October, 2020, Part 8, Political Class Insanity: Failure To Protect Lives and Property In NYC, A NY Politician Trades Drugs For Sex, and Eight Indicted For Illegal Foreign Donations To Democrats

It is the beginning of another month which means it is time again to review the latest political class insanity from the American political class. Each month it takes us multiple posts to cover the wasteful spending, incompetent government organizations and employees, government programs that usually make a problem worse than resolving it, inane and idiotic politician comments, etc.

To review past posts on this insanity and idiocy, just click on the first few posts in each month listed to the right of this page. After reviewing just a handful of these insanity posts we think you will agree that we are currently being served by the worst set of American politicians ever to hold office in our entire history.

1) A very, very basic function of government is to protect the lives and property of citizens. It does not get much simpler than that, protection. But recently, cities across the country have failed miserably in providing this basic service to its taxpayers. Stupid politicians have talked about defunding police operations or eliminating police forces altogether without having any plans in place to protect lives and properties as a result of these changes. 

The mayor of NYC, Bill de Blasio has insulted, belittled and defunded the NYPD since the first day in office, demeaning police officers and reducing the respect they get from criminal elements in the city. As a result, NYC has seen significant jumps in crime, violence, and murders perpetrated against citizens and businesses. This in turn has caused a lot of people to start moving out of the city, taking their jobs and tax money with them.

And it doesn't look like it will get better any time soon from a protect lives and property perspective:

• The number of NYC police officers retiring is up almost 90% so far in 2020.
• 2,400 officers have filed for retirement in 2020 vs. 1,300 in the same period in 2019.
• A police spokesperson said: “The NYPD has seen a surge in the number of officers filing for retirement. While the decision to retire is a personal one and can be attributed to a range of factors, it is a troubling trend that we are closely monitoring.”
• Chief of Patrol head, Fausto Pichardo, retired recently after more than 20 years of service to the NYPD.
• The PBA commented on his retirement saying that he resigned because of “elected officials” who were playing “political games” with the police force in the city.
• NYPD PBA President Patrickj Lynch stated: “This is the highest attrition rate we have seen in over a decade, during a time we are battling enormous spikes in shootings and murders. And thanks to the City Council and Mayor’s ‘Defund the Police’ lunacy, no help is coming any time soon. Our elected leaders need to be held responsible for the dangerous path they’ve chosen.”

Reduced funding for the NYPD at the same time that crime is soaring is not a viable long term strategy to protect the lives and property of the citizens in the city. But that is the failure that is Mayor Bill de Blasio and the rest of the fools that run the city, reduce funding, demean the force, lose valuable, experienced police officers and the city goes down the criminal drain, causing the city to fail in its basic responsibility to protect lives and property.. Nice job, Bill.

2) As we have said so many times, one would hope that those that enter politics would be fine, honest and upstanding citizens, setting a good example for the rest of us. And every time we say that we realize what a pipe dream that hope is with the current people in the American political class:

• A New York state politician, Dr, William Spencer, is also an ordained minister and prominent doctor.
• Sounds like he really has his stuff together.
• Until you find out that he was recently arrested trying to trade opioid drugs for sex behind a Goodwill store.
• Besides being a sitting New York politician, he has worked on fighting the opioid crisis as well as trying to reduce the use of tobacco, energy drinks, and caffeine.
• And yet he was willing to trade drugs for sex in an alley, arrested because of a law enforcement sting operation.

Nice guy but not surprising given how low so many American politicians have stooped when it comes to lacking integrity and actual criminal conduct.

3) But shady and criminal behaviors are not confined to trading drugs for sex in a back alley:

• Attorney General Bill Barr has recently announced he has executed eight indictments for people who illegally funneled overseas donations to Democratic politicians in this country.
• One of those indicted was a star witness in the Robert Mueller failed collusion witch hunt that tried to link Trump to Russian influences, further damaging the credibility of that whole fiasco.
• That witness, George Nadler, was indicted for illegally funneling foreign money to Hillary Clinton’s failed 2016 Presidential campaign and other Democrats.
• Nadler was not only arrested but, according to Justice Department sources, he was one of the leaders of the whole effort.
• According to the Gateway Pundit: “An indictment was unsealed against the CEO of an online payment processing company, and seven others, charging them with conspiring to make and conceal conduit and excessive campaign contributions, and related offenses, during the U.S. presidential election in 2016 and thereafter.”
• This illegal dirty funnel money found its way into the campaigns of Democrats Hillary Clinton, Senator Cory Booker, Congressman Adam Schiff, and others.
• According to the indictments: “The 53 count indictment charges Khawaja with two counts of conspiracy, three counts of making conduit contributions, three counts of causing excessive contributions, 13 counts of making false statements, 13 counts of causing false records to be filed, and one count of obstruction of a federal grand jury investigation. Nader is charged with conspiring with Khawaja to make conduit campaign contributions, and related offenses.”
• The money involved totalled over $3.5 million.

