October, 2013 Political Class Insanity, Part 3: An Underpaid/Delusional Congressman, Banks Still Rule, and More

Please note: Nancy Pelosi recently made the outrageous comment that there was no waste to be cut in the Federal govnerment, i.e. EVERY dollar the Washington political class spends is essential to our country. Keep this insanity in mind as we go through this month's polticial class insanity, you will quickly see that she is very much out of touch with the reality of today's wasteful federal government.

This is the third in a series to review the latest insanity, lunacy and antics from the American political class. The first two posts were quite depressing. We saw politicians getting richer, fraudsters getting richer, bridges ready to collapse around the country, and more. As a warning, the insanity today and in subsequent days will be as bad, as wasteful, and as depressing as the insanity we have covered this month and in the years leading up to this month. The number of politicians stays the same but the idiocy they come up with, the ineptness they exhibit, continues to grow exponentially.

1) Over 20 million Americans are unemployed or under employed. The average/median household annual income in this country has dropped substantially since AFTER the recession ended and is now about $50,000. The price of gas is up about 80% since Obama took office. Food stamp recipients now total over 47 million Americans, an all time record by far.

And what does a current member of Congress think about his salary, currently about $172,000 a year with outstanding benefits to boot? According to  recent Politico article, one lawmaker, Congressman Phil Gingrey,  said he’s “stuck” making $172,000 a year, while Congressional aides will go on to make in big bucks lobbying on K Street, according to a National Review report. Staffers “may be 33 years old now and not making a lot of money. But in a few years they can just go to K Street…and make $500,000 a year. Meanwhile I’m stuck here making $172,000 a year,” Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.) said, according to the National Review.

He is “stuck making $172,000” while tens of millions of Americans cannot even find a job or need help putting food on the table. He is “stuck” making three times more in salary than what the typical American family makes. And it is not like the Congressman is poor. According to Politico, quoting the National Review reports, his net worth is about $3 million. 

We are truly living in a “Hunger Games” country when the country is suffering dire economic stress and a Washington politician complains about only making $172,000.

2) The U.S. healthcare industry can make you shudder. According to Aetna, in the United States, we spend over $2.3 TRILLION a year on health care. No other country in the world spends more but 32 other countries in the world have higher average life expectancies. 

This comes out to over $10,000 a year for every single American citizen but we still rank 33rd in the world. And Obama Care is likely to make us spend more and fall further down the rankings since the legislation never looked at the root causes of the $2.3 TRILLON expense.

3) According to a recent article from the New York Post, that was reviewed in the September 30, 3012 issue of The Week magazine, in just 2001 alone former Congressman Robert Kennedy, Jr. had sexual trysts with 37 different women. He tracked and categorized these trysts, along with annotations, in a diary that the Post had obtained.

Kennedy, whose wife committed suicide last year, is just another politician whose respect for his spouse, his word of honor, his constituents, and his public office is no better than the politicians who came before him, e.g. Weiner, Spitzer, Edwards, MacGreevey, Sanford, Ensign, his uncle JFK, etc. If you are having affairs with 37 different women, it is a lot tougher focusing on the government work of the people.

4) An article in the December, 2012 issue of Reason magazine gave a stunning example of how government spending and mismanagement of taxpayer wealth is so out of control, using the Chicago city government as an example:

• While trying to get its out-of-control budget tamed, between 2003 and 2012 the city of Chicago eliminated more than 8,000 city jobs, about 20% of its workforce.
• However, according to a recent analysis from the Illinois Policy Institute, the cost of health care for the remaining employees’ jumped 29% in 2012.
• Additionally, from 2003 to 2012 the annual cost of a city employee on the city payroll jumped from $58,299 per employee to $96,082.
• Thus, with 20% fewer employees compared to 2003, the city is paying out $700 million more a year for 20% fewer employees vs. 2003. 
• Far fewer employees and far more costs, you cannot make this stuff up.
• But it gets worse since on the current budget trend, the city must find a way to increase its annual contributions to the employee pensions fund by almost three fold, from $476 million a year to $1.2 billion a year by 2015.

Needless to say, unless some drastic cuts are taking soon, the city is going pull a “Detroit” in the next few years despite cutting a fifth of its workforce. This is the poster child for out-of-control government spending when you slash staff but increase your staffing budget.

