Yes, Barack,You Did Have Scandals, Part 2

Usually I reserve the early days of the month to review the latest political class insanity. Insane quotes, stupid actions, unlawful activities, the nonsense of the political class is usually grouped together early each month.

But let’s get an early start on June’s political class insanity. Barack Obama has been very quiet over the past few months, almost suspiciously quiet. My theory is that he is laying low given that there is a decent chance that he weaponized the nation’s Federal intelligence agencies and resources to spy on the Trump campaign. If he knew or allowed such despicable behavior to happen it would be an incredible affront to freedom and I suspect his lawyers are telling him to lay low and shut up.

But given the ego and narcissism of Obama, he cannot keep entirely quiet and humble. He dared to speak out recently when he proudly said that his administration had no scandals. We have already killed this fantasy in a series of posts beginning with the following post back in 2016:

https://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2018/05/yes-barack-you-did-have-scandals-part-1.html

But let’s reminisce using a recent list of Obama’s “Lies, Scandals, and Quotes” that was recently printed by the Gateway Pundit website. Despite Obama’s delusion that he had no scandals, the Gateway Pundit came up with an amazing 108 things to dispute his view. Let’s review this insanity with Part 2 of additional comments that were not included in the original list from the Gateway Pundit (note: the first 31 points reviewed can be accessed at the following link: https://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2018/05/yes-barack-you-did-have-scandals-part-1.html):

32. Still on vacation in Hawaii on the first day Obamacare is supposed to begin. Comment: Biggest piece of Washington legislation passed in decades, which unfortunately became the biggest failed piece of legislation in decades, and he cannot even be present at its onset to support it.

31. "ObamaCare will lower costs for everyone." Comment: No, Obama Care raised costs for just about everybody.

32. "More Americans will be insured under Obamacare" Comment: This was a true statement but those who got Obama Care insurance policies paid a lot of money for them with very high premiums and high deductibles, faced very narrow networks as far as doctors and hospitals and as a result ended with policies that were often useless or unusable.

33. "Islam is the religion of peace and tolerance….Muslims are our friends" (then he bows to the muslim leaders). Comment: Then why, according to a 2016 study, were the 450 of the 452 major terrorist attacks in 2015 attributed to Islamic terrorism?

34. “That’s the good thing about being President, I can do whatever I want,” Comment: Which you proved dozens of times when you broke the law, violated the Constitution, and shredded the Bill of Rights.

35. "My father served in WW2.: Comment: So did mine.

36. 2011 Arab spring FAIL. Comment: Do not know what this means.

37. America's 2010 Summer of recovery FAIL. Comment: I assume this refers to the most anemic economic recovery this country has seen in about hundred years, an anemic economic recovery that was not limited to the single year of 2010.

38. Hiring a known Palestinian terrorist to work on Obamacare in Illinois. Didn't bother to check her on e-verify. Comment: no aware of this incident.

39. “I promise 100% transparency in my administration.” Comment: Then why did you hound and harass journalists, redact government documents, and make it often impossible for citizens to easily and cheaply use their Freedom of Information Act rights?

40. "Buying health care insurance will be like using Amazon." Comments: Turns out this could not have been further from the truth, buying health care on the Obama Health Care exchange was harder than doing a root canal on yourself.

41. “I will end Income Tax for seniors making less than $50K a year.” Comment: Not aware this ever happened.

42. "I will bring ALL of our troops home within ONE year."Nope, took a lot longer.

43. “I’ll put the Health Care negotiations on CSPAN so everyone can see who is at the table!” Comment: Never happened, Obama Care negotiations were done behind closed doors with industry lobbyists, never to see the light of day.

44. “I’ll have no lobbyists in my administration." Comment: Ah, yeah, you did.

45. DOJ spying on the free press telephone calls. Comment: Spying was not restricted to the press, it involved just about every American.

46. Blocking veterans from seeing their own WWII memorials during shutdown. Comment: And yet the military golf course Obama played regularly somehow stayed open during the shutdown.

47. Allowing illegals to protest on mall during the same govt shutdown. Comment: Not aware of this incident.

48. Shutting down White House (people's house) tours. Comment: See golf course comment above.

49. Solyndra bankruptcy cost to taxpayers. Comment: Hundreds of millions of dollars lost, an amount that was higher than legally required once the Obama administration put political donors ahead of the American taxpayer during the bankruptcy proceedings.

50. "Obamacare will not be used to fund abortions." Comment: Ah, I believe it was used to fund abortions.

51. Eric Holder -- tooooo much to list with this liar-incompetent. Comment: After lying to Congress and running any number of illegal operations, e.g. Fast and Furious, Obama protected him from any legal and penal ramifications.

52. Millions losing health care coverage. Comment: Despite Obama promising over and over that if you like your current health insurance coverage you could keep it, millions lost their coverage.

53. RECORD welfare rolls. Comment: Again, one of the most if not the most anemic economic recovery ever.

54. RECORD Hollywood parties on the taxpayer's dime. Comment: not aware of this situation.

55. RECORD campaign tours on the taxpayer's dime. Comments: Record number of campaign tours, record number of vacations, and the most Presidential rounds of golf since Eisenhower.

