1) Let’s start off today on the greedy angle. According to a recent Associated Press report, a Federal prosecutor has accused Virginia's former governor and his wife of illegally accepting gifts from a businessman who sought their influence to promote his company.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jessica Aber opened the trial of the former governor and his wife, Bob and Maureen McDonnell, a trial that charges the couple with accepting more than $165,000 in gifts and loans from Jonnie Williams, the CEO of dietary supplements maker Star Scientific. They are accused of accepting the gifts in exchange for helping promote his products.
Which just goes to prove that politicians at the state government level may not be any different than corrupt and now jailed politicians at the Federal level. Innocent to proven guilty but disgraceful nonetheless that this former politician and his wife acted so greedily that the Federal government thinks it has enough to put them away for their actions.
2) The Iron Dome system is a missile defense system that shoots out missiles with the intent of destroying incoming missiles from an enemy. It has been in the news a lot lately because the Israeli deployment of its Iron Dome System, has probably saved hundreds, if not thousands, of Israeli lives, by intercepting the thousands of rockets that Hamas has shot into Israel over the past months.
Pretty simple concept: anti-missile shot up in the air to intercept and destroy incoming missiles. Simple, but apparently not simple enough for a politician who is running for a seat in the U.S. Senate from Kentucky. Democratic Kentucky Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes says Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system prevents Hamas terrorists from tunneling into Israel.
Ms. Grimes was asked about the war going between the Israelis and Hamas during a recent interview with the Lexington Herald Leader: “The Iron Dome has been a big reason why Israel has been able to withstand the terrorists that have tried to tunnel their way in.”
Makes you wonder where she gets her information about life from. The Iron Dome is a MISSILE DEFENSE SYSTEM. It is not a giant iron cage or dome that is buried in the ground that prevent Hamas terrorists from tunneling into Israel. This is a quote and view of reality that is quickly moving up the charts as one of the dumbest quotes from a politician in recent times.
According to an article in the Washington Beacon: the Iron Dome is a joint U.S.-Israeli missile defense system that is able to track terrorist rockets as they enter Israeli territory and destroy them in mid-air. The system has saved scores of Israeli lives and protected the Jewish state during Hamas’s latest terror campaign, in which some 9,000 rockets have been fired at Israel.
How out of touch can one be to not know this? How out of touch and inept is your campaign staff that they would allow you out in public so knowledge impaired? And you want to be a U.S. Senator? I don’t think so. Not if you are that naïve and out of touch with what is going on in the world.
3) A few days ago we reported on a New York Times article that reported on how New York governor Andrew Cuomo had shut down his own corruption investigation commission once the commission started investigating the potential wrong doings by one of companies he used for his election campaign.
Well, it seems that might not be the only shady dealings going on up in Albany. According to a recent Bloomberg report, the governor’s election campaign collected at least $650,000 in campaign contributions from companies or people whose companies were granted tax credits to redevelop industrial sites according to research done into state government data.
Related Cos. was the biggest donor, donating at least $262,700 to Cuomo’s campaign. Syracuse shopping-mall businessman Robert Congel, members of his family and executives at his Pyramid Cos. contributed $143,250.
According to Bloomberg, critics of the incentives, which have cost taxpayers more than $1 billion since 2006, claim they benefit wealthy developers and have done little to clean up contaminated industrial sites. Bloomberg cites a research study found that 94 percent of these tax credits have been used for redeveloping properties instead of fixing polluted and contaminated land.
Again, innocent until proven guilty. But as we have often said, the appearance of a conflict of interest is just as bad as a real conflict of interest. Deals and arrangements like this just smell bad, regardless of intentions, good or bad.
That is why Step 7 from “Love My Country, Loathe my Government,” is needed in this country. Step 7 would allow only individual citizens to contribute to political election campaigns. Businesses, unions, PACs, Super Pacs, etc. would be prohibited form contributing and possibly buying influence and political favors. While it might not get rid of all the political hi-jinks and rip offs of taxpayers, a properly implemented and policed, Step 7 would go a long way to getting rid of even the appearance of conflicts of interest and might actually protect taxpayer interests in the long run.
4) According to a recent Bloomberg report that was summarized in the August 1, 2014 issue of The Week magazine, former secretary of State Hillary Clinton has made $12 million in speaking fees since leaving that position in February, 2013. That comes out to an amazing $750,000 a month. She is making in a MONTH, on average, fifteen times as much than what the average American household earns in a YEAR. I am sorry, nobody is worth that much money whose track record of accomplishment is next to nil.
5) More secrets about the National Security Agency’s (NSA) out of control spying on American citizens was made public recently. In an interview in the Guardian newspaper in England, former NSA analyst and whistleblower, Edward Snowden, made it known that NSA employees circulate ‘sexually compromising images” among co-workers that they came across when spying on innocent American citizens.
This type of behavior was “seen as sort of the fringe benefits of surveillance positions,” according to Snowden. We are getting oh so close to 1984 and Big Brother when the type of behavior is allowed to go on, secretly exploiting the lives of innocent American citizens using these same taxpayers’ wealth to do so.
6) According to a CNN.com report that was summarized in the August 1, 2014 issue of The Week magazine, a whopping 48% of the Dodd-Frank financial industry reform legislation’s regulations and rules have not be formulated or written yet. This is four years after the legislation was passed.
What good is passing legislation if four years later the Federal government is just about half way to getting the guidelines put together never mind having that legislation having an positive impact in the market? I cannot imagine the IRS letting any citizen get away with similar behavior, e.g. granting a four year extension to file income taxes. But somehow, politicians can get away with idiotic legislation that never really gets implemented. Insane.
7) We often make the case that the current set of American politicians have no economic background, no economic experience, no economic sense, and no economic training, resulting in economic programs and strategies that often to more harm than good in growing the economy. A recent article from Bloomberg, summarized in the July 18, 2014 issue of The Week, magazine reinforced this opinion.
Despite spending about $830 billion on a failed economic stimulus, trillions of dollars in Federal Reserve “quantitative easing," record low interest rates, and an energy boom, the political class has screwed up the economy so much that around 15% of all Americans, about 45 million people, still live below the poverty level in this country. The poverty level is defined as earning less than $23,600 a year.
If we had taken that $830 billion from the failed economic stimulus and written a check to each of those 45 million Americans, a family of four living below the poverty line would have gotten a check for over $70,000 or at least three times their annual income. That would have been the far better economic decision rather than squandering the money like Washington did on stupid programs and crony infested programs, none of which stimulated any economic activity.
That will wrap up the political class insanity for this month. A depressing but necessary exercise that shows once and for all that we are living under the worst performing, most inept set of politicians in the history of this country. If you would like to help change this status, please visit the following term limits website and help us change out the current Washington insanity because, really, how much worst could it get:
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
