October, 2016, Bonus Post, Political Class Insanity - Foreign Mosques Get Fixed While Our Vets Commit Suicide, Fourth Amednment Shredding By Yahoo amd More

Note: we started this month with a series of political class insanity posts, like we do every month. We then stopped the insanity posts for a week while we concentrated on the the hundreds of failures and disappointments of the Obama Presidency as it it hit the last 100 days of its existence. Today is a return to one last insanity post for this month to cover the political class insanity that has arisen over the past week while we were reviewing all of Obama’s failures.

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 posts that were needed to cover one month's worth of insanity is ten. We equaled that record last month when we needed ten 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 whistle blowers, 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) The Patriots Update website recently reported on how Yahoo had helped the Federal government seriously abuse the Fourth Amendment. Apparently, Yahoo scanned hundreds of millions of Yahoo Mail accounts at the request of the NSA or the FBI, according to four current and former Yahoo employees. This was likely done without court orders, search warrants, or any other legal or justified reason.

This is obviously a direct contradiction and violation of the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution, the protection from unreasonable searches. According to the article: “Some surveillance experts said this represents the first case to surface of a U.S. Internet company agreeing to an intelligence agency’s request by searching all arriving messages, as opposed to examining stored messages or scanning a small number of accounts in real time.”

Obviously, to at least this administration, the Constitution has become more a set of suggestions than the law of the land. 

2) In most industries in the world, if you have a bad year financially, you are stuck with those results. You just suck it up, make changes and improvements and try better next year. 

Unless, of course, you are an American farmer. In that case, if you have a bad year the Federal government will take taxpayer dollars and make it better. According to Rob Williams, writing for Newsmax on October 4, 2016, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) will pay U.S. farmers over $7 billion this year to compensate them for low crop prices in 2016. Market conditions have been so favorable for growing crops around the world this year that there is an over supply issue which has driven down crop prices for U.S. farmers by about 11% vs. 2015.

Why the U.S.government should put billions of American taxpayer dollars at risk to help a particular industry is beyond me. Just about every other industry often faces reduced prices, oversupply, and a shrinking market size and the U.S. government does nothing to bail them out. I might be able to see protecting the small, classic American farmer who may not be able to stand a temporary fluctuation in prices. But the majority of farming in this country these days is done by huge agriculture conglomerates who should be able to manage their business and absorb market and pricing setbacks.

However, the Washington political class has seen it fit to throw taxpayer money at these huge companies when things get a little rough. You can be sure that these companies are very generous when it comes to election time to ensure that incumbent politicians will stay elected to protect this taxpayer funded revenue stream.

3) We have already reported in a previous insanity post on how Harry Reid, in order to make a trivial, ego-driven point, single handedly held up legislation that had unanimous House and Senate support to make it a felony to distribute any recorded material that depicted the torture and killing of animals. As a dog and animal lover, I found this pathetic attempt at attention to be despicable.

But according to Alice B. Lloyd, Harry Reid blocked the enactment of a law that would have provided emergency support to a veterans suicide hotline program that is sorely needed. The Government Accountability Office recently concluded research that found the Department of Veterans Affairs crisis hotline failed to answer the phone between 20 and 30% of the time from veterans that needed counseling and support. 

The “No Veterans Crisis Line Call Should Go Unanswered Act” was unanimously passed in the House of Representatives and a similar companion bill was moving quickly through the Senate. The plan was to use the unanimous consent function of the Senate, a procedure that is used when unobjectionable bipartisan legislation has widespread appeal within the Senate. In this case, if no Senator objected, the bill is passed. But obviously at least one Democratic Senator did object, since every Republican Senator was on board with this critical piece of legislation, and it appears that the objecting Senator was Reid. 

Thus, Congress has recessed and veterans in severe need of counseling and support will continue to be under served, all because of a very small minded Senator who would rather score political points than save the lives of veterans and animals. Pathetically insane.

4) In a great piece of irony, a Hispanic activist that actively objected to what he considered the racism of Donald Trump relative to when Trump was calling some illegal immigrants rapists, has himself been arrested and charged with, you guessed it, rape. According to the Salt Lake Tribune, Latino Tony Yapias has been charged with rape in an assault of a former girl friend.

Yapias once was the director of Utah’s Hispanic Affairs Office and works on immigration and other Hispanic issues. Despite pleas that he stay away from her, Yapias went to his former girl friend’s home, forced himself in and allegedly raped her, for which he has been arrested. Somewhere Donald Trump is smiling.

5) Last piece of insanity for this month. This is a story that was published in a September, 2016 website article on the Truth Feed website but it actually covers an investigative report by CBS News out of Atlanta in 2015. That report found that the Obama administration had spent an amazing $770 million overseas to refurbish and repair Muslim mosques around the world. The State Department defended this wasteful spending by claiming it was a “good will effort” in Muslim countries and that they are “fighting Islamic extremism by building relationships with Islamic leaders.”

Two things grossly wrong with this insanity:

1. Tens of millions of Americans need Federal food assistance every month, upwards of a million Americans are homeless at at any time during the year, tens of thousands of Americans are dying from drug addiction every year, and untold thousands of American veterans cannot get the medical attention they deserve and were promised. Would not that $770 million be better spent taking care of needy Americans first since I see no benefit of giving that ridiculous amount of money away to fix buildings halfway around the world?
2. The second issue with such nonsense is a carry over from the last phrase in the previous paragraph - what benefit, if any, have we seen by spending such money around the world? The link below that has the CBS story also has an interview with a former Muslim where she explains how this type of program relative to the Muslim psyche is a joke and a total waste of money which, unfortunately, is pretty much the status quo on most Federal government programs.

