Sunday, July 31, 2022

August, 2022, Part 1, Political Class Insanity: The Idiocy and Stupidity of Many U.S. City Politicians and the Great Migration To Safer Lives

It's another month so let’s check in with the American political class and see the recent insanity, ineptness, wasteful spending, and other disgusting behaviors that our politicians have been up to:

1) We have all too often talked about how the local, county, and state politicians in Chicago, Cook County, and the state of Illinois have failed the residents of the city of Chicago. It has turned the city into a lawless and very dangerous place to live. For a number of years, more people have been killed and wounded in Chicago than in any other U.S. city.

And apparently the carnage is still underway:

  • During a single recent weekend, an amazing 66 Chicago residents were shot.
  • Four of those 66 died from their wounds.
  • And the shootings do not just happen in the early morning night hours: “Police told Fox News Digital that three people were shot in the 0-100 block of East 108th St. at around 2:30 p.m. on July 23, which is outside the Universal Community Missionary church,” it added.
A very, very basic principle of any government entity is to protect the lives and property of the citizens it has responsibility for. Any other accomplishments that are attained by politicians, but who cannot protect their citizens’ lives, do not matter if they cannot fulfill this basic “protect life” tenet. Thus, it is no wonder that people and businesses are fleeing the city, it is just not a safe place to be anymore.

And as people and businesses leave the city, the tax base and the tax revenue goes down. This results in higher taxes and fewer government services which drives more people out of the city. And this financial death spiral concept is why we still believe that Chicago will be the next major city to go bankrupt due to the ineptness of the politicians that have been running it.

2) The real estate company, Redfin, recently published a report that showed the ten cities across the country that Americans are most desperate to relocate out of:

  1. San Francisco
  2. Los Angeles
  3. New York City
  4. Washington DC
  5. Seattle
  6. Boston
  7. Detroit
  8. Denver
  9. Chicago
  10. Minneapolis
A quick sanity check of what these cities have in common in many ways should not surprise us:
  • All of these cities are in high tax states which are made worse by additional, onerous city and county taxes.
  • Crime rates, homicides, and violence have been rising sharply in many if not all of these cities.
  • Many of these cities implemented the inane “defund the police” theory which made their citizens less safe as police resources were reduced.
The quality of life has been declining for years in many of these cities e.g. San Francisco and Denver have made it not a crime to defecate, urinate or shoot up illegal drugs in their cities resulting in a horrible and unhealthy environment out in the streets.

People and businesses just want to be free to go through their existence, free from onerous taxes, onerous government regulations and to feel safe and secure in their homes and out in the streets. If those requirements are not met, they are going to execute plans to attain those goals, a trend that the Redfin data prove to be true.

And as we stated in the first point above, as residents and businesses leave an unsafe, highly taxed city, they take their tax base contributions with them which reduces a city’s tax revenue which means higher taxes and fewer government services which drives more people out of those cities and the financial death spiral is then in play.

The Redfin data proves this point when you look at the cities where these people are fleeing to:

1. Miami, FL
2. Tampa, FL
3. Phoenix, AZ
4. Sacramento, CA
5. Las Vegas, NV
6. Cape Coral, FL
7. San Diego, CA
8. North Port, FL
9. San Antonio, TX
10. Dallas, TX

What do these cities have in common:
  • Seven out of the ten cities are in states where there is no state income tax unlike the cities being fled listed above which are in states which all have that extra state income tax burden.
  • To my knowledge, these cities did not go through anywhere close, if at all, the defund the police craziness the cities like Chicago, NYC, and the others went through, which helped keep police resources available and on the job.
  • Many of these cities where people are heading to are in states with far fewer business regulation burdens than other states which makes them attractive to businesses and their employees.

People want to be free and safe. And will take matters into their own hands if those two principles cannot be met where they currently live. The Redfin data proves it.

