March, 2019, Part 1, Political Class Insanity: A Mean,Nasty Senator, A Failed Railroad, and More

It is another month which means it is again time to review the latest political class insanity from Washington and around the world. Political class insanity takes many forms including the wasting of taxpayer wealth, criminal fraud within government programs, inane and stupid political quotes and actions, the inability to create and implement effective and efficient government programs, stupid and ill performing economic policies and strategies, and other forms of insanity that continue to evolve and surprise and shock us.

Let’s get started:

1) For decades the Federal government never figured out how operate an efficient and effective railroad system (AMTRAK) in a profitable manner. Then California politicians decided they were going to build and operate a high speed train line from northern California to southern California. Then the California politicians decided that after years of effort, many, many studies and the wasting of billions of dollars, it could not be done. Then daft Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez decided that the U.S. airline industry needed to be destroyed at the altar of climate change.

Which brings us to the latest failure and ongoing saga of failure when it comes to politicians trying to build and operate a railroad system:

• An AMTRAK train going from Seattle to California has been stuck for days in Oregon after it reportedly hit a tree.
• Only a Federal government run railroad could break down because it somehow hit a tree.
• The 180 or so customers on the train were not allowed to leave the train since there was four feet of snow in every direction and the local area was out of power.
• As a result, the customers ran out of food, ran out of diapers forcing the riders to cut up clothes to make their own diapers, ran out of feminine products, and ran out of medicine. 

Obviously, this did not happen on the Orient Express in the middle of nowhere in Siberia. It happened in Oregon and yet the Federal government operation could not get 180 Americans stranded, in Oregon, out of harm’s way for three days. So sad.

Oh, and by the way, an Amtrak train crashed into a freight train in South Carolina early this past February. The crash resulted in two AMTRAK riders being killed and at least 70 other riders being injured. 

Oh, and by the way, in December, 2017, an Amtrak train derailed in Washington state, smashing through an overpass onto Interstate 5, killing three people and injuring dozens. 

Oh, and by the way, in early 2018, an Amtrak train carrying Republican members of Congress to a retreat in West Virginia hit a garbage truck in Virginia, killing one of the three occupants in the vehicle.

So, in a little over a year, we have at least four major AMTRAK incidents with death, injuries, and abandonment and not to mention the abandonment of a major high speed rail project after wasting billions of dollars. And politicians like Ocasio-Cortez think we need to stop flying and somehow use a nationwide, unbuilt rail system that does not exist that would be operated by the same idiots that operate the embarrassment known as AMTRAK. The height of insanity.

2) Washington politicians always act like they care about us but often their actions, and wasteful spending, show us that they only care about themselves and their own self gratification:

• Warner Todd Huston, writing for the Godfather Politics website on February 25, 2019, discussed one of those times when Washington politicians were so self serving again.
• Five Democrats in the House of Representatives are under pressure because of a trip they took, at no cost to themselves, to South Africa just to see a Beyonce concert.
• The trip for the five of them cost $60,000, none of which they paid for.
• According to the article, as reported by Fox: “ They attended the “Global Citizen Mandela 100” concert from Dec. 1-3 to celebrate the centenary birth of the late Nelson Mandela and raise awareness of global poverty. In addition to Beyoncé, other musical acts included her husband Jay Z, Ed Sheeran, Pharrell Williams and Chris Martin.”
• The trip was paid for my a so-called charity organization, the Global Citizen, a group that supposedly helps out the poor in Third World countries around the world.
• Which raises the question: how many poor people could have been clothed, housed, and fed if Global Citizen had used that $60,000 boondoggle money on the poor and not five U.S. politicians?
• The National Legal and Policy Center, a government watchdog group, called the trip a mockery: “These members of Congress that were given an all-expense paid vacation to party with Oprah, Jay Z, and Beyoncé in South Africa are claiming with a straight face this was needed to help poor children around the world live better lives. This was in fact, a mockery of House ethics rules on gifts and travel, the truly poor, and all Americans that expect members of Congress to live not only by the letter of the law but by the spirit and intentions of the rules of the House of Representatives.”

Well said. I almost guarantee you that the world’s poor are no better off because five U.S. Congress people went to a concert in South Africa. So ego satisfying and so useless, as always.

