July, 2019, Part 5, Political Class Insanity: More Voters Than Adults In LA, "The Russians Are Coming," and Politicians Pulling Strings?

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) In order for a democracy to survive there must be total faith that the voting process is in complete integrity. Once citizens believe that casting their vote makes no difference since forces are working behind the scenes to undermine their vote and their voice then democracy dies.

And according to the Godfather Politics website, if democracy dies in America from voter fraud there is a good chance that the death spiral begins in Los Angeles:

• In an article by Warner Todd Huston on July 11, 2019, there are 1.6 million more registered voters in Los Angeles county than there are eligible adult voters living in the county.
• This is equivalent of the county having the population of Philadelphia worth of extra voters.
• This disgrace in voter integrity puts the county in violation of Federal law.
• Despite being in violation of Federal law, according to the article, county officials do not seem to be in a rush to fix this problem, a problem that has been going on for years.
• And while Los Angeles is a very gross voting disgrace, they are not alone relative to other California counties.
• Ten of California’s 58 counties have voter registration rates that are higher than 100% of the counties’ eligible voters.
• This in turn causes the ENTIRE state of California to have 101 registered voters for every 100 eligible voters.
• According to the article: “Eight other states have voter rolls that exceed their actual voting population, and 38 states have at least one country where the disparity exists.”
• A Pew research study estimated in 2012 that there are 24 million voter registrations, about one in eight, which are “no longer valid or are significantly inaccurate.”
• 24 million is bigger than the entire population of Florida or New York state.
• Pew also found that current voter registration rolls included 1.8 million dead people and 2.75 million voters who are registered to vote in at least two different states.

What a mess. If democracy dies in this country could very well die because our broken voting process caused Americans to lose faith that they still had an honest and worthwhile voice in their country’s future. What a disgrace.

2) The Democrats that fueled the Robert Mueller Russian investigation into whether or not Trump used the Russians to help get himself elected spent almost $30 million to find out that there was no Russian/Trump collusion. But even after two years of wasted time and resources and a lot of taxpayer money, Democrats are still trying to find a way to blame the Russians for everything wrong with their lives:

• Presidential candidate Kamala Harris has already claimed that the Russians are already after her, over a year away from the next Presidential election and months and months ahead of any Democratic primaries.
• In a recent interview she claimed that “Russian bots” have already attacked her campaign:
• During the interview she was asked if her campaign would come under attack from the Russians: "We already know we are [under attack]. What we have to do is we also have to know when we’re being played and we also have to respond immediately when we know something is inaccurate."
• And in a really weird twist she also blamed the Russians for attacking Colin Kaepernick, the former NFL quarterback who insulted America with his childish anti-America and anti-police antics.

Really foks, the whole “Russians under every rock” is really getting tired. If the Russians were actually that good and influential then the Soviet Union would still be a world power. Why not go positive and promote your assets, ideas, and ideals rather than chasing Russian ghosts everywhere, it is getting stale and is so unproductive.

3) Most people probably know that Jeffery Epstein, a very rich billionaire, has once escaped the consequences of promoting pedophilia with young girls but has been recently arrested again for the alleged sick transgressions. The biggest question and scandal of the original effort to put him jail was the extremely lenient sentence he received for abusing so many underaged girls.

The lenient sentence and treatment raised the obvious question: what people in power may have helped Epstein escape justice in his original trial and arrest? If you believe the old saying, “follow the money,” than those who may have helped him dodge justice with his first brush with the law for abusing kids could be in the following list:

• Steven Beyer, writing for the Western Journalism website on July 12, 2019, shed some light on how much money Epstein has given to mostly Democratic politicians over the years.
• Epstein donated to Democrats 26 times in the 1990s but only 3 times to Republicans.
• Receivers of Epstein donations included Democrats Chuck Shumer, Jeff Bingaman, Joe Lieberman, Chris Dodd, John Glen, Bill Bradley, Daniel Moynihan, and Mark Pryor.
• Epstein also donated to the Democratic senatorial campaign organization.
• He gave $25,000 to the Democratic National Committee.

Just saying, who knows who may have pulled strings to get Epstein off the hook the first time. Hopefully, this time he will not get the same secret help for his disgusting transgressions.

4) But if politicians, likely Democrats, helped get Epstein off the hook the first time, these same politicians may have also helped their kids get unfair advantages and admissions to the best schools in the country, not because their kids were special but because they had influence and money to do so. We already know that famous celebrities in Hollywood pulled strings, cheated, and paid off people to get their kids into top schools when such admissions were not valid. Many of those involved, including celebrities, have gone or will be going to jail.

