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)In our last post we discussed the reality that New York residents are fleeing that state faster than the net out-migration rate of every other state. No surprise given that New York has some of the highest taxes, most overbearing regulations, high crime rates, and totally ineffective politicians.
Our premise in that post is that people want to be free to run their lives as they see fit with minimal government interference, want to keep as much of their hard earned income as possible to have more freedom in their life decisions, and have their taxes used to benefit their lives, not the lives and pocketbooks of politicians.
A few years ago we hypothesized what state would go bankrupt first and New York, along with California, New Jersey, and Illinois, were the top contenders for going belly up financially. All of these states have overspent their revenue streams, rolling up huge unfunded future liabilities, have taxed the state businesses and residents to death, their out of control government spending has not been used efficiently to improve the lives of the taxpayers, and as a result state residents and businesses are leaving the state for better quality of life situations.
As more and more taxpayers and businesses leave the state, the tax revenue stream shrinks which requires more taxation which results in more exits from the state which reduces tax revenue and a financial death spiral is put in motion.
The latest Census data confirms that these death spirals are indeed taking place right now:
California showed the largest, absolute negative total population change from 2020 to 2021, a little over 367,000.
New York had the second largest negative population change while Illinois had the third worst negative population change.
New Jersey was also way down there with these states although not as bad from a rate of negative population growth.
Meanwhile, states with little or not state income tax laws, lower overall taxes, smaller government spending totals, and less government regulations saw some substantial population gains, over 1.00% population growth in a single year.
These growth states included Texas, Arizona, Idaho, Montana, South Carolina, Utah and Delaware.
Florida, another state without a state income tax burden, also grew substantially but not quite as fast as these states from a growth rate perspective.
The bottom line is people want to be free: free to spend their money as they want, not taxed to death, free to not worry about being a victim of violent crime, free to live their lives as they please with minimal government regulations. And they are showing their desire to be free by moving their families, themselves, and their businesses to those states which accommodate freedom.
Meanwhile, politicians in the states left behind in the population growth and freedom race are now dealing with what will eventually be the financial death spiral of their states. And that will not be pretty. But the voters in those states have no one to blame but themselves, they voted in the inept politicians who drove their states into the ground. Elections have consequences and we are about to see some huge, negative consequences in places like California, New York, Illinois and New Jersey. The population numbers don't lie.
2) There are some very strict stock trading laws on the books in this country. These laws are designed so that so-called “insiders” in a business who have special, secret information, do not unfairly gain financial advantage by using that information to trade stocks and bonds to their favor. Failure to adhere to these so-called insider trading laws can result in fines and prison time. Marthat Stewart is one of the most famous citizens to be convicted of insider trading, serving prison for her actions.
But apparently, insider trading violations only apply to regular U.S. citizens. If you are a member of Congress, and have access to secret government, legislative, and business information, you are free to use that information for self enrichment without danger of being subjected to the same insider trading laws that the rest of us have to obey:
During the Obama administration back in 2012, legislation was enacted called the Stock Act, Stop Trading on Congressional knowledge.
This law was passed at a time when it became known that members of Congress were getting quite rich trading stock based on secret government information that only they had access to.
The original legislation was passed with overwhelming Congressional support, passing by a vote of 417 to 2 in the House and 96 to 3 in the Senate.
Great idea but subtly, a little time after this act a was passed, additional legislation was passed that considerably weakened the penalties that were originally included in the first passage of the law.
The law was weakened so much that the penalties/fines if you got caught doing trading on inside government information was minimal compared to the potential wealth upside that could be garner on secret government information.
Which is exactly what happened since recent news reports found that at least 14 members of Congress and at least 182 Congressional staff members have indeed violated the Stock Act’s provisions.
The Congressional violators come from both parties and both Houses of Congress and include Pat Fallon (R-Texas), Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.), Dan Meuser (R-Pa.), Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Blake Moore (R-Utah), Kim Schrier (D-Wash.), Lance Gooden (R-Texas), Susie Lee (D-Nev.), Diana Harshbarger (R-Tenn.), Tom Malinowski (D-N.J.), Kevin Hern (R-Okla.), Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), Tom Suozzi (D-N.Y.), and Chris Jacobs (R-N.Y.).
These members of Congress failed to properly report their stock and financial activities as required by law.
And these are not some small slip ups, e.g. Pat Fallon violated the Stock Act at least 100 times and Tom Suozzi may have violated it over 300 times.
But the problem is despite these hundreds of violations, the penalties they may end up paying are likely to be minimal, hundreds of dollars, relative to whatever self enrichment they experienced.
As always with the American political class, it is “do as I say, not as I do.” Maybe if these folks did less self enrichment and spent more time on the problems facing their constituents we would not have skyrocketing gas and food prices, a supply chain fiasco, a Federal government debt issue, and millions of homeless, hungry and drug addicted Americans in need.
3)Unfortunately, we have had to return to this topic way too many times in just the past year or so. It is always our contention that a very, very basic function of any government entity is to protect the lives and property of its citizens. No matter how successful a government entity is in other areas, if it cannot protect its citizens then it is a failure.
Consider the following opinion from an LA Times article by Ayaan Ari Ali:
The title of his article is, “Will California Ever be Safe?”
This is obviously written in light of the reality that there have been astronomical rises in crime rates across the entire state.
Things have gotten so bad that a representative of the LAPD union organization has publicly told people not to visit the city, that they cannot be protected by local law enforcement.
She starts off her article with the following dose of reality: “In my home state of California, smash-and-grab is fast becoming a way of life. Crime is a rampant, daily occurrence. Just this week, two of my close friends were robbed near San Francisco. One owns a popular restaurant; the front door was destroyed, and the cash register robbed. The other was renting a car, the entire rear window of which was smashed to bits and the contents swiped. So common is this sort of looting and thievery that when he returned the rental car, he noticed that the car company’s lot was full of vehicles with broken windows.”
She goes on to discuss the rampant attacks on retail stores throughout the state.
These stores include Apple, CVS, Louis Vuitton, and Burberry.
$40,000 was stolen from a Lululemon store and a criminal gang of at least 80 people descended on a Nordstrom store to ransack that store.
All of this has resulted in law abiding citizens needing to change their behaviors in order to not become victims by not going out alone after dark, keeping their car doors and trunks unlocked so that would-be robbers would see there is nothing to steal, installing fences and alarms, etc.
Businesses are boarding up their windows, closing earlier, and hiring security guards.
What a mess, a huge failure to provide that very basic government service, protecting the lives and property of law-abiding citizens and businesses. Ali goes on to propose the theory that the very rich are in cahoots, if only indirectly, in causing this vicious and widespread crime wave: “Those with enormous wealth are often also the loudest advocates for leniency towards criminals. Those individuals, who have the least contact with crime, are frequently the most enthusiastic proponents of reforms that reduce the safety of the average American. Democratic donors give their money to candidates who support defunding the police. They campaign against stop-and-search, three strikes, and “broken window” policies. They argue for lighter sentences or even the decriminalisation of certain crimes — shoplifting, for example, has been all but legalised in San Francisco.”
That will do it for today: people fleeing states where politicians have overtaxed, over-regulated, and under-reacted to rampant crime, Washington politicians continue to put their self enrichment higher in priority than the needs of Americans, and California implodes with crime and politician inaction.
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