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Yesterday was the first post in this month’s political class insanity. There we discussed the fact that taxpayer dollars were spent on a wide variety of puppet initiatives and to study the sex habits of New Zealand snails. We learned that a lucky county commissioner in California is not only earning over $400,000 a year but will continue to earn about the same amount every year in retirement. We learned that three of the toughest areas of the country for gun control, New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, are the three worst areas for prosecuting the breaking of Federal gun control laws. I can hardly wait to see what today’s insanity brings.
1) The city of Detroit’s story is certainly a pathetic one. It has lost a large percentage of its population over the past few decades. Many parts of the city have turned into vast urban wastelands where there are not even abandoned houses. The unemployment rate is embarrassing high. Some street lights are not turned on or their burned out bulbs not replaced since the city cannot afford these repairs. The governor is likely to impose a state controlled city manager to take over the city government.
How could all of this happened? Well, one reason might be because of a story in the March 22, 2013 issue of The Week magazine. It reported that former Detroit Democratic Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick was found guilty of racketeering, extortion, bribery, and fraud. According to the charges, the former mayor steered more than $83 million worth of municipal contracts to a friend who then kicked back money to the former mayor.
According to the local U.S. Attorney, Barbara McQuale: "Kwame Kilpatrick didn’t lead the city, he looted the city." He faces a maximum prison term of 20 years. $83 million could have fixed a lot of street lights and a lot of other problems with this distressed city.
2) The March, 2013 issue of Reason magazine had some interesting analyses of Amtrak, the distressed, Federally operated national train system:
- Amtrak is the most expensive way to transport oneself from city to city, on average costing consumers twice as much than commercial airline travel.
- The average American travels 15 miles a year via Amtrak but 15,000 miles a year via car.
- Amtrak per-passenger miles subsidies are more than nine times higher than subsidies paid to airlines and 20 times more than subsidies paid to car drivers.
- In 2012, Amtrak needed about $1.4 billion from the American taxpayer to run its operations.
- Only three of its twelve routes are profitable without taxpayer subsidies.
This financial insanity has been going on for decades, with no politician willing to fight the right battle to fix this disaster. Sell the assets off, let a private company worry about running a profitable railroad since it is obvious that the Federal government is not capable, and save $1.4 billion a year, a government expense that benefits only a tiny, tiny portion of Americans.
3) That same issue of Reason also carried a crazy story about a crazy public servant in Nevada City. City police chief James Wickham wants to control the city’s homeless population by having the town council pass a law that requires that homeless people pay for a permit to set up a tent.
His rationale for such a law is pretty silly: “The goal is to start managing the homeless population in this city. It just basically means that you cannot set up a tent. You can’t live in your vehicle. You can’t live in the woods in Nevada City.”
Did this brainiac ever think that the reason many of these people are homeless is because they do not have a lot of money? What little money they do have is not going to be spent on a permit, it will be spent on food and other life essentials. Does he think they will not sleep in a tent, car, or the woods because the town council says they need a permit?
The article goes on to say that if you are homeless in the city without a homeless permit, you could go to jail. That might be a better option for these unfortunate people than spending their very limited funds on a piece of paper for the privilege of sleeping in a tent, a car, or the woods.
Maybe the chief and the town council should be working on some compassionate ways to take care of these people rather than criminalizing them.
4) The Hill reported on March 28, 2013 that President Obama’s official Federal government budget proposal will be presented on April 10, 2013. According to existing law, this makes the budget presentation two months late.
This will be the fourth time in five years that Obama’s White House has been late in developing and presenting his official budget, meaning he has broken the law four out of the past five years.
This is not to be confused with the law that the U.S. Senate has broken every year since 2009 when it went four years without developing and presenting a detailed official Senate budget.
To my knowledge, Obama, any of his budget executives, or any Senator has gone to jail for not meeting the lawfully established budget guidelines. However, you can bet you will get prosecuted if you do not submit your tax returns on time by April 15. Apparently laws and their guidelines apply to you and I but not politicians.
5) A national debt fast approaching $17 TRILLION. About 23 million Americans either unemployed or underemployed. Anemic national economic growth. Sky rocketing health care costs. Continued under educating of our nation’s kids. Gas prices that are about twice as much as they were the day Obama took office.
So what are our Washington politicians worrying about these days. According to a March 20, 2013 article from The Hill:
A group of House Democrats on Wednesday introduced a bill that would prevent the term "Redskins" from being trademarked, a move intended to put pressure on the Washington football club to change its name.