But maybe it was not only celebrities who pulled those Epstein-like strings for their kids and fancy colleges:

• All four of Al Gore’s kids got into Harvard even though Harvard usually accepts only 4.5% of all applicants.
• What are the odds that each of Gore’s kids fell in the top 95.5% of kids applying to colleges, at least according to Harvard’s standards?
• Other Democrats whose kids got into Harvard include Senator Richard Blumenthal, Senator Robert Menendez,Senator Chuck Shumer, former NewYork Governor Eliot Spitzer, and President Barack Obama.
• NYC mayor Bill de Blasio’s son got intoYale as did the kids of Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Senator Amy Klobuchar, and Senator Michael Bennet even though Yale has an acceptance rate under 6%.
• Chelsea Clinton got into Stanford even though its acceptance rate is only 4.8%.
• Kids of Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden and many Kennedys got into Georgetown whose admission rate is only 6%.
• Also, consider the reality that Ivy League colleges donated over $1 million to Democratic politicians while donating far less to Republicans last year: Yale gave Democrats over $170,000 and only $2,600 to Republicans, Harvard gave Democrats over $440,000 but less than $50,000 Republicans.
• Back in 2016, Ivy League schools gave about $2.6 million to Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

All of these kids of Democrats could have been very smart and maybe none of them received any extra help getting into elite, highly selective schools. And Jeffery Epstein may have just gotten lucky and got minimal jail time and punishment from his first arrest for pedophilia without the help of powerful people in politics. Maybe...but doubtful. 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:

https://www.amazon.com/Walter-Bruno-Korschek/e/B002KYU08Q/ref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share

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

Open Letter To My Democratic Senator: Why Do Democrats Care More About Illegal Immigrants Than Needy Americans?

Before we get into this post, let’s review my voting record:

• I have never voted for a Republican for President in my life and I am 65 years old.
• Thus, I did not vote for Donald Trump.
• I rarely have voted for a Republican for national office.

Given my voting history, consider the following letter that I recently sent to my incumbent Florida U.S. Senator, Democrat Bill Nelson, who is up for reelection this fall:

************************************

Senator Nelson:

I have never voted for a Republican for President in my life (I am 65). But in November I fully expect to vote for no Democrats across the board since it is pretty obvious that Democrats, yourself included, care more about illegal immigrants than you do about needy Americans. 

Rather than help veterans get the healthcare they have been deprived of, you and Democrats care only about illegal immigrants. Over 300,000 veterans may have died because they could not get the healthcare they needed from the VA:

https://www.cnn.com/2015/09/02/politics/va-inspector-general-report/index.html

Rather than helping the many homeless Americans across the country you and the Democrats care only about illegal immigrants. Over 500,000 Americans are currently homeless and that number is growing steadily:

https://www.usnews.com/news/us/articles/2017-12-06/us-homeless-count-rises-pushed-by-crisis-on-the-west-coast

Rather than care about the thousands and thousands of Americans fighting an opioid addiction, you and the Democrats care only about illegal immigrants. Over 60,000 Americans die from drug addiction every year and over 40,000 of them overdose on opioids:

https://www.cnn.com/2017/12/21/health/drug-overdoses-2016-final-numbers/index.html

Rather than care about thousands of American kids who are in foster care, homeless, hungry, and subject to physical and mental abuse you and the Democrats care only about illegal immigrants. Four American kids die everyday from child abuse, over 1,400 a year, and 70% of them are under the age of three:

https://www.dosomething.org/us/facts/11-facts-about-child-abuse

Are you getting the message? As a taxpayer, we have serious problems and deficiencies helping millions of Americans in dire need but you and the Democrats care only about a relative handful of illegal immigrants. I do not get it. 

But hopefully you and other Democrats do get it in November in the form of unemployment status, you are all a disgrace to needy Americans. Senator, you personally have been present for all of the crises and unfulfilled needs affecting the American groups listed above, from American youngsters dying from abuse to veterans dying from neglect. You are part of the problem and no longer deserve to provide this disservice to this country’s neediest citizens.

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

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December, 2016, Part 2, Political Class Insanity: Child Abuse, Food Assistance Abuse, and Fiscal Abuse at the State Government Level

It has been almost a month since Donald Trump has been elected which means at some point in the future we may run out of material to talk about. With the demise of the Obama administration, eight years worth of wasteful and excessive spending for nothing in return, foreign affairs blunders, Obama Care disasters, and assorted other administration and government blunders and screwups might end with the onset of a new administration. Trump may usher in a new paradigm of government actions that are limited, effective, cost efficient, and protective of the Constitution. If so, then this blog would run out of material to discuss and would have to be shut down.

But I doubt it. Even if Trump is truly a different type of President, he is still fighting over 500 embedded and entrenched politicians in Congress and thousands and thousands of government bureaucrats who will not go peacefully into the night for the good of the country. I wish him well and hopefully he can fix at least some of the myriad of problems the American political class creates everyday but until then, enjoy the latest political class insanity from Washington and beyond:

1) Yesterday we reviewed how over time many Washington politicians have been charged and found guilty of crimes despite being a member of Congress. But it is not just actual politicians that are downright disgusting and criminal, many times it is the people they hang out with that are just as despicable. According to Brett Deckwer, writing for USA Today on November 20, 2016, Democratic Party operative Terrence Bean, likely possibly into this category: 

• Bean was recently arrested in Portland, Oregon and charged with two felony counts of having sex with a minor.
• Bean has solid White House and Democratic Party connections, having raised over half a million dollars for Obama’s 2012 election campaign.
• According to oregonlive.com: "Bean has been one of the state's biggest Democratic donors and an influential figure in gay rights circles in the state. He helped found two major national political groups, the Human Rights Campaign and the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund and has been a major contributor for several Democratic presidential candidates, including Barack Obama."
• Bean has flown on Air Force One and has made contributions to such Democratic politicians as Hillary Clinton, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Senator Dick Durbin, and Congressman Barney Frank, among others. Photos of Bean posted online show him flying on Air Force One with Obama.