Another indictment of how dirty and perverted the American class has turned the political process into in this country. What is not apparent is if any of those who received the illegal and dirty money or their staff will be indicted and punished. Obviously those that donated the foreign money to the Democrats' campaigns knew they were breaking the law but what about those that received the dirty money, how did they not know they were also breaking the law?

If history is any indication, those that received the money will make sure that they never face justice because for American politicians laws always seem to be merely suggestions, not hard and fast rules that the rest of us have to live under.

That will do it for today: politics gets dirtier and dirtier, whether illegally getting money from overseas sources or trading drugs for sex in a back alley and the ability of New York politicians to provide the basic service of protecting lives and property continues to deteriorate as they dismantle the NYPD.

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:

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=loce+my+country%2C+loathe+my+government&ref=nb_sb_noss

Please visit the following sites for freedom:


http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

September, 2015, Political Class Insanity, Part 5: Iranians Buying U.S. Senators, The Federal Inability to Build A Fence and More

It is the start of another month which means it is time for our monthly review of the latest political class insanity that continually spews forth from America’s politicians. Their actions, words, quotes, incompetency, and general ineptness continue to reinforce our theory that we are currently being served by the worst set of politicians in the history of the nation.

As you read about the latest shenanigans and ineptness of the political class, keep in mind what should be their priorities in these difficult times and compare this list to what they are actually working on:

• NBC recently reported that ISIS forces are getting larger and stronger despite the Obama administration spending billions of dollars on a failed air campaign and military strategy.
• The stock market is in free fall.
• Job creation is barely keeping up with population growth.
• Wage growth is anemic, growing just .2% in the second quarter, the lowest quarterly growth since 1982.
• The labor participation rate is at the lowest level in decades because the Obama economy cannot generate enough jobs.
• Thousands of veterans are still not getting the medical care they were promised by the Federal government.
• 46 million Americans are still receiving monthly Federal food assistance.
• Our borders still leak and thousands of illegal immigrant criminals continue to walk our streets
• A record number of police officers have been assassinated in the past week.
• Major programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security are hurtling towards insolvency and lose hundreds of billions of dollars every year to fraud and mismanagement.
• Our kids are still getting lousy public educations at most public schools.
• The IRS and other government functions seem to be getting their computer systems hacked on a regular basis, exposing tens of millions of Americans to identity theft potential.
• Obama Care is a failure along so many dimensions as health care costs continue to soar despite the Obama promise that they would decrease.
• Annual Federal deficits, while down, are still about half a TRILLION a year meaning that even though the Federal government is collecting more in taxes than ever before, it still cannot run a balanced budget.

Again, keep these real crises in mind as you read what our politicians are actually doing.

1) While we try to respect everyone’s opinion, we find it difficult to believe why anyone believes that Obama and Kerry did not get their pockets picked by the Iranians when you look at the lopsided, one sided deal that was agreed to to limit Iran’s ability to get a nuclear weapon or two. We will be talking about the idiocy of this deal in a near term future post and have already shown its shortfalls in the following past post:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2015/09/why-iran-nuclear-weapons-deal-stinks.html

But somehow dozens of Democrats in the Senate are supporting this atrocious deal which puzzled me until I remembered that old adage: “follow the money.” In a recent article by Daniel Greenfield, writing for the Israel’s Voice website, he laid out the the amount of money that Iranian interests and lobbyists have showered onto Democratic U.S. Senators. Once you follow the Iranian money, it becomes clearer why a Senator would vote to support this crazy deal:

• Senator John Markey of Massachusetts supports the Obama Iranian deal and also was the top recipient of campaign funding contributions from the Iranian American Political Action Committee (IAPAC) which maxed out the amount of dollars it could contribute to his campaigns.
• Senator Al Franken of Minnesota also supports the deal and also received a load of money from IAPAC.
• Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire also supports the deal but is obviously a lousy money negotiator since she supports the deal but only got half the amount of money from IAPAC given to Markey and Franken.
• Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York also supports the deal and she also had received IAPAC money a few years ago.
• The Iranian lobbyists also tried to turn Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona and Charles Schumer of New York with campaign contributions but those investments went sour since neither supports this deal.
• Iranian lobbyist Hassan Nemazee has also contributed to Gillilbrand, served as Hillary Clinton’s national campaign finance director, raised campaign funds for both her and John Kerry, pleaded guilty to a fraud scheme involving millions of dollars and has served as an IAPAC trustee.
• Nemazee also contributed to deal supporter Senator Barbara Boxer who also received IAPAC money.
• Vice President Joe Biden has also received big bucks from Iranian interests including the American Iranian Council and the Iranian Muslim Association of North America.
• According to the article: A member of Iran’s oppposition had accused Biden's campaigns of being “financed by Islamic charities of the Iranian regime based in California and by the Silicon Iran network.” Biden’s affinity for the terrorist regime in Tehran was so extreme that after 9/11 he had suggested “Seems to me this would be a good time to send, no strings attached, a check for $200 million to Iran”.
• Akbar Ghahary, a co-founder of IAPAC, has donated and raised more than $50,000 for Obama’s election campaigns.