The link to the story and the interview can be accessed at:

http://rightwingnews.com/barack-obama/outrage-obama-spends-770m-dollars-tax-payer-money-renovate-mosques-seas-video/

The Washington political class is willing to spend $770 million to fix leaky pipes in a mosque in Cairo but cannot pass a simple piece of legislation that would provide the needed suicide prevention support for our veterans. So pathetic.

That will do it for today’s and this month’s political class insanity: spending millions overseas to fix buildings while veterans cannot get suicide prevention help, an anti-Trump racists feels some cruel irony, helping rich farming conglomerates stay rich with taxpayer money, and shredding the Fourth Amendment...again. More insanity next month.

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

Fighting The Invisible Empire, The Political Class and The Banksters - Was Woodrow Wilson Right?

“The government, which was designed for the people, has got into the hands of the bosses and their employers, the special interests. An invisible empire has been set up above the forms of democracy.” Woodrow Wilson

We have talked about this quote a few times in prior posts. These days it seems as if ordinary American citizens have very little control of their own wealth as the Washington political class has confiscated and handed out our personal wealth to large and small businesses for a variety or reasons:

• General Motors still owes the American taxpayer at least $24 billion, according to government sources, with little chance of ever repaying that debt in the near future.
• Chrysler, now owned by a foreign company, has cost the American taxpayer about $1 billion that will never be paid back.
• Hundreds of billions of dollars were dished out to small and large banks alike via the TARP program to cover for their inept and irresponsible banking practices, much of which has not been paid back.
• The Federal Reserve Board has printed well over $2.3 TRILLION and used it to buy back bad assets from major banks in the vain and unfulfilled hope that these banks would lend their newly acquired cash to businesses and Americans to jumpstart the economy.
• An article by Bloomberg on June 18, 2012 outlined how the American taxpayer, and taxpayers around the world, subsidize their countries' major banks, encouraging risky banker behavior that always seem to lead to bank bailouts. The details of the article can be read at:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-18/dear-mr-dimon-is-your-bank-getting-corporate-welfare-.html

• The major point made by the analysis and article was that about $76 billion of taxpayer wealth is money laundered through Washington and flowed through to the major banks every year.
• An Associated Press news report from August 9, 2012 covered the news that the Justice Department will not investigate or prosecute criminal charges against either Goldman Sachs the company nor Goldman Sachs employees related to trades they made during the financial crisis/Great Recession. These charges were developed and highlighted in a detailed 2011 U.S. Senate investigative report. Despite the Senate findings of potential criminal activity, no legal action happened.
• In a December 2, 2011 post we did on Goldman Sachs' relationship to the highest levels of the Federal government, we came to the following conclusion: “There is an obviously cozy Goldman Sachs connection between the highest levels of government and the highest levels of Goldman Sachs and those that used to work for Goldman Sachs." 

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2011/12/government-favors-and-politicians-for_02.html

These are just some of the bigger money laundering examples of recent memory, there have been so many more including the tens of billions of flushed down dozens of bad alternative energy companies, that we do not have time today to review them all.

This is not a Republican or Democrat condition, it is a politician affliction. We get very little say in how our wealth is redistributed to special political cronies and interests, often in exchange for campaign cash for politicians’ reelection efforts.

While Bush may have funneled taxpayer wealth to Haliburton, Obama funneled it to Solyndra et al. Both were intimately involved in funneling wealth to the big banks over the years. Individual taxpayers were helpless in stopping the redistribution. Seems Wilson was right, an invisible, or not so invisible, empire has been set up above the forms of democracy.

But what if we could get control of this invisible empire? Not only would it make good financial sense to control our taxpayer wealth, it would help us get additional liberty pumped into our faltering democracy, and frankly, revenge is sweet. Somebody outside of the invisible empire is actually taking on the task of breaking up this cartel:

• A Federal lawsuit seeking the return of $43 trillion and an audit of all the TARP programs by an independent receiver has been filed against senior members of the Obama administration and the New York group known as the “Banksters”.
• From what I understand about the law suit, “Banksters” is a collective term meant to include all of the big banks and those that operate them in that invisible empire.
• The Wall Street Journal has reported the Spire Law Group, LLP has moved its massive law suit/tort action into the Federal court in Brooklyn, New York.
• In this District Court lawsuit (Case No. 12-cv-04269-JBW-RML), Spire is acting on the behalf of homeowners across the country seeking to halt all foreclosures nationwide until the return of the $43 trillion.
• Note: I have not found out how they arrived at the $43 trillion number but it certainly gets attention and is probably a good opening bid.
• The lawsuit is seeking an audit of the TARP Program based on a report by the former Inspector General of the bailout program, Neil Barofsky. Barofsky has countered the claims made by President Obama, both publicly and privately to Congress, that the TARP money has been paid back.
• Mr. Barofsky asserts that none of the money advanced by the Treasury has ever been paid back by the recipients of the program.
• The lawsuit contends it has established the location of the $43 trillion of laundered money in a criminal racketeering enterprise participated in by the following individuals: Eric Holder, Tony West, Kamala Harris, Jon Corzine, Robert Rubin, Timothy Geithner, Vikram Pandit, Valerie Jarrett, Anita Dunn, and Robert Baueras
• The lawsuit alleges that the Obama administration “actively borrowed money from these “Banksters” to fund his political campaign in this 2012 election and has not pursued any criminal charges against them.” (sound familiar, see the above point about Goldman Sachs.
• The lawsuit also claims multiple violations of the United States Patriot Act have occurred, along with the Policy of Embargo Against Iran and Countries Hostile to the Foreign Policy of the United States, and the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) and other State and Federal laws by the Obama Administration. Seems like they have got all of the potential bases covered.

