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This is the second post among a few days worth of discussion of “by the numbers.” We do this theme occasionally where we look at the reality of the numbers in the world and not the lies, deceptions, and spin of the American political class. I used to work for a boss whose favorite quote was: “There is nothing more devastating to an opinion than the correct number.” By looking at the statistics, trends, and numbers in our world we can cut through the politicians’ smoke screen to truly understand what is going on and hopefully, remedy the issues of the day.
The numbers we will look at this week will often have a common thread running almost through all of them: the views, positions, and opinions of the majority of Americans are often the exact opposite of the views and related actions that our politicians own. Since we are supposed to be living in a representative government system one would hope that the laws, rules, and government functions that our politicians oversee reflect the thinking, hopes, and views of the American citizenry.
As the numbers will usually show, that is nowhere close to reality, which I think reflects two underlying negative trends:
- American politicians vote and act for their own personal interests first, Americans’ interests and well being being of secondary consideration. If a politician’s actions can get them more votes or more campaign cash for their perpetual reelection campaigns, than that is their priority, usually not the priorities of their constituents.
- Second, I personally believe that today’s American politicians take care of their special interest friends and financiers first and foremost, and the interests of those special interest friends (e.g.unions, corporations, lobbyists, etc.) are usually not in alignment with what the majority of Americans have as their priorities.
Keep these two possibilities in mind as we go “by the numbers” for the next few days and try to show the major disconnect between what Americans want and what politicians are doing:
1) Judicial Watch recently completed a new study using a lot of official government documents and found that the number of illegal criminal immigrants being released unto U.S. streets and civilians is mind staggering:
- There are now 340 so-called sanctuary cities across the country, cities that are breaking Federal law everyday by allowing illegal immigrants to reside in their cities, protected from deportation by the Federal government.
- Over the nine month period studied, in total, these cities on average allowed 1,000 illegal criminal immigrants to be released every month.
- In those nine months, 9,295 illegal criminal immigrants were set free before Federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents could get them deported.
- More than 600 of the criminal immigrants had been released twice.
- The majority of the criminal immigrants released (58%) had prior felony charges or convictions, 37% had prior misdemeanor charges and 5% had multiple misdemeanor charges.
- 2,320 of the 9,295 released were subsequently arrested within the nine month time frame for NEW crimes they committed.
Is there any doubt why 59% of Americans want illegal immigrants deported and 78% want a fence built on the Mexican border to keep illegals out of the country, as we discussed in yesterday’s post? If the local politicians will not turn over illegal criminal immigrants for deportation and the Obama administration does nothing to make them obey the law and do them over to the Feds for deportation, this becomes just another example of where the politicians we elect do not reflect the values and desires of those that elected them.
2) Obama and his fellow Democrats are on the warpath to gut or ignore the right to bear arms as outlined in the Second Amendment. One of the efforts they want to try enforcing is crack down on the purchasing of guns at retail stores and gun shows under the false theory that criminals actually buy their weapons at stores and gun shows.
I know, stupid assumption from stupid politicians but the numbers from a recent study actually prove that such lame efforts at gun control are actually that, lame. Researchers from Duke University and the University of Chicago conducted a study of criminal gun purchases that will be published in Preventive Medicine, a peer-reviewed medical journal.
According to reporting by the Washington Free Beacon: The study found that due to fears of encountering undercover police officers attempting sting operations, a large majority of the criminals surveyed would only make illegal gun purchases from people they knew. “In discussing the underground gun market in their neighborhoods, most respondents emphasized the importance of connections — prior relationships that could create sufficient trust to reassure the seller that the transaction would not create an unacceptable legal risk,” the survey says. “A majority of the primary guns (40 of the 48 for which we have detailed information on the source) were obtained from family, fellow gang members, or other social connections; the fraction is still higher for secondary guns.”
The study went on to quantify that only 2 out of the 70 primary guns, or 3%, were reported as being purchased from a gun store. NONE of the criminals in the study, NONE, got their weapons from a gun show. The Chicago Sun-Times quoted Harold Pollack, co-director of the crime lab that did the study: “In a survey of almost 100 detainees in the Cook County Jail, few said they get firearms at gun shows or through the Internet. They also said they don’t normally steal guns or buy them at a licensed store.”
Alan Gottlieb, founder of the Second Amendment Foundation, put these numbers in perspective relative to proposed new gun laws: “Criminals don’t obey laws. That’s why we call them criminals.”
3) And to illustrate another disconnect between Americans and politicians, especially those that want to restrict or eliminate gun rights and possession,consider the findings of a recent Gallup poll:
- The majority of Americans feel that more concealed weapons would make America safer.
- In a poll taken between October 7 and 11, 2015, 56% of those polled stated that they would feel safer if more Americans carried concealed weapons vs. 41% who would feel less safe.
- In a somewhat inconsistent manner, while 86% of respondents said they would favor a law which would require universal background checks for all gun purchases, a majority (53%) of the same group said background checks would have no impact on the number of mass shootings and only 19% said it would have a great amount of impact on the number of mass shootings.