Now, supporters of the deal might point out that Israel also plays the lobbyist game and has probably donated far more to American politicians than Iranians lobbyists have done. There is a big couple of differences though:

1. First, Israel’s leaders and its citizens do not preach “Death To Iran” and vow to wipe Iran off the face of the earth.
2. Israel does not support terror organizations and terrorist attacks across a wide swath of the Middle East and throughout the world.
3. Although the Israelis probably have had nuclear weapons for a long time, they have proven themselves to be responsible owners of such weapons, something that the Iranians have not proven they would be.

Of course, we could have avoided the whole mess of Senators prostituting themselves and their principles to the highest bidders if we had implemented Step 6 from our book, “Love My Country, Loathe My Government.” Step 6 would allow only individual American citizens to donate to political campaigns. No PACs, no foreign interests, only American citizens. 

But Step 6 is not in play and as a result, the worst set of politicians to ever serve in Washington have again proven themselves to be weak willed, shallow people who would trade the safety of millions of people for a few thousands dollars. Insanity.

2) We have often showed that projects and programs started by the Federal government never get completed as planned. Much money is promised, much ballyhooing is done at the beginning, and years and billions of dollars later, nothing has been accomplished. Such is the case with building a Federal government wall to secure our southern border with Mexico.

According to reporting by Paul Bedard, writing for the Washington Examiner, on September 4, 2015, the Department of Homeland Security recently admitted that only 36 miles along the U.S./Mexican border had effective double fencing. 36 miles out of thousands of miles. Pathetic. Especially pathetic since the Federal government has been trying to build an effective security fence since at least the Reagan administration over three decades ago...and probably billions of dollars ago.

How badly has the effort gone? Consider some recent Congressional testimony from Homeland personnel:

• With a current budget of $2.5 billion, the Feds have still only been able to build less than 40 miles of effective fencing.
• Another 352 miles of border have different types of less effective fencing which cost an amazing $7 million a mile. For that cost, the fence should go a mile under ground and a mile in the air.
• Some of this 352 miles of fencing are built out of Vietnam era helicopter landing pads, not a very effective approach to security fencing.
• 1,300 miles on the border have NO fencing at all. This is 66.5% of the border mileage.

Incompetence, plain and simple.

3) Let’s stay with the Department of Homeland Security for one more piece of insanity. This organization has probably received at least hundreds of billions of funding to secure the homeland since the 9-11 attacks. How well they have done is open for debate given the dozens of attacks, both executed and thwarted, over the years.

However, along one dimension of measurement they have been a total failure despite hundreds of billions of dollars. According to more Paul Bedard reporting from the Washington Examiner, a recent opinion survey by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs found that 72% of those surveyed think an Islamic terror attack on our shores is critical threat. 

Additionally, the percentage of respondents who perceive a "critical threat" from Islamic fundamentalism has increased 15 percentage points in just a year, to 55%, up from 40% in 2014 and is at the highest level since 2002. So much for making us feel safe. Given the ineptness of the Department of Homeland Security to build a simple, effective border fence, this fear and tribulation is probably real and justified.

Another day, another three examples of political class insanity: Iranian lobbyists buying U.S. politicians, a Federal agency that needs $7 million to build a mile long fence, and the same Federal agency that has not calmed our fears of being attacked in our own country. And the insanity will continue to march on again tomorrow.



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

Obama And Campaign Fundraising - No Different Than The Rest Of The Political Class

As most Americans probably know, we are in the midst of a major political election campaign season that has and will seem like it stretches out forever. We are and will be bombarded by political messages, both via news outlets and paid political commercials. And those paid political messages will have to be paid somehow, which brings us to today's discussion.

Many of my Democrat friends like to point out that President Obama is somehow different than past Presidential candidates. That his campaign in 2008 was mostly funded by average, everyday Americans donating small amounts of money to help him get elected.

That his campaign reflected the way America should be run politically, average Americans having their voice heard above the special interests that manipulate our politicians and political processes. That the President is a man of the people, not of the lobbyists, PACs, and other moneyed interests. According to a recent Associated Press (AP) report, in 2008 President Obama had always been a big critic of "Washington's pay-for-access privileges."

Of course, we know that is more fluff than fact. Although he probably did get a lot of money from small time donations from individual Americans in 2008, campaign donation records also show that large banks like Goldman Sachs, large companies like Google and Microsoft, and a myriad of other large special interest groups donated millions and millions of dollars to his campaign in order to win favor and have a say in any Presidential decisions, policies, and strategies.

