March, 2016, Part 1, Political Class Insanity: A Sampling of Government and Political Insults to the American Taxpyer and Citizens

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.

To kick off this month’s insanity, we reference a recent article on the website of the Washington Weekly News. They recently put together a hall of shame for the corruption and insults to the American taxpayer that many of the Federal government have incurred over the past couple of years. 

After going through the list, I think you will have a much better understanding of 1) why nothing ever gets successfully and efficiently accomplished by the Federal government bureaucracy, the employees involved with that useless bureaucracy and the politicians that are supposed to oversee that bureaucracy and 2) how we have gotten to a whopping national debt of $19TRILLION and have nothing to show for it.

The original article can be accessed at:

http://washingtonweeklynews.com/long-long-list-of-lies-how-corrupt-is-the-american-government-see-for-yourself/#

At that article you can click on other links that verify that the corruption that is being listed actually happened. 

Trust me, you will need a strong stomach and low blood pressure to survive the following insults to your wallets and intelligence:

Senior SEC employees and officials were caught surfing the Internet for pornography 8 hours a day on government computers during work hours rather than cracking down on financial illegalities.

Nuclear Regulatory Commission workers were also caught watching Internet pornography on the job rather than protecting us from nuclear plant accidents and meltdowns.

An EPA employee was caught after he had downloaded 7,000 computer files filled with pornography and who also spent upwards of 6 hours a day watching it. This behavior had been going on for years but he never got fired.

Another EPA official harassed at least 16 EPA female co-workers but rather than getting fired he was promoted to a higher paying job where he continued to harass female employees at his new location.

While illegally spying on ordinary Americans and shredding their Fourth Amendment rights, NSA employees passed around sex video and pictures that they had illegally collected from Americans’ computers.

NSA employees were also caught using their expensive, taxpayer funded surveillance equipment and power to spy on girlfriends, mistresses, former wives and others besides eavesdropping on the intimate conversations of overseas American soldiers and their wives back home.

A TSA employee admitted that airport agents regularly share and laugh at nude scans of airport passengers.

Another TSA employee claims that TSA airport screeners make excuses so that they can grope and fondle air travelers that they are attracted to.

The Treasury Department’s inspector general found that Treasury employees surfed erotic websites while on the job, hired prostitutes, and accepted gifts from bank executives, the very people they were supposed to be overseeing and regulating.

The Minerals Management Service, the agency supposedly in charge of protecting us from oil spills, was found to be infested with “a culture of substance abuse and promiscuity” which extended to “sex with industry contacts.”

Drug Enforcement Agency agents had dozens of sex parties with prostitutes who were hired by the drug cartels that DEA agents are supposed to be taking down.

Those same DEA agents were found to also having received money, gifts, and weapons from those same drug cartels.

DEA agents also operated a New Jersey strip club using illegal and undocumented girls, an operation that also included a prostitution operation.

Pentagon employees used government credit cards to pay for prostitutes and to gamble using taxpayer money.

The IRS promoted IRS employees who were also tax cheats or delinquents.

Commodity Futures Trading Commission employees conspired with big banks to manipulate commodities prices.

The SEC has been shredding Wall Street bank documents for decades to help big banks cover up criminal activities.

Former Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner allegedly was involved in Lehman Brothers' accounting fraud.

The former chief SEC accountant claims that at least two former Treasury secretaries, Ben Bernanke and Henry Paulson, broke the law.

Different government agencies (The Fed, SEC, FBI, DOJ, and others) and high ranking government officials knew about massive banking fraud long before the Great Recession hit but did nothing about it.

Paulson and Bernanke lied when the said that the big banks receiving TARP money were financially healthy but in truth, were not.

The Washington political class bailed out the banks that caused the Great Recession, sending none of the law breaking bankers to jail, but did nothing for the homeowners that ended up losing their homes as a result of big bank policies and strategies.

A high-level Federal Reserve official claims that the Fed’s quantitative easing programs were "the greatest backdoor Wall Street bailout of all time." 

Another high ranking American government official in charge of the bank bailouts claimed: “Americans should lose faith in their government. They should deplore the captured politicians and regulators who distributed tax dollars to the banks without insisting that they be accountable. The American people should be revolted by a financial system that rewards failure and protects those who drove it to the point of collapse and will undoubtedly do so again.”

The supposedly non-partisan Government Accountability Office called the Federal Reserve “corrupt and riddled with conflicts of interest.”

Congress audaciously told the courts that Congress cannot be investigated for insider trading.

Congress exempted itself from Obama Care rules even though it was illegal to do so according to the legislation.

The Federal government allegedly covered up health risk and dangers to New Orleans residents as a result of tainted water as a result of Hurricane Katrina.

The Centers For Disease Control allegedly covered up lead poisoning of children in Washington D.C.