Of course, Mr. Bean is presumed innocent until proven guilty. But I would bet that a lot of politicians are thankful that the mainstream press has not pursued such a sordid situation. More details from the story can be accessed at the USA Today website at:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2014/11/20/kiah-lawson-terry-bean-human-rights-campaign-gay-sex-obama-prison-column/70021560/

2) We have never denied that the obesity levels in this country for both adults and kids, are a major, major driver of the ever escalating nd ahigh healthcare costs in this country. Obesity causes all kinds of health conditions to develop including heart disease, diabetes, joint degeneration, and other maladies, all of which require health care usage and expenditures. This situation is one of the reasons that Obama Care has been and will continue to be a failure in that it failed at addressing this root cause of high healthcare costs. 

In probably its only attempt to address obesity, we have been subjected to Michelle Obama’s fight to force American school kids to eat a balanced meal by dictating what kids should eat in school. Rather than launch a public health initiative to address the need to eat right, it tried to force kids to eat right by dictating school menus. This has resulted in massive amounts of school food being wasted and thrown out and causing school budgets to be strained to comply with the Federal regulations, all for no gain since kids are not eating right anyway.

Maybe her efforts should have been more focused on the bad eating habits of American families receiving Federal food assistance every month via the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Terence P. Jeffrey, reporting for the CNS website on November 22, 2016, discussed the buying habits of people under the SNAP program at a major national food retailer:

• According to a new study from the Federal agency, the Food and Nutrition Service, more SNAP money is spent on soda at the retailer's locations used in the study, a major source of the nation’s obesity problem, than any other food product category.
• A whopping $357,700,000 of SNAP money was spent on soft drinks at the grocer’s stores in the study, accounting for over 5.4% of all SNAP dollars spent.
• This was almost 50% more than what was spent on milk ($253,700,000) and about 75% more than was spent on ground beef ($201,000,000).
• In addition to bad purchases from an obesity perspective, over 3% was spent on bag snacks (e.g. potato chips), 1.54% was spent on “frozen handhelds and snacks,” 1.46% on packaged candies, 1.31% was spent on ice cream and sherbets, 1.19% was spent on cookies, and 1.04% was spent on cakes.
• Thus, over 15% of SNAP money was spent on items that Michelle Obama would have NEVER allowed to be served in the nation’s schools for lunch.
• Compared to non-SNAP money spent, only 11.47% of the money spent was spent on the above listed obesity related food, far below the 15% that SNAP recipients spent at the same grocer.
• For example, SNAP buyers spent 35% more of their budget on soda than non-SNAP buyers and 25% more on bag snacks.

If we assume that this pattern is indicative of overall SNAP purchases, then we can easily see how the SNAP program is inducing behavior completely opposite of what Michelle Obama wants and what is good for the country from a health perspective. 

Thus, as we have often pointed out, the Federal government has gotten so large and out of control that one part of the government is working against another part of the government. In this case, the Department of Agriculture with its SNAP guidelines is causing the exact same type of behavior that Michelle Obama has railed against, soft drinks, candies, cakes, etc. when it comes to our kids’ eating habits.

Obviously, what Ms. Obama should be lobbying for is to make her targeted “bad” foods not eligible for SNAP and taxpayer subsidies in order to reduce the obesity levels in this country. Since in the first eleven months of fiscal 2016 (October through August), the average monthly participation in food stamps was 44,283,586 people and 21,815,990 households, taking soda, cakes, candies, ice creams and bagged snacks out of this process would positively affect a lot of Americans. In those months, the government paid out $61,110,832,720 in benefits. 

It would also save the American taxpayer well over $9 billion, money that could be returned to the American taxpayer or put forth into a real public health initiative to change the overall eating habits of all Americans, not just school age kids. So simple a change and yet so difficult for the American political class to do.

3) We have often pointed out how out of control the Federal government is when it comes to spending. Many times we have shown how the Obama administration has doubled the national debt in just the past eight years, adding more debt to the Federal government than ALL previous Presidential administrations combined. Each American household would have to put out over $100,000 each to cover the debt load today.

But Federal debt is not the only debt load facing every American household. The organization, Truth In Accounting, recently released its periodic study, "The Financial State of the States.” It’s findings are not pretty relative to the debt load that state governments have piled up:

• To pay off their debt loads, state governments need to raise man additional $1,328,204,440,079.
• 40 out of the 50 states currently do not have enough money to pay off their debts.
• The study found that all 50 states have racked up over $2.4 TRILLION in debt but only have about $1 TRILLION in revenue to pay off the debt, leaving the $1,328,204,440,079 unaccounted for.
• This state government debt load comes down to about $13,514 that each state taxpayer would have to put into the pot to pay off the debt.
• New Jersey is the worst state with an unaccounted for debt load of $59,400 needed from each New Jersey state taxpayer to pay off that state’s debt. 
• The total unfunded debt of New Jersey is a whopping $183 billion.
• Other so-called “sinkhole states” with the most debt load per taxpayer are Connecticut ($49,000 per taxpayer), Illinois ($45,500), Kentucky ($33,700), Massachusetts ($33,300), and Hawaii, California, New York Delaware, and Michigan rounding out the top ten sinkhole states, with per taxpayer debt ranging from $18,200 to $28,500 per taxpayer.
• There are ten so-called “sunshine states,” states that have no debt and actually have excess money that if spread across their taxpayers would give each resident of Alaska $52,600, North Dakota taxpayers would get $28,400, Wyoming - $26,400 per taxpayer, Utah - $4,800 per taxpayer, Nebraska - $3,500 per taxpayer, and New Mexico, Idaho, Tennessee, and Iowa taxpayers would get back anywhere from $3,300 to $1,100.