Interesting, somebody outside of the cozy Washington club is trying to break through the invisible empire. Obviously, the $43 trillion figure is for attention and public relations. The Federal government’s annual budget is only about a tenth or so of this figure so I doubt that even the largest bank have anything close to $43 trillion in assets. In fact, $43 TRILLION is about three times the size of the nation’s GDP so it is indeed a large number.

I wish them luck in both recovering ill gotten gains from both politicians and the Banksters and more importantly, uncovering the invisible empire that Wilson warned us about. Given that we have allowed the political class to take over and abuse our political processes in so many ways:

• Gerrymandering of Congressional districts
• Earmark funding for political cronies in exchange for campaign funding and support
• The obscene amount of organizational (corporations, PACs, unions) money that drowns out citizens’ voices, needs, and priorities
• The absence of term limits that produces non-productive, self satisfied, and self enriched members of the political establishment,
• Insider trading by politicians for their own financial good,

this avenue of approaching the misuse of political power is a unique, welcome respite from the continual degradation of our political processes and democracy.

Many of these political abuses were discussed in “Love My Country, Loathe My Government” along with some suggested ways to fix the situation. I did not think of going the legal route like Spire is doing, but good luck to them in their quest to squash the undue influence of “The Invisible Empire.”

Note: We will take Spire's approach a step further over the few posts so stayed tuned.

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

Political Class Insanity - January, 2012 Edition, Part 2

Yesterday we covered the first half of the political class insanity we came across over the past month. Unfortunately, it was so much that we had to split the insanity across two days worth of posts. Thus, the second half of the insanity is not so proudly presented below:

- According to a Washington Post article that was written by Robert Samuelson and summarized in the December 30, 2011 issue of The Week magazine, in 2012 America's budget deficit is expected to be about 8% of the country's GDP, assuming that the current set of optimistic economic assumptions actually come true. U.S. Federal government borrowing to cover its expenses will be 24% of its expenditures, i.e. the U.S. Federal government will have to borrow one dollar for every three dollars it expends.

However, even though these numbers are very scary, consider other numbers from the article as it relates to two economic basket cases in Europe. Italy's budget deficit will be 2.4% compared to our 8%.  Greece's government borrowing will be 24% of its spending, compared to our 27%. Thus, if Greece and Italy are tottering close to financial insolvency, what does our expected/best case, economic situation in 2012 mean for us?

- The November 25, 2011 issue of The Week magazine reviewed how Jefferson County, Alabama had filed the largest government bankruptcy in U.S. history in mid-November. The county had tried to restructure its $4 billion worth of debt with its creditors but could not come to an agreement.

The reason for the financial mess? Not surprisingly, the article identifies poor accounting and political corruption, two functions under the full control of the political class. I would bet that Jefferson County and Detroit (see yesterday's insanity) will not be the last government entities that we will see go belly up, with most of them being caused by incompetent and corrupt politicians. We will cover more on this as the bankruptcies unfold going forward into 2012. This would have been unheard just ten years ago, governments going bankrupt.

- A New York Times article that was summarized in the November 11, 2011 issue of The Week magazine  reported the United States spends more on health care than what the French spend on everything: education, defense, housing, health care, and more. Thus, our unhealthy health care industry is bigger than the fifth largest economy in the world. And given that we know that Obama Care is likely to add hundreds of billions of dollars to our health care tab, we are likely to move up further in this dubious comparison to the rest of the world's economies.

- Reason magazine is always a great source of political class insanity and their February, 2012 issue did not disappoint. When a technology entrepreneur Amit Gupta found out he had acute leukemia he also found out that he had two good friends. Both friends offered $10,000 of their own money for a donation of genetically compatible bone marrow that could be given to Gupta in his fight against leukemia.

It must be great to have friends like this, ones who would offer $20,000 to incent a stranger to come forward to test if they could help their friend. Unfortunately, their generosity is against the law and exposed themselves  to fines and up to five years in prison. The National Organ Transplant Act of 1984 makes it a felony to give or accept "valuable consideration" for any "transplantable organ or tissue."

But bone marrow is not a transplantable organ or tissue, it is like giving a blood transfusion, totally replaceable by the donor. Nevertheless, it is still illegal under the 1984 law. Good friends trying to help out a friend in need and the government makes it illegal. Insanity.

- U.S. News and World Report, reported on December 12, 2011 that "President Barack Obama is pressing his request that Iran return the U.S. surveillance drone captured by the country's armed forces." Talk about insanity. The United States illegally sends a surveillance aircraft over Iran, illegally violating their airspace, which crashes into Iranian territory and the President has the nerve to ask the Iranians to return the craft? And has the irrational expectation that they actually will return it?

If the Iranians had done the same thing to us, illegally violated our airspace with a spy drone, do we think we would return it to them?  No chance. We violated international law so for the Iranians, it is "finders keepers, losers weepers." The President looks just plain silly and insane publicly putting forth such a request.

The second part of this insanity is why don't our illegal drones have a self destruct mechanism on board? If the remote controllers of this craft knew it went down in Iranian territory, wouldn't it have made sense to have some kind of way to destroy the craft? We fly them remotely, it should not be a problem to destroy them remotely so that the sensitive technology on board does not fall into unfriendly hands.

Seems crazy not to have that simple self destruct function on these aircraft. If that had happened, the President would not have looked so silly on the international stage asking for the return of the craft.

- On November 16, 2011, the U.S. Treasury officially announced what the final taxpayer cost would likely be for the bailout of General Motors, a bailout that was completely unnecessary. Recall that the government intervened in the GM bankruptcy proceedings, screwing up a business process that should have been an easy, non-taxpayer affecting bankruptcy court action.