The Obama administration went after honest whistleblowers in many cases including an FDA/GE scandal, an FBI anthrax scandal, a Dow Chemical scandal, and a Bank Of America scandal.

$8.6 TRILLION in taxpayer money allocated to the Pentagon has never been accounted for. 

The Obama administration has gone after more whistle blowers than all previous Presidential administration COMBINED.

These are just a sample of the government screw ups and insults to the American taxpayer covered in the article. Again, go to the link above to see all of the instances of insults and corruption along with the links to find the original stories. 

This should get us started on this month’s political class insanity. It just gets worse and worse every month as the Washington political class continues to undermine our liberty, financial, and economic stability right in front of our faces. Buckle up as the insanity continues over the next week or so.

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:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

January, 2016, Part 5, Political Class Insanity: Dozens Of Examples Government Corruption, Lies, Wasteful Spending, and Incompetence

It is the start of another month which means it is time for our monthly review of the latest political class insanity that continually spews forth from America’s politicians. Their actions, words, quotes, incompetency, and general ineptness continue to reinforce our theory that we are currently being served by the worst set of politicians in the history of the nation.

As you read about the latest shenanigans and ineptness of the political class, keep in mind what should be their priorities in these difficult times and compare this list to what they are actually working on:

• NBC recently reported that ISIS forces are getting larger and stronger despite the Obama administration spending billions of dollars on a failed air campaign and military strategy.
• The stock market is cratering.
• Job creation is barely keeping up with population growth.
• Wage growth is anemic, growing just .2% in the second quarter, the lowest quarterly growth since 1982.
• The labor participation rate is at the lowest level in decades because the Obama economy cannot generate enough jobs.
• Thousands of veterans are still not getting the medical care they were promised by the Federal government.
• 45 million Americans are still receiving monthly Federal food assistance.
• Our borders still leak and thousands of illegal immigrant criminals continue to walk our streets.
• Major programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security are hurtling towards insolvency and lose hundreds of billions of dollars every year to fraud and mismanagement.
• Our kids are still getting lousy public educations at most public schools.
• The IRS and other government functions seem to be getting their computer systems hacked on a regular basis, exposing tens of millions of Americans to identity theft potential.
• Obama Care is a failure along so many dimensions as health care costs continue to soar despite the Obama promise that they would decrease.
• Annual Federal deficits, while down, are still about half a TRILLION a year meaning that even though the Federal government is collecting more in taxes than ever before, it still cannot run a balanced budget.

Again, keep these real crises in mind as you read what our politicians are actually doing, saying and wasting.

We have often made the case, and supported it with real life, verifiable examples of how the entire Federal government operation is severely broken. Nothing works, problems that are supposed to be addressed are usually worse once the Feds get involved, often the Feds not only do not solve the issue at hand but create no problems and issues,and all of this incompetence is carried out at great expense to the taxpayer with no societal benefit in return.

In previous posts in this blog we have talked about how many Federal employees have been caught watching pornography on their government computers rather than doing their job but no one ever seems to get fired. We have discussed how Las Vegas parties have been held at great expense even though most of the party attendees live and work in the D.C. area. We have reviewed how the ATF had guns and explosives stolen right from their own secure facilities.

And there is not enough time in the day to discuss how broken and dysfunctional the Veterans Administration, TSA, Medicare, and the IRS are. Stick any of these organizations in the search box above and be prepared to spend hours finding out how badly and how often these entities screw up.

Which brings us to today’s political class insanity post which was basically written by the Washington Weekly News. They recently put forth an incredible piece on their website that documented and verified the massive ineptness and insanity that currently passes for government functions and workers in D.C. today. Their original article and the links to verify that they are not making this idiocy up can be accessed at:

http://washingtonweeklynews.com/long-long-list-of-lies-how-corrupt-is-the-american-government-see-for-yourself/#

Some of the insanity they uncovered, which sometimes verifies the same incompetence and waste we have previously discussed, include the following:

 - High level SEC employees spent up to 8 hours a day on pornography websites instead of cracking down on financial crimes

- Nuclear Regulatory Commission workers watched pornography on the job instead of cracking down on unsafe conditions at nuclear plants

- An EPA employee who downloaded 7,000 porn files then spent 2-6 hours each workday watching them. He’s been doing it for years but the EPA never fired him.

- Another EPA employee harassed 16 women co-workers but was promoted to a higher-paying job with more responsibility, where he harassed more women

- NSA spies pass around homemade sex videos and pictures they’ve collected from spying on the American people

- NSA employees have also been caught using their mass surveillance powers to spy on love interests, such as girl friends and former wives.

- NSA employees also eavesdropped on American soldiers’ intimate conversations with their wives back home. 

- An employee of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) admitted that TSA agents share and laugh at nude scans of passengers. 

