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)More times than we would like, we have shown how Washington politicians have gotten so wealthy from simply being a member of Congress or part of the DC establishment. Members of Congress and their staffs have access to insider information regarding companies, legislation, and other pieces of reality that enable them to trade stocks, schedule legislation, manipulate legislation and do other things to enrich themselves.
But they often not only enrich themselves but also enrich their family members and other political hangers-on. Maxine Walters, a California Congresswoman is very good at this type of corruption:
The Federal Election Commission recently reported that Walters has channeled $192,300 of campaign her donations during the 2022 election cycle to the company owned by her daughter, Karen Walters.
Karen Walters runs a direct mail company that helps create mailers to promote her mother’s reelection campaigns.
Since 2004, Karen Waters company has received over $1.2 million from her mother’s never-ending reelection campaigns.
Karen Walters mailers usually involve having other politicians pay to have their names and images included in Maxine Walters’ campaign literature.
Must be nice, mom collects campaign donations and funnels a big chunk of those to her daughter, keeping it in the family. “The rich get richer” adage applies over and over when it comes to American politicians.
2)We have discussed over and over how residents and companies are abandoning the state of California for a number of reasons: higher and higher crime rates, higher and higher taxes, higher and higher utility costs, etc.
As more and more residents and businesses leave the state, the tax revenue base gets smaller and smaller resulting in lower tax revenue. This causes the state opticians to cut vital government services (e.g. police, fire, etc.) and raise taxes to cover the tax revenue shortfall. This causes more residents and businesses to leave and the financial death spiral is underway.
Rather than cut government spending and making government functions more efficient, the state politicians refuse to do the right thing from a budget perspective. But you have to give them credit from a creative perspective, even if their latest financial idea is so stupid:
The state government politicians have proposed a so-called “worldwide wealth” tax.
It would impose a tax on wealthy state residents on their total wealth, not their income, and from a stupidity perspective… even if a wealthy resident moved out of the state, the California state government would try to impose the California wealth tax on that person who no longer resided in the state.
The proposed bill would impose a 1.5% tax on a resident’s worldwide wealth that is over $1 billion.
A lower tax would be imposed on residents who have a net worth over $50 million.
A wealth tax is different than an income tax where an income tax is levied on a person’s annual income and earnings.
This wealth tax would apply to someone’s total wealth and would include stock holdings, savings accounts, real estate, collectible art and coins, vehicles, pension funds, etc.
And a pipe dream, the state would try to apply the tax to anyone who left the state to live somewhere else.
Joe Lonsdale is a venture capitalist who recently fled to Texas was interviewed by Fox Business: “This is really more a theatrical production going on in California. The state’s a total mess. And what they’re doing here is they’re signaling something crazy, and they’re probably going to compromise and tax the billionaires more some other way. But it’s really ridiculous.”
There is no way they could apply a wealth tax on a non-resident. I would assume that as long as the ex-resident never visited the state they would never have to pay the tax. It is probably un-Constitutional anyway: why should someone who no longer lives in California be obligated to pay taxes in California? So insane.
Rather than do the right thing and cut back excess and wasteful government spending, the state politicians go headhunting for additional revenue while the financial death spiral circles the drain.
3)And maybe it is these types of stupid ideas, i.e. the wealth tax on non-residents, that have caused Americans to finally start realizing that it is the politicians in this country that are the main problem facing Americans:
According to a recent survey, 21% of those polled said that “government/poor leadership” was the most pressing problem facing Americans today.
This is up 40% from last year when 15% said this was the most pressing problem.
This year, 15% of those polled said inflation was the most pressing problem vs. 16% last year, 10% said the economy vs. 16% last year, and 11% said immigration was the most pressing issue vs. 8% last year.
So despite higher gas prices, higher food prices, higher utility prices, and higher crime rates because of out of control immigration, Americans now think that the root cause of the country’s issues are the politicians that are in charge. Maybe they are onto something: these other problems are caused by the inability of today’s politicians to fix the underlying causes of the major issues.
And the survey went on to describe how depressed American are about the current situation in the country:
45% of those polled said economic conditions were poor and 38% said economic conditions are only fair, thus, over 80% of those polled do not think the economcy is in good or great shape.
Only 15% of those polled thin the economy is in good shape.
72% of those polled think that their financial standing will get worse over time.
It is a depressing time to be alive: we think that our economic future is not good, we do not have a lot of faith in our politicians to fix the major issues of today, California politicians do not understand economics or human nature, and in the face of these crises facing American families, politicians like Maxine Walters, and many others, only care about enriching themselves and their families, the needs of ordinary Americans be damned.
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:
No comments:
Post a Comment