4) I was a little surprised that Portland did not make the Redfin top ten list when it comes to residents leaving. The city has been racked by riots and lawlessness and a very big homeless population problem. Thai has resulted in highly frustrated residents as they try to keep themselves, their families, and their property safe:
  • The city is infested with broken down cars, piles of uncollected garbage, and RVs in residential areas of the city, much of which is driven by the homeless population.
  • A recent local TV news station recorded the despair of some of the city residents - Christinia Hartnett: “I want to cry. I just want my house back. My lawn is now becoming a public bathroom. I live in a nightmare neighborhood.”
  • Resident David Berkson: “It’s really scary.”
  • There are a whopping 1,900 homeless encampments just in a single Portland neighborhood.
  • “Tess” has lived in the same neighborhood for 35 years and told the TV news crew that she has had to install security cameras around her home and boarded up her front windows after they were smashed by some homeless people: “Scared because I don’t know what they’re going to do next.”
  • Cliff Pearce, an employee at the city’s Bucket Brigade Sports Bar and Restaurant, said that customers have to avoid people overdosing on drugs on the sidewalks in front of the bar.
  • Unfortunately, the political class and people running the city government appear clueless in how to fix the problem and provide the basic service of protecting the lives and property of its citizens.
  • For example, the city’s housing director, Shannon Callahan, is about to step down from that post but actually proclaimed the following tripe in anticipation of her leaving the job:“I can truly say that the work we do at Portland Housing Bureau, alongside our community partners and jurisdictional partners, changes lives for the better. It has been a privilege to work with the dedicated, passionate, and exceptional team of public servants at the bureau.”

Has she really changed lives for the better? I don’t think so. The homeless population has grown despite whatever policies she put in place and the crime and fear of the rest of the city seems to have grown substantially. So out of touch with reality in her own city.

Again, surprisingly Portland did not make the top ten list of cities where people are fleeing from given the failures of the local politicians.

5) But Seattle did make the bad top ten Redfin list and that should not be surprising. The city politicians for a number of years defiled their police department, disrespected them, criticized them and as a result a number of things have happened:
  •  So many people are getting out of Seattle because of safety and quality of life concerns that the city made the top ten of cities where people are leaving.
  • And the disrespect that local politicians have shown the Seattle police force has resulted in a crisis situation:
  • City police staffing levels have gotten so low that the city has had to put aside millions of dollars to bribe police officers to both stay on the force or join the force.
  • Over 400 police officers have left the police force over the past few years because of horrible working conditions and no support from city politicians.
  • Even the mayor admitted that the current depleted force has caused a crisis "where basic services cannot be delivered swiftly and effectively."
  • As of a few short months ago there were only 954 police officers on the city force, the lowest number in over 30 years.
  • A smaller force requires a lot more overtime and stress on current officers which lowers morale and which leads to more officers leaving the workforce.
All of which shows what a stupid idea defunding the police was, a concept that Seattle politicians implemented with a vengeance. As a result, the police force shrunk, police resources shrunk, crime skyrocketed and Seattle made the dubious top ten list of cities that most people want to flee from. Stupidity of politicians exists in the four corners of the country.

That will do it for today. People want to be free and be safe, businesses want their employees to be happy and be safe. Apparently, that message has not reached many politicians across the country and as a result, many of the nation’s largest cities are facing a mass out migration crunch that will make life more miserable, less safe, and more expensive for those that remain behind. And eventually, those cities will collapse into bankruptcy as their tax base dwindles and their population of productive citizens goes elsewhere.

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Wednesday, July 27, 2022

More Political Class Insanity: Buttigieg Continues to Be Clueless, Public Defecation Okay in Kalamazoo, And Bad Priorities of Chicago's Lori Lightfoot

 More political class insanity from across the country:


1)We have often debated what government entity is the worst run entity operated by the most inept politicians. Candidates for the worst include the states of New York, New Jersey, Illinois, and California. Candidates for the worst run cities include NYC, Baltimore, and San Francisco.


But that discussion almost always leads us to the disaster that is the city of Chicago and it's totally incompetent mayor, Lori Lightfoot. Chicago continues to lead the country when it comes to homicides and the wounding of residents in violent gun crimes. Businesses are leaving the city because of a number of factors including high taxes and the dangers posed by the violence directed at their employees. Residents are leaving the city for the same reasons. Lightfoot totally bungled the whole pandemic effort in the city.