As a result of the political class sticking their political noses and the taxpayers' wallets into the proceedings, right now the bailout is likely to cost the American taxpayer about $38.6 billion. This $38.6 billions includes $23.6 billion loss that the Federal government incurred on its $60 billion investment and an additional $15 billion in tax liability that the Federal government "forgave" for GM. This bailout cost every American household about $330 each.

The losses could get better or worse depending on what the government eventually sells its remaining GM stock for but given the stock prices has gone from the mid $30s range in early 2011 to about $20 today, optimism should not be the assumption going forward.

- The following insanity escaped my observation back in the summer but it is still worthwhile to cover for two reasons. First, recall the Obama administration forced through an $800 billion economic stimulus plan a few years ago to try and get the economy rolling. It was not successful since we still have anemic economic growth, high unemployment, and higher underemployment.

Maybe one reason for the failure was what the money was spent on, according to a Senate report called "The Summertime Blues:"

• A half million dollars for new windows at the Mt. St. Helens visitors center in Amboy, Washington. The building has been closed since 2007 and there are no immediate plans to reopen it.
• $6.9 million dollars for repairs to an 1846 brick fort marooned on Dry Tortuga at the end the Florida Keys. Few people can visit this remote national park unless they hire a seaplane or take a four-hour round-trip boat ride.
• Creating a museum in an abandoned train station in Glassboro, NJ, at the cost of $1.2 million.
• $2 million dollars to send researchers from the California Academy of Sciences to islands in the Indian Ocean to study exotic ants.
• A study of dog domestication at Cornell University with a price tag of $296-thousand dollars.
• $141-thousand dollars to send students from Montana State University to China to study dinosaur eggs.
• $762-thousand dollars to create interactive choreography programs at the University of North Carolina. Dancers would wear electronic monitors to analyze their movements.
• $89-thousand dollars to replace sidewalks in Boynton, Oklahoma that were just replaced five years ago. One of them goes nowhere near any houses or businesses and leads directly into a ditch.

Why the Federal government would send money on any of these projects at any time is beyond me. They were certainly not worthy ways to help intelligently mend and grow the economy and all probably represent nothing more than wasteful earmarks to make politicians look good. What fool would think that these were worthy economic programs that would help the majority of Americans suffering through bad economic times?


Oh yes. Vice President Joe Biden, who was in charge of the stimulus program had this reaction to the "Summertime Blues" report: "The economic initiatives that we took, they are working."

- One last bit of insanity. We have often discussed the fact that the U.S. has hundreds  of thousands of military troops unnecessarily deployed all over the world for no purpose except to needlessly burn up taxpayer wealth. And President Obama has recently decided to station 2,500 U.S. troops in the remote reaches of Australia, again for no reason.

North Korea has 1.2 million men in its army so 2,500 Marines, no matter how good they are, are no match for 1.2 million. The Chinese have several million people in their military so our 2,500 will serve no military purpose against them, half way around the world. Japan is highly unlikely to attack us and Australia is an ally. This insanity is totally unnecessary but will cost us more than half a billion dollars a year for this deployment.

Unfortunately, political class insanity comes in many forms and in many costs, all of which is borne by the American taxpayer.




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/

2010: Politically, It Was Much Worse Than You Thought

As we come to the end of the year, it is usually a good time to look back and see what the year brought us and hopefully, be thankful for our health, wealth, and good times. However, from an American political class perspective, the events of 2010 were not healthy, wealthy and good for most of America. The exact opposite was true, events of the year were much worse than we think they were, based on some recent news reports:

- In the lead up to the passage of the legislation that would extend the Bush tax cuts for every American for two years, the Democrats were hollering that the legislation was not a good idea to extend the tax cuts for those Americans making over $250,000 a year. It would add about $70 billion a year to the national debt and this horrified them. Never mind that while in control of Congress the past four fiscal years, they managed to add over $4 TRILLION to the national debt.

The Republicans have spent most of the year decrying how out of control Federal government spending was, using that fact as a rallying cry to have a great midterm election. Wow, both parties seemed so interested in taming the budget deficit. However, according to an article in the December 17, 2010 isse of The Week magazine, once the two parties got together to work out a compromise on the tax cuts, the resulting compromise legislation ended up increasing the national debt by $900 billion in just two years. Thus, although all Americans will continue to be taxed at their same level, each U.S. household has now been burdened by an additional future national debt burden of almost $8,000.

How come every time the political class does anything, current and future Americans get hit with more onerous debt burdens? What makes this latest travesty so frustrating is the hypocrisy of both parties who claimed to worry about curbing government spending but ended up making a bad situation even worse.

- According to an article in the December 20, 2010 issue of Business Week magazine, the United States added 937,000 jobs in 2010. This was not nearly enough to begin bringing down the almost 10% unemployment rate. Conversely, a single company in Taiwan, Foxconn, by itself created 300,000 jobs in 2010. Let's see: one foreign company creates 300,000 all by itself, our political class creates only three times that much for the entire country. Proves once again that no matter how much government money is wasted in "economic stimulus programs," it cannot compare in either volume or cost effectiveness in the job creation capability of the private sector. Pathetic. When we will they ever learn?

- One reason that entities like Foxconn can create so many jobs and the United States political class cannot, despite spending hundreds of billions of dollars, was vividly illustrated in the December 27, 2010 issue of The Week magazine. According to the article, the last economic stimulus program spent money on a new heating system for an Indiana Methodist church, bought new windows for a Wyoming Catholic church, and food for a Pennsylvania Christian organization's homeless program. Combine them with other such wasteful stimulus programs as researching insect colonies on an island off the coast of Africa and you can see why much of the stimulus spending had absolutely no chance and no leverage of creating jobs.

A real company in the real world spends money efficiently. In the political realm, money is spend inefficiently to get incumbents re-elected by fixing their places of worship or counting bugs.