And his thirst for big time bucks and the influence it buys continues unabated as we lead up to the November, 2012 Presidential election. According to recent Associated Press reports:

• A March 28, 2012 AP article, "Obama Rolls Out White House Red Carpet for Big Donors," described how wealthy individuals that contribute to Obama election campaigns get privileged access to White House events and personnel.
• The article documented how more than 60 of Obama's biggest campaign donors have visited the White House hundreds of times for meetings with Obama top advisers, holiday parties or state dinners.
• Thirty of his biggest donors were invited to the recent state dinner for Britain's Prime Minister.
• According to the AP, "the President (has) embraced the big-money, fundraising groups he once assailed as a "threat to democracy" on grounds they corrode elections by permitting unlimited and effectively anonymous donations from billionaires and corporations. Obama was once so vocal about super PACs that, during his 2010 State of the Union speech, he accused the Supreme Court in its 2010 decision in the Citizens United case of reversing a century of law that would 'open the floodgates for special interests.'"
• Top donors to the Obama Super PAC include Chicago investment manager John W. Rogers Jr. and Hollywood director Steven Spielberg, who each gave more than $150,000.
• Spielberg has gotten White House access many times including an invitation to a Rose Garden event and a private movie showing with the First Family in the White House.
• Rogers' donations are also interesting and point out a severe conflict of interest since the AP reports: "Rogers was selected by the administration in October 2010 to head a financial advisory council, and visited the White House more than two dozen times since Obama took office, including one-on-one meetings with former chief of staff William Daley and Jarrett, Obama's senior adviser. Two weeks before Rogers' contribution in January, Obama's campaign paid his firm, Ariel Investments, $600 for "event site rental." Quid pro quo?
• Lenny Mendonca, a director of consulting firm McKinsey & Co., gave $50,000 to an Obama Super PAC and received access to top Obama advisors.
• Bill Maher has donated a million dollars to an Obama Super PAC, money that the President has not asked to be returned despite Maher's public, disgraceful and border line pornographic public comments about Republicans that contribute heavily to the sour political class divisions in this country.
• One of the richest men in the world, Warren Buffet, has hosted at least one fund raising dinner for Obama where the cost of attending was in the tens of thousands of dollars, certainly out of the financial reach of "average" Americans.
• These "dinners for access" events for the President's campaign have occurred many times in the past year with one of them costing attendees a whopping $70,000 to attend.
• In early March, First Lady Michelle Obama attended a fundraiser in North Carolina that cost $100,000 per couple to get access.The fundraising event included a dinner with the First Lady, a performance by singer James Taylor, and a photo with the First Lady, reports www.newsobserver.com.

If the typical American household has an average household income of under $60,000, how many "average" Americans do you think got invited to the recent White House state dinner?

How many "average" Americans ever got access and a briefing from top Obama's White House advisors?

How many "average" Americans were invited to the Warren Buffet's dinner for the President?

How many "average" Americans got invited to the the First Lady's fundraising event in North Carolina?

How many "average" Americans get appointed to a White House financial advisory council after making a campaign donation?

How many "average" Americans get to a Rose Garden event or share a movie with the First Family?

I think we know the answers to all of the above questions and that answer is none. This President, despite the hype and fluff, is just as bad and just as corrupted by big money as any other American politician. He has and will receive campaign money from corporations, unions, PACs, Super PACs, lobbyists, and wealthy Americans just like any other politician.

Which is why several steps from "Love my Country, Loathe My Government" are urgently needed to fix this pervasive and perverted problem of money in politics:

1. Step 6 would allow only individual Americans to contribute to election campaigns. When the Founding Fathers granted us freedom of speech, I do not believe that they had corporations, unions, PACs, and lobbyists in mind, only individual Americans. This step would restore freedom and democracy to "average" Americans and remove the overwhelming influence of organizational money form our politics.
2. Step 7 would allow individuals to contribute money only to politicians that serve them, e.g. someone in Kansas could not contribute to a New Jersey politician's campaign.
3. Step 39 would impose term limits on all Federal politicians, "one and done," to eliminate the influence peddling and buying that politicians do with wealthy campaign donors in order to continue their incumbency.

As this campaign season progresses, and the President and other candidates proclaim they are the candidate of the "average" American, remember that you probably have not been invited to the White House for being average, you have not had meetings with White House personnel for being average, and you have not been invited to a $30,000 political dinner for being average.

Until the country implements the three steps listed above, you and I are nothing but a vote to Obama and the rest of the political class, a vote that means little after the election when it comes to resolving the issues we "average" people face everyday.


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/

Government Favors And Politicians For Sale! Election Year Specials! Act Now! Goldman Sachs

On Wednesday we discussed the basic approaches our political class in Washington use to gain favors and enrichment for their careers and their net worth. Yesterday, we looked at the institutional approaches the political class has used to establish rules, laws, and exemptions so that they are not affected by felonious behavior that would put most every other American in jail.

Today, we will look at the curious relationship between the premier banking establishment in this country, Goldman Sachs and the Federal government. You decide at the end of this post whether this is all only a coincidence or it is incestuous corruption.