- Another TSA employee claimed that screeners make excuses so they can grope and fondle travelers that they’re attracted to.

- Investigators from the Treasury's Office of the Inspector General found that some of the regulator’s employees surfed erotic websites, hired prostitutes and accepted gifts from bank executives,people that they were supposed to be overseeing and regulating.

- The Mineral Management Service was riddled with “a culture of substance abuse and promiscuity”, which included “sex with industry contacts,” all of which may explain why this Service did not see the BP oil spill coming before it happened. 

- Agents for the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) had dozens of sex parties with prostitutes hired by the drug cartels they were supposed to stop.

- DEA agents also received money, gifts and weapons from drug cartel members.

- Pentagon employees used government credit cards to pay for adult "escorts" (i.e. prostitutes) and to gamble.

- North Carolina passed a law legalizing prostitutes for state lawmakers. 

- Federal agents with the DEA and Secret Service investigating Bitcoin money laundering extorted and stole over $1 million in Bitcoin

- The IRS gave promotions to employees who were themselves tax cheats. 

- Regulators knew of and allowed the use of debt-hiding accounting tricks by the big banks

- The SEC has been shredding Wall Street documents for decades to help the big banks cover up their fraud.

- The Secretary of Treasury (Tim Geithner) was complicit in Lehman's accounting fraud.

- The former chief accountant for the SEC  says that Bernanke and Paulson broke the law and should be prosecuted.

- The government knew about mortgage fraud a long time ago. For example, the FBI warned of an “epidemic” of mortgage fraud in 2004. However, the FBI, DOJ and other government agencies then stood down and did nothing. 

- Paulson and Bernanke falsely stated that the big banks receiving Tarp money were healthy when they were not. The Treasury Secretary also falsely told Congress that the bailouts would be used to dispose of toxic assets … but then used the money for something else entirely.

- Every year D.C. the politicians have bailed out large banks to the tune of many tens of billions of dollars and created a system where all of the profits were privatized and all of the risks were socialized. 

- Obama and Congress promised help for struggling homeowners, and passed numerous bills that they claimed would rescue the little guy. But every single one of these bills actually bails out the banks and do not really help the homeowner

- A high-level Federal Reserve official says quantitative easing is "the greatest backdoor Wall Street of all time."

- The American government’s top official in charge of the bank bailouts wrote, “Americans should lose faith in their government. They should deplore the captured politicians and regulators who distributed tax dollars to the banks without insisting that they be accountable. The American people should be revolted by a financial system that rewards failure and protects those who drove it to the point of collapse and will undoubtedly do so again.”

- The non-partisan Government Accountability Office (GAO) calls the Fed corrupt and riddled with conflicts of interest

- Both the Bush and Obama administrations broke the law by refusing to close insolvent banks.

- Congress may have covered up illegal tax breaks for the big banks

- Congress recently told the courts that Congress can’t be investigated for insider trading

- Congress has exempted itself from the health care rules it insists everyone else follow.

- The government has gone to great lengths to cover up nuclear accidents, radiation dangers, and unsafe conditions at nuclear plants

- The government made sure that false claims were made about the amount of oil spilled by BP in the Gulf.
  - The government covered up the health risks to New Orleans residents associated with polluted water from hurricane Katrina, and FEMA covered up the cancer risk from the toxic trailers which it provided to refugees of the hurricane. 

- The Centers for Disease Control, the lead agency tasked with addressing disease in America, covered up lead poisoning in children in the Washington, D.C. area (the Centers for Disease Control has also been outed as receiving industry funding.

- Government scientists originally pushed fluoridation of water as “safe and effective” because fluoride is a major byproduct of making nuclear weapons… and the government ordered them to downplay the risks of fluoride exposure in order to prevent massive lawsuits by those suffering injury from poisoning

- When one of the most respected radiologists in America – the former head of the radiology department at Yale University – attempted to blow the whistle on the fact that the FDA had approved a medical device manufactured by General Electric because it put out massive amounts of radiation, the FDA installed spyware to record his private emails and surfing activities (including installing cameras to snap pictures of his screen), and then used the information to smear him and other whistle blowers

- The EPA colluded with Dow Chemical to toss aside Dow’s own safety studies showing that the Agent Orange ingredient 2,4-D caused kidney damage in rats, so it could approve an increase of 4100% of 2,4-D in the American diet.

- The Bush White House worked hard to smear CIA officers, bloggers and anyone else who criticized the Iraq war

- The FBI smeared top scientists who pointed out the numerous holes in its anthrax case. Indeed, the head of the FBI’s investigation agrees that corruption was rampant.

- After a top USDA scientist disclosed that commonly-used pesticides kill monarch butterflies and beneficial insects, the government punished him and tried to make his life miserable.

