, existing, living, and struggling small businesses of families across the country could have really used that $1.4 billion rather than have it go to and probably be kept by those that did not deserve it. Insanity.

2) We have often talked about how ineffective and inept Chicago and Illinois politicians are when it comes to curbing the violence in the city of Chicago. This violence has been going on unabated for years, resulting in annual violence deaths in the city of hundreds and the wounding and maiming of thousands. 

While the George Floyd death/murder was horrific and despicable and got a lot of attention, the killing of African Americans in Chicago by the hundreds every year goes unreported and unaddressed. The latest:

• Keep in mind that Chicago has some of the stiffest and supposedly tightest gun control laws in the country.
• And yet during one recent Monday, 41 Chicago residents were wounded and six died as a result of the shooting violence in the city.
• This Monday violence comes on the heels of a Father’s Day weekend in the city where over 100 were shot and 14 of those shot died.

And yet no Black Lives Matter people were marching in the Chicago streets demanding that the mayor and town council stop the carnage inflicted on the black community in the city. Nancy Pelosi was nowhere to be found with solutions to the problem. CNN was not doing hard hitting reporting on this atrocity. And yet a single despicable killing of a black man in Minneapolis gets the political class all riled up but still without solutions.

3) Michigan Gretchen Whitmer has been the poster child on how to be a really bad politician over the past few months in so many ways:

• She put into place draconian lock down measures on every Michigan resident even though the vast majority of residents were not being affected by the virus since the vast majority of the cases were only in the Detroit area.
• But that logic of being a little specific and elegant about her lockdown plans were beyond her mental capacity and she locked down the whole state, bringing unnecessary hardship to the majority of Michigan residents.
• She then put in place nonsensical restrictions on what state residents could do: they could only buy paint from stores less than 50,000 square feet in size, they could only buy garden tools and seeds from stores with less than 50,000 square feet., etc.
• She illogically allowed people to take their sailboats and jet skis out for a ride but prohibited any other boats from being taken out for a ride.
• And although she locked down the whole state her husband tried to get his boat out on the water for a Memorial Day spin despite that being forbidden under his wife’s lock down edict.
• She then had the nerve to say that her husband was just pulling a joke on the marina owner, that he had no intention of actually violating his wife’s order, her reasoning being that her constituents were too stupid to not realize what a lie this was. 
• She then marched in mass protests following the George Floyd killing even though she objected strongly to regular citizens going to the state capital to protest her idiotic orders, claiming that they were endangering everyone else but somehow her marching with thousands of others did not endanger others.
• She had a barber arrested for trying to save his business and feed his family because a few people might get within a few feet of each other and yet she immersed herself and supported large George Floyd protests.
• She was critical of Trump’s handling of the virus crisis and yet provided no productive solutions herself.
• She is considering blocking Trump from having a political rally in her state, denying untold millions of Michigan residents their First Amendment rights strictly because of her politics.

And now on top of all of her failures, arrogance, idiocy, and badmouthing of Trump, she now wants Trump and the Federal government to bail her out of her incompetence:

• It appears that she has lost control of the Michigan state government budget and wants American in other states to bail her out.
• She recently announced that the state has spent more than $436 million in fighting the coronavirus,money that had not been budgeted.
• In addition, the state has lost $3 billion in tax revenue because of the illogical and draconian lock down she placed on businesses and workers in the entire state even in areas which had no occurrences or few occurrences of the virus.
• In addition, she predicts that Michigan will be $6 billion short budget wise over the next two years.

But what she does not recognize is that if the Federal government bails her out it is really the taxpayers in other states that are paying for her incompetence. Those states also have budget shortfalls and expenses for fighting the virus. Why the taxpayers in other states should pay her for her troubles and ineptness is ludicrous. 

She dug the financial hole in Michigan, she and Michigan residents should dig themselves out of it, not rely on taxpayers from other states to help them out. Those taxpayers have their own state government expenses to worry about. She obviously does not understand basic economic concepts of taxation, wealth, and government spending. 

The Federal government spends wealth it has collected from taxpayers, it does not generate wealth itself. Every dollar it spends comes from someone’s paycheck and for the Governor to lay claim to the paychecks of people not living in her state is either arrogance, ignorance or both.

That will do it for today’s insanity: more wasteful Washington spending, more unabated violence against African Americans in Chicago, and more ignorance and arrogance from the governor of Michigan.

