February, 2021, Part 2, Political Class Insanity: Facebook Screws Free Speech In Vietnam, John Kerry's Climate Hypocrisy, and Biden's Failed Choice To Operate the Department of Energy

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) Far too often we talk about how politicians are masters at, “Do as I say, not as I do” behavior:

• They want us to wear masks because of the pandemic but they do not wear theirs.
• They want to take away our Second Amendment rights but increase their security forces to protect themselves.
• They subject us to rules and laws but often exempt themselves from those same rules and laws. 

The latest such hypocrisy comes for a long time member of the American political class, John Kerry:

• Biden has appointed Kerry as his so-called “climate czar.”
• Which means he will be involved in our lives regarding the likely myth of manmade global warming and climate change.
• As readers of this blog know, we have refuted and dispelled these two myths many, many times in this blog using real science from real scientists, not faux science from non-scientists like Kerry.
• To review those past myth-busting posts just enter “I am a global warming doubter” in the search box above.
• Kerry is sure to push the country to use less carbon based fuels which in turn will make our lives more expensive and more uncomfortable.
• But while he is doing that to us he will likely continue flying around the world in his private jet that his family uses, throwing much more carbon into the air than if he had used a commercial airline for his travels.
• According to the Daily Wire, “The Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) “registry shows a Gulfstream Aerospace jet owned by Flying Squirrel LLC, the name previously reported for Teresa Heinz-Kerry’s private charter jet company. The company’s listed address matches that of the Heinz Family Foundation,” Fox News reported. “According to FAA records, the jet’s registration certificate was issued in July of 2005 and expires in October of 2023.””
• According to research by Honeywell Aerospace, private jets like Kerry’s “burn 40 times as much carbon per passenger as regular commercial flights.”

If Kerry really wanted to show us how much he believed in man made climate change, he would junk or at least sell his family’s private jet and fly commercial jets like the rest of America. That would make a strong statement that he really believed the guff he was feeding us. 

But he won't do it. Only ordinary citizens will have to bear the burden of any negative climate regulations that Biden puts forth since in this country, politicians are exempt from the rules that they impose on the rest of us. Kerry is surely going to continue to burn carbon at the 40 times the rate that his private jet does, inconvenience is only for the peons like us, not the political elite like him.

2) Let’s stay with the likely myth of manmade global warming and review what happened during the Obama years. He and his Democratic friends in Congress spend billions and billions of dollars, to the benefit of his financial and political backers, to try and jump start a green economy under the lie or false reality that mankind was going to burn up the earth with its use of carbon based fuels.

The end result is that the American taxpayer gave billions of dollars to companies like the following listed below and got NOTHING in return: Solyndra, A123, Spectra, Fisker and many, many other failures.

Remember those names? They were all operated or owned by Democratic operatives and financial donors, they all got taxpayer money for nothing, and produced the exact same thing, nothing. Adding insult to injury, Fisker was not even an American company.

All of which brings us to the person that Biden wants to run the Energy Department in his administration:

• According to a recent USA Today article, former Michigan governor, Jennifer Granholm, is Biden’s choice to run the Energy Department.
• According to the article, “A big part of her job will be to dole out taxpayer dollars to “green” companies and industries favored by the Biden administration — a strategy she deployed in Michigan, but with little to show for it.”
• During her time as governor, she spent billions of Michigan taxpayer dollars on “politically favored companies” in a chance of creating green jobs to counteract global warming.
• She did this while promising her state taxpayers that, “In five years, you’re going to be blown away.” 
• Apparently the taxpayers were blown away years later but not in a good way. 
• Her green government organization, the Michigan Economic Growth Authority, gave out billions of dollars in tax credits to a whopping 434 green projects.
• But according to an analysis by the Mackinac Center, years later only 10 of those 434 projects yielded any positive results, a dismal success record of only 2.3%.
• So much for being blown away in five years.

Some of her more notable failures included the following disasters:

• A123 Systems was supposed to create hundreds if not thousands of jobs in Michigan making electric car batteries. The company received millions of state taxpayer dollars but ended up going bankrupt and created zero jobs in the state.
• Another battery company, LG Chem, received $125 million and was supposed to make Michigan “the world capital for advanced batteries.” But the demand for the company batteries never materialized and it was documented that employees ended up getting paid to watch movies and play games in order to stay on the payroll so that the company could continue to draw Federal taxpayer dollars. The company eventually started making batteries but came nowhere close to being the world capital for advanced batteries. It produced no batteries while Granholm was governor.
• She also directed taxpayer dollars to other battery companies and promised that the state would have “up to 40,000 great new (battery) jobs by 2020.” Well, we just got through 2020, and none of the battery companies who received state taxpayer dollars met their job projections with many going through bankruptcy. Rather than having 40,000 battery jobs, there are currently less than 2,000 state battery jobs.
• Michigan gave Mascoma a $20 million grant to convert biomass into ethanol. The company also received $100 million of Federal taxpayer wealth. The company’s biomass factory was never built, no ethanol was ever produced, and the intellectual property of the company was sold off.
• A closed Ford production property, Wixom, was supposed to become a $725 million renewable energy industrial park. Granholm boasted it would be “symbolic for Michigan in what we’re going to become.” That is not a good thing for Michigan since even though it got a $100 million tax credit in exchange for promising 4,000 new jobs, the whole concept was scrapped two years later.
• Suniva got $250 million, promised 500 green jobs, produced no jobs or anything else of value.
• United Solar Ovonics got both state and Federal government subsidies, pledged 1,00 jobs, produced no jobs and parts of the company were sold off in 2012.
• Evergreen Solar got state money but went bankrupt.
• GlobalWatt got $42 million in state taxpayer money but also went bankrupt.
• The “RASCO Fiasco'' was probably the worst embarrassment of Granholm’s ill fated green job spending spree. She appeared at a press conference with Richard Short to promote the $9 million in tax credits she gave him to produce jobs in Flint, Michigan. But Short’s parole officer actually saw the press conference. You see, Short was a convicted embezzler with a long history of running financial scams. He lived in a borrowed trailer when Granholm gave him the tax credits. He eventually went back to prison. How do you not do at least a simple background check if you are the governor before making a fool of yourself and forking over $9 million in taxpayer wealth to a known embezzler?