Three major takeaways from this in-depth study:

1. Politicians in forty states have dug deep, deep debt holes for their taxpayers that will require cuts in services, cuts in pensions and retirement payouts, a rise in taxes or a combination of all three acts to stay fiscally viable.
2. According to the study, these sinkhole states have hidden expenses and used accounting tricks to make their state look better financially than it actually is, essentially kicking the debt problem down the road to future generations of state residents.
3. The 10 sunshine states prove that you can operate a fiscally sound state government if you want to.

Always keep in mind that paying off debt does not result in increased freedom, it does not make schools better, infrastructure safer, or state government more effective, it only pays off the errors and fiscal irresponsibility of previous political acts.

State politicians running up uncontrolled debt loads, a government program making Americans less healthy and more obese, and more scandals from the American political class.  More insanity 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:

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

December, 2015, Part 2, By The Numbers: Chicago Gun Control Fallacy, Homeland Security Hires Terrorism and More

This is the first post this month as we continue our periodic 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.

And there will be a lot of smoke to cut through in the next few posts. Much of what we will touch on has to do with many of the current lies, deceptions, and ignorance many politicians, including this President,have been spewing regarding gun control and terrorism, two topics that this President seem to want to link together to his political gain. 

If you have an inability to believe that guns are anything but evil or that this President always stays in integrity, than do not waste your time reading any further. The numbers we will be reviewing come from reputable sources, often from the Obama administration itself, and these numbers will prove that the American political class only use facts when they fit their political aims and schemes.

1) Gun control people like Obama always take a simplistic and naive approach to guns: if only if we banned guns then life would be wonderful and crime free. The closest they come to that vision is in the city of Chicago, and surrounding county, which has some of the strictest gun control and prohibitions in the country. Thus, they must be almost crime free, right? Wrong. According to a recent Chicago Tribune article:

• As of November 23, 2015, there had been 2,703 shootings in Chicago this year, the gun control capital of the country.
• This comes out to over 8 shootings a day.
• This is about 400 more shootings than the same period last year.
• As of November 23, 2015, there have been 440 shooting deaths in Chicago, the gun control capital of the country.
• This comes out to 1.3 shooting deaths a day.
• In just the weekend prior to November 23, 11 people in Chicago, the gun capital of the country, were shot and 5 were killed.
• In 2014, Chicago put in place a so-called “violence tax” which placed a tax on every gun and bullet sold within the city, a tax that had already been put in place in the surrounding county around Chicago. 
• Despite this tax, shooting deaths in 2014 went up by 19 to 434 for the whole year, a number that has already been exceeded in 2015 with over a month left to go.

The numbers do not lie, more and more gun control and gun taxes do not decrease violent crime. Not only the city of Chicago but the county surrounding Chicago prove this point and reality. Better jobs, better schools, better recreation options, more realistic drug laws and rehab, less hate from our politicians, those are the ways you reduce crime. These numbers show that gun control does not reduce crime.

2) We covered this embarrassment before but the numbers contained in this story are worth repeating. A recent audit by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the people and organization that is supposed to keep us safe from terrorists, as reported by the Washington Free Beacon, found that at least 72 DHS employees are also listed on the U.S. terrorist watch list.

Congressman Stephen Lynch, a Democrat from Massachusetts, stated that a Congressional investigation found this glaring reality: “Back in August, we did an investigation—the inspector general did—of the Department of Homeland Security, and they had 72 individuals that were on the terrorist watch list that were actually working at the Department of Homeland Security.The [former DHS] director had to resign because of that.”

What makes this number and scandal so important is the reality that Obama says that his administration can accurately identify and keep potential terrorists out of the country who might try to sneak in as a Syrian refugee. But, if the administration has already hired 72 would-be terrorists to work for the Federal government, does he really think we believe he can screen thousands of people from the Middle East before they get into the country? Or does the DHS plan to hire those people also?

3) According to the Self Reliance Central website, several years ago, immediately after the schools shootings in Newtown, Connecticut, Obama gave the Centers For Disease Control (CDC) $10 million to do research on gun violence and suggest ways to reduce it. The person he put in charge of the effort was Dr. Mark Rosenberg, who is probably not a member of the NRA, given his view on guns, as quoted in the Washington Post: “We need to revolutionize the way we look at guns, like what we did with cigarettes. Now [smoking] is dirty, deadly and banned.”