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

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

June, 2020, Part 8, Political Class Insanity: The 14 Major Scandals Of The Obama Administration, The Second Seven

It is the beginning of another month which means it is time again to review the latest political class insanity from the American political class. Each month it takes us multiple posts to cover the wasteful spending, incompetent government organizations and employees, government programs that usually make a problem worse than resolving it, inane and idiotic politician comments, etc.

To review past posts on this insanity and idiocy, just click on the first few posts in each month listed to the right of this page. After reviewing just a handful of these insanity posts we think you will agree that we are currently being served by the worst set of American politicians ever to hold office in our entire history.

We are going to do a little retro today, much like we did with the previous post. For whatever silly reason, on a regular basis someone proposes that Obama was one of the greatest Presidents ever. It is an indefensible position on so many dimensions. We have previously talked about the multitude of failures of his administration:

The laws Obama broke:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2016/10/part-2-obama-presidency-end-of-error.html

The failures of Obama’s administration:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2016/10/part-1-obama-presidency-end-of-error.html

The hate inspired by the Obama administration

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2016/10/part-3-obama-presidency-end-of-error.html

But let's revisit some of his failures courtesy of Matt Margolis who recently published a review of Obama’s failures on the PJ Media website. His article was entitled, “Liberals Still Think Obama Was the ‘Best President Ever,’ Here Are 14 Reasons Why That’s Ridiculous.”

So let’s take a walk down memory lane and review 14 of Obama’s biggest failures [note: if you are a fan of Obama, try to come up with the 14 greatest successes of the Obama administration as you read the following, I am positive your 14 successes, if they even exist, cannot come close to matching the damage he did to the country via his failures.]

The driver of this article was the recent celebration of Obama’s birthday and some liberals' celebration of his failed Presidency. Apparently, Obama’s 14 failures were not discussed during this celebration (note: the first seven failures were discussed in our previous post):

8) Democrats and liberals got all upset when Bush initiated the Iraq War WITH Congressional approval. But when Obama started the horrific and illegal war in Libya without Congressional approval, Democrats and liberals went mute:

• Yes, Obama did basically start the war in Libya and the reason he did is still a great mystery.
• Since he knew Congress would never approve his war, he decided to do an end run around the Constitution.
• His end run involved getting the United Nations to declare the war for him and he then brought the U.S. military into play without Congressional approval to support the UN resolution.
• The Washington Times described this charade in that his actions “dilut[ed] the sovereign power of the United States.”
• His illegal military action led to the deaths of thousands and the disintegration of the country which led to the development of an ISIS terror region inside the borders of the country.

American tax dollars wasted, American service people put in mortal danger, the bypassing of the Constitution and the creation of a terrorist state, cannot fail much more than this.

9) As we mentioned briefly in our previous post, his illegal Fast and Furious program, the purpose of which has never been figured out, allowed his administration to pass over 2,000 weapons into the hands of the Mexican drug cartels. These guns eventually killed at least one U.S.Border Patrol agent and untold dozens of Mexican civilians. 

Once the operation got exposed for its failure and illegality, the Obama administration went into full cover up mode. His attorney general, Eric Holder, falsely claimed that he knew nothing about the operation. This led to him receiving a bipartisan contempt notice of Congress for failing to testify about the operation. Obama claimed executive privilege over documents requested by Congress to protect the coverup.

10) In 2009, Obama illegally fired Gerald Walpin, the Inspector General for the Corporation National and Community Service organization. He was fired because he dared to investigate an Obama crony and political fund donor, Kevin Johnson. Walpin allegedly found evidence that:

• Johnson had misused Federal grant money.
• The money was intended for use by AmericCorps but Johnson diverted it to his personal nonprofit group.
• He also allegedly used the diverted funds to donate to political campaigns and paid hush money to underage girls he allegedly sexually abused.
• When Walpin recommended charges against Johnson for violating Federal laws, Obama fired him.
• When Congress tried to investigate the filing, Obama went into stonewalling and cover up mode again.

11) As you can see, Obama was very active when it came to obstructing people from doing their jobs and rooting out corruption and law breaking. This was vividly illustrated in August 2014 when a whopping 47 out of 73 Inspector Generals wrote an open letter to Congress claiming that the Obama administration had obstructed investigations by not providing them the full access to documents and information they needed to do their jobs.

According to the article: “Such a letter was unprecedented, and the systemic corruption and obstruction of the inspectors general would have been considered an impeachable defense for almost any other president.” But Obama obstructed their accusations also, not allowing his two attorney generals, Eric Holder, and Loretta Lynch, from appointing a special prosecutor to investigate the charges.