56. RECORD exorbitant vacations on the taxpayer's dime. Comment: At least $100 million in taxpayer expense spent on Obama family vacations.

57. RECORD number of golf games of any president, on taxpayer's dime. Comment: I believe the count was over 300 rounds of golf during his eight years despite his promise that he would forgo any and all vacations and leisure time if elected President.

58. RECORD secret service agents compared to ANY other president, on the taxpayer's dime. Comment: not aware of this situation.

59. Unconstitutional Obama recess appointment. Comment: Which I believe the courts struck down as being illegal.

60. Taking all credit for SEAL Team 6 success. Comment: Of course he did because he is so wonderful.

61. Forcing businesses to violate their abortion religious beliefs with Obamacare. Comment: another Obama attempt to shred the First Amendment which generally failed to work because of court rulings.

62. Obamacare website no-bid contract website-cronyism that cost $634M to build (and the website NEVER worked). Comment: I believe an old college friend of Michelle Obama was given the contract without competitive bidding and which failed miserably and expensively.

63. Supporting the Muslim Brotherhood terrorists with arms and money in Syria, on the taxpayer's dime. Comment: Too many tentacles and unknowns to comment but there was certainly something going which likely got four Americans killed at Benghazi.

64. NSA acting as Obama Gestapo, spying in ALL AMERICAN telephone calls. Comment: Shredding the Fourth Amendment.

65. Proposed amnesty for illegal law breakers. More law breaking by his administration.

66. Spying on Americans, on American soil, with drones. Comment: not aware of this situation but not surprised.

67. NEVER having a balanced budget. Comment: Not ever coming within miles of a balanced budget - first administration to have an annual budget deficit of over a trillion dollars, first administration to have four consecutive budget deficits over a trillion dollars and an administration that created a budget deficit almost equal to ALL previous Presidential administration budget deficits COMBINED.

68. CONSTANTLY contracting economy under Obama. Comment: He did not have constantly contracting economic growth during his administration but the economic growth that did occur was the most anemic in generations.

That i will do it for today, another 37 situations that are either unlawful, disgusting, outright lies or scandalous, bringing our two day discussion to 68. Sorry, Barack, it is not looking good for that “no scandals” statement, we still have another 40 items to review.

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

February, 2017, Part 4, Political Class Insanity: Fiscal Mismanagement At Every Level Of Government, Obama's Golf Tally, and More

It has been several weeks since Donald Trump has been sworn in 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) Democrats and liberals often trumpet the empty slogan to “tax the rich,” as if confiscating even more from the more fortunate in the country will solve all of our issues. We have often shown how absurd this is, that this country cannot resolve its fiscal crisis by raising taxes, the problem can only be resolved by reducing out of control government spending. Let me explain.

According to a recent BBC article, that was summarized in the January 27, 2017 issue of The Week magazine, the three richest people in this country, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, and Mark Zuckerburg have a total net worth of about $181 billion. That seems like a lot of money but it really is not when compared to out of control government spending.

The Federal government spends about $10.4 BILLION a DAY. If you confiscated and liquidated every asset of these three billionaires, leaving them with nothing, the total amount of wealth you would then have could run the Federal government for about...17 days, or about two and a half weeks. Not very long. I addition, by confiscating all of their wealth, you would no longer receive the billions of dollars in taxes they pay over the years, forcing the tax rates for the rest of us to go up to cover their shortfall.

So if confiscating ALL of their wealth has virtually no effect on government spending, imagine how little effect there would be by raising their tax rate on their income, not their wealth. It would be lost in the rounding. And speaking of being lost in the rounding, all of their wealth if used to pay down our $20 TRILLION national debt would pay off less than 1% of the national debt. Proving once again that we do not have an under taxation problem in this country, we have a government overspending problem in this country.

2)As an FYI, Obama played 306 rounds of golf while President, the most rounds played by any President since Eisenhower 60 years ago. This was a Presidential candidate that promised to devote 24 hours a day, seven days a week to his Presidential duties and take no vacations or time off for himself. Yeah.

3)While some liberals and Democrats hail Obama as an economic wizard for his economic recovery, we have often pointed out that his recovery was one of the worst economic recoveries ever, based on the following realities:

• Six years after the Obama recovery started, annual national economic growth has not come close to the long term average of just over 3%.
• For this anemic growth rate, Obama doubled the national Federal debt by a whopping $10 TRILLION that will hinder future economic growth and burden future generations of Americans with the interest bill due on that incremental $10 TRILLION in debt.
• Job creation during the Obama recovery did not even keep up with adult population growth.
• And those millions of jobs that were created during the Obama recovery were mostly temp jobs, short term contract jobs, and jobs in low paying industries.
• Wages and household income have been stagnant for most of the entire recovery period, only recently having started to increase a bit.
• The labor participation rate is at very low levels, levels that have not been seen since the dark days of the Carter “stagflation era.”
• Over 94 million American adults are currently not in the workforce.
• As a result of poor quality jobs and low/stagnant wages, young adults are still living with their parents at levels not seen since the Great Depression and more seniors are working past the retirement age than ever before.