But her latest effort is possibly her worst priority to date for those businesses and residents still in the city:

 

  • Rather than hire more police officers, hire more teachers, reduce taxes, and do other projects that might actually improve the quality of life of the city’s folks, Lightfoot recently announced a plan to spend anywhere from $900 million to $2.2 billion to keep the NFL’s Chicago Bear team in their current city stadium, Chicago’s Soldier Field.

  • The Bears have played their home games in Soldier Field for over 50 years.

  • However, they are aggressively looking to move their home and their games to a sparkling new stadium in the Chicago suburbs, 30 miles outside of the city limits.

  • She worked on this project, using city resources and taxpayer wealth despite the fact that the Bears have publicly stated that they are not interested in any renovations of the stadium: “As part of our mutual agreement with the seller of that property (in Arlington Heights,  Illinois), we are not pursuing alternative stadium deals or sites, including renovations to Soldier Field, while we are under contract,” stated the team.

  • Besides getting out of the crime riddled city, the Arlington Heights city has a robust median income over $100,000 and only 4% of the area lives in poverty, certainly an attractive market.

  • The median income in Chicago is $62,100 and more than 17% of residents live in poverty.

  • Add the reality that about 800 city residents are likely to be murdered this year and thousands will be wounded and the logic for moving out of the city is obvious.

  • Lightfoot also had her employees make a website to support her multi-billion dollar effort, “Re-Imagine Soldier Field.”

 

Keep in mind that the Bears organization is worth about $4.1 billion and earns about $370 million a year in revenue and yet Lightfoot wants to spend a bunch of taxpayer money for the team.  

Such a sad, sad set of priorities. Spending possibly over $2 billion while the city schools, city police force, and city financials are spiraling down the drain. Insanity.


2) We have previously discussed the quite disgusting situation in the city of San Francisco where the local political class decriminalized public urination, public defecation, and the public use of illegal drugs.  As a result of this insanity, city streets are littered with urine puddles, piles of poop, and used and dangerous drug needles.


This stupidity has caused the city to hire people to build a website so that local  city residents could report piles of poop and hire more people to go out and power wash the poop down the sewer drains. This in turn has polluted local streams and rivers, endangering the health of local residents and the health of agricultural products that depend on the water from those streams to grow. A total  disaster and waste of taxpayer wealth and health. 

And yet, unbelievably, another American city has gone down the same disgusting path despite the incredible and likely negative impact on the quality of life of city residents:

 

  • The local politicians in Kalamazoo, Michigan recently decided to decriminalize public urination, public defecation, and littering.

  • How can any sane person, even a politician, put forth such a law, given that other cities were turned into public cesspools when they made the same decisions?

  • To justify their thinking, a local politician put forth this type of tripe: “I definitely empathize with the downtown business owners too. They have invested a lot to be in downtown, and a lot of those spots are mom and pop shops where that is their life income. We want to be respectful of that. We hear them. We are listening to them, and we care a lot, but we care about everybody in the community,” City Commissioner Christ Praedel said.

  • In other words, they know what a disservice we are doing to the majority of the city residents, they know this approach imperils the very existence of the city’s small  businesses but they went ahead and did it anyway.

  • City residents and business owners are not happy, as described by city business owner Becky Bill: “People have to clean up where they have defecated right in front of your door of your business. We can’t have that downtown.”

  • Cherri Emery, owner of Cherri’s Chocol’art: “I don’t understand why it would be proposed that the law would be less restrictive than it is now. I don’t understand why we would make it easier for them [those that defecate, urinate and litter in public.]

 

Allowing someone to defecate wherever they want does not solve any problem that this person is having be it mental illness, homelessness, etc. It just enables them without helping them. 


Instead, it gives them carte blanch to do what most in society would consider deviant behavior and destroy the quality of life for the rest of the city residents. A classic example where the political class tried to address a societal problem and actually made it worse, not better.


And just like the bungled city governments in San Francisco and Chicago, people and businesses will start to leave and  look for a better quality of life for their businesses, employees and families, reducing the tax base and resulting in an eventual financial death spiral. So stupid.