12) Despite promising to take care of America’s suffering veterans, Obama came nowhere close to keeping that promise also:

• Obama claimed he would reduce the large backlog of veterans’ requests for medical and healthcare help.
• However, the backlog trend reversed in Obama’s first term and grew from 390,000 claims to about 884,000 in just his first term in office.
• As a result, the number of veterans who died because they could not get the medical help they requested and deserved skyrocketed.
• While Obama did nothing to help the situation, some sources estimate that 307,000 died while waiting for medical treatment.

13) Despite the Great Recession ending just after he took office and despite his spending over $800 billion on a mostly failure of an economic stimulus program, he presided over the worst post recession economic recovery in decades:

• There have been 11 recessions since World War II, each followed by an economic recovery.
• On average, it took about 25 months on average to recover the jobs lost during the recession.
• The Obama recovery took 77 months to recover the number of jobs lost during the recession, three times the post war average.
• And this horrid recovery happened despite that $800+billion economic stimulus package.
• Obama is the only President not to have had a single year of GDP growth of at least 3%.
• The only Presidents to have lower average economic growth during their terms were Herbert Hoover, Andrew Johnson, and Teddy Roosevelt.

Not mentioned in the article is that household growth was more or less stagnant for the vast majority of his term. An economic mess for the ages.

14) And last but not least is the substantial abuse of power he wielded during his term in office:

• He weaponized the IRS to suppress the First Amendment rights of millions and millions of citizens.
• The head of the IRS met with Obama over 150 times, much more than he met with most of his Cabinet members.
• He spied on the Trump Presidential campaign in order to undermine it and then have it investigated with bogus Russian election meddling charges, basically attempting a coup against a legally elected U.S.President.
• Multiple times his minions in the FBI and Justice Department, and possibly Obama himself, abused the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to illegally spy on American citizens.

So, after just two posts, we have pointed out at least 14 Obama era scandals that broke laws, abused the rule of law, allowed Americans to unnecessarily die, allowed foreign citizens to unnecessarily die, shredded the Constitution and trampled the Bill of Rights. To say his administration was scandal free is the height of ignorance or hypocrisy.

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

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

June, 2020, Part 7, Political Class Insanity: The 14 Major Failures of the Obama Administration, The First Seven

It is the beginning of another month which means it is time again to review the latest political class insanity from the American political class. Each month it takes us multiple posts to cover the wasteful spending, incompetent government organizations and employees, government programs that usually make a problem worse than resolving it, inane and idiotic politician comments, etc.

To review past posts on this insanity and idiocy, just click on the first few posts in each month listed to the right of this page. After reviewing just a handful of these insanity posts we think you will agree that we are currently being served by the worst set of American politicians ever to hold office in our entire history.

We are going to do a little retro today. For whatever silly reason, on a regular basis someone proposes that Obama was one of the greatest Presidents ever. It is an indefensible position on so many dimensions. We have previously talked about the multitude of failures of his administration:

The laws Obama broke:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2016/10/part-2-obama-presidency-end-of-error.html

The failures of Obama’s administration: http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2016/10/part-1-obama-presidency-end-of-error.html

The hate inspired by the Obama administration: http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2016/10/part-3-obama-presidency-end-of-error.html

But let's revisit some of his failures courtesy of Matt Margolis who recently published a review of Obama’s failures on the PJ Media website. His article was entitled, “Liberals Still Think Obama Was the ‘Best President Ever,’ Here Are 14 Reasons Why That’s Ridiculous.” 

So let’s take a walk down memory lane and review 14 of Obama’s biggest failures [note: if you are a fan of Obama, try to come up with the 14 greatest successes of the Obama administration as you read the following, I am positive your 14 successes, if they even exist, cannot come close to matching the damage he did to the country via his failures.]

The driver of this article was the recent celebration of Obama’s birthday and some liberals' celebration of his failed Presidency. Apparently, Obama’s following 14 failures were not discussed during this celebration:

1) There was wide ranging corruption during the Obama years. Mr. Margolis has come up with 30 significant Obama Presidency scandals including but not limited to, the following: 

• He tried to sell his former Illinois Senate to the highest bidder.
• He used government agencies to target his political opponents.
• He gave untold billions of dollars to the biggest terror organization in the world, the Iranian government.
• He illegally spied on and tried to derail the Presidential campaign of a potential White House successor.
• He lied about his failure to protect Americans in Benghazi.
• He operated an illegal gun running operation called Fast and Furious which supplied high end, military grade weapons to the Mexican drug cartels, weapons which were used to kill an untold number of Mexican citizens and at least one U.S.Border Patrol officer.