However, study results include the following realities:

• The overall conclusion of the study was that “armed citizens were less likely to be harmed by an attacker.” $10 million to find this out by the way. 
• The study report went on to say that “defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals,” with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million per year…in the context of about 300,000 violent crimes involving firearms in 2008. In other words, more people use guns to defend themselves by a wide margin, every year, than criminals use to commit violent crimes.
• Mass shootings of the type that occurred in Newtown accounted for a very tiny fraction of all gun related deaths.
• Since 1983, there have been 78 events in which 4 or more people were killed by a single perp, resulting in 547 deaths and 476 injured people. This comes out to just over 2 mass shooting events per year, less than 17 deaths per year, and just over 14 injuries per year from mass shootings.
• Contrast these numbers with the reality that about 46,000 drug addicts die every year from their addictions, about 35,000 Americans are killed every year from auto accidents, about 41,000 Americans commit suicide every year, about 29,000 die from alcohol related maladies, and about 1,500 American kids die from child abuse every year. 
• From another perspective, more Americans kids die from child abuse in ONE year than the total number of Americans have died in mass shootings in the past 33 years.
• According to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program, 68,720 people were murdered in firearm-related violence between 2007 and 2011, about 17,000 people a year, substantially less than the number of people that die every year from auto accidents, drug addictions, suicide, and alcohol.

Look, no one should have to die in a mass shooting in this country. But why are we spending $10 million to find out the obvious, more people protect themselves with guns every year than gun related crimes, when the numbers show that the $10 million could have gone a long way to prevent thousands of deaths every year from other causes. 

The only rational explanation for Obama taking such an interest in gun violence is not because of the lives lost but because he wants to disarm Americans, giving the government and political class that much more control over our freedom and liberties.

4) The Washington Examiner recently ran graph that showed the murder rate per 100,000 people in the country over the years. A couple of observations:

- The U.S. murder rate has been declining steadily and quickly since peaking in 1980.
- After leveling off during the latter Bush years, it started another steep decline since Obama took office.
- The murder rate is now less than half of what it was in 1980.



Now consider the following chart from Bloomberg News:



Thus, from 2008 until 2013, which includes the first four years of the Obama administration, the number of guns sold every year steadily increased at the same time that the murder rate was plummeting. The number of annual gun sales went from 7.1 million in 2008, the year before the Obama administration to 13.4 million in 2012, an 89% increase while the murder rate was dropping almost every year.

So what did the numbers tell us today:

- The murder rate is going down as gun sales are going up.

- Obama is spending $10 million to research a tiny cause of deaths in this country, mass shootings, while other causes of death kill a lot more Americans every year. 

- The Obama administration has hired 72 people that are on the terrorist watch list but still insist that they can screen out terrorists from Syrian refugees thousands of miles away.

- Chicago’s murder and violence rate shows that gun control does not control criminals or crime. 

More numbers tomorrow.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To 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

Hate Week, Part 1, Retro Post From 2013: How About More Hate Control Before More Gun Control, Part 3 - The Facts, Statistics, Fallacies, and Realities Of Gun Control

Over the past week or so a number of potential Presidential candidates have come forward to throw their hats in the ring for the 2016 Presidential elections. Which means that the hateful hollering and yelling and name calling has started already, something that will go on for at least the next year and a half. And likely intensify and dehumanize as we get closer to the election.

Unfortunately, mature and adult political debate has disappeared a long time ago. Instead, we are stuck with a version of political divisiveness that was first explained by George Orwell in his novel, 1984: 

"This is not to say that either the conduct of war, or the prevailing attitude towards it, has become less bloodthirsty or more chivalrous. On the contrary, war hysteria is continuous and universal in all countries, and such acts as raping, looting, the slaughter of children, the reduction of whole populations to slavery, and reprisals against prisoners which extend even to boiling and burying alive, are looked upon as normal, and, when they are committed by one's own side and not by the enemy, meritorious."

This was the original quote. It does not take too much imagination to get from this Orwell view of oppression to today's divisive political environment to get to the following edited version by simply changing just a few words:

"This is not to say that either the conduct of politics, or the prevailing attitude towards it, has become less bloodthirsty or more chivalrous. On the contrary, politics is continuous and universal in all parts of the country, and such acts as name calling, personal degradation, accusations of unpatriotism, sexual degradation, verbal assaults, the reduction of whole groups of fellow citizens with opposing views to idiocy and reprisals against common Americans with opposing views, are looked upon as normal, and, when they are committed by one's own side and not by the enemy, meritorious."

Rather than lead and fix the problems facing the country, today's politicians only know a scorched earth approach to life and serving the country, worried only about their own careers and self enrichment, the good of the country and the citizens be damned. It does not matter if you have good ideas and principles, the only thing that matters is to eviscerate your opponents with lies, deceptions, innuendos, and nasty trash talking.

As a result, we never resolve any of the major issues in this country. Political dialog is venomous and divides Americans into separate camps and tribes, shutting down all hope of compromise and progress. And this is exactly what the political class wants. We fight each other while they continue to enrich themselves and their political donors, destroying our economy, freedoms, and civility in the process. 

So for the next week or so we are going to call out the haters, both the political ones and their respective allies in the media who are all too eager to join in the slander, mudslinging, and hate. Until we stop yelling at each other and start holding politicians accountable for adult behavior and adult leadership, we will continue to be stuck with the sad state of the nation that we have allowed the political class to create where it seems that they are the only ones who are doing well.

We are going to start this "hate week" with two previous posts we have written in the past. Today we will be reproducing one of the most widely read posts we have ever done and one, that although written over two years ago, has seen a major surge in readership in the past week.