5) I get a little sense of relief when I find out that at least our politicians are no different when it comes to politicians around the world in wasting taxpayer money. The latest issue of Business Week has some information on how the Chinese government has gone overboard building infrastructure in China and has allowed loose credit policies (are you listening, Federal Reserve board) to result in the building of new towns and special zones that have gone unused and unoccupied because while the government said to build and encouraged building. The immutable forces of the market said there was no need or demand for the build outs.

 One of the most glaring examples of taxpayer wealth wasted  is the building of a new airport in a far flung city in the western Chinese hinterlands in the Xinjiang province. The new airport has four check-in counters and handles a grand total of two flights a DAY. Thus, wasting taxpayer money does not appear to be a uniquely American political talent.

6) On January 21, 2010, President Obama stated: “I’m proposing a simple and common sense [financial] reform, which we’re calling the Volcker Rule, after this tall guy behind me.” The Volcker rule that he proposed was to ensure that banks could not make investment bets and investments that would stick American taxpayers with the bill if the banks ended up failing, much like what happened in the Great Recession. 

Simple enough. When the Dodd-Frank financial industry reform legislation was passed, the Volcker rule encompassed 12 pages of the final bill. Three years later, the rule has still not been written into formal, enforceable regulations. The unfinal, unapproved regulations now run 530 pages long and we still do not have an answer of how to do this simple thing.

Deadlines for enforcement continue to be missed and you can be sure that many lawsuits will ensue since translating 12 pages of law into well over 500 pages of regulations is going to tick off some people regarding the intent of the original 12 pages and the effect of over 500 pages.

Whenever something can be done simply, you can be sure that our political class will make longer, more difficult and less effective.

7) Speaking of financial matters and the Great Recession, a graphic from a recent issue of Business Week showed how much taxpayer money that the Federal government gave to bail out the firm AIG actually passed through AIG and directly into the hands of foreign banks:

• Canadian banks got $1.4 billion of American taxpayer wealth
• French banks got $20.8 billion
• British banks got $2.6 billion
• German banks got $10.8 billion
• Swiss banks got $3.8 billion
• Netherlands banks got $.6 billion
• Total = $40 billion of American taxpayer wealth ended in the vaults of foreign banks.

Which obviously raises the question of why were foreign banks relieved of the responsibility for their stupid decisions in the marketplace? And why were American taxpayers forced to pay for their stupid decisions?

That $40 billion could have been used to:

• Give every American household a $350 tax rebate.
• Could have kept the White House tours operating for 40,000 years.
• Could have put a trained, armed police professional in every U.S. school for about five years to prevent future Newtown like shootings.

Never underestimate the ability of the American political class to take care of bankers and itself from a financial backer and donor perspective. And now they have expanded to take care of overseas bankers also.

Enough insanity for today but tomorrow brings another day and another batch of lunacy from our politicians.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now:http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.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

Who Really Caused The Great Recession - Part 2: Fannie and Freddie Perform The Great Escape

Yesterday, we reviewed the first part of this two part series, which tries to identify the real culprits behind the Great Recession. Not those that profited it from it, like mortgage brokers, Washington politicians and their insider trading, Wall Street, banks, etc. Not those that eventually were burned by their poor business and bad ethics decisions.

No, we want to find out the true root causes of the Great Recession, what was the real underlying force that resulted in all of the financial industry shenanigans, shenanigans that could not have happened unless that root cause of the problem was not present. Without the root cause, the Great Recession does not occur.

The basis of yesterday's discussion was a chapter from a new book, "Duped America," by Richard Bernstein. Mr. Bernstein makes a very convincing argument that the Great Recession's root cause was very simply Democratic politicians' abusive manipulation and shameful, selfish misuse of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the Federal Housing Authority, and Federal government housing policy since the Carter Presidency.

Today we turn to an extensive interview that was published in the June, 2012 issue of Reason magazine. The interviewee was Peter Wallison of the American Enterprise Institute. Wallison had previously worked as White House counsel and Treasury Department general counsel during the Reagan Presidency.

He also served on the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) which was supposed to come up with the definitive answers to what caused the Great Recession but which ended up with a split set of answers, split along Democrats and Republicans. Thus, Mr.Wallison has been around the issue of government for a long time.