Just a small fraction of the over 400 green energy projects that failed during her term in office. And yet Biden wants her to be the head of his energy Department and continue the failed strategies that Biden and Obama had during the Obama administration.

In what real world job can you be successful only 2.3% of the time in your job and get promoted? It pays to be an American politician where failure is not viewed as an impediment to advancing your career….even if you do waste billions of dollars of taxpayer wealth in the process.

The article summed this insanity best: “Now Jennifer Granholm is set to bring her record to the national stage. She’ll try to make good on Biden’s promise to “accelerat[e] cutting-edge technologies” in the “green” space. With her at the helm, you can expect the Biden administration to repeat Michigan’s corporate welfare failure, but on a much grander and costlier scale.”

3) A little political class insanity from around the world. Facebook has agreed to censor any material that shows up on its social media platform in Vietnam if that material is critical of the government or those that operate the government. Thus, Facebook has no problem abridging the freedom of speech rights of citizens in order to maintain its revenue and profit flow, at least in Vietnam. 

How long before it does the same thing elsewhere such as in this country? Given that it has already taken down Facebook groups and posts that are not consistent with Zuckerberg’s political leanings in this country, that may be happening already.

That will do it for today’s insanity: an ominous sign from Vietnam when it comes to free speech, another incompetent politician lands on her feet despite having a failed track record of performance and John Kerry’s hypocrisy lives on.

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:

https://www.amazon.com/Love-My-Country-Loathe-Government/dp/1604942789/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=love+my+country%2C+loathe+my+government&qid=1607716020&sr=8-1

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.reason.com

http://www.cato.org

http://www.bankruptingamerica.org

http://www.conventionofstates.com

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

 

 

April, 2019, Part 3, Political Class Insanity: Liberal Hypocrisy In San Francisco, Billions For Illegal Immigrants, and Another Green Deal Gone Criminal

It is another month which means it is again time to review the latest political class insanity from Washington and around the world. Political class insanity takes many forms including the wasting of taxpayer wealth, criminal fraud within government programs, inane and stupid political quotes and actions, the inability to create and implement effective and efficient government programs, stupid and ill performing economic policies and strategies, and other forms of insanity that continue to evolve and surprise and shock us.

Let’s get started:

1) We have previously discussed how liberals and Democrats California have screwed up a once great state, especially in the bigger cities in the state. In San Francisco, the homeless problem is so bad and laws so lax that there is a major problem with homeless folks defecating and urinating out on the streets in broad daylight. This requires the city to have a staff on hand that goes around with the sole purpose of cleaning up public defecation and urination.

In Los Angeles, about 40% of the population is so poor that they qualify for Medicaid, with this dismal economic record happening in the midst of the longest economic recovery ever. In addition, the homeless and trash problem has gotten so bad that typhus, a disease associated with the Dark Ages, has made a comeback in the City of Angels.

But the really disgusting thing is that even though liberals and Democrats have created these disgusting situations, the wealthy ones living in San Francisco are unwilling to help to fix the situation:

• The wealthy residents Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco Congressional district are actually collecting money in an attempt to block the city from creating a 200 bed homeless shelter in their neighborhood.
• They have raised $60,000 to use as legal fees to prevent the construction of that 200 bed homeless shelter in the San Francisco area known as Embarcadero.
• The effort is named the “Safe Embarcadero For All” campaign: “The planned location for Mayor Breed’s#megashelter is home to thousands of families, visited by millions of tourists and at the center of some of San Francisco’s most iconic events – including the San Francisco Marathon, San Francisco Giants stadium and on one of the busiest bicyclist paths in the city.”
• The eventual goal is to get $100,000 collected for legal fees.
• A Fox News investigation found that a lot of those who have already donated have previously donated to other liberal causes and Democratic politicians such as the Democratic National Committee, MoveOn, Hillary Clinton’s campaign, etc.
• At least the city’s mayor had some courage to stand up to these well heeled liberals: “People want us to address the challenges on our streets and help our unsheltered residents into housing, and I am committed to doing the hard work to make that happen. But it’s incredibly frustrating and disappointing, that as soon as we put forward a solution to build a new shelter, people begin to threaten legal action.”

If you are going to cause a problem, at least have the courage and decency to try and fix the problem. I bet a lot of homeless folks could have gotten some decent meals if that $60,000 had been repurposed. Instead, liberals and the Democrats that are supported by them would rather direct funds to making sure the problem they helped create stays out of eye sight and smell range.

2) Liberal friends like to imply that I am racist and unfeeling since I would prefer that current Federal laws be enforced when it comes to illegal immigration. They all seem to think that traditional nuclear families are coming here over the border, two parents with 2.2 kids on average, a reality that does not exist. While there may be some families like that, a lot of those coming across the border are members of criminal gangs, drug cartels, human trafficking groups, and possibly terrorist organizations.