Tomorrow, we will produce another popular post that focuses on the silence of President Obama during his term as his political allies have called others who disagree with his policies racists, Neanderthals, and other names and body parts too profane to print here. After tomorrow we will get into the most recent instances of hate and call out the haters for the divisions they have driven into Americans.

TUESDAY, JANUARY 15, 2013

How About More Hate Control Before More Gun Control, Part 3 - The Facts, Statistics, Fallacies, and Realities Of Gun Control

This is our third post in the series where we propose that the country, and especially our politicians, practice more “hate control” than gun control. In the previous posts we reviewed how venomous and hateful speech were pervading our society, degrading the sanctity of life and possibly being a major reason why some people go nuts and end up killing innocent people. We also reviewed actual cases of Americans legally using their Second Amendment rights to protect their lives, their families, and their assets from violent criminal elements, an option that many politicians would like to eliminate with draconian gun control/gun elimination.

Today, we will be reviewing a wide number of statistics, sources, and realities when it comes to violence and gun control, all of which indicate that rational gun laws that allow Americans to keep and use guns in the protection of their lives is a logical, Constitutional, and viable option for the citizens of the country.

Now some people may question the following “facts” and realities since the sources are not what they consider mainstream media. But I think there is a growing awareness among informed, rational people that the mainstream media is no longer the unbiased, purveyors of truth that many think they are today. The various components of mainstream media now take sides, and the publication or non-publication of facts and stories is based on whether or not it helps their “side.”

So, when reading the following, if you do not like the source, I encourage you to prove it wrong. If proven wrong, I have no problem issuing a retraction. But do not blindly rule out the following conclusions and theories just because it does not line up with your position on the issue or it is not from your favorite media/news source. Going forth blindly allows the political class to lead you to where their best interests lie and we all know that is seldom the best interest for citizens and the country.

1) Lets start with an article from a January 7, 2013 article from the website, www.mrconservative.com, entitled “Society Is Crumbling And Banning Guns Will Make It Worse.” Consider some of the facts and conclusions laid out in the article:

- The writer points out that Chicago has some of the strictest gun laws. But 10 people were shot in the city of Chicago on the Friday before this article was posted. Ten people shot on one day in one city, a city with very strict gun laws. The author claims Chicago is now considered to be “the deadliest global city,” and the murder rate in Chicago is about 25% higher than it was last year. So, implementing strict gun laws has resulted in rising violence.

Now, I guess one could make the case that gun violence would have been up 50% without the strict gun laws and that would be a valid counter argument. But I would not believe it, based on the actual individual cases we reviewed yesterday where gun owning Americans protected themselves from violent criminals.

I suggest you check out the following link to the gun violence in Chicago from the Associated Press. It contains a myriad of statistics and reasons why 500 people, more than one a day, are murdered annually in Chicago, a murder rate that has doubled in the past decade. A lot of the murders are a result of gang activity, the participants of which are highly unlikely to register their guns with authorities:

http://enews.earthlink.net/article/us?guid=20121229/b5734626-50e3-4ce9-80b4-027a3e02d387

- The following paragraph from the article describes the situation in a Georgia town where a law was passed that required all of its citizens to actually own a firearm. The article reviews what happened after that requirement was passed: “In March 1982, , the small town of Kennesaw (Georgia) – responding to a handgun ban in Morton Grove, Ill. – unanimously passed an ordinance requiring each head of household to own and maintain a gun. Since then, despite dire predictions of “Wild West” showdowns and increased violence and accidents, not a single resident has been involved in a fatal shooting – as a victim, attacker or defender. The crime rate initially plummeted for several years after the passage of the ordinance, with the 2005 per capita crime rate actually significantly lower than it was in 1981, the year before passage of the law. Prior to enactment of the law, Kennesaw had a population of just 5,242 but a crime rate significantly higher (4,332 per 100,000) than the national average (3,899 per 100,000). The latest statistics available – for the year 2005 – show the rate at 2,027 per 100,000. Meanwhile, the population has skyrocketed to 28,189."

So let’s review. A town has a crime rate substantially above the national level. The town passes a law requiring every responsible adult to have a licensed gun. Over time, the crime rate drops to a level substantially below the national level.

Again, an argument could be made that this was a spurious correlation and that the crime rate would have dropped in the absence of the gun law. A valid point, but given that the program did not result in wild shooting incidents and no one accidentally shot themselves, I would contend that it did not hurt.

- The article goes on to put forth a very valid hypothesis: maybe guns are not the problem but medication and legally prescribed drugs are the problem. The Washington Post has reported that the Newtown shooter was “on medication.” The article quotes some authorities on this issue/root cause: “The Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP) has raised concerns about severe acts of violence as side effects of anti-psychotic and antidepressant drugs not only on individuals but on society as well. Just a month ago PRWeb described drug induced violence as ”medicine’s best kept secret. And the Citizens Commission on Human Rights International (CCHRI) is calling for a federal investigation on its web page which links no less than 14 mass killings to the use of psychiatric drugs such as Prozac and Paxil."

Certainly a potential root cause worth exploring.