On the one year anniversary of the FCIC publishing its findings, Mr. Wallison had the following to say about the root causes of the Great Recession:

• He disagrees with the overall FCIC findings that the recession was caused by a mixture of deregulation, Wall Street greed, predatory lending, and many other things.
• He advances the theory that these conclusions was reached by many on the Commission before the actual Commission investigation took place and that the subsequent investigation was used only to confirm their biased answers.
• Like Bernstein, he blames Fannie and Freddie as the primary culprits because: "The government's housing policy was intended to provide financing to people who were unable for one reason or another - mostly lack of resources - to get mortgage credit."
• He also attributes the birth of the recession to the Carter administration's passage of the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) which put the Housing and Urban Development organizations in charge of this effort to get unqualified Americans into a mortgage arrangement and a home.
• He states that by 2008, there were about 28 million subprime, weak mortgages in effect in the country. That was about half of ALL mortgages that were in effect and of that 28 million, 20.4 million of them were on the books of various government agencies. The 20.4 is a whopping 36% of all mortgages and almost 70% of the weak mortgages.
• He concludes that the 20.4 million bad mortgages existed as a result of the CRA and would not have existed at all if the free market had been allowed to operate naturally.
• Mr. Wallison is very careful in explaining his conclusions. He is not saying that government housing policy caused the Great Recession. The subtlety to his findings and analyses is that without the intrusive government housing policies that evolved directly from the CRA, the financial meltdown and recession would not have happened.
• The government's creation of 20 million weak mortgages and the eventual collapse of many of them led to the financial weaknesses throughout the financial system and the economy as a whole.
• These weaknesses reverberated back through the banks and other financial institutions when those mortgages could not be paid.
• He disputes the theory that big banks had to be bailed out since when Lehman Brothers collapsed without getting a government bailout, no other major banks collapsed as a result. The results of Lehman's collapse were messy and inconvenient for the industry but not fatal, disputing the call and need for the bank bailouts.
• He concludes that since the Great Recession was caused by government housing policy and mismanagement via Fannie and Freddie. He then correctly points out that Fannie and Freddie were not addressed at all in the Dodd-Frank financial industry reform legislation, and thus, the root cause of the Great Recession has not been addressed or resolved by the legislation since these two government disasters escaped any kind of attention within the legislation.
• Given the failure of Dodd-Frank to address failed government housing polices, we unnecessarily ended up with massive new Federal government regulation forced onto the entire economy, beyond just banks, regulation that will waste more economic time and resources like every other massive Federal government bureaucracy without solving the original problem.
• With any type of regulation, especially massive new regulations from this bill, massive uncertainty is introduced into the market which freezes economic growth and vitality.
• One example that he gives in the interview goes back to Fannie and Freddie. Since they are not covered by the regulations introduced by Dodd-Frank, they have a built in competitive advantage to any private sector financial entity that wants to get into the mortgage industry. This depresses competition and strengthens the very causes of the Great Recession, Fannie and Freddie.
• As a result, with no new entrants to compete with the Federal government in the housing industry, Mr. Wallison concludes the housing industry will not recover any time soon and that the status quo we are living with, a mortgage and housing industry dominated by an inept set of government agencies (Fannie and Freddie), will continue to drag down the economy.

Thus, Mr. Wallison basically comes to the same conclusion we reached yesterday. The Community Reinvestment Act from the late 1970s started the ill fated government housing policies that resulted in over 20 million faux mortgages that would never have been created in a regulation free market that weakened the overall financial system and economy when these faux mortgages began it naturally implode which led to the political class misdiagnosing the causes of the financial meltdown, either intentionally or unintentionally, which led to the Dodd-Frank legislation which excluded the culprits from their legislation's reach (Freddie, Fannie, and government housing policy) which restricts competition in today's housing market which suppresses housing demand which depresses economic activity.

A straight line from cause to effect. A long straight line but still a straight line.

Mr. Wallison does not address the greed of Wall Street bankers, the greed of community bankers, the greed of mortgage lenders, the deception of securitization and the bundling of mortgages, the deceptive lending practices, etc. These actions probably all occurred.

But he correctly points out that none of these actions, behaviors and greed happen if the political class, through the Federal government, does not foster and encourage the creation of weak mortgages for political gain and then makes the American taxpayer assume all of the risk until the house of cards collapses.

The sad part is once the cards collapse, the political class misdiagnoses the cause of the collapse and leaves the original root causes in place for the next housing and financial collapse. In the meantime, their solution, Dodd-Frank, ends up crippling the economy into the foreseeable future and leaves the seeds of a second Great Recession firmly in place.