- Staying with the bad financial management theme of government, prepare to be horrified by the assertions from various sources in a December 17, 2010 article, also in The Week magazine. According to a a quote from the Financial Times, a recent document dump by the Federal Reserve Board, as required under the recently passed financial markets regulation bill, revealed that the Fed had not dumped about $800 billion into the market to rescue the banks and other financial institutions from the Great Recession, as originally and widely thought.

It was much worse. The Fed had actually dumped more than four times that amount or $3.3 TRILLION. These TRILLIONs were lent to domestic and foreign banks (I cannot understand why the U.S. taxpayer would bailout a foreign bank!), hedge funds, and even Harley Davidson. All of these TRILLIONs were disbursed without congressional oversight or approval.

According to the article, the Fed took massive risks with current and future Americans' wealth and financial health by taking on not good loans with solid collateral but "toxic assets." The article goes on to pint out that the Chairman of the Fed, Ben Bernanke, pushed to bailout AIG, the most toxic of all the bailed out companies even though his staff concluded that any AIG bailout was unnecessary.

The article quotes the CEO of JP Morgan, Jamie Dimon, when he told his shareholders "that the bank hadn't actually needed the Fed's help - but the program (loans from the Fed) did save us money." This verifies the assertion made many times in this blog that many of the financial institutions did not really need the Fed's help to survive. They could have made the hard business choices needed to get themselves out of the problems they created (issued more stock, sold off assets, cut salaries and expenses, etc.) but were more than happy to have an out of control and foolish Fed give them a lending hand, courtesy of the American taxpayer.

Thus, the American taxpayer was actually not on the hook for the original $800 billion dollars of bailout (almost $7,000 per U.S. household.) It was much worse with each household responsible for closer to $30,000 per household ($3.3 TRILLION) due to the Fed and Bernanke being out of control and accountable to no government oversight or institution.

- Another article in the December 17. 2010 issue of The Week magazine reported that American students finished 17th in reading test scores, 23rd in science test scores, and 31st math test scores in an international survey conducted by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. These scores were ranked relative to the 60 countries included in the survey. A recent Associated Press article revealed that almost 25% of those wishing to enlist in the U.S. Armed Forces cannot complete basic reading and math tests.

Thus, as we are closing the second year of the Obama Presidency, we see that we are seemingly further and further away from properly educating our kids to compete in the world. Combine these results and findings with a recent quote by Robert Reich in Salon.com (as reported in the December 27, 2010 issue of The Week magazine) where he stated unemployment rate of those Americans without a college education is more than 20 percent (double the national average) and you can see what an education hole the political class has dug for the country.

This continuing public education failure by our political class, regardless of who controls Congress and who controls the White House, is drastically undermining the future economic strength of the country along with the ability of our armed forces to defend us. Shameful.

- Not only has the failure of public education in this country not been addressed in 2010:

• We still do not have a national, comprehensive, and rational energy policy.
• We still do not have a national, comprehensive, and rationale immigration policy.
• We still do not have a rational, comprehensive, and rationale health care reform policy with Obama Care coming apart at its financial underpinnings and in courts throughout the country.
• We still do not have a national, comprehensive, and rationale drug addiction policy. The current policy, the lost "War On Drugs" has not worked for the past forty years, has wasted untold billions of dollars, has not materially reduced drug usage, and has allowed a near lawless, violent narco state to evolve just south of our borders.

- Although we do not have many policies listed above, as we look back to 2010, we still have the following in this country, courtesy of the political class:

• We still have the prison at Guantanamo despite Obama campaign promises to close it.
• We still have the Patriot Act, one of the most freedom inhibiting laws of all time.
• We still have an ineffective SEC who has not prosecuted anyone of consequence despite the largest financial meltdown of our generation. Was everyone involved in the financial markets during the meltdown completely honest and law abiding?
• We still have an ineffective Congress and political class which continues to work on useless legislation such as the recently passed law to regulate the sound of television commercials.
• We still have a perverted election process that allows incumbent politicians to almost ensure their perpetual re-election via controlling earmark allocations, gerrymandering Congressional districts, accepting money from money well endowed organizations (PAcs, corporations, unions, etc.), and moving money around the country to benefit of the political parties but to the detriment of local voters.

I would say have a happy 2011, that it cannot be any worse than 2010. However, every time I say something like that, the political class proves me wrong and makes things worse. Instead, let's hope and work towards replacing those in office with a better and smarter class of people with higher standards of integrity and performance, both in 2011 and beyond. We cannot afford a lot more years like 2010.


Our recent 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.org

"Off With Their (Political) Heads!" Shouted The Queen Of Hearts

Any number of recent events have reinforced the notion that many in our political class really do not know what they are doing. The world has gotten so complex but their grasp of it's realities is so naive. Unfortunately, every time they screw up it usually costs us in wasted tax dollars, lost freedom, or in the Wikileaks scandal, potentially human lives. In an "Alice In Wonderland" world, we could follow the advice of the Queen of Hearts and chop off their political heads and move on, hopefully filling their position with someone more competent.

However, we do not live in Wonderland. But if we did, wouldn't it be great to chop off the political careers of the following politicians:

- According to Robert Scheer, writing in The Nation, and summarized in the December 20, 2010 issue of The Week magazine, of the $44.4 billion increase in U.S. corporate profits this past quarter, about $33.3 billion of those increased corporate profits went to Wall Street banks and investment houses. Many of these firms are the same ones that were at the center of the financial meltdown with their risky investments and some were saved with taxpayer bailout money. What's more irritating is that these same financial firms, flush with cash and profits, are not making very many loans to businesses and consumers, loans that might finally get the economy moving again.