The Non-Disparagement of American Indians in Trademark Registrations Act of 2013 is co-sponsored by Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.), and comes days after a federal trademark panel heard arguments over whether the team name was a slur. The panel could potentially overturn the team's trademark, which would erode profits by allowing other businesses to sell apparel and goods featuring the Redskins name.
Talk about bad priorities. When you cannot prevent the Titantic from sinking, you rearrange the deck chairs. When you cannot resolve the major issues of our time facing Americans, you spend time and resources on the name of a football team.
The incompetence, bad priorities, and wasteful spending from politicians just keeps on coming. And more of the same will come 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.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w
The following list of political class insanity comes to us courtesy of the website of the Independent Journal. I cannot state that all of these are actual wastes of taxpayer money, politicians acting on fake problems because they do not know how to solve the real problems facing this country, and just plain political class insanity since the Independent Journal does not list their sources.
However, I do know that many of them are true since either reliable other sources have reported the same stories (e.g. NYC Mayor Bloomberg banning certain sizes of soda purchases) or I have reported, researched and sourced similar stories in this blog already (e.g. local board of health officials shutting down kids' lemonade stands.)
If I had to bet, I would wager that most, if not, of these instances of government gone wild are legitimate misuses of government time and taxpayer wealth, unnecessary intrusions into our lives and our freedoms, and just plain stupid.
#1 New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has announced that he wants to ban the sale of all large sodas and sugary drinks in order to fight obesity.
#2 In North Carolina, authorities are threatening to send a blogger to prison for blogging about his battle against diabetes.
#3 In San Francisco, if you do not recycle your trash correctly you can be fined up to $500.
#4 The following are just some of the cities that have started using RFID tracking chips to monitor the recycling habits of their citizen.
- Cleveland, Ohio
- Charlotte, North Carolina
- Alexandria, Virginia
- Boise, Idaho
- Dayton, Ohio
- Flint, Michigan
#5 In Minnetonka, Minnesota you can be fined up to $2,000 for having a muddy vehicle.
#6 In Hazelwood, Missouri it is against the law for little girls to sell girl scout cookies in front of their own homes.
#7 San Francisco has implemented a ban on Happy Meal toys.
#8 Over the past couple of years there have been quite a few instances all over the country where lemonade stands run by children have been shut down because the children had not acquired the proper permits.
#9 State legislatures all over the country have been passing legislation making it more difficult for parents to opt out of having their children vaccinated.
#10 In many U.S. states is it now illegal to collect any rain that falls on to your own property.
#11 In San Juan Capistrano, California it is against the law to hold a home Bible study without a "conditional use permit".
#12 In New York City, it is against the law to smoke at public parks and beaches.
#13 In California,”food confiscation teams” visit the homes of people that have been discovered to have purchased raw milk.
#14 In Hilton Head, South Carolina it is illegal to have trash in your car.
#15 In major cities all over the United States feeding the homeless has been banned due to “health reasons”.
#16 In Louisiana, one church was ordered to stop passing out water because it did not have the proper permit.
#17 At public schools all over the United States, the lunches that little children bring from home are now inspected to make sure that they meet USDA guidelines. One North Carolina girl was told her turkey and cheese sandwich, banana, potato chips and apple juice did not meet USDA guidelines.
#18 Today, a vast array of government agencies are constantly monitoring what all of us say and do on the Internet. They claim that this helps makes us all more “safe” and “secure”.
A few observations:
- Given the hard economic times the country has been experiencing and the suppression of tax revenue many government entities have lived through, does it make sense to hire government workers and devote government resources to shutting down lemonade stands, tracking peoples' recycle habits, prosecuting muddy vehicle violators, etc.? Wouldn't the money going to these silly, extraneous activities be better spent helping the homeless, keeping teachers on the job, feeding the needy, etc. in these hard economic times? Wouldn't that be the more compassionate list of services than checking for garbage laden cars?
- Regardless of how wasteful these activities are, do we really need them? I think most Americans are smart enough to decide for themselves whether it is safe to buy lemonade from a kid's side walk lemonade stand. I think most Americans are smart enough to decide for themselves whether it is safe to drink raw milk. I think most Americans are smart enough to say and do what they want on the Internet, with rare exceptions, without some overbearing government agency looking out for their perceived safety and security.
In other words, I think most Americans are smart enough to not abuse their freedom of personal choice. If they make poor choices, then they should have to live with them as regards to lemonade, raw milk, Internet usage, Happy Meals, etc.