- What happened in Newtown was tragic. I do not want to belittle the sorrow and tragedy in any way. But while the political class is fretting and grandstanding about gun control, how about the following issues that never get their attention, according to the article:

• There are more than 3 million reports of child abuse in the United States every single year.
• An average of five children die as a result of child abuse in the United States every single day.
• The United States has the highest child abuse death rate on the entire globe.
• It is estimated that 500,000 Americans that will be born this year will be sexually abused before they turn 18.
• In the United States today, it is estimated that one out of every four girls is sexually abused before they become adults.

Would banning guns keep these atrocities from happening? No, banning guns would not prevent these atrocities from going on everyday. Maybe we need a national discussion about protecting our kids, with preventing school shootings only a component, but a very important component, of the overall discussion. That would be a noble cause for the political class as opposed to using the Newtown shootings as means to another, selfish, political end, gun prohibition, rather than a means to truly protecting and cherishing our kids on a daily basis.

The Pentagon has the Defense Department. The businesses in this country have the Commerce Department. The unions in this country have the Labor Department. Energy companies have the Energy Department. Maybe we need a Kids Department, an organized effort to protect our kids, not only from school shootings, but also from bad public schools, sexual predators, bad economic futures, etc.

2) The following letter, and the accompanying TV news reports this Marine has been on, has become wildly popular across the country. He has done the best and most succinct job of pointing out the massive hypocrisy of our politicians as they try to reign in our ability to defend ourselves with severe gun ownership laws but make sure that they are protected with gun toting employees and exceptions to the laws they want to pass for the rest of us.

The letter is addressed to California Senator Diane Feinstein who is proposing very severe and freedom eroding gun control legislation despite the fact that she has admitted to carrying a concealed weapon in the past for her own protection. The initial letter that started it all and which pointed out the hypocrisy is below:

From: U.S. Marines Cpl. Joshua Boston
To: Senator Dianne Feinstein,

I will not register my weapons should this bill be passed, as I do not believe it is the government’s right to know what I own. Nor do I think it prudent to tell you what I own so that it may be taken from me by a group of people who enjoy armed protection yet decry me having the same a crime. You ma’am have overstepped a line that is not your domain. I am a Marine Corps Veteran of 8 years, and I will not have some woman who proclaims the evil of an inanimate object, yet carries one, tell me I may not have one.

I am not your subject. I am the man who keeps you free. I am not your servant. I am the person whom you serve. I am not your peasant. I am the flesh and blood of America.

I am the man who fought for my country. I am the man who learned. I am an American. You will not tell me that I must register my semi-automatic AR-15 because of the actions of some evil man.

I will not be disarmed to suit the fear that has been established by the media and your misinformation campaign against the American public.

We, the people, deserve better than you.

Respectfully Submitted,
Joshua Boston
Cpl, United States Marine Corps
2004-2012

As an aside, consider two recent sets of news reports:

• President Obama just signed legislation that will guarantee that he and his family, along with other former Presidents, will be protected by armed Secret Service guards for the rest of their lives.
• The school where the President sends his kids currently has 11 armed guards on site for protection, not counting the Secret Service personnel assigned to protect Presidential families.

Given that politicians want to protect themselves with armed guards, responsible, ordinary Americans should have the same right, a right not made overly restrictive or arduous by the Federal government.

3) According to the latest available FBI crime statistics, in 2009, 1,825 Americans were murdered by knives, 611 were murdered by blunt objects likes hammers and bats, and 801 were murdered by an assailants feet or hands. In context, only 766 murders were committed by rifles or shotguns. Should we ban knives, hammers, bats, feet, and hands since they account for more than four times as many murders every year than rifles and shotguns?

Or should we focus on crime prevention of all types so that the act of murder is done less regardless of the means? By the way, the national number of murders by handguns has decreased by 15% from 2005 to 2009 and murder by any type of gun has decreased by 10% from 2005 to 2009. But has increased in places like Chicago which has very strict gun laws. Thus, statistically, one could make the correlation that violence goes up (as in Chicago) where there are stricter than normal gun control laws but goes down overall where the gun laws, on average, are not as strict.

4) An Associated Press article from January 8, 2013 showed that all not politicians are as ignorant as the Washington political class when it comes to sane gun laws for stable law abiding citizens. Politicians in a Utah town, Spring City, want to make sure every head of household has a firearm and knows how to use it, and they want to give school teachers training with guns too.

Councilman Neil Sorensen first proposed the legislation requiring a gun in every household in the town of 1,000. The rest of the council was not in agreement of making at making it a requirement, but they unanimously agreed to move forward with an ordinance "recommending" the idea. The council also approved funding to offer concealed firearms training to the 20 teachers and administrators at the local elementary school.

The proposal, which will go before the full council in February for further review and comment, appears to have the support of the council's five members and many residents in the community about 90 miles south of Salt Lake City. Councilman Noel Bertelson believes making guns in every house mandatory was too much.

However, he agrees the town would be safer if everyone was armed. With only a part-time police force, he said, response time is not like it is in a big city: "If a person is able to take care of themselves for a while, it would probably be a good thing."

Sounds like the situation that reported on yesterday, when a mother alone with her infant child waited well over 20 minutes for police help, needing to shoot the knife wielding intruder on her own to save her and her baby’s life.