The genesis of this discussion comes from a recent Bloomberg Markets Magazine story from November 29, 2011, written by Richard Teitelbaum and entitled: "How Paulson Gave Hedge Funds Advance Word." As review, recall that Henry Paulson was Treasury Secretary when the economy and financial markets collapsed towards the end of the Bush administration. According to the article and Mr. Teitelbaum:

• On July 21, 2008, Mr. Paulson was meeting with members of the hedge fund, Eton Park Capital Management LP in New York City.
• Bear Sterns had collapsed four months earlier and its remaining assets had been sold at rock bottom prices to JP Morgan. The stock and financial markets were in turmoil.
• At the same time, home prices had been crashing, foreclosures were approaching record levels, and the stock market was getting real antsy about the mortgage giants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
• A New York Times article July 22, 2008 said that the Fed and Office of The Comptroller were looking into the finances of Fannie and Freddie and quoted Paulson as saying he believed this examination would give "a signal of confidence to the market."
• Attending the Eton Park meeting were about a dozen hedge fund managers and other Wall Street executives, and at least five of them were Goldman Sachs alumni. These included Eric Mindich, the founder of Eton Park, was a former chief strategy officer at Goldman Sachs,  Dinakar Singh who was the former head of the Goldman Sachs proprietary trading desk, Daniel Och who once was the co-head of the Goldman Sachs equity trading organization, Stephen Mandel who worked as a retail analyst at Goldman Sachs, and Frank Brosens who worked at Goldman Sachs as an arbitrageur. However, an official list of those attending the meeting is not available, this list being unofficially obtained from someone who was in the meeting themselves.
• Paulson was chief executive officer chairman of Goldman Sachs from 1999 to 2006.
• Paulson's book about the financial crisis, "On The Brink," makes no mention of the Eton Park meeting despite the  high powered hedge fund managers and others who attended.
• Despite his "signal of confidence"public quote in the Times article, Paulson told the assembled group of a scenario where Fannie and Freddie would be taken over by the Federal government and placed into "conservatorship," wiping out the common and preferred stock value of Fannie and Freddie stockholders. According to a witness at the meeting, no one in the room had any doubt that this was the actual federal government plan that was going to be implemented.

The article states that there is no evidence that those attending the meeting traded on this sensitive, valuable, and non-public information or shorted the stock of Fannie and Freddie. However, the article also does state it is impossible to track company specific short stock sales since this information is not available through public documents. Also, this does not mean those attending the meeting did not pass the information along to family and friends.

Obviously, this type of behavior just screams of insider trading violations and abuses. Consider the quotes from outside experts on Paulson's behavior:

1. William Black, associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City: "You just never ever do that as a government regulator - transmit nonpublic market information to market participants."
2. Janet Tavakoli, founder of the Chicago consulting firm Tavakoli Structured Finance: "What is this but crony capitalism?" Most people have had their fill of it."
3. Larry Ribstein, professor of law at the University of Illinois: "The optics are awful, there's no doubt about it. Everyone knows that insider trading is a huge issue."
4. Adam Zagorin, senior fellow at the Project on Government Oversight: "The bottom line is that senior level people in Washington, in the name of keeping in touch with their stakeholders, are tipping their hands. You can't prosecute them for insider trading if they didn't trade shares. You may not be able to even reprimand them. What the hell are the rules?"

Thus, although most knowledgeable people know this was atrocious insider trading behavior by the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, it apparently happened anyway, according to the article. And what is the most common thread through all of the points discussed above? 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.

Now, no one has been arrested or convicted relative to this meeting. However, as we have said many times in this blog, the appearance of conflict of interest is just as bad as the actual act of conflict of interest. Given everything else we have discussed over the past few days relative to corruption, this type of behavior just adds to the wretched smell of the political class.

But the Goldman Sachs/political class connection does not end with this disaster:

• Robert Rubin, who was also once the Secretary of the Treasury, worked at Goldman Sachs for 26 years, eventually serving as a member of the Board, and Co-Chairman from 1990-1992.
• Rajat Gupta, who was once a member of the Goldman Sachs board of directors, was indicted on October 26, 2011 for disclosing nonpublic information on Goldman Sachs and other companies.
• Goldman Sachs donated almost a million dollars to President Obama's 2008 Presidential election campaign, making it one of the biggest contributors to the campaign.
• According to the Center For Responsive Politics, Goldman Sachs employees have contributed almost $32 million to politicians' campaigns since 1989.
• Although the current Secretary of the Treasury, Timothy Geithner, never worked for Goldman Sachs, his chief of staff did.
• Jon Corzine is a former Goldman Sachs chairman, a former U.S. Senator, a former governor of New Jersey, and has recently presided over one of the biggest financial institution collapses in recent history, MF Global.
• Johusa Bolten is an ex-Goldman Sachs employee, he was the chief of staff for George W. Bush, and he was the one who recommended Henry Paulson, a former chairman of Goldman Sachs, be Secretary of the Treasury.
• According to the New American website, ex-Goldman Sachs employees Robert Hermats, Mark Petterson, Adam Storch, and Gary Gensler all hold high ranking positions in the Obama administration.

Again, I am not saying any of these people, Goldman Sachs, or any of these situations resulted in unethical or unlawful behavior. But I am also not saying that they did not. Given everything else we know, it just seems like there are too many coincidences and too many relationships for conflict of interest situations not to be going on left and right.