But what these liberal friends refuse to realize is that while their rosy, unreal picture of immigration may let them sleep at night, the cost of illegal immigration on American taxpayers is real, large and growing, as discussed in a recent Godfather Politics article by Frosty Wooldridge on March 28, 2019:

• Illegal immigrants cost the American taxpayer $5.3 billion in medical costs every year because of 429,000 births to legal and illegal immigrant women.
• According to Dr. Steven Camarota, director of research at CIS, and a new report: “Based on an analysis of Census Bureau data, the Center estimates that nationally one in 13 births is to an illegal immigrant, totaling 300,000 births a year. One in eight births is to a legal immigrant. We also find that more than half of the births to immigrants (legal and illegal) are paid for by taxpayers, including 67 percent of births to illegal immigrants.”
• Legal immigrants accounted for 12.4 percent (494,000) of all births annually and illegal immigrants accounted for 7.5 percent (297,000) annually.
• The 297,000 births per year to illegal immigrants are more than the total number of births to all mothers in any state except California and Texas. 
• The 297,000 birth to illegal immigrants are also more than the total number of births in 16 states combined, plus the District of Columbia.
• The estimated 28,000 births to illegal immigrants in just the Los Angeles metro area are more than the total number of births in any of 14 states or the District of Columbia. 
• More than half (54 percent) of births to immigrants (legal and illegal) are entirely or largely paid for by taxpayers because the mother is on Medicaid or uninsured.
• The report estimates that the cost to immigrants, both legal and illegal, is a whopping $5.3 billion every year.
• In California, New Jersey, and New York, immigrants (legal and illegal) account for about one-third of all births, in Massachusetts, Nevada, Florida, Texas, Hawaii, Maryland, and Washington, immigrants account for one in four births, and immigrants account for one in five births in Virginia, Connecticut, Illinois, Arizona, Rhode Island, and Oregon.
• In California, Florida, and New York, two-thirds of these births were likely taxpayer-funded. 
• In Illinois and New Jersey, more than half were likely funded by the public.”

Amazing and distressing numbers. These billions of dollars every year do not include the Federal food and housing benefits that go to both illegal and legal immigrants, the cost of patrolling the border, incarceration, and prosecuting of illegal immigrants, and the drug and criminal activity and the associated costs with the activities of drug cartel and gang members that come across the border unimpeded.

How many needy American citizens could be fed, housed, drug addiction treated, and job trained for $5.3 billion a year, not even counting the food stamp, housing subsidies, and other costs associated with illegal immigration? Bad, bad national priorities.

3) In previous years and posts we covered how horribly Obama’s corporate climate change initiatives had failed. Basically he ended up giving shaky companies, all owned and/or operated by Democratic operatives, billions of U.S. taxpayer money which ended up getting flushed down the toilets of such notable green energy company failures such as Solyndra, Spectra, A123, and many others.

We bring this up since Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, an inane and not too bright freshman Congresswoman from NYC is pushing the atrocity known as the Green New Deal.This program aims to make the U.S. 100% dependent on solar and wind power in a very short timeframe. 

Given that it is estimated this idiocy would cost the country almost $100 TRILLION, you can imagine how staggering the fraud and waste would be. If Obama blew billions of dollars on such rinky dink projects like Solyndra, imagine how many trillions of dollars Washington would mismanage under the Green New Deal.

Which brings us to our last insanity topic for today:

• Tim Brown, writing for the Godfather Politics website recently had an article that talked about Amanda Knorr of Hellertown, Pennsylvania.
• In 2009, Knorr was recognized and honored by the Clinton Foundation and its Global Initiative effort.
• Unfortunately, Knorr was just sentenced to thirty months in prison for operating a Ponzi scheme related to green/clean energy.
• Prosecutors called it the largest green energy scam in American history in which many people “lost their life savings.”
• According to NBC News out of New York: “Knorr co-founded a company called Mantria Corp., which with the help of a slick-talking Colorado "wealth advisor" raised millions [$54 million] for a supposed clean energy product called "biochar. Their pitch about producing biochar, however, turned out to be completely baked, according to prosecutors, and eventually proved to be a giant Ponzi scheme.”
• In addition to the prison term,Knorr has been ordered to pay back $54 million in restitution.

Two lesson learned here. This green fraud went for $54 million. Imagine how much other fraudsters will get if trillions of taxpayer dollars are ever put forth for the stupidity known as the Green New Deal? And second, makes you wonder what types of people the Clintons hang out with if they recognized people that operated the largest green energy criminal fraud scheme EVER?

That will do it for today’s insanity: more green/climate change fraud and crime, the wasting of lots of taxpayer money on illegal immigrants, and San Francisco liberals hypocritically refuse to clean up the mess they made. More insanity 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:

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:


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

September, 2016, Part 7, Political Class Insanity: Giving Away Taxpayer Money To Stupid Causes, Another Delusionsal Politician, and More

It is the beginning of another month which means it is again time to review the latest political class insanity from Washington and around the world. Political class insanity takes many forms including the wasting of taxpayer wealth, criminal fraud within government programs, inane and stupid political quotes and actions, the inability to create and implement effective and efficient government programs, stupid and ill performing economic policies and strategies, and other forms of insanity that continue to evolve and surprise and shock us.

The current monthly record for the number of days needed to cover one month's worth of insanity is ten. We almost equaled that record last month when we needed nine days to cover one month’s worth of political class insanity. There is a very good chance that the ten day record could fall this month since as we get closer and closer to the election, the volume of ineptness grows almost exponentially. 