- The government has intentionally whipped up hysteria about terrorism for cynical political purposes. For example, former Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge admitted that he was pressured to raise terror alerts to help the president win reelection. 

- Warmongers in the U.S. government knowingly and intentionally lied us intol a war of aggression in Iraq. The former head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff – the highest ranking military officer in the United States – said that the Iraq war was "based on a series of lies" The same is true in Libya, Syria, and other wars. Indeed, the U.S. has often launched or proposed launching wars based on false premises.

- The U.S. has supported main backers of Islamic terrorism because they have a lot of oil and do our government’s dirty work. In the name of fighting terrorism, the U.S. has been directly supporting Al Qaeda  and other terrorists and providing them arms, money and logistical support in Syria, Libya, Mali, Bosnia, Chechnya,Iran, and many other countries before and after 9-11. 

- Conservatives like the director of the National Security Agency under Ronald Reagan (Lt. General William Odom) and liberals like Noam Chomsky all say that the American government is the world's largest purveyor of terrorism. 

- When the American government got caught assassinating innocent civilians, it changed its definition of “enemy combatants” to include all young men between the ages of say 15 and 35 who happen to be in battle zones. When it got busted killing kids with drones, it changed the definition again to include kids as “enemy combatants”

- U.S. government officials say that the government has long PROTECTED drug cartels.

- $8.5 trillion dollars in taxpayer money doled out by Congress to the Pentagon since 1996 ha never been accounted for. 

- Congress pushes expensive boondoggles that our generals say are unnecessary and unhelpful because it’s pork for their district

- The government lied when it said it doesn;t conduct mass surveillance on Americans and then lied again when it said that spying was aimed at protecting America against terrorists. 

- The same Congress members who backed mass surveillance against the American people have only become indignant only when they were spied on by the government

- The government also lied when it said America doesn't torture and then lied once again when it said torture was aimed at protecting America against terrorists

- The government protects criminal wrongdoing by prosecuting whistle blowers. The Obama administration has sentenced whistle blowers to dozens of times the jail time of all other Presidents COMBINED. And the government has framed whistle blowers with false evidence.

- The government treats journalists who report on government corruption as CRIMINALS OR TERRORISTS. And it goes to great lengths to smear them. For example, when USA Today reporters busted the Pentagon for illegally targeting Americans with propaganda, the Pentagon launched a smear campaign against the reporters. 

- The intelligence services blackmail people in both government and the private sector with evidence of homosexuality ,nude pictures and other information that people want to stop from going public

- Terror attacks such as 9/11, the Boston Marathon bombing and the Texas shooting all happened because of PERVASIVE CORRUPTION in our intelligence agencies.

The sad thing is that I did not include all of the corruption and ineptness that the Washington Weekly News article put forth, again, all of which can be verified by the links they embedded in the original article’s web address listed above. 

Additionally, the article did not get to all of the corruption, wasteful spending, spying, and ineptness of the political class and the government it oversees that we have previously reviewed. To review even more government incompetence, just browse through the first few posts at the beginning of each month listed above through the years. It is at the beginning of each month where we put the latest insanity from the political class.

After reviewing all of the insanity we just discussed, you will certainly reach the same conclusion that we reached and that Mark Twain reached years ago:

• Our view: We are currently served by the worst set of American politicians to ever hold office.
• Mark Twain’s view: Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself.

Incompetent idiots, a deadly combination in Washington and around the country. More political class insanity tomorrow.

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:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

The Hypocrisy and Greed of The Washington Poiitical Class and The Immediate Need For Term Limits

In writing our book, “Love My Country, Loathe My Government,” we theorized that there were really not two distinct political parties in Washington. While each party emphasizes different issues and voting blocs, they are really all part of a single political class. And the purpose of that class is solely to propagate their own time in office and their own selfish needs and personal fortunes.

Washington politicians could care less if they are making your life better. The could care less if they are keeping you safe or if they are efficiently and effectively spending your tax dollars. They are into being a politician only for their own self enrichment and ego satisfaction. 

There are the obvious signs that we have an elitist political class. 

• They allow themselves to be paid more than three times the average American household annual income. 
• They have outstanding benefits, both healthcare and other types.
• They take numerous vacations times every year, claiming a five week vacation every summer. 
• They have rigged their pay/wage system so that they automatically get a raise every year regardless of how poorly they perform their job, which has been at all time low levels. 
• They almost always leave political office much wealthier than when they come into office, an increase that cannot be solely explained by their high salaries.

But this is the obvious day to day shenanigans our politicians treat themselves to. Let’s consider some less obvious but certainly more fruitful selfish acts of our current politicians.

1) Eighteen months or so ago, the Washington political class shut down the Federal government. Rather than take an adult, mature approach to governing, they took the exact opposite approach: partisan fighting, childish name calling, and a complete inability to lead or formulate a strategy and a budget.