Why are they not making any loans? According to John Cassidy, writing in The New Yorker, the banks can make more money "exploiting complex security trading, day-to-day movements in the markets and other financial schemes. They do not have to make traditional loans anymore in order to make oodles of money.

Who were the brilliant politicians who worked on the bailout process that saved many big financial firms, firms that were "to big to fail," wasted billions of taxpayers dollars, and apparently included nothing in the financial industry reform legislation to prevent the banks from getting bigger and less responsive to the market? Off with their heads!

-Continuing along in the same industry, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, Ben Bernanke, has this wonderful plan to get the economy jump started. It is called quantitative easing but in layman's terms it means our central bank, the Fed, is going to create $600 billion out of thin air ("print money") and use it to buy back government bonds owned by the same financial firms discussed in the previous point. His hope is that the banks, flush with this new pile of money, will go out and start making loans, getting the economy growing again.


Hey Ben, I may not be an expert on quantitative easing but won't these banks and other financial institutions just take the money and use it the way they have been using their own profits and cash, i.e. play the market rather than grow the market? If they can make a lot of money playing with their tens of billions of dollars, imagine how much money they can make playing the market with the hundreds of billions of dollars you are going to give them, apparently with no stipulation that they loan it out. Off with his head!


- Recent results form an Associated Press/CNBC poll indicated that 59% of those surveyed prefer cutting Federal government budgets and services and about half that many (30%) preferred raising taxes. 85% of those surveyed are worried that our high national debt will be harmful to future generations.


Thus, average Americans understand what our problem is, high national debt is really a government spending problem, not a government revenue problem, and the current trend of deficit spending will be detrimental to future generations of Americans. How does our political class respond? They cannot come to a consensus on the President's Debt Reduction Commission, with only 11 of the 18 members approving the final recommendations of the Commission, three short of the 14 votes that were needed to get put before Congress. Off with their heads, especially the Commission's Democrats who voted against the plan, stating that there were not enough tax increases and there were too many spending cuts in the recommendations. Apparently they did not get the poll results.


- Let's talk about the Wikileaks fiasco. An ordinary U.S. Army private logs onto his government computer and with about $5.00 worth of hardware, a blank CD disc and a portable USB drive, downloads hundreds of thousands of documents that expose many valuable secrets of the U.S. military around the world. These documents identified local contacts in countries such as Afghanistan who were working closely with the U.S. military in fighting the Taliban. The documents placed them and our fighting troops in additional danger.


Apparently no computer security firewalls were breached. No complex, online security measures were hacked and undermined. Just a USB drive and a CD disc. How simple can it get? And to my knowledge no one has been fired for such lax security. Yes, the private has been arrested and is in custody, but someone, whether it is the Secretary of Defense or someone underneath him on the organization chart needs to fall on their sword for this one. We spend hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars a year for the defense Department and is it this simple to expose the entire U.S. military data systems to this soldier's downloads? Off with someone's head.


- Wikileaks, Part II. Let's move over to the State Department where the damage might be even more devastating. Previous State Department documents release by Wikileaks showed how the State Department worked and contained personal references and appraisals by U.S. diplomats of leaders from around the world, often in non-flattering terms. These disclosures have damaged our relationships with world leaders in ways that we have no idea how yet. Why would anyone in a foreign government tell our diplomats anything valuable or personal in the future since the State Department has proven via Wikileaks that we cannot keep a secret from the world?


But it gets worse and the potential damage far more lethal. In a December 6, 2010 Associate Press article, we find that Wikileaks has posted a secret U.S. cable on its website that lists entities worldwide that our government considers critical to our national security. The article quotes U.S. officials fearing that the publication of the cable gives a hit list to terrorists. The cable, "Critical Foreign Dependencies Initiative List," included such things as border crossings, hydroelectric dams, undersea communications lines, food suppliers, shipping lanes, manufacturers of components used in U.S. weapons systems, and vaccine sources.


Here's the sad part. Hillary Clinton deemed the list so important that if these sites were "destroyed, disrupted, or exploited, would likely have an immediate and deleterious effect on the United States." In other words. the Secretary of State knew how important and dangerous this list was and still Wikileaks was able to get their hands on it. What do these people use for computer security if they cannot even protect this most valuable piece of intelligence? Unbelievable.


And apparently Wikileaks is not done. The website apparently held back some disclosures as "insurance." This information was stored and downloaded by multiple people in an encrypted file that can be opened only if the Wikileads head guy, Julian Assange, gives out the password. He claims he kept the really good stuff in that file as insurance for himself. Who knows what other damaging information the State Department has let leak out and now an entire Federal government department is at the mercy of a single man.


As with the defense information leaks, someone, be it Hillary or someone high up at the State department needs to be fired. This breach of security is historic and could be fatal for a lot of people. In real life, outside of politics, people lose their job every day for incompetence. Same thing should apply to government work, especially a screw up this large. If Gates and/or Hillary got fired by Obama for this mess you can bet it would get the attention of a lot of other government bigwigs. I would bet these highly paid folks would  immediately would be taking a long hard look at beefing up their own data security procedures, a hard look that hopefully would be to the benefit of all Americans. Off with their heads!


Maybe the Queen of Hearts had it right, off with their heads. As an alternative to this rather drastic approach, Step 34 from "Love My Country, Loathe My government," would be a good start. Step 34 would remove any member of Congress sitting on a Congressional committee or subcommittee if the government functions those committees were overseeing fail at executing their responsibilities. Alternative methods of determining failure are outlined in the book under Step 34.


Thus, this step would remove those Congressional members from any committee responsible for Defense Department and State Department data security. These leaks will cost us in so many ways including additional tax dollars to repair the damage, lost credibility with world leaders, and potentially lost human lives due the the military and other intelligence that is now in the hands of our enemies. Not only should high ranking  members of these two Departments pay for the leaks but Congressional members also should absorb some kind of negative hit, short of, of course, "off with their heads."