3) Let’s move from House of Representative members acting childish by allowing themselves to get treated to a concert at the expense of the world’s poor over to a childish politician in the Senate, one who actually wants to be President of the United States:

• According to a story by Shawn, writing for the Fix This Nation website on February 24, 2019, Senator Amy Klobuchar of the Senate is possibly not one of the nicer people you will meet in Washington.
• According to many of Klobuchar’s staff members, she is quite the tyrant when it comes to treating other human beings.
• For example, on a trip to South Carolina several years ago, Klobuchar got crazy and blew up at an aide when the aide lost the Senator’s dining utensils in the middle of the flight.
• It then got really bizarre when the Senator used her comb to eat her meal and then ordered the aide to clean the comb of food that had gotten on it when she used it as dining utensil.
• She has been known to throw binders, phones, and other things at aides who did not measure up to her needs and expectations.
• She also had aides do demeaning errands including washing her dishes or doing other cleaning for her, tasks that are quite possibly a violation of Senate ethics rules.
• She was known to point out perceived staff screw ups that were delivered at all hours of the night and day.
• Her nasty quotes included, “In 20 years in politics I have never seen worse prep”, “This is the hands down worse thing you have ever given me” and “This is the worst press staff I ever had.” 

Such a pleasant person. And she wants to be President of the U.S. Really cannot see such a petty, disrespectful human being becoming someone who could unite and lead the country,. Pettiness in personal dealings with people that may not be at such a high level of status would result in pettiness in dealing with anyone who has a different opinion from hers. And that is not the type of divisive behavior that this country needs today.

That is a good start for this month’s political class insanity: a childish, condescending Senator, five Congress people who needed to have scarce money spent on them rather than the Earth’s poor, and the disaster that is the Federal government’s operation of a railroad system. More insanity to follow.

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:

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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.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

February, 2014 Political Class Insanity, Part 3: Abusing Washington Interns. Playing With Nuclear Missiles, Giving Money To Aremenia, and More

This is the third post this month where we are looking at the insanity, idiocy, and wasteful spending of the American political class. Our politicians waste so much money in so many different and original ways that we need multiple posts every month just to stay on top of the incompetence they create. This month is no different.

1) According to the Federal government’s Agency for International Aid (USAID):

• The United States allocated and paid out $3.35 million to “improve the quality of media content and strengthen the media’s capacity to meet professional standards” in the country of Armenia.
• American media outlets are not eligible for the grant, just foreign media outlets and organizations.
• The grant is supposed to help Armenian citizens get access to reliable media sources for the next five years. 
• USAID said it hopes that the $3.35 million the grant will improve the quality of media within Armenia and develop stronger, more professional Armenian journalists.

So much wrong with this effort, the primary insanity being why are we giving a foreign country like Armenia, or any foreign country, millions of dollars to improve their media? What is in it for us since Armenia is a small country, a non-strategic country, and a country that is likely not a big trade partner with us? Why, why, why?

Wouldn’t this money be better spent trying to get good jobs or retraining opportunities for the 20 plus million Americans who are unemployed or under employed? Wouldn’t this money be better spent on our veterans who just got their pension benefits cut by the Washington political class? I can think of dozens of better uses for this money, including not spending it at all, rather then throwing it down the sinkhole in a stupid program thousands of miles away in a country that 99.9% of Americans could not locate on a map.

2) According to an article in the January 31, 2014 issue of The Week magazine, Michelle Obama celebrated her 50th birthday party with a star studded birthday party at the White House. The party included performances by Beyonce and Stevie Wonder and more than 300 guests were present including Bill and Hillary Clinton, Samuel L. Jackson, Smokey Robinson, Magic Johnson, Ashley Judd, and Paul McCartney. 

Any guesses on how much this party cost the American taxpayer, for someone that is not even an elected public servant? In my view, given the dire economic straits tens of millions of Americans find themselves in every day, this type of over-the-top “Hunger Games” celebration is a disgrace and an insult to every American who is not in the inner circle of the political class.

3) According to a Los Angeles Times article that was summarized in the January 31, 2014 issue of The Week magazine, the combined wealth of the world’s richest people is now a total of $1.7 TRILLION. That’s a lot of money and wealth. Or is it? Let’s do some simple math:

• If you could some how scoop up that $1.7 TRILLION and disburse 100% of it equally to every person living on the planet, every person would receive a grand total of….about $243. Hardly enough to lift anyone out of poverty, even assuming you could disburse the $1.7 TRILLION.
• Today, $1.7 TRILLION would only pay off 10% of this nation’s national debt. This gives you some frame of reference of how far into debt the American political class has taken us.
• The $1.7 TRILLION would not come close to even covering the first two years of the Obama Presidency’s deficit spending. In other words, decades of wealth accumulation by the richest people in the world would be wiped out in less than two years by the Obama Presidency’s wasteful and out-of-control spending.