As a result, major parts of the Federal government shut down. No one outside of Washington was responsible for the government shutdown. It was all caused by about 500 people in Congress and the White House, who are as inept as they come. 

But who suffered? It was everyday Americans who suffered. National parks were shut down, government programs supporting Americans were suspended, etc. The Washington political class, however, felt no pain. They caused the problem but they continued to draw their high salaries, they continued to get their posh offices, they continued to get their benefits, etc. Talk about selfish: cause heartbreak for others due incompetence but rig the process so that they suffer no ill effects.

2) When Obama Care was passed, the Washington political class made an empty gesture that was supposed to force Congressional members and their staffs to purchase health insurance via Obama Care individual healthcare insurance exchanges. This would have resulted in substantially higher out of pocket costs for health insurance for those parties. This was the Washington politicians way of showing that they understood the hardships they were imposing on millions of Americans via Obama Care.

But shortly after Obama Care took effect, it became clear that this was indeed an empty gesture. Congressional leaders went to Obama and convinced him to allow Congressional members and their staffs to purchase health insurance via the Obama Care small business Obama Care exchange of Washington D.C. This would allow these Washington types to pay far less for their health insurance, an option not available to other Americans.

But this was clearly against the law. Not only was it prohibited by the legislation itself, but the D.C. health insurance exchange was explicitly and legally restricted only to businesses that had less than 50 employees. Obviously, members of Congress and their staffs number far more than 50. Nevertheless, Obama let them get away with this slap to the face of all Americans despite its illegality.

Well, at least one Senator has been fighting back against this hypocrisy and illegal move on the Obama administration’s part. U.S. Senator David Vitter, Senate Small Business Committee Chairman, had put forth a motion and effort to find out how this atrocity occurred. Specifically, who in the Obama administration filled out the paperwork and approved the paperwork to allow Congressional members and their staffs to ignore Obama Care tenets and get a break on health insurance premiums.

Sounds like a noble effort. Someone, somewhere broke the law, it is only right to find out who actually broke it and whether or not that Federal employee was told to do so by who. Unfortunately, as always, nobility and integrity are almost always lacking in Washington’s political class. The motion has at least died temporarily in committee as five Republican committee members and along with all Democratic committee members voted down the proposal.

Pathetic leadership, selfish behavior. They broke the law and now they want to cover it up so that Vitter and the country cannot find out what members of Congress and the administration might be responsible for defrauding the government through the District of Columbia’s Obamacare exchange. Vitter had been seeking an un-redacted copy of the Obama Care D.C. exchange application to determine who listed the number of employees as 45, which qualified members of Congress and their staff for special small business employee subsidies.

The stupid thing about these Senators voting no is that eventually someone is going to go to court and the court is going to force the disclosure of who broke the law. The names will get out and now the names will get out for both the original crime and the cover up of that crime. No one ever accused the Washington politicians to be especially smart. 

3) A few years ago, the CBS news show, “60 Minutes” broke a scandal that showed how Washington politicians were making themselves rich trading on insider information on pending and proposed legislation. We covered that political scandal in detail at the following link:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2011/11/final-proof-of-undeniable-corruption.html

Disgusting greed and law breaking that no one went to jail for. If you or I had done the same thing, we definitely would have exposed ourselves to felony jail terms. But Congress had miraculously passed previous legislation that allowed only them and their high level staff members to increase their wealth in insider trading schemes.

Due to the news, Congress immediately passed legislation called the STOCK bill which finally forbade this type of insider trading. Sounds good, right? Well, a little while after they passed the legislation, they very quietly went back and gutted the law with another piece of legislation so that they could keep the flow of insider trading secrets going to the advancement of their bank accounts.

Now it appears that they have gone one step further to ensure they can continue their insider trading. While they gutted the original bill, they did not completely destroy the SEC’s ability to investigate insider trading within the halls of Congress. The SEC started an investigation on how a Mr. Brian Sutter, a former staffer for the House Ways and Means Committee, allegedly passed along information about an pending Medicare decision to a lobbyist. It is alleged that this first lobbyist then shared the tip with other lobbyist firms. Leading hedge funds used the insider tip to trade on health insurance stocks that were affected by the soon-to-be announced Medicare decision.

Sounds like a valid violation of the STOCK law and the SEC began to investigate. That is when the same politicians that passed the STOCK law started to fight back. They got a team of lawyers together that put forth the inane premise the SEC could not investigate members of Congress or their staffs due to the doctrine of separation of powers within the Constitution.

You can draw two absurd logic conclusions here:

1. Members of Congress can do anything they want including breaking the law without fear of penalty because of separations of power in the Constitution, according to their lawyers.
2. The law they themselves passed has no teeth since they now say they cannot be investigated for wrongdoing under that law that was supposed to penalize them for any wrongdoing. 