 

3) Everyone knows that gas prices have skyrocketed since Biden took office due to his stupid, short sighted and ignorant energy policies and plans. And just to be clear, the skyrocketing gas prices started long before Russia invaded Ukraine, an act that Biden and his henchmen are trying to blame for their ineptness when it comes to energy policy.


And one of the most inept of those folks is Biden’s own Secretary of Energy, Pete Buttigieg. Prior to his current government assignment, he was the mayor of a third tier town in Indiana. I do not believe that he has any education, experience, and or skill when it comes to energy but that did not stop Biden from putting him in this critical job. 


And like most people in the political class, such as the mayor of Chicago, and the morons in Kalamazoo, they are so out of touch with reality and the issues facing Americans today. As gas prices started to skyrocket, Buttigieg came up with this not so brilliant insight and out of touch attitude that people worried about high gas prices should just buy an all electric car and they would never have to worry about high gas prices again.

 

A couple of things wrong with this pompous attitude from someone that is likely making several times more than the average American worker:

 

  • Electric cars are expensive, much more expensive than regular gas cars so there is a big upfront investment for the consumer who goes electric.

  • Electric cars do not run on fairy dust, they need electricity, so it is true you will not be paying high gas prices, high prices that people like Buttigieg and Biden caused, you are going to have  to pay for the electricity you need to power your gasless car.

  • And since you can  energize a gas car in minutes, you need hours to energize an electric car which wastes your life and your time both of which certainly have a price tag.

  • Since electric cars cannot go as far as a gas car before needing to be juiced up, this is more time and life wasted.

  • The resale value of an electric car falls much quicker than the resale value of a gas car, given that at some point an electric car is going to need a massively expensive battery replacement.

 

Higher upfront investment that tens of millions of Americans cannot afford, low resale value, wasting of valuable time, paying for the electricity to be used in the electric car, etc., does not sound like a good tradeoff. Which brings us to the eternal question we have often posed about American politicians: are they really that ignorant about the world or do they thnk that we are so stupid that we will believe whatever fairy tale they tell us which suits their needs and covers up their failures? We may never know.

 

That will  do it for today: politicians that are out of touch with the economic struggles of most of America, politicians that do stupid stuff even when similar actions to theirs have already destroyed the quality of life elsewhere, and politicians who cannot resolve the big issues facing Americans so they focus on wasting taxpayer wealth on stupid but higher profile actions like subsidizing an NFL football with billions dollars that could be spent elsewhere and do so much more for those in need.

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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Sunday, July 10, 2022

July, 2022, Political Class Insanity: Sellng Our Oil Top The Chinese, Biden Lies Again, Death on the Border and More

 It's another month so let’s check in with the American political class and see the recent insanity, ineptness, wasteful spending, and other disgusting behaviors that our politicians have  been up to:


1) Obviously, Americans are hurting because of the Biden induced inflation that is making our lives miserable. High gas prices, high food prices, shortages, and 40 year high inflation records being broken. One would think that Biden and the rest of Washington would make the economic suffering of Americans their top priority.


You could think that but you would be wrong:


  • The Biden administration recently sold almost one MILLION barrels of oil from our strategic oil reserve to a Chinese company.

  • We are all paying record high gas prices and he sends a million barrels overseas.

  • Even worse, this Chinese company is closely associated with Biden’s kid, the notorious Hunter Biden.

  • Apparently, Hunter has an equity company which once bought a $1.7 billion stake in the Chinese oil company getting the million barrels, Unipec America.

  • Unipec is receiving 950,000 barrels of our oil.

  • Unipec is a branch of the China Petrochemical Corporation, also known as Sinopec, and is controlled by the Chinese Communist government.

  • According to Reuters: In 2013, Hunter Biden co-founded the private equity firm, BHR Partners,  which in 2015 acquired a $1.7 billion stake in Sinopec Marketing and in 2017, Biden took a minority stake in BHR, purchasing a 10% stake through an LLC he solely owned called Skaneateles.

