August, 2018, Part 2, By The Numbers - Murders and Financial Suicide In Chicago and Massive Street Cleaning In San Francisco

On a semi-regular basis we do a post under the theme, “By The Numbers.” Under this theme we analysis the crazy ways that politicians use numbers, from making them up outright, to using them inappropriately, to using them to lie to us. The problem for them when they do that is it is so easy to show how either stupid they are or how conniving they are. 

As an FYI, as you read my analysis of the misuse of numbers, keep in mind that I have a masters degree in statistics and for most of my life have been involved in analyzing numbers and stats. Politicians misuse of numbers and statistics is taken as a personal and professional affront to me and my profession.

1) Walter Williams, writing for the Heritage Foundation earlier this month, listed out some very distressing numbers coming out of Chicago, a gang and violence infested city. Mr.Williams, by the way, is an economics professor so he probably has a pretty good handle on numbers:

• During the weekend of August 4 -5, 12 residents of Chicago were shot to death and over five dozen were wounded.
• In the first seven months of 2018, 1,718 Chicago residents had been shot and 306 had died from their gunshot wounds.
• The law enforcement authorities in the city have cleared only about 15% of all of the shootings which means that if you are a violent criminal you have pretty goods odds (85%) of getting away with your crimes in Chicago.
• As of early July this year, 626 people had been shot by police officers this year of which 114 (18%) were black and all of last year, 987 people were shot by the police of which 223 were black, 23%.
• While these percentages were higher than the percentage of blacks in the U.S. (12%), in Chicago in 2017 there were 674 homicides of which a whopping 80% were black residents.

So while people are getting bent out of shape because Tiger Woods recently refused to denounce Trump and protesting NFL football players show such “bravery” on the football field every Sunday but contribute nothing to bringing down these Chicago shooting numbers, the killing and maiming numbers continue to march on in Chicago.

2) Let’s stay in Chicago because the financial numbers are just as disastrous as the murder and wounded numbers. We have previously discussed the reality that the financial situation in Chicago, and the state of Illinois also, is horrible. There are unfunded future liabilities, the schools are in terrible shape, and the most productive citizens continue to move out of the city as taxes go higher and higher without a commiserate drop in city expenses. Things are so bad that the city bonds have basically been dropped in value to junk bond status.

The local CBS outlet recently dropped two distressing numbers on the politicians in Chicago. The city apparently has unfunded future liabilities of about $28 BILLION. A single city that is short an amazing $28 billion. 

And rather than do the right thing, reduce city spending to cover this future shortfall, the city plans on issuing additional debt of $10 billion. Yes, great strategy, dig yourself an overwhelming debt hole and the proposed solution is to take on more debt! According to the report: “[Mayor] Rahm Emanuel suggested the city issue billions in obligation bonds. The plan aims to inject more cash into the pension system now in order to leverage a higher rate of return to exceed the interest that will accrue on the bonds, the Illinois Policy Institute says.”

Think about these numbers. Why would anyone want to own any of these new city bonds worth $10 billion when it still leaves the city short $18 billion? Does anyone really think that the $10 billion would ever be completely repaid when more city debt continues to pile up? And if Chicago is serious about issuing more debt, how high will the interest rates have to be to attract anyone to by basically junk bonds? 

Thus, it is obvious from these numbers that Chicago is in a financial death spiral: to pay off current debt they need to create more and more debt which drives up the interest rate they have to issue for the latest bonds which increases debt even more, etc., and the death spiral is underway.

3) We have previously discussed the reality that San Francisco has been turned into a third world hellhole. The streets are overrun with human defecation, urination, and illegal drug usage and needle use. So much so that the city actually has both a hotline for citizens to report human feces on the streets of the city and a five person full time pooper squad that goes around the city scooping up human feces from the street.

The numbers are unbelievable:

• The city has received a whopping 20,000 reports of human feces on the street.
• The five person city pooper squad costs almost $1 million a year just in salaries for the squad since each person on that assignment makes an obscene $185,000 a year.
• According to the San Francisco Chronicle: “San Francisco Public Works has a $72.5 million-a-year street cleaning budget — including spending $12 million a year on what essentially have become housekeeping services for homeless encampments. The costs include $2.8 million for a Hot Spots crew to wash down the camps and remove any biohazards, $2.3 million for street steam cleaners, $3.1 million for the Pit Stop portable toilets, plus the new $830,977-a-year Poop Patrol to actively hunt down and clean up human waste.”
• But beyond the popper squad, the city has budgeted $700,000 for a 10 person needle cleanup squad to cleanup the drug needles strewn about city streets.

Would one ever expect to see numbers like this in a modern American city? Pretty disgusting numbers with no relief insight. What is the great idea that the incoming mayor, Landon Breed, wants to implement to combat this problem? She wants to ask non-profit organizations serving the 7,500 homeless souls in the city to ask their constituents to stop pooping in the streets. Yeah, that will work.

As always, the numbers show just how ineffective and useless our politicians. Numbers do not lie but politicians do. More numbers 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:

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

April, 2016, Part 1, By The Numbers: Hillary's Speech Numbers, Bad Economic Numbers, and Bad Crime Numbers.