We will not list the other 24 scandals that the article pointed out, you get the idea, to say his administration was scandal free is the height of ignorance.

2) The student loan debt of American college students skyrocketed during his administration. Just five years into his administration, student loan debt in the country increased a whopping 463%, much faster than any previous President. He had the Federal government takeover the program which not only saddled theAmerican taxpayer with this debt it also resulted in debt ridden kids graduating college into a feeble job market that his economic policies created.

3) Under Trump, the national average price for gasoline has stayed under $3.00 a gallon. During the Obama years it was not uncommon to pay between $3.50 and $4.00 a gallon in one three year period, more than double what we have been paying under Trump. 

This was his feeble attempt to get the country away from oil and into a green economy, an effort that also failed miserably. His green initiatives resulted in the wasting of billions of dollars of taxpayer wealth with absolutely no redeeming benefit. Who can forget the green company flameouts known Solyndra, A123, Spectra, and dozens of others who all failed and took billions of taxpayers down with them? Of course, the biggest flameout was Solyndra, which wasted over half a billion dollars but produced nothing of value.

4) Supposedly the biggest success of the Obama administration was going to be his landmark Obama Care legislation which was going to “bend the cost curve,” reduce annual health insurance premiums “up to $2,500 a year,” would make it possible for every American to get inexpensive health care, etc. But it did not bend the cost curve, it did not reduce anyone’s annual insurance premiums anywhere close to $2,500, and it failed to come anywhere close to getting every American affordable health insurance.

In fact, health insurance costs, co-pays, and deductibles went through the roof. Millions of Americans lost access to their favorite insurance policies, their favorite doctors, and their favorite hospitals. Health Insurance for millions became more expensive and less usable because of high deductibles or the inability to access doctors who accepted Obama Care insurance.

5) Unrealized by many Obama supporters is the high levels of poverty that were attained during his time in office:

• He broke a 50 year record during his Presidency relative to poverty.
• The poverty level measurement in this country got to 15% during three years of his Presidency.
• The number of people on food stamps got to a record 47 million Americans and none of his policies over eight years did much to relieve this food stamp need.

6) He violated the First Amendment any number of times relative to spying on journalists using government agencies to do so, abusing and misusing the Espionage Act in the process:

• His Justice Department secretly and illegally obtained two months of phone records of AP reporters and editors.
• This caused longtime sources of the AP to stop talking to the AP and other news organizations, stymying their attempts to keep politicians and government officials honest.
• Obama’s Justice Department also secretly and illegally obtained the phone records of Fox reporter James Rosen, records which enabled them to track his movements and read his emails.
• Obama threatened him with jail time and labeled him a “co-conspirator” along with one of his sources regarding an investigation Rosen was doing.
• James Risen of the New York Times also got the same treatment as Rosen, treated as a co conspirator along with one of his government sources under the Espionage Act, a law that was passed during the First World War to combat wartime spying and which has absolutely nothing to do with journalists doing their job today.

For any American that cherishes freedom, these acts of subverting the free press have to be very disturbing.

7) But his spying was not reserved just for journalists. He literally spied on tens of millions of ordinary American citizens:

• The NSA’s size grew exponentially during the Obama years.
• This is not because the NSA was tracking that many more potential terrorists but because they were tracking and spying on millions of ordinary American citizens who had done nothing wrong but live their lives.
• The ACLU estimates that there was a 64% increase in electronic spying by the Federal government during the Obama years, much of which had nothing to do with terror suspects.
• According to the article: "The Obama administration argued in federal court in 2012 that the public has no “reasonable expectation of privacy” regarding their cell phone location data and that the government can obtain these records without a warrant. Further blemishing Obama’s record on civil liberties, his administration green-lighted a giant government database of information on millions of citizens who weren’t even suspected of terrorism or any crime at all.”
• Furthermore: “The Obama administration argued that “without any individual suspicion of wrongdoing, the government is allowed to know whom Americans are calling every time they make a phone call, for how long they talk and from where.” Even that wasn’t enough. After Obama left office we found out his NSA was conducting illegal searches on Americans for years in defiance of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. The ACLU called these searches some of the most serious Fourth Amendment abuses ever documented.”

