Friday, June 23, 2023

June, 2023, Part 4, Political Class Insanity: The Continued Failings Of The Department of Education, Democrats Do Not Care About Drug Overdose Fatalities and Biden's Cognitive Decline Continues

 Every month we devote posts to just general political class insanity that is running rampant through the country. The members of the American political class continue to show that they are incapable of operating any level of government in this country. 


Even their best efforts are almost always inefficient and ineffective at resolving any problem facing Americans. They spend a great amount of time not trying to improve the lives of their citizens but continually ensuring their reelection and enriching themselves, their families, and their friends in the process, all at taxpayer expense.


Lately it seems like the insanity is getting more frequent and more intense as politicians continue to fail us all. Let’s look at just for of the latest examples of political class insanity:


1)No doubt being President is the hardest, most demanding, and  most stressful job in the world. Or maybe not if you are Joe Biden:


  • Joe Biden is 80 years old and is likely in the depths of cognitive decline, whether that decline is dementia or plain old senility there is no doubt his mental acuity has been decreasing for years.

  • His physical sharpness is also not good as he continues to fall down often, be it climbing steps or just walking along flat surfaces.

  • Thus, it is probably apparent to most people he is not capable of executing the most stressful job in the world.

  • And if you do not believe that previous statement then do not take our word for it, take the word of the liberal media icon, the New York Times.

  • According to the Times, Biden’s staff has to go to tremendous lengths to make sure Biden looks fit and capable to the public.

  • His staff schedules most of his public appearances only between noon and 4:00 pm.

  • They try not to have him do anything on the weekends.

  • They also  try not to let him talk to the press in news media interviews since he has taken about one fourth the number of press interviews that Trump gave in the same amount of time in office.

  • He has given only a fifth of the number of interviews Obama did in the same amount of time in office.

  • In the past 100 years, only Reagan and Nixon had such a low number of news media interviews.

  • His staff has not made his personal doctor available for interviews like previous Presidents have always done.

  • His staff claims that he has a remarkable memory citing the example of a visit to Shanksville, Pennsylvania on the 20th anniversary of the 9-11 attacks where he vividly and accurately knew the layout of the grounds where the memorial to the Flight 95 was located.

  • What they fail to mention is that victims of dementia often have very sharp memories of long ago experiences so that in essence, using the Shanksville experience as an example of his mental  sharpness reinforces the concept he has dementia.


I do not blame Biden, it is not his fault he is in the mental  and physical state he is currently in.  I blame his wife, his family and his political handlers for forcing a man of his declining cognitive ability to do what he has had to do over the past three years. They are the ones that need to be  blamed and locked up for elder abuse. Unfortunately, their greed and selfishness has caused great and often fatal harm to the citizens across this country.


2)It seems every year that more and more Americans are dying from drug overdoses. That fatality number  is now over 100,000 people a year and rising dramatically. And a major driver of that upward spiraling overdose death number is the flood of fentanyl that has come over the border as a result of Biden’s failed border security policies. About 70% of the overdose deaths every year are now from a fentanyl related substance. 


We have often said that a very, very basic function of any government entity is to protect the lives and property of the citizens they represent, be it at the local town level or the national, Washington D.C. level. No matter how well a government does anything else, if they cannot protect their citizens from harm and evil then they are a failure.


Which brings us to the latest Congressional failure of over 100 sitting members of Congress:


  • The good news is that the House of Representatives recently passed legislation that would permanently classify any fentanyl tainted as Schedule I drugs.

  • Schedule I drugs subject criminals in those types of drugs to the toughest Federal prison terms.

  • Obviously, this effort was an attempt to make people think twice about dealing with illegal fentanyl since the penalties of getting caught would now be greater.

  • Great idea, fentanyl is killing tens of thousands of Americans every year so anything that the Federal government can do to try and get this epidemic under control is welcomed.

  • Well, not everyone welcomed the legislation since a whopping 132 Democrats in the House voted against the legislation.