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 or 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/

Occupy Wall Street and The Ignorance Of Their Math

As most Americans know, there have been protests going on in major U.S. and international cities called Occupy Wall Street. They are a loose knit group, to say the least, with confused and divergent objectives. The most frequently occurring complaints are that corporations in general, and Wall Street banks in particular, are too greedy, that 1% of the population controls too much of the nation's wealth and the wealthy 1% need to be arbitrarily punished for being in that situation.

We could probably do any number of posts on the philosophy of soaking the rich, taxing the rich more, greedy banks, etc. However, rather than get into an endless and pointless loop of emotionally arguing with Occupy Wall Street supporters, let's look at the math behind their demands and positions. I find in life that if you understand the underlying math and the reality of that math, you can understand the world a lot more clearly, a lot less emotionally.

Let's start with some basic assumptions and basic math, mostly taken from government and other, respectable sources, (sources include the official IRS website, http://www.usgovernmentrevenue.com/, U.S. Census Department):

• Number of U.S. households - 114,000,000 households
• Population of the United States - 308,745,538 according to U.S. Census reports
• Number of U.S. individual income tax returns filed with the IRS in 2009, the latest year data was available - 140,494,127 returns
• Number of individual income tax returns filed with the IRS in 2009 showing more than $1,000,000 income - 236,883 returns
• Total amount of income of those tax returns with more than $1,000,000 in income in 2009 - $726,910,880,000
• Percentage of 2009 Federal income taxes paid by top 1% of earners in the country - 40%
• Expected 2011 Federal government revenue - $2.174 TRILLION
• Expected 2011 Federal government budget deficit - $1.3 TRILLION
• Percentage of 2011 Federal government revenue that comes from individual income taxes - 53%
• Percentage of 2011 Federal government revenue that comes from payroll taxes - 37%
• Percentage of 2011 Federal government revenue that comes from individual income taxes and payroll taxes - 71.5% (53% plus half of the 37% that is paid by individuals)
• Estimated 2010 total revenue of the nation's four largest banks - $350 billion
• Estimated national debt - Approaching $15 TRILLION
• Estimated total wealth (money, stocks, bonds, cars, real estate, etc.) of the richest 400 Americans according to Forbes magazine - $2.4 TRILLION

Let's do some basic math, thinking relative to how the occupy Wall Street people think:

- Percentage of U.S. tax returns filed by people making more than $1,000,000 a year = .17%, significantly less than 1%. This number surprises many people, with the vast majority of people thinking that there are certainly must be more than about 236,000 Americans earning over $1,000,000 a year. Thus, there are not a lot of American millionaire earners that could be taxed more to support the rest of the country.

[Side note: the total number of Americans earning over $1,000,000 is down by about a third relative to the 2007 IRS statistics, a reduction in taxes that will have to be made up by other non-millionaire American tax filers. At this rate, Obama, Reid, and Pelosi should wipe out high earning Americans within four years.]

- Four of the largest banks in America (Bank Of America, Wells Fargo, JP MOrgan, Citigroup) had 2010 revenue of about $418 billion in 2010. Let's use that number since 2011 is not yet done and their revenue is probably down year over year, given the bad economy. Occupy Wall Street people think that these banks make too much money.

If we made the banks set aside 10% of their revenue a year for ordinary Americans as a result of these demonstrations, each American would receive about $135, assuming that the bureaucracy of distributing the money did not eat up a lot of the 10%. Hardly enough for the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators to pay off their student loans or substantially improve their lives.

- Almost two thirds of the those Americans earning over $1,000,000 earned between $1.0 and $2.0 million in 2009. Thus, it is not like there are that many Americans earning billions of dollars that would make a substantially dent in any financial aspect of the nation's financials.

The average earnings for these two thirds is about $1.4 million, hardly enough to make everyone in the so-called 99% rich or even moderately better off. In fact, just over 8,000 American tax filers in 2009 made over $10 million. These people represent just .01% of tax filers in America.

- Harry Reid wants to impose a 5% tax on the income above $1,000,000 of any American who earns over $1,000,000. If he somehow got this inane proposal passed, it would generate about $28 billion additional revenue a year. This would reduce the tax burden of every other American taxpayer by only about $198, it would account for a mere .8% of  the 2011 Federal government budget, and only 2% or so of the 2011 Federal budget deficit.