“Most serious offenses ever documented.” Scary stuff when it comes to privacy, freedom and an intrusive and dangerous government and political class. 

Okay, that will do it for today, seven instances where Obama was nowhere close to being a great President. Failures of execution (e.g. Obama Care, good economic policies, etc.) and violations of the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, and existing laws. Unfortunately, we are only halfway through the ignominious trail of failure and disaster that Obama wrought on the country for eight long years. The other seven failures in the next post.

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

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

A Libertarian View On Today's World and What To Do About It

[Note: the first three paragraphs of this post comes from a Facebook post of a friend but I do not know where she got it so apologies for not crediting the person who originally penned these words.]

I’m sick of COVID-19. I’m sick of black vs. white. I’m sick of Democrats vs. Republicans. I’m sick of gay vs. straight. I’m sick of Christians vs atheists. I’m REALLY sick of the media. I’m sick of no one being allowed to think what they want and feel what they do without offending someone. I am sick of the nosy ass people who call the cops when anyone does anything they don’t approve of. I am sick of blaming the whole for the sins of a few.

We’re one race—the human race. You want to support President Trump? You do you. It’s your choice. You want to support Biden? Fine... also your choice! You want to believe in God? Okay, believe in God. You want to believe in magical creatures that fly around and sprinkle fairy dust to make life better? Awesome... you do you.

BUT stop thrusting your beliefs on others and not being able to deal with the fact that they don’t have the same exact mind-set as you. Having our own minds is what makes us all individual and beautiful. If you can’t handle the fact that you may have a friend that has opposing views as you, then you are not any better than the bigots and the racists. I don’t have to agree with everything you believe to be a decent human being and your friend.

Remember, those trying to take away our liberties and freedoms are not our neighbors, our co-workers, our friends or family members. It is the political class in this country and their cohorts in the biased media and journalism industry. Their strategy is to divide us, make us fight among ourselves while they reap the rewards of public office where getting reelected over and over is more important than ever resolving any issue facing the country.

People have different views, that is human nature. But people should be able to come together in a civil, adult, mature manner to resolve problems, not change someone else's view. But civil, adult and mature is anathema to politicians' overall selfish aims of greed, power and ego. They are the root cause of the problems in this country, not your neighbor's differing political views. 

Never forget the words of George Orwell in his novel, 1984: "The propagandist's purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human." Adult and civil conversation and problem resolution is not possible if we allow the media and the political class to make us think those with differing views are somehow not human and not worthy.

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

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

June. 2020, Part 6, Political Class Insanity: Clueless In Washington State, Corrupt In Colorado, and Ineffective in DC

It is the beginning of another month which means it is time again to review the latest political class insanity from the American political class. Each month it takes us multiple posts to cover the wasteful spending, incompetent government organizations and employees, government programs that usually make a problem worse than resolving it, inane and idiotic politician comments, etc.

To review past posts on this insanity and idiocy, just click on the first few posts in each month listed to the right of this page. After reviewing just a handful of these insanity posts we think you will agree that we are currently being served by the worst set of American politicians ever to hold office in our entire history.

1) If anyone follows just a little of the news they are aware that a bunch of anarchists and criminals have literally taken over a six block area of Seattle, Washington and have declared themselves the rulers of a new country. The area they took over is called Capitol Hill and they have renamed their new country the Capital Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ). This is obviously an act of lawlessness this country has not seen since the Civil War.

Lord knows what is going on inside the zone but reports allege rapes, violence, business shakedowns, “deportations,” etc. The city government is helpless in enforcing the rule of law within its own city limits and the cops have been reluctant to investigate alleged crimes or to shut down this insurrection.

And despite all of this insurrection going on in Washington state’s largest city, an insurrection and lawlessness that has been broadcast around the world, the governor of the state seems to be a little out of the loop:

• Jay Inslee is the current governor of Washington state.
• At a recent press conference he was asked the following, legitimate press question: “Governor, I’d like to ask you about what’s going on Seattle, there’s this thing called the capital autonomous zone, what’s your thought about the fact that the protesters have taken that over and are not allowing people to come and go freely?”
• In a response that has to rank high on the list of most ridiculous answers to any question EVER, the governor responded: “Well that’s news to me. So, I’ll have to reserve any comment about it. I have not, I have not heard anything about that from any credible source, not that you’re not credible, it’s just like before I espouse an opinion, I should know of which I speak.”