But today and for all of the posts this month, let’s start off with a welcome piece of honest political dialog. It comes from a State Department spokesperson.Mark Toner, who is about to start the daily State Department press briefing. In a joking matter, he makes the following quote: "Welcome to the State Department. I think we have some interns in the back. Welcome. Good to see you in this exercise in transparency and democracy." 

He then burst out laughing at his own quote, indicating he also knew what a joke the Obama administration has been, especially Mr. Toner’s State Department, when it comes to cover ups, lack of transparency, denial of Freedom of Information Act requests, the prosecution of whistleblowers, etc. But at least it was a little refreshing to finally hear some actual honesty out of Washington as we see from the actual clip of the news conference:

http://www.againstcronycapitalism.org/2016/08/when-even-the-state-department-spokesperson-cant-keep-a-straight-face-about-things-anymore-video/

With that context of honesty, let’s see what other insanity has been going down: 

1) A few years ago it seemed we could not write fast enough to discuss the many solar energy companies Obama was giving taxpayer dollars out to, all of which eventually or suddenly went bankrupt. At last count, if memory serves me correctly, almost $40 billion had been flushed with no societal benefit in return.

But it has been all quiet on that front recently. I assumed that Obama had simply run out of money to waste. But the Daily Caller website recently recounted how badly that taxpayer wealth was invested. Chris White, writing for the website on August 12, 2016, pointed out that one of the solar energy companies that the Obama administration had backed was “hopelessly insolvent.” Details of this latest alternative energy disaster includes:

• SunEdison recently declared bankruptcy since its liabilities are at least $1 billion greater than its assets.
• It was the judge overseeing the bankruptcy, Judge Stuart Bernstein, who called the company “hopelessly insolvent.”
• Things are so bad that the judge said that shareholders of the company will see no value coming back to them since you cannot “create value where it does not exist.”
• The company has debts that could be as high as $1 to $2.5 billion larger than its assets.
• Its stock price has dropped an amazing 95% in just the past year as confidence in the company waned.
• At one point in time the company was valued at $10 billion but is valued at less than $500 million now.
• The Washington political class has given the company almost $650 million in direct Federal subsidies and tax credits since 2000.
• Even though the company was crashing, the Obama administration gave it another $4.6 million in 2015, an investment that is obviously lost.

Not a single alternative energy company that received taxpayer subsidies from the Obama administration seems to have survived, a record of futility that is insane. Solyndra, A123, and dozens of others took taxpayer wealth, usually because they were political cronies of the Democratic Party, and gave back no benefit to the economy society.

2) Most politicians are very bad at doing just about everything including making predictions. But one foreign politician got at least one prediction very right back in 2007. 

Back in February, 2007, when Obama was campaigning for President, before he took office, Australian Prime Minister at that time, John Howard, predicted if Obama became President, Iraq and the Middle East would descend into chaos and become the mess it is today: “I think that would just encourage those who wanted completely to destabilize and destroy Iraq, and create chaos and victory for the terrorists to hang on and hope for (an) Obama victory...If I was running Al Qaeda in Iraq, I would … pray, as many times as possible, for a victory not only for Obama, but also for the Democrats. And, if America is defeated in Iraq, the hope of ever getting a Palestinian settlement will be gone.” 

Looks like the Prime Minister nailed that forecast. As we all know, with the premature withdrawal of American troops out of Iraq, a move that was opposed by professional military and diplomatic government experts in order for Obama to have a political talking point, Iraq has been split into three parts, Shiite, Sunni, and Kurdish, with a barely functioning central government. This facilitated the rise of ISIS in neighboring Syria and the spillover of that terror group into Iraq.

ISIS is now the most horrific and richest terrorist group in the history of the world and it is sowing terror and death around the world. The Middle East is in far worse shape than when Obama took office. Seems everyone saw the insanity of withdrawing all U.S. troops, his military advisors, his diplomatic staff, and at least one foreign leader except Obama, a community organizer politician that thought getting a political talking point was more important than preserving peace.

3) Debbie Wasserman is a Florida Democratic Congresswoman who up until the Democratic national convention was chairwoman of their national committee. At that time, the Democrats’ computers got hacked by someone who published a lot of secret party documents, many of which showed that Wasserman was actively working against the Bernie Sanders campaign even though as chairwoman of the national committee she was supposed to stay neutral.

As a result of the nefarious goings on of her and others, as uncovered by the computer hacks, she was forced to resign as a result of Sanders’ supporters relentlessly going after her and blaming her for their candidate’s loss to Clinton. Despite this embarrassment, Wasserman is still in denial as she claims she was never booed while in public at the convention. 

Which gets us to to the perennial question when it comes to politicians misspeaking: are they so out of touch with reality that what say has no basis in reality or do they think we are so stupid that we will not check what they tell us?

Look at the following tape where she is literally heckled and booed off of a stage at a convention meeting and then ask yourself: how can she be that delusion to think she was never booed at the convention:

http://trumpinsurrection.com/archives/3458

Not only does she not think she was heckled and booed off of the stage, listen to her version of what happened: “There were about 300 people at that breakfast, and the overwhelming majority of people in that room were enthusiastic supporters of me and my message.”

Insanely delusional.

4) Let’s finish off today’s insanity with some really stupid government spending. MRCTV recently posted a short video describing this insane waste of money. The Federal government recently awarded Cornell University a $2 million grant to to develop a new hybrid type of broccoli that can be grown on the east coast. 