The community is still smarting from the double-murder of an elderly couple in nearby Mount Pleasant couple of years ago. One councilman said what used to be a peaceful, quiet town has seen increasing criminal activity. Thefts of metal for scrap and other property also have become a problem” "We are kind of tired of people breaking in and taking stuff," said Councilman Mickel, explaining why he voted to urge every house to have a gun.

Angela Johnson, owner of a local town gas station, said she doesn't like guns but backs the council's proposal, showing more insight to human beings than all Washington politicians combined: "If criminals knew they would be fired against, I think it would cause pause."

Why is that concept so difficult for people like Senator Feinstein to understand?

5) Consider the reporting from the Sacramento Bee on December 27, 2013:

• Gun deaths and injuries have dropped sharply in California, even as the number of guns sold in the state has risen, according to new California state government data.
• Gun dealers sold 600,000 guns in California last year, up from 350,000 in 2002, according to records from the California Attorney General's office, a 71% increase.
• During that time period, the number of hospitalizations from gun injuries dropped from about 4,000 annually to 2,900, a roughly 25% drop, according to hospital records collected by the California Department of Public Health.
• California firearm-related deaths fell from about 3,200 annually to about 2,800, an 11% drop, state health figures show.
• The number of California injuries and deaths attributed to accidental discharge of firearms also has fallen.
• The number of suicide deaths involving firearms has remained roughly constant, i.e. having a lot more guns present in California homes and businesses has not increased the number of self inflicted deaths by gunfire.

So in summary, gun sales go way up, gun deaths, wounding, and suicides either go down or remain the same. See Angela Johnson’s comment above for a potential reason.

6) Consider an article written by AP award winning columnist Richard Larsen which appeared on the Western Journalism website on December 26, 2013, and whose excerpts are listed below:

• The city of Chicago currently has the most restrictive gun control laws on the books, has been declared a “gun free zone” where handguns are banned, yet it is the most bloody city in the world in terms of gun-related deaths. The city averages 40 deaths per month from guns, and is nearing 500 for the year. Chicago’s murder rate is 19.4 per 100,000, which is by far the highest rate in the nation, at nearly 3 times New York which is at 6, and nearly 2 ½ times Los Angeles’ 7.5. In fact, Chicago ranks as the number one deadliest Alpha city (significant urban center in the global economic system) on the planet. Since it is no longer possible to legally own guns within city limits, the only ones who still have them are criminals. It doesn’t appear gun control works for Chicago. In fact, the city illustrates how correct the aphorism is that if guns are outlawed, only the outlaws have guns. The law-abiding citizens do not.
• The Center for Disease Control (CDC), in 2003 thoroughly analyzed fifty-one in-depth studies dealing with gun control. Those studies included everything from the effectiveness of gun bans to laws requiring gun locks. From their objective analysis, they “found no discernible effect on public safety by any of the measures we commonly think of as ‘gun control.’”
• In 2005, the American Journal of Preventive Medicine conducted a similar analysis of extant gun laws across the country. They arrived at a similar conclusion, as the abstract for their research concludes, “that evidence for the effectiveness of a given firearms law on an outcome is insufficient.” After reviewing over fifty different gun control laws, and coming to the conclusion that their effectiveness on an outcome is “insufficient” is euphemism for “they had no discernible effect.”

Not only are these findings of interest and vital in debunking the need to severely restrict or prohibit gun ownership of rational American citizens, he closes the article with a great description of why we are going through this useless exercise of draconian gun control laws and why it will fail: “Gun control has proven impotent in curbing the problem, and “gun free zones” are absurd, since they practically advertise themselves to be potential venues of mayhem and violence. More gun control is not a solution, but only serves as a Band-Aid to our emotions so we feel like we’re doing something. The problems are much deeper in our society than Band-Aids can cure.”

Band Aids will not prevent future Newtown shooting sprees. Putting a trained police officer in each of our 132,000 schools will do a lot more than Band Aids.
Band Aids will not prevent people from being raped or killed in their homes or businesses. Only well trained, rational citizens with legal firearms will do that.

Band Aids will not halt the venomous and hateful speech that spills out of certain people’s mouths, vileness that has become a trademark of current day politicians.

Band Aids will not prevent criminal elements from getting their hands on guns.

Band Aids will not force criminal elements to register or turn in their firearms.

Band Aids will not stop thousands and thousands of our kids from being abused, physically or sexually, or unnecessarily dying every year.

Band Aids will not allow us to understand how our legal drug infested culture leads an individual to snap and kill innocent people and children.

Band Aids will not prevent the current and dire economic and social conditions from creating the gangs that lead to the thousands of firearm murders every year.

Band Aids will not work but as usual, that is all the Washington political class is capable of. They always fail to understand the root causes of our major issues and fail to address those root causes with real medicine and real solutions, settling only for political grandstanding and surface solutions that never work.

Nowhere is this simplicity of this Band Aid approach and idiocy more on display by the current administration. Vice President Joe Biden is having a series of meetings and thinks that his recommendation after two weeks of meetings will result in a viable solution. The problem is way too deep and way too complicated for a single politician to come up with a solution in less than a month’s time, especially a politician like Joe Biden.

Senator Feinstein’s simplistic approach, ban or severely restrict gun ownership, will only result in the killing of so many more people that it will dwarf the carnage at Newtown.

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Hate week is just getting started,more to follow in the following days.

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