Roundabout, insane logic, all to cover up their continued and profitable insider trading practices, all of which comes at the expense of the American taxpayer in one way or another.

Again, as we stated above, the Washington political class does not care about you or me. They care about maintaining their high salaries and high benefit levels, they care about their frequent and long vacations, they care about violating the law to minimize their own expenses (e.g. Obama Care), and they will tell you they did the right thing to your face but do the exact opposite behind your backs to maintain their insider trading pipeline to riches. 

They are pathetic, liars, hypocritical, and selfish. And on top of that, they are also ineffective, as witnessed by the sad state of affairs the country’s citizens outside of Washington face everyday.

That is why supporting any group or organization that is working towards term limits deserves our support. The current set of Washington politicians have proven to be unable to resolve problems and issues while self enriching themselves to the detriment of the country. If interested in joining this movement to kick out the incumbents that have lied to us so many times for their own financial good, please visit the following site that advocates for term limits:

www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com

Because, how much worse could it get if we replaced every single Washington politician with someone new? At least with new, fresh faces in Washington, we would have a chance at honesty and integrity, something we have no shot at today.

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:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

April, 2015, Part 6,Political Class Insanity: Tax Freedom Day Despair, Massive Conflict Of Interest and Coal Fallacies

It is the beginning of another month which means it is time to review the latest political class insanity that has cropped up over the past 30 days or so. As regular readers of this blog know, political class insanity comes in many different forms including, but not limited to, the following craziness:

• Spending taxpayer wealth on idiotic programs and projects.
• Wasting taxpayer wealth on their own selfish financial and political needs.
• Implementing legislation to resolve problems that make the original problems worse or which created unintended bad consequences as a result of their legislation.
• Implementing legislation that supports their political donors and financial backers rather than the typical American citizen.
• Issuing idiotic and stupid comments.
• Overseeing government organizations that are incompetent, inefficient, ineffective, and wasteful of taxpayer wealth.

As always, we identified new forms of insanity over the past week or so as we reviewed the past ineptness coming out of Washington and other bastions of American politicians. We will finally get through all of the latest insanity below:

1) According to a recent New York Times article, that was reviewed in the March 13, 20915 issue of The Week magazine, since Mary Jo White became chairwoman of the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC), she has had to recuse herself from more than four dozen current SEC investigations, many of which involve Wall Street firms, in order to avoid conflict of interest potential. 

She is a former Wall Street lawyer and her husband works for a corporate law firm. The four dozen cases involve former or current Wall Street clients of both her and her husband. Tough to do your job when you are so deeply involved in the industry you are supposed to oversee that you have to stay out of the very investigations you are supposed to be managing. Maybe she was not the best choice for the job.

2) A famous quotation from early in our history was “no taxation without representation” and it was part of the rallying cry for the American Revolution against England, the over taxation of American citizens. A recent, cynical spinoff of that quote is “taxation with representation isn’t so great either.” That was driven by the high amount of taxation every American faces from all levels of government. 

Well, it turns out that 2015 will be another bad year for taxation since the “Tax Freedom Day," the day when Americans stop working for the government and the political class and start working for themselves and their families worsened again. According to the latest analysis from the Tax Foundation:

• The national Tax Freedom Day in 2015 is April 24.
• This is a day later than Tax Freedom Day in 2014.
• For comparison, in 1900, the Tax Freedom Day was January 22.
• Americans will pay $3.38 trillion in Federal taxes and $1.57 trillion in state and local taxes this year, for a total of more than $4.8 trillion, or 31 percent of the nation's income. 
• If you were to spread that tax burden evenly across every American household, the individual household portion would be over $40,000 each.
• In total, American taxpayers will spend more on taxes in 2015 than they will on food, clothing, and housing combined.
• Taxpayers will work 43 days this year to pay all levels of income taxes, 26 days to pay payroll taxes, 15 days for sales and excise taxes, 12 days for corporate income taxes, 11 days for property taxes, and seven days for estate and inheritance taxes, custom duties, and other levies.
• The latest-ever Tax Freedom Day was May 1, 2000 so we are close to the all time record.
• Tax Freedom Day varies by state with Tax Freedom Day arriving the latest in Connecticut and New Jersey, May 13, and in New York on May 11.
• The earliest Tax Freedom Day in Louisiana (April 2), Mississippi (April 4), and South Dakota (April 8).
• "Tax Freedom Day gives us a vivid representation of how much we pay for the goods and services provided by governments at all levels," Tax Foundation economist Kyle Pomerleau said in a release. "Arguments can be made that the tax bill is too high or too low, but in order to have an honest discussion, it's important for taxpayers to understand the cost of government."