Our recent 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/

The Conflicts Of Interest and The Lies That Are Our Political Class When It Comes To Banks

Consider the sleazy, conflict of interest behavior of our political class that has occurred over the past year or so:


- In the middle of the TARP bank bailout discussion and debate, the Associated Press reported that Congresswoman Ginny Waite Brown from Florida was actively trading stocks of the very banks she was helping determine if and how much taxpayer bailout money those very banks would be receiving. She obviously had insider information since she knew what banks would be getting a government bailout boost and which ones would not. In real life this is called insider trading and is generally a felony. In the political class reality, this is business as usual. When called out on this obviously conflict of interest, her staff tried to justify these actions by revealing that she had actually lost money on these trades. How ridiculous is this justification? It was alright to participate in insider trading and have a gross conflict of interest since she was an incompetent stock trader? Don't think that argument would hold up in court. Conflict of interest, insider trading style.

- A Bloomberg.com report, that was reprinted recently in an October issue of The Week magazine, reported that six dozen Congressional staffers had traded in stocks of companies that their political bosses were actively involved in. One staffer heavily traded in Bank Of American stock when he found out early, before the rest of the world, that Bank of America had successfully passed its so-called "stress test," i.e. it was deemed a healthy company. Conflict of interest, being a parasite off of a politician style.


- Congresswoman Maxine Walters is likely to go on trial before the House Of Representatives after the midterm elections, accused of allegedly using her influence in Congress to get the Treasury Department to change their minds on a specific bank and to allow it to get bailout funds. Apparently, according to the investigators. Ms. Walters' husband stood to lose a substantial investment he had made in the failing bank unless it was bailed out with taxpayer money. Conflict of interest, family style.


- It is interesting that Ms Walters will be facing charges while Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii will not. The Associated Press reported some time ago that Mr Inouye's staff had encouraged those in charge of bailouts to funnel some taxpayer bailout money to a local Hawaiian that was initially not going to receive any government funds. The reason his staff was allegedly involved: the Senator had invested a substantial amount of his personal funds in the bank, which would be lost if the bank was not bailed out by the Treasury Department. Conflict of interest, personal wealth style.


- A December, 2008 Associated Press article reported that earlier in the year many of the big banks and financial institutions that received taxpayer bailout money were also heavy contributors to the implementation of both the Democratic and Republican national conventions. AIG, Goldman Sachs, Citibank, and Freddie Mac (a government entity!) had themselves contributed $3.1 million to the parties and celebrations that are also known as political conventions (other banks had also contributed more). Several months after the conventions, these same companies received tens of billions of dollars in unwarranted taxpayer funds. Not a bad deal, give the political class millions, have the political class give them back billions in taxpayer dollars. Conflict of interest, corporate welfare style.


- And now the latest in sleazy political class behavior. According to an October 22, 2010 article in the Boston Herald by Dave Wedge, Massachusetts Congressman, Barney Frank, has accepted $40,000 from financial institutions that received bailout/TARP from the government. Two things make this action so despicable. First, Congressman Frank was at the center of the whole taxpayer bank bailout activity since he was chairman of the lead House of Representatives committee that was determining which institutions got how much taxpayer money, if any. Second, in 2009, Mr. Frank told the Washington publication, Roll Call, that he "won't take any PAC money from banks that took TARP funds, nor would I take it from the top executive." However, according to Mr. Wedge's research and article:

• According to Mr Frank's own campaign disclosure reports, he accepted a campaign donation of $7,000 from top executives from Bank Of America. Bank of America received  $45 billion in taxpayer bailout funds.
• He received $5,000 for Bank Of America's Federal PAC fund.
• He received $10,000 form the Bank Of New York Mellon Corporation which received $3 billion from the bailout fund.
• He received $2,000 from the Financial Services Roundtable PAC that includes representatives from TARP recipients Bank of America, JP Morgan, Chase, and Wells Fargo.
• He received $1,000 from U.S. Bancorp's PAC which received $6 billion in bailout funds.

I guess the pledge had a time limit or expiration date. It was good for as long as Mr. Frank did not need the money. Makes you wonder why we ever believe what the politicians tell us. They never seem to really mean it and have no problem justifying their behavior in their own minds, hypocrisy and conflict of interest be damned.

These are just a few examples of how the political class is so much more concerned about their own wealth, their own welfare, and their own future and not the wealth, welfare, and future of ordinary Americans and the country as a whole. That is why systematic changes are needed to structurally change how politicians behave, they have proven time and again that when left to their own devices and integrity, they cannot do the right and ethical thing. Several steps from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" would be a good start to this structural change:

• Step 39 - implement term limits so that re-election campaigns and their financing become a thing of the past since re-elections would no longer exist.
• Step 40 - prohibit any politicians to go to work for a company or lobbying firm or other entity that the politicians had responsibility for during their tenure in office for at least ten years after they leave office.
• Step 7 - implement election financing rules and laws that allow only individual citizens to contribute to election campaigns. The Bill of Rights guarantees freedom of speech for individual Americans, not freedom of speech for corporations, unions, PACs, etc., they should not be protected by this individual freedom and should not be allowe to flood the election process with funding. Only individual American should be allowed to contribute to election campaigns.
• Step 38 - require all politicians to sign off on an annual shared values commitment pledge which includes enhanced anti-conflict of interest rules that result in stronger penalties for personal wealth, family welfare, insider information, insider trading, and other conflict of interest situations which could result in stiffer penalties including dismissal from office and criminal prosecution.