Adding insult to injury, the Goldman Sachs-related people have not performed in a stellar manner. As we discussed above, Corzine helped crash his company, MF Global, and there are several investigations underway into criminal activity at the firm. Henry Paulson apparently never foresaw the Great Recession until it was almost on top of him and the country, too late for any corrective action to be taken. I could not find an examples of an outstanding job being done by anyone from Goldman Sachs who worked for the Federal government (I would be more than happy to print one if anyone knows of such a case).


And why seemingly only Goldman Sachs? Aren't there competent people from JP Morgan, Bank Of America, Morgan  Stanley, Wells Fargo, or other big financial institutions, or anywhere else, that could serve the American people through the Federal government? Why does it seem that Goldman Sachs has a monopoly hold on the relationship on the American political class and the Federal government?

The answer to all of these questions is likely the same as the answer to all of the other corruption issues we discussed. Just follow the money and the campaigns for reelection that our politicians continually run. Money funds the campaigns and I would bet that Goldman Sachs is the best at leveraging the money it puts towards those reelection campaigns and leveraging the people it has gotten placed in the halls of government. Just ask the people at the Eton Park meeting.


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/

What's Next, Roulette In The Rose Garden? Poker In The Press Room?

I have never hidden the fact that I was never a big fan of Barack Obama. Back in 2008 I found him shallow, void of concrete plans, pompous, nothing more than a typical Chicago politician. However, I was willing to give him a fair shot at success even though I did not vote for him. Friends and family members whom I respect were very excited about an Obama Presidency so I was willing to accept the fact that I was possibly wrong, not able to see some attributes or qualities of leadership that they thought they saw.

After two and half years in office, I can confidently say I stick by my initial suspicion, this is not a leader by any means, this is just another politician. His economic programs have all been failures, his health care reform initiative is riddled with problems, he has not gotten our troops out of Iraq as promised, he has not closed down the prison at Guantanamo as promised, and his administration's policies and amateur hour antics have introduced so much uncertainty into the world that it has been a long time since our economic condition has been this dire. His reckless spending may have already bankrupted the country under mountains of debt.

But what really cemented my belief that I was right back in 2008 was the recent email that the President's handlers sent out and its accompanying video clip, announcing that the President would be raffling off a dinner with himself in the White House for four people. All you had to do was donate $5 to his re-election campaign fund and you would have your name entered into a raffle for the honor of having dinner with the President.

I find a number of quite despicable aspects of this whole affair:

• Should the most powerful man in the world stoop to such carnival-like antics, raffling off his valuable time to collect a few bucks from Americans? In my eyes, this cheapens the aura and respect of the office of President to unheard levels.
• Given that the country is facing a possible default on its debt, we are fighting three wars across the world, unemployment is stubbornly high, the country is as divided as ever, etc., how could this President find time out of what should be a hectic schedule to film a video for this raffle? If he performed his job like he should have wouldn't that performance be more Presidential and effective for his campaign than this cheap stunt?
• The video effort gets even stickier when put in the light of legality. According to many sources in the news, it appears that this video was filmed in a non-residential area of the White House. If that is the case, and other official videos have been presented to show the same setting and which would verify this was not in the residential area, than the President and his handlers have actually violated a Federal law which prohibits the use of the White House public areas for political campaigning. Thus, you can bet this issue will eventually take up more and more valuable time away from solving the actual problems of the nation as the political class looks for any angle to optimize this possible illegality.
• Given this administration's less than sterling record of playing by the rules, you can bet that this raffle will be rigged so that only Obama supporters win. I thought about entering but I am sure that if I was one of the winners (or Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity were a winner), you can bet that our entry would suddenly disappear.

But the most obnoxious part of this whole affair is the following quote from the email invitation:

"Most [election] campaigns fill their dinner guest lists with Washington lobbyists and special interests. We're running a different kind of campaign. We don't take money from Washington lobbyists and special interest PACs - we never have and we never will."

Wow, a campaign based on the little people in the country, the individual Americans, the true essence of America. Not! Does the President and his handlers think we are that stupid to believe that he is a man of the people, that he shuns politically motivated, large sums of money when it benefits his election campaigns? Let's look at his track record when it comes to being a "man of the ordinary people:"

- On August 3, 2011, the day that the country might start running into debt ceiling and financial problems, a massive birthday party/campaign event in Chicago is planned for the President. The event will consist of several events including a Jennifer Hudson concert ($50 per ticket), admission to the birthday party ($200 a ticket), a premium seat $1,000), a souvenir photo with the President ($10,000) and VIP seating and dinner with Obama ($38,500). Kind of makes that $5 raffle ticket a bargain.

The President could not care less about your $5, he wants the big spenders and your raffle entry is nothing but political PR and a way to get your email address to hit you up for money later in the campaign. Trust me, at $10,000 a picture, there will be alot of special interest money banging around on Birthday night regardless of what the raffle email said.