- Some of these government actions are just plain stupid. If you are homeless and hungry, why shouldn't compassionate Americans help to feed you, even if the meals you provide do not exactly conform to some strict government menu decided by a set of out of touch bureaucracy? Isn't it better to be fed than go hungry? It is not like these shuttered food banks and sources were just feeding the needy candy and cake.
I read about such a story a few months ago where a husband and wife team had been traveling around, using their own money, and feeding local homeless people using their fried chicken recipes. The local authorities shut them down because, in the authorities' opinion, fried chicken is not healthy enough. Thus, rather than get free fried chicken meals, the homeless in that area now get nothing to eat. Talk about a lack of compassion.
- By far, one of the worst examples in the above list is the mayor of New York intervening in the private purchase habits of American citizens by depriving them the opportunity to purchase a 32 ounce or 64 ounce servings of soda. He has nothing better to do than intrude on peoples' lives and their soda habits?
Granted, we have a big health care and obesity problem in this country. We need a strategic plan and effective approach to save the country's financial future and improve the health of those in the country due to the obesity threat. But regulating the size of a person's soft drink purchase in the absence of an overarching strategic plan is pretty much useless for the following reasons:
- Since the mayor provided no research on whether or not his action will help reduce obesity, I am assuming that no proof exists that this action will have any positive outcome. If this is indeed the case, than the mayor's ban is nothing but an uninformed crap shoot on addressing the obesity problem in this country.
- This action, done in a void, will likely do little to change behavior. All it will do is pose a small inconvenience to people without educating them on WHY they should cut down on soda consumption. Without changing behavior, a person who can no longer purchase 32 ounce fountain soda in a NYC 7-11 will just go over to the refrigerated shelves and purchase a one liter bottle of soda. Since a liter contains almost 34 ounces, the mayor's plan may actually make the problem worse by migrating people from 32 ounce fountain drinks to 34 ounce liter bottles of soda.
- A liter purchase is just one way to bypass this silly ban. Without changing attitudes and behavior, a person could simple purchase three 12 ounce sodas to beat this system. This action would make the problem worse, with the person now consuming 36 ounces of soda vs. the banned 32 ounce drink.
- The mayor obviously does not have a clue on what the major root causes of excessive soda consumption are and the bigger root causes of what drives the obesity problem. Is it cultural, marketplace, pricing, psychological, etc.? Without understanding the root causes of the obesity problem, the ability to solve the overall problem is almost zero.
- Regarding likely root causes of the obesity problem, one probable root cause the mayor never dreamed of and one of the prime reasons that soda and less than healthy processed food has become so inexpensive and wide spread, is the fact the U.S. government heavily subsidizes the production of certain corn varieties. These corn varieties are easily and inexpensively processed into corn fructose, a by product of government actions that now infests a large part of our food chain. Thus, a comprehensive and strategic way to cut down on obesity might be to cut down on the government's subsidy of corn fructose. For an insigthful and troubling look at this proposition, I suggest that anyone interested on this subject and perspective view the documentary entitled, "King Corn," and be prepared to be very scared. The movie makes a pretty convincing argument that the obesity problem in this country is really a straight line track from the Federal government's corn subsidy programs to the unhealthy food in our supermarkets and the resultant obesity in the nation.
These 18 foolish political class actions and programs are just another set of bad priorities from the politicians that serve in our government structure. Rather than work on problems that positively allocate resources to help the needy and have the biggest impact on the most citizens, they work on problems that waste resources and impact very few people positively, and possibly a lot negatively.
Until we start getting real problem solvers to run for public office who understand root causes of problems and can then set good priorities for using limited taxpayer resources, we will continue to see bad politicians set bad priorities and waste good money on bad initiatives.
We invite all readers of this blog to visit our new website, "The United States Of Purple," at:
http://www.unitedstatesofpurple.com/
The United States of Purple is a new grass roots approach to filling the office of President of The United States by focusing on the restoration of freedom in the United States, focusing on problem solving skills and results vs. personal political enrichment, and imposing term limits on all future Federal politicians. No more red states, no more blue states, just one United States Of America under the banner of Purple.
The United States Of Purple's website also provides you the formal opportunity to sign a petition to begin the process of implementing a Constitutional amendment to impose fixed term limits on all Federally elected politicians. Only by turning out the existing political class can we have a chance of addressing and finally resolving the major issues of our times.
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.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment
