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) There is no doubt that the country is facing a homeless problem and the problem is most acute in the state of California and the county of Los Angeles, both home to the largest state and city homeless populations in the country. It is so sad that American politicians have not been able to come up with any viable solutions to this problem despite spending untold billions and billions of dollars on it. The problem just keeps getting worse.
But maybe these are not the right people to think can resolve the problem, as witnessed by this disaster out in LA:
Proposition HHH is an LA project that was going to spend $1.2 billion to provide housing for the city’s homeless population.
But according to the Associated Press, so far it has cost the city over $700,000 on average to provide one unit of housing for the homeless.
One of the project's efforts cost a whopping $837,000 a piece.
This finding was the result of a city audit of the program and was found by LA City Controller, Ron Galpern, to be “wholly inadequate.”
According to the audit: “While future plans have not been finalized, building tens of thousands of additional units using the same model will likely cost billions of dollars and will take far too long to match the urgency of the ongoing homeless emergency.”
In addition, the audit concluded that the city must “find new ways to scale up faster and cheaper projects.”
Another failure of the political class to fix anything efficiently, effectively, and on time. Given that the city budget to address the homeless population has gone from about $10 million in 2013 to $1 billion nine years later supports the notion that city and state politicians have no idea how to fix the problem but have spent and wasted billions of dollars in their failed attempt to do so.
2) Politicians are also very good at being hypocrites. The most glaring, recent example of such hypocrisy was their behavior during the bad days of the covid crisis. Too many politicians set forth draconian restrictions on their constituents’ social behavior but then went and ignored those very restrictions that they insisted their citizens follow.
Consider some of the latest political class hypocrisy:
Eric Swalwell is a California Democrat in Congress.
He was an active advocate for the false proposition that Donald Trump was in cahoots with Russia, a proposition that has been proven to be total fiction.
But we now know that Swalwell has been the recipient of campaign election donations from a high level lobbyist for a Russian pipeline company.
He got $2,900 from Vincent Roberti of the Roberti Global lobbyist group in 2021.
He also got $5,400 from Roberti in 2018 as reported by the Washington Free Beacon.
Ths company received $2.4 million from the pipeline company, Nord Stream 2 AG, which Biden supported prior to the invasion of Ukraine.
Compare his eagerness to take money from a lobbyist tied to vital Russian energy interests vs. what he had to say about Trump: “Not only does his [Trump] past and current team have ties to Russia, but the President himself also does. He has traveled to Russia extensively, done business there often, and has ties to Russian interests. . . Why is America’s leader and his team so close to Russia? This is either due to poor judgement or a deeper personal, financial, or political link between President Trump and Russia. It is not normal for the leader of our country to be so extensively tied to a foreign government that has sought to undermine democracies across the globe, and connections like these should be concerning to American citizens everywhere.”
Oh, by the way, Roberti has also contributed to other Democrats including Pelosi, Schumer, and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, all of whom falsely accused Trump of having corrupt ties to Russia.
As often the case of American politicians, follow the money not their words to find out what is truly going on. Swalwell is no exception.
3) We have all too often discussed the reality that “defunding the police” movement has been a total and often fatal disaster. Large, liberal, Democratic controlled cities got on the defund the police bandwagon over the past couple of years, stripping budget and personnel resources from their city police forces. And without exception, those cities, Chicago, NewYork, LA and others, have seen dramatic rises in violent crime within their city borders.
And while most of our previous discussions of this political failure of been in cities like Chicago and NYC, apparently Atlanta is also a victim of its own defund the police initiative:
Murders in Atlanta are already up 43% this year.
At this rate the city will break last year’s mark of 153 homicides, a number that was a 30 year high for the city.
Rapes are up 236%, burglaries are up 1%, and shopliftng cases are up 4%.
One of the more ridiculous excuses for poor performance by a politician, former mayor Kesha Lance Bottoms blamed the relaxing of covid restrictions for the increase in crime, not her failed policies and administration.
In her opinion, prematurely lifting covid restrictions caused people to come to her city to party in bars and then go out and rape and murder others, nonsense.
The new mayor has a more realistic approach to stopping crime including installing thousands of cameras and hiring hundreds of more police officers.
A very, very basic function of government is to protect the lives and property of citizens. If a government entity, and the politicians that operate it, cannot provide this basic service, then they are a failure regardless of whatever else they think they accomplished. Thus, the former mayor is a failure under this very simple but important tenet.
4) Besides Atlanta, NYC continues to victimize its citizens after it defunded its police department:
At least six people were recently stabbed in the city’s subway as violence continues to grow in the city.
The first of these latest attacks occurred less than 24 hours after the mayor announced his new plan to combat subway violence.
Subway attacks are up over 65% this year vs. last year.
These attacks include assault, stabbing, and pushing people into oncoming trains.
Many of the attacks have been caused by homeless people and drug addicts, many of whom have serious mental problems.
Too early to tell if the mayor’s new program will help curtail the violence. We hope it works. But given the track record of politicians protecting the lives and property of citizens, the trend is not good.
That will do it for today but more of the same failed behavior of our politicians: failure to protect the safety of citizens, the continued and fatal failure of the defund the police movement, and hypocrisy continues to be a standard behavior of the American politician.