Truly insane how much we are taxed in what is supposed to be a free country with minimal government interference in our lives. Given the $40,000 per household calculation done above, ask yourself: are you getting $40,000 worth of services and benefit back from any level of government? How much more freedom would you have to send your kids to better schools, have a better vacation, start your own business, give more to charities, etc. if you could just keep half of that $40,000? 

This is a prime example of why you cannot have personal and political freedom if you do not have economic freedom. The first step towards what this country should be about was outlined in Step 1 in “Love My Country, Loathe My Government,” which called for a 50% reduction in all government spending over a five year period. This would force government and the politicians that operate it to become more efficient with our tax dollars and get our Tax Freedom Day down to a saner level than what is has become.

3) I always love it when politicians do not look at the underlying numbers and realities of their faulty reasoning and policies. In fact, if you enter the phrase, “by the numbers” in the search box above, you will see a whole host of previous posts that examined the numbers that truly define what is going on rather than relying on the spin and deceptions of politicians. 

Consider the faulty reasoning of the Al Gore types and other global warming advocates, including President Obama, when it comes to using coal as an energy course. It is not a secret that Obama has never liked the coal industry and his plans to reduce U.S. carbon emissions another 15% or so is mostly going to be accomplished by forcing the coal industry to repress its energy production.

But that will just be only an incremental reduction in the current emissions of the the U.S.’s 600 coal fired plants. However, according to an article in the March 27, 2015 issue of The Week magazine, China, which currently gets 70% of its electricity from burning coal, plans on building 363 additional coal plans in the near future. 

India, which has 340 million people who currently do not have access to electricity, plans on building 455 coal fired power plants. Thus, China and India are planning to bring at least 818 new coal fired plants online while Obama wants to reduce the output of 600 U.S. plants. 

Thus, you can see how even if the U.S. does reduce its carbon footprint by 15%, that reduction will be overwhelmed by over 800 new power plants in just two other countries. This will cause the cost of electricity to go up for American businesses and customers, depressing our economic growth, while the rest of the world inflicts far more carbon impacts that increases their economic growth. Insanity.

That wraps up this month's insanity. Six days of stupid government programs, wasteful spending, over taxation for under performance, and a whole host of other forms of insanity. Please consider visiting our term limits website at:

www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com

Because, really, how much worse from a political insanity perspective could it get if we replaced every Washington politician with a new person. Hard to see how much worse it could get.

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:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

Part 5, September, 2013 Political Class Insanity: Dodd-Frank Is a Disaster, Paying For Palestinian Mortgages With American Money, and Nancy Pelosi Thinks She Has Dignity

After a short diversion to cover the latest crises in Syria and Obama Care, this our fifth post this month covering the latest stupidity, insanity, and antics of the American political class. You do enough of these posts and the associated research and it makes you realize why these politicians have never resolved a major issue facing Americans over the past few decades. They are either unwilling, unable, or to wrapped up in their own personal careers and personal enrichment to care if an issue ever gets resolved.

The continuing saga of political class incompetency and embarrassments starts here:

1) According to a New York Times article that was summarized in the August 30, 2013 issue of The Week magazine, banks, insurers, and other financial institutions have ponied up $10 million to members of the House of Representatives Financial Services Committee. Pretty disgraceful show of business cronies supporting their political cronies for favorable government treatment.

The really embarrassing part of this bribery scheme is that there are a whopping 61 Congressmen and women that actually sit on this committee. 61 members is about 14% of the entire House of Representatives. These 61 obviously know where to go to get the money they need to stay in office. You can bet if this committee had something to do with an insignificant part of the economy, unlike financial services, there would NOT be 61 members clamoring to get on the committee. Disgraceful.

2) In a related set of insanity involving the financial services industry, consider an article from the latest edition of Business Week. The Dodd-Frank legislation that was supposed to fix all of the problems in the financial services industry so that another “Great Recession” never happened again, was passed into law three years ago. We have shown numerous times how the tenets of this law are already proving inadequate to stop financial services misdeeds with the collapse of MF Global being just one glaring example.

However, according to the article, one reason why this legislation may not be working, besides the fact that is was a horrible piece of legislation, is the fact that less than 40% of the processes and regulations that are needed to implement Dodd-Frank have not yet been written. At this rate, it will take at least 7-8 years to implement the legislation, a time length that will likely render anything positive in the law, if there is anything positive, obsolete, as the world moves on.

How poorly is a piece of legislation written if it takes years and years to make it operational> In 7-8 years, the country will likely have gone through at least two more recessions, given historical patterns, any one of which could be caused by the same factors that caused the Great Recession.

Obama recently called a meeting to find out what the problem is and the attendees at the meeting are a good indication of why this is a snail-like process. At the meeting were people representing the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Consumer Financial Bureau, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the National Credit Union administration, and the Securities and Exchange Commission. Nine Federal bureaucracies are working on operationalizing Dodd-Frank and they cannot get out of their own way. 

