There is a lot going on in the world: Obama and Russiagate findings, Middle East powder keg, the Russian/Ukrainian war, etc. But through all this, the American political class continues to constantly deliver its own special brand of insanity, stupidity, wasteful taxpayer spending, and ineffective government programs.
1)One of the great failures of the Federal government over recent decades is the Department of Education. Its 2024 budget was $238 billion (Wikipedia) and it has probably spent well over a trillion dollars since it was formed about 45 years ago. But given the latest test results of American kids, that money has not been well spent by the Washington political class:
According to the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress, American kids are getting lousy educations.
The latest assessment found that 45% of high school seniors tested performed “below basic” in math.
32% tested below “below basic” in reading.
8th grade science scores found that 39% performed “below basic.”
Reading scores are 10 points lower than they were when the first assessments were done in 1992, 33 years ago, i.e. kids got dumber in reading despite the rich Department of Education annual budgets.
Things have gotten so bad in some states that rather than fix their broken school processes, Wisconsin, New York, and Illinois simply reduced the requirements to qualify for being adequately educated, i.e. they dumbed down the standards to better fit the dumbed down students that they failed to educate.
And for this pitiful performance, the American taxpayer shelled out almost a quarter of a trillion dollars in 2024. I think Einstein once said: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.” That is exactly what we have been doing with the Department of Education for over four decades, insanity.
Consider this: there are about 130,000 K through 12th schools in the country. I wonder what would happen if we gave each of those schools a piece of that Department of Education budget, about $1.8 million per school on average each year, and see if they can do a better job educating our kids than spending $238 billion out of Washington? How much worse could it get?
2)But money is not just being wasted at the Department of Education. FEMA is doing a pretty good job of wasting some taxpayer money but in an entirely different way:
Two FEMA employees were recently fired after an internal investigation found that they had been having explicit sexual communications with foreign nationals.
In at least one instance, they shared so-called “deviant pornography” using a government facility designed to withstand nuclear war.
The pornography party was going on at FEMA’s Mount Weather Emergency Operations Center, a center designed to stand up to weather disasters, terror attacks, and nuclear war.
One of the frequent FEMA contacts was in the Philippines and involved "sexually explicit conversations.”
These conversations were going on while the employees were on the job, drawing taxpayer funded salaries.
The good news is these activities and employees were identified and terminated. But it begs the question: were there no safeguards to prevent government employees from being involved in sexual pornographic discussions with foreign people around the world while on the job using top secret and critical computer resources that were designed to protect Americans? Unreal incompetence.
3)Even when politicians do something right, they still screw it up:
The state government of New York recently rolled out a new rule that prohibits cell phones from being used by middle school and high school students during school hours.
As we know from the above disucssion, American kids, including New York kids, are falling behind in their education attainment.
Shutting down cell phone usage during school hours might enable the kids to focus more on their studies and learning and be less of a distraction for teachers, improving their productivity and results.
Great concept, poor execution since the governor’s office in the state, headed by Governor Kathy Hochul, somehow thought that middle and high school kids would respond favorably to a six foot tall Sesame Street-like fuzzy mascot for the effort, “Frankie Focus.”
“Frankie Focus” is a six foot high costumed person that might work well for kindergarten kids who still watch Sesame Street but to think that a high schooler is going to be wowed by tall, furry, brightly colored cartoon like mascot is ridiculous.
Moshe Spern is a NYC high school teacher: “It’s completely tone deaf. We all agree that the cell phone ban would be great for students and learning. But having a silly cartoon character be the focus of the promotion loses the target audience… It insults their intelligence.”
High school parent Yiatain Chu had a similar repulsed reaction: “The use of a mascot doesn’t appeal to parents and certainly not high school students. It doesn’t appeal to me.”
Hochul’s office refused media questions on how much taxpayer money was spent to develop and then create such an idiotic concept. But her office, apparently realizing too late how inane the idea is, would disclose the cost of this lame effort.
4)We have often discussed the reality that many California residents and businesses are fleeing the state for a number of reasons:
Oppressive taxes.
Oppressive business regulations.
High utility costs.
High gasoline costs.
High rates of homelessness.
High rates of crime.
As a result, businesses, like Toyota, Tesla, Charles Schwab, and many others have moved their business operations and staff out of the state. And the out migration continues:
Bed Bath and Beyond, a company that has been resurrected out of bankruptcy, has decided not to establish retail stores in its new store rollout effort.
Its executive Chairman, Marcus Lemonis, claimed that the California state government’s anti-business regulations caused his company to avoid the state.
The company will serve the state’s customers via online sales.
The first store recently rolled out in Nashville and there are plans to roll out 300 new stores in the next two years, none of which will be in California.
Another dart into the economic balloon that is California. Companies leave, taking their jobs and tax dollars with them, residents leave and take their tax dollars with them, the tax base decreases which reduces tax revenue which results in a budget shortfall (because California politicians never cut government costs or expenses) which leads to higher tax rates which leads to more out migration and eventually the financial collapse of the state government. And just another reason why we think that California is a top candidate for being the first state government to go into bankruptcy.
California loses another asset, New York creates a cartoon character for teenagers, pornography on site at FEMA, and our kids continue to get under educated.
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If you agree that we need to deseat every member of Congress for their lack of success and accomplishment, then please consider going to the following petition link to help the cause:
https://www.change.org/p/deseat-congress-reset-freedom
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