So many problems with this waste of taxpayer money:

• What is wrong with the broccoli being grown today elsewhere in the country, is there somehow a pressing need to have an east coast grown broccoli crop?
• If there somehow a need, doubtful, why aren’t broccoli farmers paying for this research at Cornell, they are the obvious benefactors of a new breed of broccoli, assuming there are benefits from a new type of broccoli?
• Since I hate the taste of broccoli, regardless of where it is grown, why are some of my taxes being spent to develop a new type of broccoli that I will never, ever even consider eating?

Rather than just read my reasons for this stupidity, consider the following videotape where this insanity is pointed out in a much more effective and entertaining manner:

http://www.mrctv.org/blog/reality-check-feds-just-spent-2m-broccoli-farm

That will do it for today’s insanity: giving taxpayer wealth to to industries that should be using their own money and resources rather than taxpayer resources, another delusional member of Congress, and one politician correctly predicts the future. More 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:


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

April, 2016, I Am A Global Warmer Doubter and A Believer In Science: Wasting Taxpayer Money On Stupid Global Warming Projects and More

Every month we have enough material to return to a continuing theme in this blog, namely that “I am a global warming doubter AND a believer in science.” This became of interest because of people like Al Gore who fanatically and verbosely claimed that you had to be an idiot to not believe in manmade global warming. It has been my life belief that anyone that is that loud and that obnoxious is hiding something, that rather than argue facts and reality it is better to beat down and insult anyone who disagrees.

As we have dove into the whole issue of manmade global warming, or its new rebranded title of climate change, we found that Al Gore and people like him were guilty of a number of things:

• Ignoring science and realities that did not support their opinions and positions.
• Rather than have an adult conversation about climate, these types of advocates like Gore sank to the level of insulting those who dared look at ALL science by calling them a variety of names including racists, homophobes, terrorists, flat earth believers, and other slanderous names.
• Continuing to insist that politicians step up their intrusions into our lives with higher taxes, more regulations, and more control of our freedoms and standards of living based on a shaky theory at best.

To see the past posts and the multitude of evidence that we have compiled that showed it is perfectly okay to be a global warming doubter and a believer in science, enter the phrase "global warming doubter” in the search box above or go through the monthly historical posts listed on the right side of this page.

Thus, let’s see the latest facts and science that prove you can be a global warming doubter and a believer in science, regardless of what Al Gore proclaims:

1) We have often discussed the reality that the Obama administration has wasted tens of billions of taxpayer dollars when it gave away our money to alternative energy companies, almost all of which were cronies of the Democratic Party. Almost all of them have gone bankrupt or are near insolvency, e.g. Solyndra, Beacon, A123, and others, providing minimal societal benefit in return. 

And now, according to a recent Townhall article by Matt Vespa, we can add another major failure to this list of failures. Abengoa is a Spanish solar company that for some god forsaken reason was given American taxpayer money but now has filed for bankruptcy. Details of this global warming disaster include the following:

• The company is $16.4 billion in debt.
• The Federal government’s Export-Import Bank gave the company almost two hundred million dollars in loans from U.S. taxpayers.
• The bankruptcy filing now makes it unlikely that any of those dollars will be recovered.
• The total number of loans and loan guarantees totalled over $191 million that was disbursed from 2007 to 2015.

Every Obama administration effort to mess in the market has been a failure, with Abengoa just the latest in a long string of failures. With millions of Americans needing food assistance every month, tens of thousands of Americans dying from drug overdoses every year, veterans not getting the medical care they were promised, etc., why we would risk almost $200 million on a FOREIGN company is beyond me. Very bad priorities.

2) But it is not just alternative energy manufacturing companies like Solyndra and Abengoa that are failures. Consider the failure of a wind energy project in Illinois that came to light recently in the Daily Caller website in an article by Andrew Follet:

• Lake Land College announced plans to tear down the wind turbines on campus since they were not financially viable.
• They were paid for in part by a Federal government grant of $987,697.20 of taxpayer wealth.
• The turbines lasted for less than four years and were very expensive to maintain and keep operating.
• The college confirmed that it has spent almost a quarter of a million dollars in parts and labor costs just to maintain the turbines beyond the construction cost.
• Faced with another $100,000 in expenses needed to make them functional again, after a lightning hit damaged them, the college decided to tear them down once and for all.
• The turbines were supposed to save the college $44,000 annually in electricity costs but only generated a total 8,500 in electricity savings.
• According to the article, the return on investment for the college was -99.14%.
• The original breakeven analysis for the turbines was 22.5 years, an estimate that is now laughable, given that the turbines are being torn down just a few years after they went up.
• The turbines went operational in 2012 after five years of construction in a now vain attempt to reduce the college’s carbon footprint and fight the mythical global warming fight.

Despite another failure in the Federal government’s continual wasting of taxpayer wealth on alternative energy sources, the college has announced that it will replace the failed wind turbines with…. a solar power system to be paid for by, you guessed it, the American taxpayer. All in the name of a global warming theory that falls apart more and more every day, taking taxpayer dollars with it.

3) But the wasting of taxpayer wealth on alternative energy companies and installations is not the only way the Obama administration is wasting your tax dollars while chasing the global warming myth. Consider the following follies and wasting of taxpayer wealth that the Obama administration is pursuing in the name of global warming: 

- The National Science Foundation (NSF) gave a grant of $17,264 to the University of Georgia Research Foundation to study Arctic shrubbery, with the going in assumption that global warming is causing shrubs to grow in the Arctic.