Another example where a great many politicians are on the wrong side of what the majority of Americans want. While people like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton threaten to illegally confiscate guns of law abiding Americans, the numbers show that criminals do not buy their guns where these ill informed politicians think they do and the majority of Americans would welcome more concealed weapons in the real world outside of the Beltway while those inside the Beltway want to have NO concealed weapons.
But of course, people like Obama and Clinton would still have their armed guards available around the clock to protect their families while the rest of us would be stripped of our protection under their views, which are contrary to ours.
That will do it for “by the numbers” today, more proof that those in the Washington political class are so out of touch with the rest of America when you look at the numbers regarding the Second Amendment and the handling of illegal immigrants, especially illegal criminal immigrants who bring danger, violence, and crime to ordinary American citizens.
More numbers tomorrow.
Today’s post will kick off a few days worth of discussion of “by the numbers.” We do this theme occasionally where we look at the reality of the numbers in the world and not the lies, deceptions, and spin of the American political class. I used to work for a boss whose favorite quote was: “There is nothing more devastating to an opinion than the correct number.” By looking at the statistics, trends, and numbers in our world we can cut through the politicians’ smoke screen to truly understand what is going on and hopefully, remedy the issues of the day.
The numbers we will look at this week will often have a common thread running almost through all of them: the views, positions, and opinions of the majority of Americans are often the exact opposite of the views and related actions that our politicians own. Since we are supposed to be living in a representative government system one would hope that the laws, rules, and government functions that our politicians oversee reflect the thinking, hopes, and views of the American citizenry.
As the numbers will usually show, that is nowhere close to reality, which I think reflects two underlying negative trends:
- American politicians vote and act for their own personal interests first, Americans’ interests and well being being of secondary consideration. If a politician’s actions can get them more votes or more campaign cash for their perpetual reelection campaigns, than that is their priority, usually not the priorities of their constituents.
- Second, I personally believe that today’s American politicians take care of their special interest friends and financiers first and foremost, and the interests of those special interest friends (e.g., unions, corporations, lobbyists, etc.) are usually not in alignment with what the majority of Americans have as their priorities.
Keep these two possibilities in mind as we go “by the numbers” for the next few days and try to show the major disconnect between what Americans want and what politicians are doing:
1) According to a new public opinion poll by Clout Research that was reported on by the Washington Examiner:
- A whopping 85% of voters think that America is going down the wrong track.
- Only 9% of Republicans, only 15% of Independents, and only about half of Democrats think the country is headed in the right direction.
- These results are based on a sample size of 800 likely voters.
- Despite an $800 billion economic stimulus plan, an energy revolution that dramatically reduced energy costs, and the Federal reserve printing trillions of dollars that were injected into the economy, 80% of respondents described the current state of the economy as "very fragile" or "somewhat fragile" after seven years of President Obama's economic policies.
If you polled members of Congress and the current President, I would bet that they would have radically different views of life in America today. I would bet that they think they are doing a great job, a complete disconnect from what most of America believes is the reality of living outside of the Washington Beltway. And why not since inside the Beltway unemployment is low, salaries are sky high, and unemployment is never a possibility for those inside the American political class.
2) It is pretty obvious that border security and the deportation of people illegally in this country is a very low or a non-priority for the Obama administration and the Democrats in Congress. If it was a priority, than many fewer innocent American citizens would not be dying at the hands of illegal immigrants and the number of deported illegals would not be declining rapidly as it is under the Obama administration.
Which brings us to the second major disconnect between Washington and America, as measured by the numbers. A recent public opinion poll from the Investors Business Daily polled 913 adults across the country if they “support or oppose the mandatory deportation of illegal immigrants in the U.S.”
Unlike many in Washington and the mainstream press, 59% of the total sample size said that they did support mandatory deportation of illegal immigrants in this country. This reality and number may help explain the success of Presidential candidate Donald Trump since a whopping 87% of Trump supporters are in favor of deportation.
Democrats in Washington want to allow illegal immigrants to stay in this country, border security be damned, while the vast majority of Americans want illegal immigrants deported. Massive disconnect.
3) Let’s stay with the disconnect between Washington and the rest of America as it pertains to illegal immigration since after this 59% number was made public, another survey reinforced this finding. According to Ben Bullard, writing for the Eagle Rising website on September 4, 2015, the latest public opinion poll from the YouGov organization found that an even larger percentage, 72%, of Americans support building a fence along our Mexican border to stop the flow of illegal immigrants into this country.
Only 27% of those polled believe that we should NOT build a fence on the border. I doubt that there is not a 72% vs. 27% consistency with the Washington political class because if there was, that much needed fence would already be under construction. Instead, we have people in Washington that want to continue to give government handouts to illegal immigrants, not send them back or fence them out. And while these top line numbers are overwhelming in favor of building a fence, the sub-category numbers are more amazing:
- The concept of building an effective border fence is more popular than unpopular within every single subgroup in the poll.
- More Democrats support building a fence than Democrats support not building a fence.