Our politicians have proven that they cannot prevent the conflict of interest sleaze that follows them around. We will have to do it for them with the above steps and an ever vigilant watch that requires us to identify subtlee and overt conflicts of interest and demand that they be eliminated. It is time for America and its citizens to retake the central focus of the government, not the individual welfare of the political class.


Our new 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 folloiwng sites for freedom:



http://www.cato.org/

http://www.robertringer.com/

http://www.realpolichick.blogspot.com/

http://www.flipcongress2010.com/

http://www.reason.com/

Mad, Sad, and Been Had By The American Political Class - Part 1

No overall theme today, just a listing of some recent actions by the American political class that either make me mad, make me more saddened and disappointed in our leaders, or just make me shake my head:

• According to a blurb in the July 16, 2010 issue of The Week magazine, a recent public opinion poll from the Marist Institute reported that 26% of Americans do not know that we as a nation won our independence from the English. Some respondents within this 26% cited France, China, Mexico, and others as the country we gained our independence from. This is both an indictment of our public education system and a threat to our freedom going forward if we have so many citizens that do not have even a basic knowledge of our history of freedom and liberty.
• An Associated Press article from July 23, 2010 reported that while the government was paying tens of billions of dollars to various financial institutions, those same institutions were paying out $1.6 billion in compensation to the institutions' executives that got those companies in trouble in the first place. Plus, the Obama administration will not try to recover any of that taxpayer money because the administration's pay czar thought shaming the financial institutions was punishment enough. Yeah, right. They were so ashamed that they all still cashed the checks. This just provides another example of how poorly constructed and how poorly executed the whole bailout/TARP process was and how unprepared the political class was once the financial situation deteriorated so quickly.
• Elizabeth Warren, who is one of the few people in Washington that knows how to analyze and solve a problem and who is not bashful of telling the truth, no matter how ugly it is, is being considered to head up the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that the latest financial regulatory overall law establishes. Regardless of what you may think of the law, Alabama Senator Richard Shelby does not want Warren to head up the organization because she is "trying to change everything." Better we should change nothing and stay in the mess we are now? Excuse me Senator, but keeping the status quo is actually going backwards (The Week magazine - week of August 6, 2010).
• According to an article in the Washington Post, as summarized in the The Week in the August 6, 2010 issue, 75% of the lobbyists who work for oil and gas companies previously worked for the Federal government, more than twice the rate than other industries. The lobbyists for these oil and gas companies include eighteen former members of Congress and dozens of their former Congressional aides. I am not saying that the BP oil spill would not have happened if government officials, both past and present, had not been so chummy with the same companies they are supposed to be regulating, but in the future, Step 40 from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" would prevent even the faintest hint of favoritism since it would prohibit politicians from going to work for any lobbyist organization for ten years after the politician's term expired.
• According to a Wall Street Journal article that was summarized in the July 23, 2010 issue of The Week magazine, the late Senator Robert Byrd funneled more than $4 billion in pork expenditures to his home state of West Virginia over the years. What did these billions of dollars accomplish? According to the article, this dependency on money from Washington may have actually made the state worse off since during Byrd's tenure, the state actually got poorer relative to other states, falling from 39th to 48th in the measure of per capita income. It also resulted in the creation of a modern highway, Route 50, that is as economically useless as the Alaskan bridge to nowhere would have been. More taxpayer money wasted, no lives improved.
• By now, most people should be aware that there may be a House Of Representatives trial in the fall to consider thirteen charges that have been leveled at Congressman Charles Rangel by a House ethics committee. These alleged infractions include misusing his office resources and tax and disclosure violations. What makes me mad here, but does not surprise me, is that regardless of what party is in charge, the corruption goes on and on. Nancy Pelosi said she would drain the swamp of corruption when the Democrats took over, but apparently that may not be the case. Given that the charges were made by the peers of Rangel, I am assuming they must be very strong, too strong to ignore. What I dread is that political sniping that will go on in the fall, elections season, while this trial is underway. You can bet no substantial issues will be debated, no problems solved, no solutions put forth. Pure, unadulterated political in fighting serving no one's purposes accept the politicians.
• Not to be outdone, the same ethics panel will be putting forth ethics charges against Congresswoman Maxine Walters for violating a House rule that members not exert improper influence that results in a personal benefit, that members not grant or accept special favors for themselves or family members that could be viewed as influencing official actions, and a rule that member's conduct must reflect creditably on the House. The sad part of these charges, if true, is that others in the Congress have not been reprimanded for similar actions. Senator Daniel Inouye did the same type of influence peddling in the bank regulation arena that Walters is accused of doing and nothing has happened to him. At least one member of the House was actively trading bank and other financial institution stocks in her personal portfolio while serving as a member of a Congressional committee that was deciding what banks would get bailout money and how much they would get. This is called insider trading and certainly falls under the special favors violation but nothing happened to these people either. Thus, while I am sad that at least two members of Congress allegedly traded off of their positions for personal gain, I am also disappointed that other known members of Congress did the same but have not been punished. Makes me continue to question Pelosi's claim of draining the swamp of corruption when so many are still knee deep in that corruption swamp.
• Let's close on a happy note. According to a report in http://www.politico.com/ and summarized in the August 6, 2010 issue of The Week magazine, Senator John Ensign is fighting a legal and ethics battle as a result of having an affair with an aide's wife. He felt the need to start a legal defense fund to help in this battle, which was established in May. So far, the defense fund has accumulated a grand total of $10, and that $10 came as a result of a contribution from Ensign himself. Thus, maybe this is a first sign that Americans are getting fed up with the poor performance and unethical behavior of the leaders in Washington.

Mad, sad, disappointed, and left shaking my head. Way to go political class, hardly a way to lead and move the country forward.


Our new 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.

Also visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.cato.org/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/