  • The legislation did pass by a vote of 289 to 133.

  • Even  the Democrat in the White House supported the legislation: "The HALT Fentanyl Act would permanently schedule all fentanyl-related substances (FRS) not otherwise scheduled into Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act as a class and expedite research into fentanyl-related substances, which the Administration has long supported," the White House said this week.

  • But Democrats opposing the legislation claimed that the new penalties on  fentanyl would unfairly penalize minorities.

  • Congress Frank Pallone tried explaining the opposition with some nonsense that the thought of making it a Schedule I drug is good as long it is  "carefully designed to avoid exacerbating inequities in our criminal justice system."

  • Congresswoman Barbara Lee had some similar word salad thoughts:  "We need to be tough on inequality, but for true, systemic change, we have to be willing to consider different roads. We have to be willing to consider community-based, trauma-informed, and harm-reducing policies. We must resist the urge to hearken back to tough-on-crime rhetoric."


“Inequities in our criminal  justice system”,community-based, trauma-informed, and harm-reducing policies.” Noble words that change nothing in the world, that do not save one American life. As always, members of Congress preen and say exalted things that make no difference in the real world. They would rather prattle on about societal  injustices while Americans die everyday from drug overdoses.


The sad thing about Lee and Pallone is that fentanyl has been temporarily on Schedule I for years, this legislation only made it permanent. If they had a problem with this they had years to fix the legislation, something they did not do.


Congressman Brett Guthrie has a much better grasp on the real world than Lee and Pallone combined: "If you are selling fentanyl to our kids, you deserve to be incarcerated. We don't apologize for that." It should not matter if you are black or brown or white and selling fentanyl to kids,  you should suffer the worst consequences possible.


3)One of the Federal government areas that we have often pointed out as being an unmitigated disaster is the Federal Department of Education. Created in 1979, I am assuming that the Department of Education was supposed to help better educate our kids.


But as we have pointed out with any number of international studies, this country does NOT do a good job of educating our kids relative to other countries. We often trail a couple of dozen other countries when it comes to assessing the brightness and education attainment of our kids vs. kids around the world. 


And according to a recent Associated Press report, we continue to fail our kids and continue to under educate them:


  • Math and reading test scores of our 13 year olds, on average, have fallen to their lowest levels in decades.

  • Math scores have dropped by their largest margin ever according to Federal government test results.

  • Average math scores for 13 year olds fell 9 points from 2020 to 2023 while average reading scores fell 4 points.

  • Another study found its measure of our kids' math scores are now at the lowest levels since 1990, reading levels are at the lowest levels since 2004.

  • The  declines in math and reading ability were largest with Native American and black students, those that are probably most in need of a good education to break their cycles of poverty.

  • The Biden administration is blaming the pandemic for the drop in math and reading proficiency, which probably accounts for part of the blame, but does not account for the reality that scores have been dropping for years and years prior to the pandemic.


Regardless of who is in the White House and who is sitting in Congress, since its establishment in 1979, the Department of Education has failed miserably in its one responsibility: educating our kids the best way possible. After 44 years of failure, maybe it is time to dump the whole department and let the states and  local  communities try their hand at better educating our kids, how much worse could they do?


Think about it: the annual Department of Education budget is about $194 billion. There are about 131,000 K-12 schools in this country. A simplistic analysis shows that if that Department of Education budget could be distributed equally to every one of those schools, each school would have about an additional $1.5 million a year to better teach our kids. That is $1.5 million a year to hire more teachers and tutors, purchase more and better education materials, train existing teachers to do a better job at teaching, etc.


 Seems to be a better use of tax dollars than continuing to fund the failed Department of Education.


That will do it for today’s insanity: the epic failure of the Department of Education, Congressional Democrats care more about nebulous social justice issues than the reality that Americans are dying everyday from fentanyl overdoses, and Biden continues to embarrass himself and the country with his declining cognitive abilities.


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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