For that money, the American taxpayer will learn the following vital information: “Higher temperatures have already triggered widespread expansion of large, woody shrubs across arctic tundra, and appear to stimulate the loss of soil carbon. This research examines whether shrubs change the composition of microbial communities in a way that positively impacts the shrub growth. This information is critical to understanding how shrubs affect carbon pools of plants and soils in the arctic. Using arctic soils from Alaska, the investigators will establish a plant growth experiment to determine how shrubs respond to different treatments of soil microbes and nutrients. By investigating plants, soils, and microbes in one experiment, this work will improve the accuracy of models of arctic carbon dynamics.”

Seriously, we need to spend taxpayer money to look at plants and model arctic carbon dynamics? And even that was a semi-good idea, how far is $17,000 going to go? You probably could not afford to send researchers to the Arctic for that amount of money never mind build a good science-based model off of it. Tremendous waste of taxpayer wealth.

- But the wasting of money on stupid global warming projects gets better. The Federal government via the NSA granted $350,000 to the University of Massachusetts Amherst to figure out why a bunch of Nordic people abandoned their homes in Greenland several thousands years ago. 

Their inane grant proposal reads as follows: “The climate in southern Greenland is a key area for reconstructions of the North Atlantic Oscillation, a major pattern of northern hemisphere climate, and is also linked to Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation changes, an important oceanic process controlling north Atlantic climate, which recent studies suggest has been weaker over recent decades than at any time in the last 1000 years. This is also the region where Norse settlements were abandoned by the early-15th century; many questions still remain about the causative factors. Although climate change is often cited as the reason for settlement failure, this explanation rests on a very poorly constrained scientific foundation and other explanations have also been proposed.”

Which raises the relevant question of, “So what?” So what if they left their settlement because of climate change, how is that the least bit relevant today? Americans are starving, homeless, drug addicted, and in need of good jobs and we are studying idiocy like this.

- One more piece of Federal government global warming insanity. Researchers at the University of South Florida landed a grant of $297,490 to study 5 million year old Mediterranean sea levels. Their grant proposal reads as follows: “This is important because current published sea level highstands during past interglacial climate are significantly above modern sea level and vary widely over time. The precision of such results are still controversial and accurate data to realistically evaluate potential sea level by the century's end is critical.” 

So well over half a million dollars is being spent to measure the Mediterranean sea levels from 5 millions years ago, Nordic settlements from 2,000 years ago, and shrubs in the Arctic to try and figure out the effects of global warming, assuming that 1) global warming exists (something that has not happened in the past 20 years or so) and 2) try to extrapolate what might happen if global warming should ever really kick in. All based on research grants are too small to really accomplish anything and too big to be wasted on such nonsense when so many Americans need help in their lives today, not at the turn of the next century.

Just the first in a series of global warming discussions this month under the theme of, “I am a global warming doubter and a believer in science.” Today was the focus on how our government and society is wasting valuable resources on shoddy, unstrategic science experiments and pipe dreams, wasteful alternative energy installations and stupid, crony-infested alternative energy companies, all under the false god of global warming. 

More global warming nonsense 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

April, 2016, Part 9, Political Class Insanity: Sotomayor Lunacy, More Money For Former Presidents, Anotehr Solyndra-Like Flame Out and More

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.

It looks like our politicians have been especially insane over the past month or so let’s get started with the latest insanity from today’s American politicians:

1) The purpose of government in a democracy and free nation should be to be as minimal as possible, letting citizens do and say and believe what they want as long as they do not interfere with others doing the same thing. But apparently that concept is lost on at least on Supreme Court judge who wants to know what would happen if government could not “demand“ citizens to conform to a government decree. 

Consider a recent statement from Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor: “What I don’t understand, Mr. Clement, is when will any government law that someone claims burdens their practice ever be insubstantial? Because every believer that’s ever come before us, including the people in the military, are saying that my soul will be damned in some way. I’m not naysaying that that is a very substantial perceived personal burden by them. But if that’s always going to be substantial, how will we ever have a government that functions? How will we ever have anything that the government can demand people do in objecting that won’t be a problem?”

Two serious problems with this attitude. First, in a democracy the government should be subservient to the people and should “demand” very little of them. Second, there really is no such “thing” as a government who is all knowing and knows best what is optimal for citizens. Government is simply a bunch of people who got elected, supposedly to represent the interests of the citizens who voted. 

When she says government demands she is really saying politicians demand and that is when things usually go off the tracks. 500 or so elitist, usually pompous politicians sitting in Washington should not be demanding anything of over 300 million citizens, they should be doing what those 300 million citizens want them to do. Sotomayer has it ass backwards, as we explained long ago from a Freedom Pyramid perspective:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2010/11/american-freedom-pyramid-where-it.html

Very scary that she thinks that we should sit back and passively accept any and all government decrees, which are really political class decrees. 

2) Let’s put some facts out there first before discussing the latest political class insanity from Obama:

• There are about 14 million Americans who are unemployed or working part time since they cannot find a full time job.
• Even jobs that have been created under Obama have tended to  be low wage, menial jobs.
• Household wages and incomes have stagnated throughout the Obama administration.
• Current Presidential pensions are orders of magnitudes higher than the median U.S. household income.
• Social Security recipients got no increase in their payments this past year.
• Recent past Presidents have milked their Presidencies for multi-millions of dollars in speaking fees and other activities.
• The Obama family is likely worth over $10 million and counting.