In other words, the Harry Reid proposal would have basically no impact on any American or government spending excess. All it would do is remove disposable income from the economy, quite possibly resulting in more unemployment, less economic growth, and more government inefficiency.

- Let's get absurd and assume that the Federal government confiscated EVERY dollar from these 236,000 Americans who earned over a million dollars in 2009. These people earned about $727 billion, that if it was distributed to other American households, each one would receive about $6,400.

Now, the Occupy Wall Street people would say we are getting some serious change or justice for the so-called 99%. However, these 2009 American millionaires would be unlikely to ever work hard again if the government took ALL of their earnings. The taxes they would have paid in subsequent years would now have to be paid by the 99%.

If we assume that the millionaires paid about 30% of their earnings to the Federal government, the non-millionaires would have to pay about $1,550 more each year to keep government revenue at the same level. Thus, beginning in the fifth year, the non-millionaires would be in a losing proposition since the they would have been past the break even point of the initial $6,400 they received and would be paying $1,550 extra in taxes a year, forever.

- If the Federal government confiscated the wealth of the 400 richest Americans, (cars, boats, real estate, cars, investments, etc.), they would end up with about $2.4 TRILLION of wealth that they could use to cover about 69% of the Federal government's 2011 spending. In other words, stealing the total wealth of the richest 400 Americans could not cover even one year's worth of political class spending and waste.

It could be safely assumed that these 400 Americans would never go to the effort to earn a lot of money again, forcing the remaining U.S. taxpayers to make up the difference in every succeeding year in Federal government taxes that these 400 Americans would have paid.

- This $2.4 TRILLION of confiscated wealth would cover only about 16% of the country's current national debt. The remaining national debt would have to be paid off by the rest of America, most of whom earn far less than $1,000,000 a year. Thus, "eat the rich," the despicable slogan the Occupy Wall Street people often use, would have a very short term desired effect but the long term effect would place a significant and ongoing burden on the non-millionaire taxpayers relative to the national debt.

- According to a Washington Post article that was summarized in The Week magazine in the October 21, 2011 issue, the average household wealth of the top 1% of households in America was $14 million in 2009. If we confiscated all of this wealth and redistributed to the so-called 99%, each household would receive about $141,000. Wow, now we are talking about true socialism or even communism,  power to the people.

However, now matter how attractive this windfall appears, it would have devastating long term consequences to most households and our nation. It is probably a safe assumption that the 1% of American households who had their entire wealth stolen and redistributed would never work hard again, given the threat of confiscation. Thus, the so-called 99% would have to pay more in annual income and payroll taxes to make up for what the 1% pay each year.

This incremental annual payment for each of the households in the 99% would be about $8,800 to cover what the Federal government spends each year. Thus, unless government spending was reduced, in sixteen years the 99% would get to their break even point and starting in year seventeen and going on forever, the 99% households would be paying $8,800 incremental a year, an ongoing penalty for killing off the vile 1%.

You get the idea. The math shows that even in the highly unlikely scenarios where the government confiscates the entire wealth of certain Americans, the impact, both short term and long term, on the rest of America eventually becomes negative. The math also shows that confiscating 10% of big bank revenue has a negligible effect on the 99%. Anything less than full confiscation is even less effective in changing the lives of the Occupy Wall Street crowd.

However, there is one avenue where a change in behavior would have long term positive consequences for EVERY American. In our October 6, 2011 post, we easily identified over $500 billion a year in government spending savings that could be incurred  on an annual basis if we clean up the fraud, waste, and excesses in Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, IRS, the military budget, and other government wastelands. If these savings were realized, these savings would be worth about $4,300 a year, EVERY year, for each American household without raising the taxes of anyone.

The October 6 post was not inclusive of all changes in government spending reductions, efficiencies, and savings that are available so this $4,300 is a worst case. Thus, the Occupy Wall Street people need to be down in Washington and getting into the face of the political class, that is where hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars can be recovered EVERY year for the good of the country and the good of every American.

Insisting that the banks and wealthy Americans give up their wealth, even in a total confiscation scenario, just does not add up, as the above math proves. As usual, the enemy is not our fellow Americans, the enemy is the incompetent and wasteful politicians in office in D.C.