Nine Federal entities and less than 40% of the way there after three years. And many of these entities were the very ones that should have seen the Great Recession coming and were asleep at the wheel until the recession hit them in the face. What are the odds they can even operationalize the legislation, given their history of ineptness?

Thus, we have legislation written by people that probably never read it or understood what was in it which was then handed off to massive Federal bureaucracies that have to make it work even though they have not done their watchdog jobs in the past. Oh yeah, this is going to work out fine. Just like Obama Care, this is what happens when politicians pass bills that are well over a thousand pages long.

3) Staying with the financial services industry again, a recent article in Business Week reported on a Federal Reserve analysis and conclusion that five years after the Great Recession began, major U.S. banks are still not fully ready for the next economic disaster. 

The Fed found that although these banks have increased their capital levels, recent financial stress tests indicate the banks have not done enough to test for and anticipate major changes and trends in the economy. This puts them on a par with the Washington political class and the nine Federal bureaucracies listed above who are also not prepared to protect Americans from the next economic blow up. Failure all around.

4) Over 20 million Americans are either unemployed or under employed. This pathetic situation has resulted in many, many Americans defaulting on their mortgages and losing their homes or putting them under intense financial pressure to make their house payments. A very sad situation as the dream of home ownership is shot down by the economy.

But, that has not stopped the Obama administration from spending $313 million of taxpayer wealth on mortgages …for Palestinian homeowners. Yes, American taxpayers are paying for the funding of $313 million in home mortgages for Palestinians living in the West Bank, according to a recently released  Government Accountability Office report .

And to add insult to injury, the U.S. will also guarantee $110 million in loans to small- and medium-sized businesses located on the West Bank. The mortgage and business-loan activities will be managed by the Federal Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC). “OPIC is the U.S. Government’s development finance institution,” says OPIC’s website. “OPIC provides financial products, such as loans and guaranties; political risk insurance; and support for investment funds, all of which help American businesses expand into emerging markets.”

Home mortgages for Palestinians, the same people that hate us for our support of Israel? Small business funding for Palestinian businesses when small businesses in America are being smothered and stamped out by Obama Care and other onerous government regulations? Hundreds of millions of dollars going to the one of the most corrupt government entities in the world? Ridiculous. 

These wastes of money could have helped some struggling American families and small businesses. These wastes of money could have helped pay down the debt or provided tax relief to American taxpayers. These wastes of money could have kept White House tours operational for over 400 hundred years. But no, it will be sent half way around the world to people that hate us and our country. Pathetic.

5) Former Speaker of the House and current Congressional member, Nancy Pelosi is estimated to be worth in excess of $35 million according to the website, Celebrity Worth. In a “60 Minutes” report that we reviewed in this blog:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2012/07/washington-corruption-train-keeps-on.html

 it was shown that she participated in up to nine different corporate IPOs, getting special insider financial advantage not available to ordinary Americans. In the space of a few days, she made over $100,000 by participating in the VISA credit card IPO. According to the Celebrity Wealth website, including in her wealth of $35 million is a multimillion dollar winery in California.

Her husband is very active and very wealthy in the California real estate market. Her Congressional salary is less than .5% of her family’s net worth. In other words, Nancy Pelosi is rich beyond most Americans’ dreams.

But ask her to take a pay cut for the good of the country and she goes ballistic. Earlier in the year when the sequester was requiring the Federal government to reduce the overall Federal budget by a nominal amount, Ms. Pelosi had this to say:  “I don’t think we should do it [cut the pay of Congressional members, people who earn more than three times the average U.S. household income]; I think we should respect the work we do. I think it’s necessary for us to have the dignity of the job that we have rewarded.”

Rather than cut their salaries, at least this member of Congress thinks it would be a blow to their so-called dignity. Apparently it is better, as a result of the sequester, to terminate White House tours, cut air traffic controller resources to inconvenience millions of America travelers, cut educational aid to native American schools, etc. than it is to ask a Congressional member worth over $35 million to give back a few thousand dollars to the American taxpayer in these times of economic stress.

Given the low performance of the current set of Washington politicians in Washington, there are many other words that I would use to describe their performance and results and none of them include the words dignity, respect, and reward. If these people were paid for the work they do in a merit based system, they would starve to death. The arrogance of these politicians is beyond disgraceful.

So, let’s review. Politicians that fight to be on the best Congressional committee to extort money for reelection purposes. Politicians that write cumbersome, inane laws that cannot be put into effect three years after they are passed. Politicians that fund home mortgage loans and small business loans for foreigners halfway around the world while American families and businesses suffer. And at least one politicians that thinks she is too valuable to have a pay cut despite being worth over $35 million. Pathetic is too kind of a word to describe these people. 

And we are still not done for their insanity this month, more to follow at least through tomorrow.

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:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now:http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w