Despite these realities of America today, Obama has asked for a whopping 18% increase in the annual amount of taxpayer wealth that is paid to former Presidents, beginning in fiscal year 2017, just in time for his administration ending, how convenient. A report from the Congressional Research Service found that: "The President’s FY2017 budget request seeks $3,865,000 in appropriations for expenditures for former Presidents, an increase of $588,000 (17.9%) from the FY2016 appropriation level." This is up from $3,277,000 for former Presidents in 2017.

Americans are suffering across the board from an economic perspective, and this multi-millionaire wants more retirement funds for himself and other milionaire foirmer Presidents like him once he leaves office despite being a millionaire many times over. Step 42 from ”Love My Country, Loathe My Government” would kill this kind of nonsense if it was in effect: Step 42 would make a former President start paying for post Presidency perks, rather than the taxpayers, once their annual income was over a million dollars or to suspend their annual pension payments and perks once their annual income was over $3 million or their total assets were over $10 million.  

Unfortunately, it is not in effect which allows the existing set of American politicians to continue to enrich themselves at the expense of struggling taxpayers.

3) At last count, the Obama administration had wasted billions of taxpayer dollars on failed alternative energy programs and companies, almost all of which have either gone out of business or have provided no societal or taxpayer benefit in return for the taxpayer wealth they received. As we have previously discussed in this blog, almost all of the companies that received taxpayer wealth were deeply entangled with Democratic politicians, including President Obama. In other words, billions of taxpayer dollars were sent out to Democratic crony businesses without any overall strategy or plan, it was just reward for loyalty to Democrats.

Unfortunately, the wasting of taxpayer dollars on bad alternative energy projects and companies continues to today. Consider the case of the Ivanpah solar energy thermal plant facility in California. David Kreutzer of the Heritage Foundation recently did a summary of how this latest energy boondoggle was failing and taking taxpayer wealth with it:

• The Ivanpah plant cost $2.2 billion to build.
• Much of the plant was funded with taxpayer loan guarantees to the tune of $1.6 billion.
• The plant is owned by Google, NRG Energy, and Brightsource, all of which have a combined market cap of half a TRILLION dollars.
• Obviously, these three companies could have paid for the whole plant, given their corporate, they did not need the American taxpayer to put up $1.6 billion.
• Despite spending so much money, the electricity created by Ivanpah is four to five times more expensive than electricity created by natural gas powered plants.
• Ivanpah electricity is two to three times more expensive than electricity created from other solar technologies.
• The physical plant has burned thousands of birds to death.
• It is behind on its loan payments which means that the taxpayer loan guarantees are in danger.
• It is looking for half a billion in financing to pay off the guaranteed loans.
• Even though it is a solar plant, it still needs to burn 4.5 hours worth of natural gas each day just to get the whole plant underway.
• Its actual production of electricity is running 32% below what was promised despite receiving only 9% less sunlight than planned for.

Just another alternative energy disaster, courtesy of the Obama administration. From Solyndra to A123 to many other failures, crony capitalism, Democratic style, has wasted billions of taxpayer dollars while Americans go homeless, hungry and drug addicted. Pathetic priorities.

4) Hillary Clinton to some degree and Bernie Sanders to a very great degree want to bring more socialism programs to the country and our economy. But is that a good idea? Consider a recent article and analysis by Juan Carlos Hidalgo, writing for Cato, on what socialism did for Venezuela:

• Transparency International ranks Venezuela and Haiti as two of the most corrupt countries in the Western Hemisphere.
• Annual inflation in Venezuela will reach 720% this year, according to the IMF.
• External national debt is up 115% in the past ten years.
• Given how worthless the Venezuelan currency has become, and the government does not have American dollars to purchase imports, there are widespread shortages throughout the entire country.
• Citizens line up for hours at government run supermarkets to find very little stock and choices available to them.
• A national opinion poll found that the percentage of Venezuelans eating less than three meals a day has grown 10 percentage points in the past year.
• Only 20% of the drugs that doctors need to treat their patients are available.
• Much of the country’s medical equipment is useless since there is no money to purchase repair parts - 86% of the country’s X-ray machines do not work.
• A recent article in one of the few remaining newspapers in the country quoted a resident doctor in one of the public hospitals saying that, due to the shortages, doctors cannot save the lives of all patients. “We are operating under war conditions.”
• The government’s inane reaction to the shortages was to encourage citizens create “urban gardens” and grow their own food or to raise chickens.
• One citizen tried to take this advice and bought 30 chickens but could not find any feed for the birds so he and his family had to kill the chickens and eat them lest the birds starve to death.

What a disaster and humanitarian crisis. And politicians like Bernie Sanders want to bring this nonsense to this country. Sometimes you cannot make up the idiocy when discussing the American political class. More insanity from today’s politicians 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

Why Increasing Taxes, This Time For Free Community College Education, Is Still A Stupid and Insulting Idea

President Obama is giving his state of the union speech tonight. And one of the main pillars of his talk will be to set up a Federal program so that millions and millions of Americans can get a community college education for free, courtesy of the American taxpayer. 

Today we will not be discussing the merits and downsides of such a program. Tomorrow we will do that, showing once again how this President continues to come up with bad, non-strategic ideas that just end up wasting taxpayer wealth (see: Solyndra, A123, and dozens of other failed alternative energy efforts that burned through tens of billions of dollars for nothing in return, Cash For Clunkers that was actually a money loser for car companies, etc.).