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

Random Questions For The American Political Class - I Was Just Wondering

According to news reports, most of the politicians that left Washington last month for their five week vacation held very few town hall style meetings to reconnect with their constituents. Could it be that they did  not WANT to reconnect with their constituents, given the extremely low ratings the American political class garners in all major opinion polls?

In the absence of face-to-face meetings with our elected officials, I thought it would be a public service if we could lay out the questions many Americans would have asked their elected officials if they had decided to meet with their voters:

- I was just wondering... if the American taxpayer had to bail out the banks because they were too big to fail, how come the top four banks in the country are even bigger now than they were before the Great Recession? According to September 12, 2011 issue of Business Week, before the Great Recession, the top four banks in the country accounted for 45.2% of all bank assets in the country. Now, the top four banks now account for 56.8% of all bank assets in the country.

Did all of the political class action (bailouts, TARP, Federal Reserve quantitative easings, financial reform legislation, etc.) have the exact opposite of what was intended,. i.e. too big too fail got bigger?

- I was just wondering...whose great idea was it to give a California solar energy manufacturer more than half a billion dollars in Federal loan guarantees without doing due diligence, resulting in  that company going bankrupt a very short time after the political class wrote them a check for half a billion dollars?

- I was just wondering... given how stupid the failed and fatal "Fast and Furious" gun running sting operation seems to have been, was there another reason behind such a clumsily conceived and haphazardly run program? It stretches the boundary of believability that the ATF actually thought it could track weapons once they were in the hands of the Mexican drug cartels, there must have been another reason for such a program, yes or no?

- I was just wondering... explain to me again how Obama Care will reduce the number of uninsured Americans in this country when AT&T, Verizon, John Deere, Caterpillar, McDonalds and other U.S. companies have said there is a very good chance they would drop their corporate health care insurance programs for their employees and retirees.

Why would they do that? Because it is less expensive to drop their corporate health insurance programs and pay the small fine laid out in Obama Care than to continue their programs. Won't tens of millions of Americans, who work for these companies, lose their insurance coverage, wiping out any gains in health insurance coverage elsewhere resulting from Obama Care? Are you people so ignorant of reality to not understand basic business finance?

- I was just wondering... in the middle of the debt ceiling crisis and negotiations, President Obama said that Social Security checks might not go out because the "coffers might be empty." Does that mean the there really is no $2.7 TRILLION trust fund set aside to cover future Social Security payments?

If there really was "real" wealth in the Social Security trust fund, as opposed to a bunch of near worthless Treasury IOUs, why wouldn't the President just have done a small withdrawal from the trust fund to cover the short term shortfall of Social Security taxes if the government ended up being temporarily shut down because of a failed debt ceiling negotiation?

- I was just wondering... why has the Securities And Exchange Commission "been systematically destroying documents related to Wall Street investigations for 17 years," according to an article by William D. Cohan, writing for Bloomberg, and appearing in the September 9, 2011 issue of The Week magazine?  Did these documents actually include allegations of criminal activity and fraud against such entities as Bernie Madoff, Goldman Sachs, and others? 

Is Mr. Cohan correct in his assertion that this is just one big, cozy revolving door relationship between the SEC and Wall Street where misdoings are swept aside and documents destroyed? With a budget of $1 billion a year, are the American taxpayers getting their money's worth of financial integrity oversight from the SEC? Probably not if you ask the Madoff victims.

- I was just wondering... is it true that we do not know the whole story about the Libyan military activities, as laid out by Steven Erlanger of the new York Times? Is it actually true that NATO is so incompetent that the United States had to do the hard work of militarily wiping out the Libyan air defenses, that the French had to withdrawal their only nuclear powered aircraft carrier fo repairs in the middle of the fighting, that Italy withdrew its aircraft carrier in the middle of the fighting to save money, and that the United States "provided intelligence, refueling, and more precision bombing than Paris or London want to acknowledge?"

How much did this whole initiative cost the American taxpayer, especially if the United States was supposed to be just a back-up to NATO, a role that seems to not be correct?

- I was just wondering... speaking of Libya, according to a report in the September 9, 2011 issue of The Week magazine, French, British, and yes, Chinese oil companies are rushing into Libya now, as the fighting winds down, in an attempt to leverage the vast oil reserves of the country. Does it seem fair that after the United States did much of the work in defeating Qaddafi but other nations will reap the financial rewards? Any chance they will give some of that oil money back to us to cover our military expenses?