And rather than come up with creative and real solutions to the nation’s and world’s poverty, this President continues to harp upon the empty concept of “income equality.” Unless he thinks $243 is income equality.

4) The Federal government has probably spent tens of TRILLIONS of dollars over the past decades for the Defense Department in order to keep us safe from foreign hostile forces. One would have thought that for tens of TRILLIONS of dollars, our defense would have been the absolute best possible.

However, that would have been an incorrect assumption in a very big and dangerous way. According to various news reports and an article in the January, 31, 2014 issue of The Week magazine:

• At least 34 Air Force officers who are responsible for the nation’s nuclear missile defense, have been relieved of duty.
• They face charges of cheating FOR YEARS on their monthly readiness tests.
• Some Air Force officers were charged with sharing answers to the tests which were designed to cover armed forces personnel proficiency at nuclear code handling, launch procedures, and missile safety.
• “Everybody cheats on every test they can, and have done so for decades,” according to a quoted former officer in the article.
• Two of the 34 people facing charges are also face charges for illegal drug use.

Still feeling safe now that you know that for decades the people responsible for the deadliest weapons known to mankind have been cheating on their proficiency tests? That some of those same people with their fingers dangerously close to our nuclear missiles have been abusing drugs? 

Tens of TRILLIONS of dollars spent and the political class and the Federal government it operates cannot run a safe operation relative to nuclear missiles. Imagine how much they screw up on minor defense issues if this is how nonchalantly they treat our nuclear missiles. Scary as heck from both a safety and financial perspective.

5) President Obama promised in his first Presidential campaign that 1) he would close the terrorist detention center at Guantanamo Bay as soon as possible and 2) he would operate the most transparent Presidential administration of all time. We know that that these were just two of the many lies and deceptions he has dropped on America over the past five years, utter failures in both respects; the detention center is still open and eating up hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars every year and this administration could really not be any less transparent.

However, according to the March, 2014 issue of Reason magazine, this administration has managed to combine both of these promises turned to lies into one bigger embarrassment. The Reason article described how the detention facility at Guantanamo had decided to not continue publishing the number of detainees that were in the midst of hunger strikes. Since 2005, many of the detainees have used hunger strikes as a way of protesting their detention without trial at the center. 

Up until December, 2013, the center had released the number of detainees currently on a hunger strike every day. That transparency ended with the announcement in December that the daily feed of hunger strike information would be suppressed and no longer published for the public. 

Which, given this administration’s penchant for lying, makes you wonder what is really going on at the detention center. Just saying. Seems this administration can find endless ways to renege on its past promises, in his case combining two promises together to break.

6) As we mentioned above, this President seems to be hell bent to raise the minimum wage, as if this action, that would affect less than 3% of all U.S. workers, will cure the dire strait’s the economy finds itself in, dire straits that this administration has probably made worse with its illogical and ineffective economic policies. Almost every economic study done by non-government experts show that raising the minimum wage, while providing a little bit of good for a few, results in many fewer job opportunities for a lot of others.

Which gets us to one of the larger hypocrisies coming out of the Washington political class today. The Employment Policies Institute has recently done some analysis and found that only 4% of all interns working for politicians and lawmakers in Washington who are advocating for a rise in the minimum wage receive a pay check. Only eight interns out of over 200 get paid for their contributions and work activities by the same people that are calling for businesses to pay more than the current minimum wage.

You cannot get much more hypocritical than that. Do as I say or demand rather than what I do. Do we think there would be a lot fewer interns in Washington if their bosses, elected officials, had to pay them for the interns’ contributions out of their own budget? 

Same thing happens in real life, basic economics. Raise the price of an item and fewer of those items were get utilized. In this case, raise the price of labor, and fewer units of labor get used, i.e. fewer intern jobs are created or maintained.

We can argument the merits of the minimum wage some other time, the real bugger is the hypocrisy of the political class and their economic abuse of interns.

That will do it for today. Financially abusing interns, fading transparency, nuclear defense that could have gone nuclear at anytime, partying with the First Lady on the taxpayer dime, and more, the ways and creativity that politicians come up with to make us insane are endless. Which means we will be back tomorrow with more political class insanity.

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