Monday, February 14, 2022

By The Numbers - $30 Million For Government Crack Pipes, Mass Migration To Low Tax States, Biden's Dismal Approval Numbers, and Thousands Left Behind In Afghanistan

On a periodic basis we do some posts that fall under the theme of “by the numbers.” Rather than trust what American politicians tell us about reality, we like to examine the real numbers and the real reality in the world to understand what is actually going on.

Relying on politicians, and their cohorts in the media, to tell us what is reality is always a sucker bet. They have their own agendas and goals, usually centering around their needs and self-enrichment. So we need to look at the reality of the numbers to determine what is really going on. Previous analyses of“by the numbers” can be accessed by entering the phrase in the search box above.

1) In what has to be one of the dumbest, most stupid, and most useless Federal government programs ever, the Biden administration has decided to spend $30 million to distribute crack pipe packages to drug addicts around the country in a useless attempt to make drug addiction safer.

According to the Washington Free Beacon: "The $30 million grant program, which closed applications Monday and will begin in May, will provide funds to nonprofits and local governments to help make drug use safer for addicts. Included in the grant, which is overseen by the Department of Health and Human Services, are funds for “smoking kits/supplies.” A spokesman for the agency told the Washington Free Beacon that these kits will provide pipes for users to smoke crack cocaine, crystal methamphetamine, and “any illicit substance.”

You don't fix drug addiction by enabling it, you fix it by curing it. Three sad things about this nonsense:
  • Other government entities have already tried this approach and it has failed miserably but that did not stop Biden from repeating the same mistake.
  • That $30 million could alternatively provide over 10 million meals for America’s homeless population, certainly a better use of the money than buying crack pipes.
  • That $30 million could alternatively have given real drug addiction treatment to about 4,000 drug addicts for a year.
Feed the homeless or treat drug addiction vs. enable drug addiction. Not a hard choice to make for that $30 million unless you work in the Biden administration.

2) We have often made the point that people just want to be free. They want to keep as much of their hard earned income as possible which would enable them to be free to make more and better life affecting decisions. With less taxation and less government regulation they would be freer to send their kids to better schools, freer to invest in their favorite charities, freer to start their own business, freer to live a better lifestyle, etc.

But that basic human need is often lost on politicians who think that more taxation, more regulation, and more control over people is better than freedom. Which is why the country is seeing a mass migration movement from less free states, as it relates to government and politician intervention in their lives, to freer states where taxation, regulation, and intervention are much lower. Consider the latest migration numbers:
  • Analyses by the Tax Foundation verify that people are fleeing from high tax, Democratic controlled states to lower taxed, mostly Republican controlled states: "People move to states with low-income tax for a multitude of reasons, sometimes it's the most direct and obvious reason that it reduces their own tax liability," the Vice President of state projects at the Tax Foundation, Jared Walczak, explained to Yahoo.
  • These low and no income states include Utah, Montana, Arizona, South Carolina, Texas, Nevada, Florida and North Carolina.
  • These states have seen recent population gains of over 1% in the past year.
  • Washington DC and New York, two government entities that actually increased their taxes recently, saw significant population losses.
  • DC lost 2.8% of its population and New York lost 1.8%.
  • New Jersey, one of the most heavily taxed states in the country, lost almost 13,000 residents in a year.
  • California, a state that has a top marginal state income tax rate of 13.30%, lost 173,000 residents in the past year.
  • Illinois, a state in a real fiscal bind, lost 100,000 residents over the past year, roughly the size of its state capital.
  • Meanwhile, Texas gained 310,000 people in the past year, Florida gained 212,000 people, North Carolina gained 94,000 people and South Carolina gained almost 60,000 people, all states with no or low income tax burdens.
  • Nine states that saw population gains over the past year either implemented or enacted tax cut legislation for individuals or businesses.
People want to be free and that includes being free of high amounts of government taxation and regulations that inhibit their ability to live their lives like they would like. And that simple concept continues to elude the political leaders in states like New Jersey, New York, Illinois, and California, states that are highly likely to be on the cusp of a financial death spiral that will not end well:

https://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2020/11/which-city-and-which-state-will-go.html

3) It is no secret that CNN is a failing news network. One of the reasons for their failing status is that for a long time now it has not been providing balanced, unbiased news reports but have skewed their news coverage to support left leaning positions and Democrats and to demonize Republicans and right leaning people and organizations. This was clearly proven during the run up to the Clinton/Trump Presidential race where they purposely oversampled Democrats in their polling to make it look like Hillary was doing much better with voters than she actually was.

So when CNN and its polling organization say something negative about a Democrat or a left leaning issue, you know it is bad:
  • In a recent CNN poll, a whopping 56% of respondents could not think of anything Biden has done that they approve of.
  • He got a new high of 58% of those polled disapproving of his performance after a year in office and a new low of only 41% approving his performance.
  • 57% of those polled viewed his first year as a failure.
  • Only 38% of independent voters approve of his performance.
  • Only 9% of Republicans approve of his performance and while Democrats overwhelmingly approve of his performance, 83%, that is down from a 94% approval rating back in late summer.
  • 41% strongly disapprove of his performance while only 15% strongly approve of his performance.
  • One survey respondent kind of captured the general mood of the country: “I’m hard pressed to think of a single thing he has done that benefits the country."
  • Respondents said that reducing inflation was the most important issue facing the country, 24%, with covid barely registering as an important issue for Biden to work on, 1%.
Horrible numbers for Biden after a year in office. And the trend is not good, as measured by this poll and others. And it is apparent to most Americans that Biden does not have any kind of plans or strategies to fix what is broken or what he has broken.

As a current Olympic joke says: The U.S. bobsled team has nicknamed one of its bobsleds “The Biden.” It is the only thinking that is going faster downhill than the Biden Presidency.

4) There is no doubt that Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan was a total disaster from every perspective imaginable. But the most horrible numbers have just come to light relative to getting Americans out of the country safely and away form the terroristic Taliban:
  • Immediately after the disastrous withdrawal, Biden’s Secretary of State Antony Blinken, claimed that less than 200 Americans who wanted to get out of Afghanistan were left behind.
  • A recent Senate report, based on State Department experts, found that upwards of 9,000 Americans were left behind in the country.
  • According to the Daily Caller: “The report, signed by Foreign Relations ranking member Jim Risch of Idaho, reveals that State Department officials believed that between 10,000 and 15,000 Americans were in Afghanistan as late as Aug. 17. In the next two weeks, only 6,000 Americans were able to escape the country ahead of the Taliban takeover.”
Very tragic numbers. And who knows what danger those left behind continue to be in despite the fact that they don't exist in Biden's World.

The numbers tell the story: Americans left behind in Afghanistan, Biden’s approval numbers continue to dive, Americans want to be free, and Biden wastes millions on a failed addiction concept.

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:

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