September, 2020, Part 3, Political Class Insanity: A Dead Person Has the Virus, The NYC Mayor Is Still Clueless and the Seattle Mayor May Get Yanked

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) Although the coronavirus experience was a new and dangerous experience for all of us, with no historical process or experience to guide the actions of politicians and government, it is pretty obvious that some brutal mistakes were made that caused the virus to infect and kill more people than was necessary.

Many times we have spoken about how the politicians in New York, especially the mayor of New York City and the governor, were late, lax, and stupid in their actions regarding the virus This resulted in the highest infection and death rates in the nation, far beyond any way you measure the effects, given the size of the state and city’s population.

We also saw that no government entity was ready for the massive amount of testing that would be necessary to measure, track, and treat the virus. And when testing was in place it turned out to be faulty in so many ways. We have reported on the man in Tennessee who was called up by the state’s health department to check on how he was recovering from the virus when 1) he never took a test to see if he had the virus and 2) he was never sick. 

We talked about testing results in Florida where in some cases labs reported that 100% of all people tested had the virus, a highly unlikely result. And there are now reports of a major national lab that has been doing tests for months and has not reported a single positive case, again, a highly unlikely scenario.

And now we have this story of ineptness in Tennessee:

• A woman who has been dead for six months recently received a letter from her county health department that says she has tested positive for the virus and needs to go into isolation.
• Her son, Troy Whittington, is having a hard time understanding how his dead mother has a positive virus test: “I’m just having a hard time understanding how they can say someone has COVID-19 when they are not even alive. It’s impossible for someone to be tested on June 20, who passed away on February 16th. I tried to call the health department this morning, ask them why this was going on. She said she would have to get a supervisor. She was sorry for the mistake or she couldn’t tell me any information till she got a supervisor, and I haven’t heard back from them.”
• His mom died on February 16th of COPD, weeks before the first case of the virus was even detected in the county and long before any testing was done.
• Even more bizarre is the reality that his mom’s body was cremated back in February so it is not even possible that the test was done on her corpse.

Another day, another government bureaucracy screw up. The bottom line is we really have no idea what the virus did to how many people in what way. Faulty tests, positive results on dead people, politicians incompetence and ignorance in handling the crisis, what a mess.

2) And we have discussed recently and far too many times, one of the very, very basic and essential functions of government is to protect lives and property. Across the country in some major cities, politicians have failed miserably in providing that very basic government function:

• The deadly violence that has plagued Chicago for years is getting worse and worse.
• Seattle lost control of a major portion of its downtown area for weeks several months ago.
• Portland has been the scene of 100 consecutive nights of constant violence, riots, looting, and deaths.
• The crime rate across New York City has skyrocketed over the past few months.

And it appears that NYC is going to break a lot of crime records this year, and not in a good way:

• The city has now experienced over 1,000 shootings this year.
• This milestone has been reached even though there are still four more months in the year.
• This increase in violence has caused moving companies to run out of capacity to move people out of the city with 10 residents a day moving out and leaving NYC behind.
• In 2019 there were 772 shootings in total for the whole year, over 200 fewer than there have been in just 8 months this year.

The trend is not good and the mayor seems not to appreciate how much he has screwed up. He brags that there are fewer people in jail in the city but does not realize that maybe, just maybe, there is a correlation of letting people out of jail for crimes they committed and the increased violence and crime. His ineptness is driving the wealthier and high paying taxpayers out of the city and yet he wants to raise taxes on those wealthy people left behind. His inability to comprehend his damage to the city is unbelievable.

3) Speaking of inept mayors, let’s jump out to Seattle for one of the top contenders for worst mayor in the country. According to the Godfather Politics website and Warner Todd Huston:

• Seattle Mayor, Jenny Durkan, has allowed her city to be a lawless battleground of violence.
• She famously allowed a major portion of her downtown area to be taken over by looters, rioters, and anarchists for a number of weeks.
• As a result, her city’s residents have launched a recall petition drive to have her removed from office because, as we discussed above, she has failed to provide a very basic government service, the protection of the lives and property of her city’s residents.
• She has filed a petition with the state supreme court to have this petition drive terminated, claiming that there is no basis for her to be recalled.
• She says that since she did not violate any laws, the petition is not valid.

Now, technically she may be right, that she did not break a specific law, she did not rob anyone, she did not mug anyone, she did not steal a car, etc. But when she took office she did take an oath to uphold and execute the current laws on the books which I assume include laws to prevent looting, arson, and conceding the lives, homes and businesses of many residents and businesses to the anarchists who took over part of the city.

And remember, the basic, basic function of government is to protect the lives and property of those that government serves, and no one can make a case she fulfilled that duty to any degree at all. If the petition drive gets 50,000 signatures in the next 180 days then a recall vote option will appear on next year’s ballot. I wish the petition owners luck.

Okay, a Seattle mayor maybe gets the well deserved heave ho, the New York City mayor continues to be clueless and continues to increase the danger facing his city’s residents, and at least in Tennessee the government counts dead people among their coronavirus patients.

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/Walter-Bruno-Korschek/e/B002KYU08Q/ref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share

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

August, 2020, Part 1, Political Class Insanity: The insanity Rages From Coast To Coast, New York To Seattle

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) Many times we have covered the reality that New York state and NYC did an absolutely horrible job in protecting the health of the New York citizens they were supposed to be protecting relative to the coronavirus. Infection rates and death rates were significantly higher than the rest of the country due to the bumbling antics and ineptness of Governor Andrew Cuomo and NYC mayor Bill de Blasio.