 

Seriously?! Americans are struggling with high gas prices, China is currently the number geopolitical enemy of the United States, and Biden’s son is an  investor with a Chinese Communist controlled company that will likely see financial  benefit from such a transaction. Insane and disgusting.

 

2) Biden’s border policies have been a disaster. The result has been a flood of illegal immigration across the southern border, illegal immigration that is rife with Central American gang members, potential foreign terrorists, un-vaccinated millions, human traffickers, drug cartels and massive shipments of illegal  drugs, and the creation of a welfare entity to feed and house millions of illegal immigrants, all funded by the American taxpayer.

 

As we have said previously, this situation is and has already resulted in many unnecessary deaths:

 

  • Record amounts of illegally imported fentanyl and other illegal drugs has resulted in a drug usage and drug epidemic in this country, with annual drug overdose deaths skyrocketing.

  • The wave of illegal immigrants has helped fuel the rise in homicides, crime and  violence across the country because of crimes caused by criminal  illegal  immigrants.

  • And it is not just Americans who are dying because of Biden’s failed policies.

  • Recently, over four dozen illegal immigrants were found dead because of heat stroke after being stowed away in a truck trailer in Texas.

  • A 48 year old illegal  immigrant is accused of killing 25 elderly Americans,  was recently convicted of another murder, and has now been indicted in 4 more murders of elderly American women.

  • Those 4 female victims ranged in age from 79 to 93 years old.

  • If he is guilty of these murders he would become the deadliest serial killer in Texas history.

 

So very sad. Americans dying because Biden cannot or does not want to control the border from drug cartels, human traffickers, and murderers. 

 

3) John Fetterman is the lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania, obviously a very important and high visibility political position. However, that visibility did not stop him from allegedly misusing of taxpayer money:

 

  • He is alleged to have used taxpayer wealth to fund a family getaway to the Jersey shore.

  • The Washington Free Beacon obtained government records which allegedly show he used over $3,500 of taxpayer wealth on food, lodging, and overtime for his security detail during his family vacation.

  • His security detail was housed at a beach front, high end hotel during his family vacation, costing the taxpayers in the state in even more wealth.

  • And while he was insisting that Pennsylvania taxpayers stay masked up, since this vacation happened during the pandemic crisis, he was spotted strolling down the Jersey shore boardwalk without any mask on at all.

 

Hypocrisy on masking while wasting taxpayer money on his family vacations, sounds about right for a typical greedy and hypocritical American politician.

 

4) Speaking of hypocrisy:

 

  • During the 2008 Presidential goings on, Joe Biden called John McCain, a potential  opponent at that time for the Presidency, a warmonger any number of times and further belittle him by saying: “You can’t call yourself a maverick when all you’ve ever been is a sidekick."

  • Recently, Biden awarded the late Arizona Senator John McCain, the Presidential Medal Of Freedom.

  • At that award ceremony he said: “I never stopped admiring John. Never said a negative thing about him in my life because I knew his honor, his courage and his commitment."

 

Another day, another lie from the pathological liar, Joe Biden.

 

5) We have often made the assertion that a very, very basic function of any government entity is to protect the lives and property of the voters that the government entity serves. Even if that entity does a lot of other things right, if they fail on  this protection responsibility then they are a failure.

 

Unfortunately, far too many times over the years we have had to point out how awful Chicago and Illinois politicians perform when protecting the lives and property of its citizens. And the  recent July 4th weekend was no different:

 

  • Despite having some of  the toughest gun  control laws in the country, over 80 Chicago area residents were injured over the July 4th weekend, with  most of the  carnage happening within the city limits itself.

  • 54 people were shot and 7 died as a result of their wounds in the city itself.

 

The failure of Chicago city to protect residents’ lives and property continues unabated.

 

That should do it for political class insanity today: selling our much needed oil to the Chinese, Americans dying as a result of Biden’s  border policies, political hypocrisy at the Jersey shore and in D.C., and more death and maiming in Chicago.



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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Friday, July 8, 2022

The Financial Death Spiral Gathers Steam In Chicago and California

 Whether people realize it or not, there is a great migration movement sweeping the country. People and businesses are leaving high taxation, high government regulation and high crime states and cities for safer cities and states with higher quality of life attributes. 