- More African-Americans support building a fence than African-Americans support not building a fence.
- And amazingly, more Hispanics (49%) support building a fence than Hispanics support not building a fence (38%).
If ever Washington could find a single, unifying set of numbers to build a consensus on, this would seem to be the concept: build a fence to stop the overwhelming flow of illegal immigration. But as usual, what the people want and what Washington’s politicians do is often the exact opposite.
That will do it for today but we have lots more numbers to cover in the upcoming days, numbers that usually show that what America wants is the exact opposite of what Washington wants, works on, or delivers. As these days unfold, please refer back to one of our most popular posts of all time at:
http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2010/11/american-freedom-pyramid-where-it.html
That post describes the so-called freedom pyramid and how the American political class has corrupted the concepts of freedom, liberty, and representative government in our democracy. Once you understand how that corruption has happened, it is not surprising when you read how Americans views and desires take a back seat to what politicians do.
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:
For the past two posts we have been reviewing the remarkable parallels between present day Washington and the plot line from the “Hunger Games” book and movie. In the “Hunger Games” there is a very, very small, elitist set of people in the seat of power, far away from the common folks, both in geography and life style and options.
The elitists have manipulated their government so that vast amounts of taxpayer wealth flows to this seat of power to the detriment of the rest of the country. Those in the seat of power enjoy self enrichment, status, pomposity, and gluttony, in its many forms, all on the backs and hard efforts of the rest of the citizens out in the country and hinterlands.
Over the past two days we have seen how politicians selfishly spend a lot of money on themselves using taxpayer wealth while our national debt gets larger and larger, how businesses and politicians have come together in an unholy union of using taxpayer money to trade political favors for political donations, and other concentrations of wealth and power within the D.C. beltway to the detriment of citizens.
Today we discuss this “Hunger Games” analogy using the details from an October 6, 2012 Washington Post article, “Capitol Assets: Congress’s wealthiest mostly shielded from effects of deep recession.” While just about every American and American household took a financial and wealth hit as a result of the Great Recession, apparently that was not the case with Washington politician.
The Post investigation shows that even in down economic times, the political class has rigged the system that they do not suffer like the rest of the country, just like in the “Hunger Games.” In the “Hunger Games,” people living in the capital city enjoy the fruits of others’ labors, seemingly impervious to the sufferings and tribulations of regular citizens.
Nowhere is this more prevalent than what happened, or did not happen, to politicians as a result of the Great Recession:
- According to the article and investigation, the wealthiest one-third of the 535 lawmakers, 180 or so, in Congress were largely untouched by the Great Recession. Think about that fact. The worst economic downturn since 1929 and the richest Congressional members did not even feel a financial bump.
- Their personal investment results took lesser financial hits and their investments recovered quicker and rose to new heights than most Americans.
- About 141 members of Congress did experience substantial financial hits like most Americans but this is less than 180 or so who did much better as a result of the Great Recession.
- While the average American household saw its median net worth DROP 39% during the recession, the median estimated wealth of Congressional members actually went UP 5% in the same time frame.
- The wealthiest one third of Congress saw their median wealth go up 14% in the midst of the greatest economic downturn since the Depression compared to the decrease of 39% drop regular Americans experienced.
- Between 2004 and 2010, 72 Congressional members probably doubled their estimated wealth, a time period that included the Great Recession.
- At least 150 members of Congress reported that they get more income from outside jobs and investments than from their Congressional salaries of $174,000, making one wonder if they are doing any work at all relative to their Congressional responsibilities and charter.
- Thus, we should not be surprised that House of Representatives members in 2010 had a median estimated wealth of $746,000 and Senators had $2.6 million estimated wealth, with apparently most of that wealth not coming from their Congressional salary, even when they were in office.
- The Post article reported that 73 Congressional members sponsored or co-sponsored legislation that could have directly benefited businesses or industries in that they or their families had a vested financial or other interest in. They did not just vote on these obvious conflicts of interest, they SPONSORED these conflicts of interest.
- Of the 72 Congressional members whose estimated wealth doubled between 2004 and 2010, a time period that included the Great Recession, the Post’s calculations show that 11 increased their financial wealth by at least $10 million, based on the midpoint of their reported ranges.
Now, granted, some members of Congress did lose a lot of money over the past ten years or so. One had to file for bankruptcy and some others saw their wealth drop considerably, some because of bad business investments or bad economic luck. But several lost a lot of wealth as a result of defending themselves against ethics violations.
However, a great many in Congress and the Washington political class did quite well or are doing quite well for themselves for themselves while in office. Unlike most other Americans who saw their household wealth get shellacked during the Great Recession, many in Washington just went along, in “Hunger Game” fashion, oblivious to the suffering and stress of regular Americans.
They were to busy getting richer, too busy running their outside business interests rather than the nation’s business, and too busy to care about the state of the nation and the issues facing Americans today, issues that they probably do not even know exist outside of their Utopian lives in the “Hunger Games” capital of America.
That term limits idea is getting better everyday.
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