Despite his obvious failure in managing the virus crisis, Cuomo somehow thinks that he did a great job. In fact, he is so out of touch that he recently claimed that people from around the country are flocking to New York state because the virus is now supposedly under control in his state: "We now have people coming to New York, fleeing the other states because it's the 'safe' state."

Of course, he provided no data to support this outrageous claim, likely because there is no data to support such a claim. Even if people were moving to New York, there is no way that data is available yet, just weeks after the virus infection rate in the state leveled off. 

But let's look at some data that we do have access to, as of a week or so ago:

• New York has 5.9% of the country’s population but had 10.4% of the country’s virus cases and 22.4% of the country’s virus deaths, almost four times higher than their share of the population.
• Compare this to California which has 12.1% of the population, 10.3% of the country's virus cases, and 5.5% of the virus deaths.
• Thus, despite California having more than double the population of the state of New York, it had about the same proportion of virus cases and a far less proportion of virus deaths.
• Florida has 6.6% of the population, 9.3% of the virus cases, and 3.6% of the virus deaths.
• Thus, despite having a slightly higher population than New York, it had a lower proportion of virus cases and a much lower proportion of virus deaths, about six times lower than New York.
• Texas has 8.9% of the population, 9.0% of the virus cases, and 3.0% of the virus deaths.
• Thus, while Texas has a larger population than New York, it had a lower proportion of virus cases, and a much lower proportion of virus deaths, about one seventh the number of virus deaths.

Thus, no matter how you cut the data, relative population or absolute numbers, New York had a higher share of virus cases and a much higher share of virus deaths. Thus, I doubt people are fleeing other states to move to New York, given the numbers above that perfectly illustrate how inept Cuomo and de Blasio have been in the virus crisis.

2) We have talked a lot about NYC mayor, Bill de Blasio, over the past few months and how he has to rank in the top three of the worst mayors in the country. From his total mishandling of the coronavirus crisis to his sour relationship with the police, his inactions or poor actions have resulted in an extremely steep and quick rise in crime in NYC. Murders are up, violence is up and he seems incapable of coming up with a plan to fix the situation.

One reason for his ineptness could be a bad set of priorities. As crime rampages, he decided to take limited police resources and not devote them to fighting crime but to “protecting” a Black Lives mural. Yes, people are getting killed, wounded and mugged, and he is using over two dozen police officers to protect a street painting.

Here is what an article in Law Enforcement Today had to say about this lunacy: “You’ve really got to hand it to New York Mayor Bill de Blasio. As violent crime goes out of control in the Big Apple, de Blasio, or as radio talk show host Mark Levin calls him, “de Commie-o,” at least has his “priorities” straight. He has directed that 27 police officers daily be assigned to protect the Black Lives Matter “mural” outside of Trump Tower.”

So rather than helping protect black lives of actual black residents, he is more interested in protecting a public painting.

3) Lets go clear across the country and talk about another city that is under the rule of idiots. As most know, the mayor and town council in Seattle actually lost control of a six block area in downtown Seattle last month when anarchists took over the area and police and medical personnel were not allowed into the area for weeks. As a result, crime, murders, rapes, violence and arson ruled the day inside that six block area.

Having not learned their lesson that allowing childish, spoiled anarchists to have their way, they have taken further steps that violate their basic government function, namely to protect the lives and property of the people who elected them:

• Seattle’s black female police chiefs recently issued a memo to city residents which warned them that the Seattle police department no longer had the ability to protect lives and property within the city.
• Specifically, the city’s police force could not “safely intercede” in any situations that had homes or businesses targeted by the rioters that had controlled part of the city over the past few months.
• The reason for this disaster is that the city council and mayor were stupid enough to pass legislation that prevented the police from using non-lethal methods, such as pepper spray, to control rioters who were threatening lives and property.
• According to the chief of police “Please know that the Seattle Police Department is committed to addressing life safety incidents and calls for service, and responding to ongoing demonstrations and unrest in the city. Please also know that the City Council Ordinance 119805 Crowd Control Tool goes into effect this weekend on Sunday, July 26, 2020. This ordinance bans Seattle Police officers the use of less-lethal tools, including pepper spray that is commonly used to disperse crowds that have turned violent. Simply put, the legislation gives officers no ability to safely intercede to preserve property in the midst of a large, violent crowd. For these reasons, Seattle Police will have an adjusted deployment in response to any demonstrations this weekend – as I will never ask our officers to risk their personal safety to protect property without the tools to do so in a safe way.”
• The chief went on to say she has talked to the members of the city's political class about how bad their decision was and has not been able to get them to change the rules of engagement when dealing with violent rioters.
• Since the non-lethal rule went into effect, 59 police officers were injured during city riots with injuries including abrasion, burns, and other injuries as rioters pelted the police with all kinds of projectiles.

Insanity. What did these political idiots think was going to happen when the hands of the police were tied behind their backs? Citizen safety has decreased significantly, police forces are under siege, and the city’s properties are subject to the whims and wishes of rioters. 

And it is not like the politicians had no idea this was going to happen. They had lost control, to the same rioters, of six city blocks a few weeks before and still did not get the message: these rioters are intent on destruction and violence and yet the politicians still handicapped the police force in the city. Truly insane.

Political class insanity is raging, coast to coast.

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/Walter-Bruno-Korschek/e/B002KYU08Q/ref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share

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