This migration of residents and businesses out of cities and states results in a reduction in the tax base which reduces government revenue which results in lower government service quality and higher tax rates which causes more residents and businesses to leave and the financial death spiral is in place. Where the death spiral ends is yet to be determined but it will not be pretty.


1)We have often talked about the failure of the Chicago political class to protect the lives and property of the results of that city. Chicago has no clue how to reduce crime and violence. Chicago violence, crime, and homicide rates continue to climb to ever higher rates and the local politicians seem to have no solution on how to fix the problem.


As a result, residents of the city, and the rest of Illinois, continue to flee the city for safer and less taxing areas. Boeing recently moved their Chicago headquarters to Washington D.C. Caterpillar recently announced it will be moving its headquarters to Texas. A major investment company, Citadel, recently announced it is moving its operations to Miami since the owner of the investment firm says he no longer wants to expose his employees to the violence of Chicago.


And the out migration continues:


  • The owner of 13 Chicago businesses has decided that he no longer wanted to expose his employees to the violence of Chicago.

  •  Gary Rabine is the owner of the businesses and finally gave up on the city to protect the safety of his employees.

  • Specifically: “We would do thousands of jobs a year in the city, but as we got robbed more, my people operating rollers and pavers we got robbed, our equipment would get stolen in broad daylight and there would usually be a gun involved, and it got expensive and it got dangerous.” 

  • The violence and crime against his employees and property has caused his operating costs to more than  double for additional security and insurance expenses.

  • More from Mr. Rabine: “What happened eventually is we said enough is enough. We stopped doing work down there, we stopped doing work for the gas company, the electric company, the south side, the west side, and eventually all over Chicago. Those companies now work in other places. They work over the border in Wisconsin, the outer suburbs of Chicago, where they feel safer. If you want a great culture in your company, you have to have people that love being on the team and they don’t want to live in a violent area. They don’t want to live in a place where their kids can’t walk to school safely and their wives and kids can’t go shopping in a beautiful environment like Michigan Avenue, which was once the safest place you could ever go shopping.” 


We have often claimed that a very, very basic function of any government entity is to protect the lives and property of its residents and businesses. Failure on this function renders anything else a government entity does moot and insignificant. Which means that Chicago politicians continue to be a failure and insignificant.


2)Regarding the withdrawal of the Citadel investment business out of the city referenced above:


  • Hedge fund billionaire, Ken Griffin, recently announced that he was relocating his investment firm to Miami to get away from the violence of Chicago.

  • Griffin is worth $29 billion and has been a long term charity donor having donated hundreds of millions of dollars over the years to causes in Chicago and the state of Illinois, donations that are now in danger.

  • Griffin has previously referenced the high rate of violent crime in Chicago: “If people aren’t safe here, they’re not going to live here,” he said of the state of affairs. I’ve had multiple colleagues mugged at gunpoint. I’ve had a colleague stabbed on the way to work. Countless issues of burglary. I mean, that’s a really difficult backdrop with which to draw talent to your city from.”


People want to be free: free from high taxes, free from over regulating government, and free to be safe in their lives and businesses. Obviously, that is not happening in the crime ridden, ineptly ruled city of Chicago and state of Illinois.


3)But Chicago is not the only place in the country where people and businesses are moving to safer, less taxing locations to improve their quality and safety of life. We have previously discussed the reality that many large and small businesses have been fleeing the high crime, high taxation state of California. These fleeing companies have included Tesla, Toyota, and Charles Schwab. 


And the out migration has not stopped:


  • Chevron recently announced that it is moving its California headquarters to Texas, a state with low taxes and a very favorable business environment, the exact opposite of California.

  • It announced that it will be paying the relocation costs of some employees.

  • The move comes after being located in California for 140 years so it was obviously not a move taken lightly.


We have discussed this out migration from a number of states, Illinois, California, New Jersey, and New York:


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


And the latest news from Chicago and California prove that the death  spiral theory is still valid and in place in Chicago and California. The race to bankruptcy should be a hoot to follow.


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:

Please visit the following sites for freedom:
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