- I was just wondering... a recent article that appeared in Wired magazine and was capsulized in the August 12, 2011 issue of The Week magazine, reported that the poorest fifth of Americans spend 42% of their annual incomes on transportation needs while middle income Americans spend an average of only 22%. Thus, wouldn't it be a better idea to fix and expand local mass transportation systems within local urban areas to alleviate this cost burden on the poorest one fifth than to spend billions and billions of dollars to build out a high speed train system that is likely to take years to complete, if ever, and will have minimal impact on these less affluent American citizens?

- I was just wondering... according to Peter Ferrara, writing for Forbes, in early 2009 the United States and Canadian unemployment rates were both about 8%. After Obama implemented his $830 billion of wasteful spending that was originally billed as the economic stimulus package, the United States unemployment rate got as high a 9.2% and has hovered around 9% for what seems forever.

At the same time, Canada decided to cut taxes and regulations while providing people with "genuine incentives to produce, save, invest, and grow," reducing that country's unemployment rate down to 7.4% today. Thus, tell me again why President Obama wants to do the same tired stimulus spending strategy again, as outlined in his jobs speech, a strategy that raised our nation's unemployment rate the last time it was used. Why wouldn't he take a page from Canada's economic playbook which actually seemed to work?

- I was just wondering... according to an article in the August 15, 2011 issue of Business Week, the Federal government gave Hawaii Superferry $140 million in loan guarantees to cover the cost of building two passenger ferries. Unfortunately, the company filed for bankruptcy, taking itself and the taxpayers' money down the drain with it.

Thus, the question:  are the same government employees that lost over $500  million with the solar energy company discussed above the same ones that lost $140 million of taxpayer money with these two ferry ships? If so, maybe these employees need to be reassigned to another job that does not involve any contact with taxpayer funds. Better yet, maybe they should be fired for incompetency.

The bigger question is: why is the government boat loan operation still allowed to exist? According to the article, this program was suspended in 1987 after it lend out over $2 billion to 129 companies that defaulted before paying back the loans. Not to let a bad thing die, the program was resurrected in 1993, after which it promptly lost $801 million on 15 loans that went belly up.

But, it gets even worse. The article states that this shipbuilder program guaranteed $798 million in Federal loans last year and another $712 million is being considered this year, for a total of $1.51 billion. The head of the program says that loan guarantees of previous years will create 8,000 jobs. If $1.51 billion in loan guarantees can "create" 8,000 jobs, is the cost of $188,750 per job really worthwhile and efficient?

- I was just wondering... has Warren Buffet written that check yet and sent it to the Federal government for all that tax money he says he should have paid over the years but wasn't required to?

From an article in the July 25, 2011 issue of Business Week, we now know that Congressmen Tim Walz of Minnesota and Spencer Bachus of Alabama two members of Congress that regularly donate extra tax money, beyond what they are legally required to pay, from their salaries to the Federal government. Given that both of these gentlemen are highly likely to be worth significantly less than Mr. Buffet, I was just curious to see if Mr. Buffet has put his wallet where his mouth is.

- I was just wondering.. according to an interview of Alan Greenspan that appeared on the Moneynews website on July 27, 2011, Mr. Greenspan claimed that the Federal government should have let some of the big banks fail back in 2008 and that after all of the bank activities by the Federal government, Congress and the Fed, banks "can now sit on their Federal reserve money and earn interest at no risk, they have less incentive to lend it and the U.S. economy is stagnating." Would you agree with either, both, or neither of Mr. Greenspan's assertions?

- I was just wondering... given the above issues, and dozens of others just like them, when are you people in the political class finally going to get around to resolving anything? Just wondering, because I am wondering how great term limits for all Federal political positions is starting to look, given your incompetence at everything except wasting taxpayer wealth.

Our Political Class: Still Clueless But Still Making Predictions

I really get a kick out of our politicians when they try to make predictions of any sort. They keep trying and they keep getting them wrong but they continue to show the fortitude to go on with more fruitless predictions. Before we review the latest prediction from Harry Reid, let's quickly review the recent past history of politicians' predictions:

- In the run up to the invasion of Iraq, I vaguely remember Bush predicting that the military effort would cost less than $100 billion. I do not remember the exact number, $60 billion sounds familiar, but it was less than $100 billion. Well, many years later we know he missed that prediction by hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars in ongoing expense before you even count the long term expenses of continuing care for our wounded and the interest on the debt that was incurred to finance the invasion. In all probability, the true cost of the invasion will exceed at least a trillion dollars, conservatively at least ten times higher than the original Bush prediction.