- A short article in the May 20, 2011 issue of The Week magazine described how a group of Democrats have announced that they were putting processes in place to collect campaign funding from anonymous sources for the 2012 elections, using a funding model that Obama labeled a "threat to democracy" when Republicans successfully used in last November. This process allows people to donate money without divulging their names. Seriously, ask yourself: do we think that this will consist of a bunch of $5, non-special interest donations or will it consist of much larger corporate, union, lobbyist, and PAC donations? Given this announced Democratic Party strategy, the President's  claim that "we don't take money from Washington lobbyists and special interest PACs" is now out the window from a credibility perspective.

- Consider an article in the April 25, 2011 issue of Business Week that described some of Obama's recent and historical fund raising efforts:

• He recently attended a fundraising dinner at the home of Marc Benioff, chairman of www.salesforce.com, which had an admission price of $35,800 per person which was to be split between the President's re-election campaign and the National Democratic Committee.
• At the time the article was written, the President was scheduled to attend another fundraiser on April 27 in new York City. Price of admission? $35,800 per person.
• In 2008, Microsoft gave the Obama campaign over $830,000.
• In 2008, Google gave the Obama campaign over $800,000.
• In 2008, Goldman Sachs gave the Obama campaign just under a $1 million and Citigroup gave just over $700,000. And the political class, including Obama, eventually gave them billions of dollars of your taxpayer money via the TARP bank bailout process shortly thereafter.
• In 2008, Boston philanthropist Alan Solomont, former media executive Charles Rivkin, and lawyer John Roos each raised more than $500,000 for Obama's campaign. They are now the ambassadors to Spain, France, and Japan, respectively. These guys went to cushy jobs in exotic, faraway lands on the taxpayer expense and all you got was a raffle ticket.

It is obvious that this President will stoop to any level at any time to ensure he gets elected. So, why not go all in, so to speak. Let's put those roulette wheels in the White House Rose Garden. Let's move the press out of the White House press room and put those poker tables in. Get a royal flush, share a beer with the President. Double down on Double 00 at roulette and maybe you can shoot some basketball hoops with the big guy. He seems bored and irritated whenever he has to actually do something as required by his job so he would probably welcome the break. The integrity, status, and aura of the Presidency cannot fall much lower.

This kind of  hypocritical and demeaning behavior makes Step 39 from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" even more important. Step 39 would impose term limits on all politicians, restricting them to one term, length to be determined. Only by imposing a one and done term limit restriction can we avoid being offended by Presidential raffles and the freedom destroying money pit that re-election campaigns have become.

Consider a quote from a June 27, 2011 article in Business Week: "If you have tens of thousands of dollars to spare, you can very easily buy face time with the President of The United States. Anything less, you're looking at a raffle ticket." So true, so please do not buy this PR raffle garbage, you are just a pawn in this high powered game of chess.



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/

The Travesty And Embarrassment That Is Our Political Class

Talk about embarrassing: we are now in April, 2011 and the Washington political class is still fighting over what the Federal government’s 2011 budget should be. The government’s fiscal year began in late 2010 so we are at least one third of the way through the year and we still do not have a functioning government budget for the year. Such a travesty, almost no human entity, business, charity, or household works in such an inept way when it comes to finances, just the government and the politicians that run it.



It is bad enough that the country still does not have a budget but what progress that has been made to formulate and approve one has also been a travesty. As you know, the United States government’s national debt is now well north of $14 TRILLION and rising at a record pace. Government expenditures in fiscal year 2011 are expected to be about $3.8 TRILLION but the government is only collecting about $2.3 TRILLION in taxes, creating a budget deficit of roughly $1.5 TRILLION on top of the $14 TRILLION. Thus, the Federal government will spend about $.40 more for every dollar in taxes it collects.


Given these dire circumstances, one would have hoped, even dared, that some politicians would have assumed a leadership role in drastically cutting government spending before our debt becomes unpayable and our country and its freedoms become untenable. As always, however, our political class continues to disappoint. Despite months of wrangling, name calling, and inaction, today’s news reports indicate that a budget agreement may be reached soon that cuts $33 billion out of Federal spending. $33 billion is only .87% of all Federal spending.


To understand how sad and inadequate this effort at responsible government and finances has been, consider some simple math examples:


• If the typical American household earns about $60,000 a year, then a .87% reduction in its spending would be equal to about $522 a year, about $10 a week or about $1.43 a day, less than the cost of a latte at Starbucks, hardly a drastic cut in spending or lifestyle.


• Unfortunately, if that household spent and borrowed like the Federal government, it would have spent $84,000, about $24,000 more than it earned in one year. Within about two and half years it would have spent more, and owed more, than the equivalent of its annual gross earnings.


• If .87% fewer people attended the Super Bowl last season, there still would have been 102,321 people watching the game in person, making hardly a dent in traffic or concession lines.


• If you were in a leaking row boat and water was coming over the sides at the rate of 14 gallons a minute (representing the 2011 Federal deficit), the political class would be removing that water at the rate of about a cup a minute (the equivalent to the .87% budget cut), an action that would quickly result in both you and the boat sinking to the bottom.