It is difficult to understand this statement. Is the governor that clueless that he has no idea what is going on isn't the biggest city in the state even though the rest of the world knows about it? Does he know what is going on but is so overwhelmed he is in denial? Or does he know what is going on and thinks we don’t know in order to make himself look better than his pitiful performance on the matter has been? In any case, ignorant, lying, or denial, he should not be in charge of an entire state that is seeing its largest city descend into anarchy. 

Seattle-based conservative radio host Jason Rantz said it best in responding to Inslee’s remarks on Wednesday on Twitter: “Wow. @GovInslee said he had no clue about the #SeattleAutonomousZone. Antifa, anarchists and community activist took an entire 6-block radius of his biggest city, have roaming armed guards doing ID checks, and Inslee has no clue. WHAT ARE YOU DOING, INSLEE?!”

2) Let’s move over to Colorado where another American politician is either in denial or thinks we are too stupid to understand reality much like Inslee up in Washington:

• John Hickenlooper is the former Colorado governor and current Democratic candidate for Senate in that state.
• However, his campaign has hit a little snag in that the nonpartisan Colorado Independent Ethics Commission has concluded that he is guilty of violating a state ban on accepting personal gifts while in office.
• The commission found that as governor he had accepted a plane flight on a political donor’s private jet and use of a Maserati limo while in Italy to attend a conference.
• Despite the supposedly nonpartisanship of the ethics commission, Hickenlooper took the low road in defending himself: “These allegations were waged by a dark-money Republican group and they’re going to lay attacks and millions of dollars of smear ads against whoever the Democratic candidate is.”
• His primary opponent was quick to jump on Hickenlooper’s rage against the accusations: “He’s the first person ever held in contempt by an independent ethics commission. Now, when he breaks the law, he refuses to apologize, defies a subpoena. You heard John blame the Republicans, you heard him blame the staff, I suppose he even blames the commission, which includes his own appointees who ruled against him.”
• In addition, the Colorado Springs Gazette seems to believe the accusations, saying that a “politician proven susceptible to inappropriate gifts by corporations is the last thing Colorado needs in Washington.”

Just another American politician assuming they are entitled to whatever they want, ethics be damned.

3) As you know, Minneapolis citizen, George Floyd was brutally and unnecessarily tortured and killed by a Minneapolis police officer. His death resulted in peaceful protests and violent riots across the country as people called out for police reform and an end to racism.

Unfortunately, rather than create the opportunity to have real reform and make real progress against racism to minimize future George Floyd-like incidents, politicians have reverted to the only actions they know, largely symbolic actions that look good on the news and result in no meaningful societal change.

This was recently illustrated by Democratic members of Congress and their leader, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, could not even do that right. Democrats recently gathered to honor the memory of George Floyd and bring attention to the horrific murder of him by a Minneapolis police officer. The process involved them kneeling on the floor for several minutes, all under the watchful eyes of news cameras so that the photo opportunity was not missed. After the period of silence tribute was done, a Twitter user Benny accurately described what happened next:

Pelosi kneels for somber moment of silence to honor George Floyd.

Here is what happens immediately after:

- Pelosi can’t get up

- Pelosi is stuck kneeling

- Pelosi calls for an aide to help

- Pelosi cracks joke about her heels

- Pelosi giggles

Real somber

Wasn’t the whole purpose of this effort to have a somber few minutes to reflect on the unnecessary death of a citizen? And in the midst of this photo op Pelosi cracks a joke accompanied by some giggles.

Fortunately, some folks in the civil rights movement were not fooled by this symbolic gesture made meaningless by this photo op and Pelosi cracking a joke in the middle of it. Yamahtta T., such a civil rights activist, called them out on this effort: “get off your fxxxing knees and change the damn policies, redistribute the funds, and stop the evictions and foreclosures.” [Note: the “xxx” is my insertion, she used the real word.]

Liberal Krystal Ball had this observation: "Embarrassing performative display which no one will fail to see through." “Embarrassing performative display” is a much more elegant description than my “empty symbolic gesture”. But it gets the same message across: politicians think they are doing something important with this and other embarrassing performative displays when in reality they are usually incapable of real, meaningful and fair changes to laws and attitudes in this country. Unlike here though, they are usually not caught in public laughing and giggling about their performative displays.

That will do it for today’s insanity: a clueless governor in Washington state, an allegedly corrupt and pompous Senate candidate in Colorado and empty, apparently funny, gestures of sympathy in Washington DC. The American political class continues to be corrupt, despicable, clueless, and ineffective.

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