- When the Obama administration was hyping its economic stimulus package, the threat was if the package was not passed, unemployment could get as high as 8%. In hindsight, I am sure that the Obama administration would welcome 8% since the unemployment rate zoomed right past 8% and has hovered just under 10% for a long time. Missed that prediction by just a little bit.

- I also got some laughs out of another economic stimulus prediction, one that involved changing the rules as time progressed. The original intent of the stimulus package was to create a couple of million permanent jobs. However, as the stimulus money got spent, nowhere near a couple of million permanent jobs got created. That was when the prediction was changed from jobs created to jobs create and jobs saved. When that definition did not work, the prediction was changed from jobs created and saved to include jobs touched. Somewhere along the line the criteria for a job being permanent was relaxed to any job, permanent or temporary. Even with all of these definitional changes, this prediction still has not come true, given the much higher than expected unemployment rate.

- The bank bailout prediction was also pretty funny. Think back to the end of the Bush administration and how Bush and Treasury Secretary Paulson were claiming that unless there was a massive taxpayer bailout of the U.S. banking system, the financial system of the world would crash and we would see the coming of the next Depression. Nice prediction but apparently way off base as far as being accurate. The bailout bill did get passed and signed and by November, 2009, the first "failing" banks were receiving their TARP bailout money.

However, one of the criteria for receiving the money was that severe restrictions were placed on the wage levels of bank executives. All of a sudden, many of these banks were scrambling to give back the TARP money, so much so that a mere seven months after the first TARP checks were cut, many of the banks had already returned their bailout money.

But let's reason this one out. If the banks that received the money were in such dire financial shape, how were they able to return the money so quickly? Couldn't they have muddled through these few months somehow by slashing costs, issuing more stock, selling off assets, or taken any number of actions to get them through this short period of time? Or were these banks never really in trouble in the first place and just wanted a free lunch from the taxpayers via the political class and government? We could not have been that close to a Depression if the majority of the banks returned their TARP funds so quickly, mere months, so that their executive pay levels would not suffer.

- And now to the latest grand prediction, this one from Harry Reid, majority leader in the Senate. In an Associated Press article today, Mr. Reid was extolling the Senate's passage of the bill that would extend the Bush tax cuts on January 1, 2011 as well as do a number of other things. Mr. Reid is quoted in the article as predicting that passage of the legislation would result in the creation of two million jobs.

If this was such a good idea and will actually create two million much needed jobs, why was this legislation not passed long ago? Wouldn't the Obama administration and the Democrats in Congress wanted this passed before they got whooped on election night?

Also, with the exception of decreasing the Social Security tax for one year and adjusting the estate tax numbers, isn't the vast bulk of this legislation designed to keep the status quo? If the status quo so far has not generated two million incremental jobs, what makes Harry think that it will now? For a family with a breadwinner making $50,000 a year, their Social Security savings will be about $20 a week, hardly enough to create demand for 2 million new jobs.

Thus, I have no idea how Mr. Reid comes up with two million more jobs by keeping the status quo and giving American families back $20 a week. It makes you wonder how these people come up with these numbers. Just as the two million job number makes no sense, neither did the Bush Iraq number, the TARP prediction, the unemployment estimate, etc.

I have a four part question that I would love to know the answers to:

1. Do our politicians really believe the numbers they spout out? 
2. Do our politicians even understand the derivation and the logic behind the numbers they spout out?
3. Are they ever embarrassed when the reality comes nowhere close to the numbers they so confidently predicted?
4. Are they aware up front that the numbers are bogus and use them just to get their way or legislation passed? If this is the case, then we have a more serious integrity issue with our politicians then we thought we did.

The bottom line is their track record is horrendous when it comes to predicting numbers and results and we would all be better off if we ignored future predictions from the political class. It is a waste of their time and credibility and usually a waste of our tax dollars. They should follow that old saying that goes something like this: "Better to remain silent and thought ignorant than to speak up and remove all doubt." Or in our case: "Better to not give a prediction and thought clueless of the future than to speak up and remove all doubt."







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/