Today we will focus again on our long held premise that no American, rich or poor, should pay one penny more in taxes until the Washington political class and this Presidential administration stop wasting hundreds of billions, if not trillions, of taxpayer dollars every year. This wasteful spending could be used for so much more good, including returning it to taxpayers, if not for the incompetence of the Washington political class.

As a point of reference as we go through, again, the many ways Washington wastes our money, the Obama administration has estimated that giving millions of Americans free community college educations would cost about $60 billion over ten years. Again, tomorrow we will discuss how this $60 billion idea is just another bad Obama Presidency idea.

Where could the Federal government, though, find $60 billion to pay for this free education program WITHOUT raising taxes:

1) One our most popular posts of all time discussed the disgraceful abuse of taxpayer money when the Navy built two ships almost to completion, at a cost of $300 million, and then decided that they were not needed. The Navy then spent another $10 million to turn the recently built ships into scrap metal. Just this single $310 million waste could have paid for almost 5.2% of Obama's community college idea.

That popular post can be accessed at:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2011/07/us-navy-ships-for-sale-cheap-never-used.html

2) We also reported previously that the State Department had spent $40 million on a consulate building in Afghanistan and THEN discovered that it would be able to withstand a terrorist attack. Thus, the building had to be abandoned after spending the $40 million. Combining this wasteful spending with the Navy ship example and just these two disasters could have funded almost 6% of the community college idea.

3) Obama commissioned a big study early in his Presidency to find logical and sane ways to reduce his own administration's out of control deficit spending. After a long and detailed study and analysis, the commission came out with its detailed recommendations, all of which were promptly ignored by this President even though he commissioned the study.

One major component of the study was the conclusion that $100 billion dollars could easily be taken out of the annual Pentagon budget without harming our national security. We have covered many stories that dramatically show how much waste and criminal fraud exists within the Pentagon operations so $100 billion is a very attainable goal.

Thus, if Obama had taken his own commission's advice, he could have easily paid for his ten year's worth ($60 billion) of his community college idea with ONE year's savings from Pentagon spending.

4) Staying with the Pentagon, we recently reported on a news report that found that the Pentagon on invested $46 billion in weapons systems that never saw the light of day. One would have hope that the viability or non-viability of a weapons systems would be known well before a whopping $46 billion was spent for nothing in return. 

Even if only half of the $46 billion could have been saved by better management, that single action, that $23 billion could have paid for more than 38% of the community college idea without raising taxes.

5) Every Federal government agency wastes tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars every year on downright stupid projects. These programs benefit no one except the people that get the Federal grant money to pursue their silly and near useless ideas. These inane ideas and expenditures include, but are certainly not limited, to the following real projects that taxpayer money has been spent on:

• A study to estimate when dogs became man's best friend.
• Development of a video game that simulated prom week.
• The State Department spent money on pottery lessons in Morocco.
• The Federal government spent $80,000 to study why the same college basketball teams usually ended up in the thick of March Madness.
• It spent $1 million for analysis of how quickly parents respond to trendy baby names.
• It spent $581,000 on whether online dating sites are racist.
• It wasted $2 million to figure out that people who often post pictures on the Internet from the same location at the same time are usually friends.
• The National Science Foundation spent almost $385,000 of taxpayer wealth to study "Sexual Conflict, Social Behavior, and the Evolution of Waterfowl Genitalia."
• The IRS spent $60,000 on a film parody of "Star Trek" and a film parody of "Gilligan's Island."

We could go on for days but you get the idea. While I think that the President's free community college idea is a bad one, it is certainly better than these stupid and useless studies and efforts. If he wants to fund his community college idea, fund it out of these stupid ideas, not raising taxes.

6) A recent article in the National Review reported that on average, every Fortune 100 company, some of the biggest companies int he world, receive $200 million a year from the Washington political class,courtesy of the American taxpayer. This comes out to about $20 billion a year. If Obama cut this off for just three years, he could fund his community college idea for ten years.

Some of the bigger recipients of taxpayer money include General Electric ($380 million), General Motors, ($370 million), and Boeing ($264 million).  If Obama is so serious about his community college idea, make these companies' shareholders pay for company operations, not the American taxpayer via increasing taxes on any American.

7) And finally, consider an analysis recently published by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. According to their report, using the Federal government's own data and information:

• In fiscal year 2013, the Federal government improperly paid out $106 billion across 13 government programs.
• While outright criminal fraud was major factor in this wasting of taxpayer wealth, other factors including clerical errors, complexity of rules, and failure to confirm eligibility were also factors that could be corrected.
• This waste is equivalent to over $900 a year for every American household.
• Fixing 56% of this waste in just ONE YEAR could pay for the first TEN YEARS of Obama's community college idea.

The detailed analysis by wasteful government programs follow (double click on the graph for a larger view):

Such a disgrace, embarrassment, and insult to hard working, taxpaying Americans. Even worse, this list does not include the main Social Security program for retirees. Reputable sources we have cited in this blog put the wasteful and criminal fraud of that program at over $100 billion a year also, more than enough to fund the community college idea for well over ten years.

No American, rich or poor, should pay another penny in taxes, when these wasteful actions continue under this Presidential administration and Washington political class. Just like an American household, if you want something you cannot afford, economize your spending somewhere else. And in this wasteful government bureaucracy, the ability to economize is seemingly endless and easy to do.

Just because the Federal government could find the ways and means to pay for this $60 billion idea by tightening up its spending, does not mean it should. Tomorrow will be the discussion on why this is just another silly, free floating, non-strategic tactical plan from this President who has shown no ability to think strategically or to operate efficiently.

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