• If the typical human should consume about 2.500 calories a day, a human eating like the Federal deficit would be eating at the rate of 3,500 calories a day, a sure fire recipe for obesity and a variety of diseases, including death, in a short period. Reducing that 3,500 calorie intake by .87% is equivalent to just over 30 calories or about one ounce of yogurt. Hello heart disease!


You could also come up with other, more qualitative and sillier analogies (e.g. if the .87% was Viagra the human race would be extinct within forty years, if that .87% was a calculator we would still be using an abacus, etc.) but you get the idea. Not only is the budget late, it is a disaster. The people sitting in Congress and in the White House either are not smart enough to be fiscally responsible, do not know how to be fiscally responsible, or do not want to be fiscally responsible since it might cost them some votes in the next election, i.e. better to protect their political career than the future financial solvency of the United States. Whatever the case, the boat is sinking, our arteries are clogging, and economic death is fast approaching.


And the situation is getting worse due to events outside of Washington. President Obama has recently attacked a sovereign country, Libya that posed no risk to the United States, without approval from Congress or the American people. This attack has already cost the country over $550 million, eating up 2% of the $33 billion in budget cuts within the first week of military activity. At this rate, the measly $33 billion budget reduction could be wiped out by Labor Day due to Libyan military operations.


The earthquake in Japan has caused widespread devastation that will require years to repair and untold hundreds of billions of dollars. According to an article in the March 23, 2011 issue of The Week magazine, Japan holds almost $900 billion of U.S. debt. What happens when 1) Japan no longer buys new U.S. debt since it needs all the cash it has to rebuild its own country and 2) Japan decides to start selling billions and billions of its U.S. debt to raise cash for its reconstruction effort? What happens is that the U.S. Treasury will find it much more difficult to find buyers of Treasury notes to finance annual TRILLION dollar deficits.


$33 billion, how pathetic of an effort is that? Think how easy it could be if someone in Congress had just a little creativity, ingenuity, and courage:


• Last year the Associated Press reported on a government analysis that showed the Federal government annually wastes up to about $96 billion in improper payments through some of its government programs because of fraud or incompetence. Just reducing this waste of money by one third would get us to about $33 billion without any typical American suffering, only the crooks that rip off the system would feel the pain.


• If President Obama had gotten U.S. troops out of Iraq, where we still have about 50,000 troops stationed, quicker than the Bush timetable, we probably would have been already saving $20 to $30 billion a year without any typical American suffering.


• If the President really showed some leadership and brought home the hundred thousand or so U.S. troops from Germany, South Korea, and Japan, where they now serve no legitimate purpose, well over $33 billion could be saved annually without any typical American suffering, only the military industrial complex would feel the pain.


• If the political class finally decided to terminate the practice of earmarks, which are nothing more than a way for politicians to raise money for their re-election campaigns by using taxpayer money, then most conservative estimates say that almost half of the $33 billion reduction could be realized without any typical American suffering, only incumbent politicians would feel the financial pain.


• If the political class implemented the findings of a recent General Accounting Office report, a report that indicated military procurement processes were so inefficient that over $40 billion a year was spent on military items that were either unused or never required, suggested purchasing reforms could be implemented to save tens of billions of dollars a year without any typical American suffering, only the providers of the unneeded equipment would see a drop in business


• If the political class stopped funding the Market Access program, a program which subsidizes the foreign advertising and promotion efforts of large American companies, and forced those companies to fund their own foreign promotions, the budget could be reduced by about $250 million a year without any typical American suffering only those large corporations would feel the pain in their increased advertising and promotion budgets. Terminate about 130 other corporate welfare programs and you may have your $33 billion in savings.


There, that wasn’t so hard and I am not even a government budget expert. Cutting the government spending relatively painlessly can be done very easily when you are talking about a bloated $3.8 TRILLION budget. The fact that the political class is months late and hundreds of billions of dollars away from a realistic and financially sane budget is indeed a travesty and an embarrassment. That is why two steps from “Love my Country, Loathe My Government” are critically important if we are to save the country from a financial collapse:


• Step 6 would allow only individual Americans to contribute to political campaigns. It would ban campaign donations from any organized entity including businesses, unions, PACs, etc. It is these “entity” donations that prevent the politicians in Washington from making even the simplest budget cuts since they are dependent on the entities’ campaign donations. Eliminate the campaign financing from these groups and maybe some politicians would finally act for the good of the country, not the good of their campaign coffers.


• Step 39 would impose term limits on all Federal political offices. The current crop of politicians sitting in Washington have now proven without a doubt that they are incompetent to run the country. They are oblivious to the coming financial crash and unable to run any aspect of government efficiently and effectively. They need to be removed from office, either via the ballot box or via term limits. They are too dangerous to remain in Congress and to remain in charge.


They are indeed a travesty and an embarrassment, we should also make them history.


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.cato.org/

http://www.robertringer.com/

http://realpolichick.blogspot.com/

http://www.flipcongress2010.com/

http://www.reason.com/ http://www.repealamendmen.com/