On a periodic basis we do some posts that fall under the theme of “by the numbers.” Rather than trust what the American political tells us about reality, we like to examine the real numbers and the real reality in the world to understand what is actually going on. Relying on politicians, and their cohorts in the media, to tell us what is reality is always a sucker bet. They have their own agendas and goals, usually centering around their needs and self-enrichment. So we need to look at the reality of the numbers to determine what is really going on.

Previous analyses of “by the numbers” can be accessed by entering the phrase in the search box above. This is the third and final post this month where we look at the numbers to truly find out how good, not likely, or bad, most likely, the American political class is doing in managing our tax dollars, protecting our freedoms, and resolving major issues that affect all of us. 

1) It is no secret to anyone who has read previous posts in this blog that the Obama administration has presided over and managed the worst recovery from a recession in over a century. Despite spending over $800 billion on a failed economic stimulus program, getting the advantage of cratering energy costs that pumped trillions of dollars into the economy, and having the Federal Reserve pump trillions of more dollars into the economy, this administration still created economic policies and strategies that resulted in the following dismal results:

• Record low labor participation rates.
• Annual national economic growth rates that were never anywhere close to the historical annual trend.
• Over 14 million Americans that cannot find a find a full time job or who have settled for a part time job since they could not find a full time job.
• Increased taxes and thousands of new government regulations, e.g. Obama Care, have depressed job and business formation.
• Household wages and incomes have been stagnant for the entire Obama administration.
• For the first time ever, business deaths are outnumbering business creations in this country.
• The jobs that have been created in the Obama economy have tended to be in the lower paying industries.

And according to recent reporting by the Investors Business Daily, the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics reports are not showing any deviation from this historically bad economic performance:

• Only 215,000 new jobs were created in March, a long way from the 14 million Americans who are still looking for a full time job.
• At this rate, it would take 6-7 years to handle those 14 million Americans, assuming that no other American lost their jobs during those years.
• The labor participation rate actually increased a little in March, good news, but is still stuck at forty year lows, around 63%.
• While Obama claims that the unemployment rate is 5%, the real unemployment rate, the rate that includes discouraged workers and part time workers that want full time work, is almost double at 9.8%.
• If the Obama recovery was comparable to the Reagan recovery, the country would have created five million more jobs.
• Two of the industries who had the biggest job gains in March were retail (48,000 jobs created) and restaurants (25,000 jobs created), two industries that usually have low wages for jobholders.
• Annualized national economic growth was 2% in the third quarter of 2015, 1.4% in the fourth quarter of 2015, and according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, who just released its prediction for the first quarter of 2016, a paltry .7%.
• According to the article, businesses are cutting back on their capital spending levels and they are not building new factories or research facilities.

The economic numbers are in for March, 2016 and they are not good. In fact they are basically the same, lame numbers the Obama administration has generated for the past seven years.

2)  2014, Hillary Clinton gave a speech to employees of wireless manufacturer Qualcomm. Since then,the Securities and Exchange Commission has sued the company, claiming that the business often bribed foreign officials in order to get better deals in country for their products and thus, gain a distinct business advantage. Qualcomm eventually paid a $7.5 million fine to end the suit.

I bring this up not because of any laws that Qualcomm broke but because the company paid Hillary clinton a whopping $335,000 to give ONE speech. I an sorry, no speech from any human being is worth $335,000…..unless that company expected something in return. Which is how Bill and Hill have gotten so rich, running the racket of trading public favors for private, severely overpaid speeches.

Oh, and by the way, according to news reports covering this story, the one time $335,000 speech fee is larger than Bernie Sanders net worth.

3) Warner Todd Huston, writing for the Breitbart website on April 12, 2016, reviewed the alarming Gallup poll results on rising crime levels (keep in mind that prior to the Obama administration, violent crime had been decreasing steadily over the past two decades):

• According to Gallup, a growing majority of lower income Americans, especially African-Americans, are more worried about rising crime levels in their neighborhoods.
• 53% of those polled said they are worried a “great deal” about rising crime and violence rates, up from 39% in 2014.
• This 53% level was pretty consistent across independent voters, Republican voters, and Democratic voters.
• 70% of respondents with high school degrees said they worry a great deal of the time while only 32% with college degrees say they worry a great deal of the time.
• Crime and violence concerns of middle class Americans has risen 20 points, up to 57%, in just the past two years while concern among upper income people is up only 8 points to 36% in the past two years.
• While 46% white respondents worried a great deal of time about crime and violence, a whopping 68% of African-Americans worried a great deal, despite having Al Sharpton and Barack Obama on their side.
• The Breitbart article cites a recent Washington Post piece that stated homicides in the country’s largest 50 cities is up 17% in the past year, the largest increase in 25 years.
• In 2015, violent crime in some areas of the nation’s capital jumped up by about 20%.
• The Gallup poll also asked about rising drug use and found that 41% of whites say they are worried a great deal about drug use, up from just 27% in 2014 while 49% of non-whites say they are worried a great deal about drug use.

Pretty pathetic results of this Presidential administration. The perception of rising crime, violence and drug use seems rampant across all segments of society, a nice part of Obama’s failed legacy, the numbers do not lie.

So today the numbers showed us that the perception of crime is marching upwards, Hillary must give a heck of a speech to get paid so much for giving a speech, and our economic performance and results under the Obama administration continue to be abysmal. More numbers 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