To add to these very bad economic results, Annie Lowrey, writing an article for The Atlantic, that was summarized in the January 13, 2017 issue of The Week magazine, revealed these sad Obama recovery results:

• In rural America, the employment rate is 2.9% LOWER than it was before the recession started while in metro areas, the employment rate is 4.8% HIGHER than it was before the recession started.
• Businesses are adding jobs at twice the rate in metro areas vs. rural areas.
• Unbelievably, only 20 counties out of 3,000 counties across the country accounted for fully half of the net new businesses added between 2010 and 2014.
• And these 20 counties came from only three metro areas, New York, Los Angeles and Miami.
• The counties that Hillary Clinton won last November accounted for two thirds of the nation’s economic output while the counties that Trump won accounted for only one third of the nation’s economic output.

Thus, although Democrats are always crying about economic inequality, it seems that their candidates and their geographic strongholds are the richest of each in their respective categories. In other words, listen to what I say and not what I do….or where I live or how much money I make.

4) We often talk about how the Washington political class has spent and wasted so much taxpayer money that we are now stuck with a massive $20 TRILLION national debt (with virtually nothing to show for it), burdening every living American with about $63,000 of debt, as the fiscal solvency of the country is quickly becoming a disaster. Earlier this week we talked about how the state government of California has over $400 billion on uncovered liabilities, saddling each one of its residents with almost $12,000 worth of state debt, all of which is threatening the fiscal solvency of that state. And also earlier this week we talked again about how fiscally mangled the state of Illinois is, so mangled that it is refusing to pay off state lottery winners.

But it is not just liberal politicians operating liberal states and cities that are in big trouble. Consider an analysis from the latest issue of Reason magazine where it shows that two cities that have enjoyed incredible financial, economic, and population growth still had politicians that managed to screw up excellent financial opportunities and conditions:

• You can see why Detroit actually filed for bankruptcy since its population over the past 60 years decreased by over a million people, severely depleting its tax base and revenue stream while Dallas saw its population triple over that timeframe from 434,000 to 1.2 million residents.
• Despite the tripling of the tax base and revenue stream potential, Dallas is $5 billion short in its pensions fund for retired police and fire personnel.
• Moody’s credit rating service estimates the pension funds will be dry and bankrupt within about 20 years unless current taxpayers and politicians allocate much more money to the pension funds.
• Which is not a surprise since in 2015 the city contributed $115 million to the pension funds while retirees took out $283 million in benefits.
• In a weird loophole of the pension’s fund rules, retired police and fireman can pull their money out of the funds early (which resulted in $230 million being pulled out in just six weeks in 2016) which many are doing, anticipating the coming fiscal storm, making matters even worse.
• And another high growth Texas city, Houston, is not much better fiscally since it has the fourth worse pension debt problem of all U.S. cities despite very robust economic and population growth over the past few decades.

Which proves once again that we do not have an under taxation problem in this country: at every government level, Federal, state, and municipal, American politicians do not know how to develop, manage, and live within a budget despite sometimes being given a rapidly growing economic and tax base.

That will do it for today’s insanity: fiscal mismanagement at every level of government, Obama made the rich richer despite being a liberal, and he played a LOT of golf for a President while accomplishing very little when he was not playing golf.

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

The Selling and Buying Of America, Part 3: The Gangs That Control America

This is the third post on the topic and insult of the “Buying and Selling Of America.” Two days ago we reviewed the recent history of politicians helping themselves to taxpayer wealth to enrich themselves, enrich their families and friends, and continuing to finance their reelection campaigns with taxpayer dollars.

Yesterday, we reviewed the disgrace of the Washington political class asking for/demanding citizens and businesses contribute to Obama’s inauguration festivities and parties and how taxpayers will likely pay over $150 million to support the inauguration parties for the politicians in D.C.

Today’s examples come from a new book written by Jeffrey Sachs, a highly respected economist from Columbia University. The book is titled "The Price of Civilisation" and Mr. Sachs says the US economy is caught in a feedback loop: ''Corporate wealth translates into political power through campaign financing, corporate lobbying and the revolving door of jobs between government and industry; and political power translates into further wealth through tax cuts, deregulation and sweetheart contracts between government and industry. Wealth begets power, and power begets wealth,''

Well said. In about fifty words Mr. Sachs has summarized how the buying and selling of America works. We no longer live in a democracy, we live below a tier of elitists that trade taxpayer wealth and freedoms for their own reward, greed, and enrichment. That is why no major issue ever gets resolved in this country. There are powers and “gangs” that do not want them solved, it would upset the cozy arrangements that these elitists have established.

I use the word “gangs” because that is what Mr. Sachs calls them, as outlined in an article by Ross Gittins of The Sydney Morning Herald. Mr. Sachs categorizes the gangs as follows:

1) The first gang is the military-industrial complex, i.e. the relationship between the Pentagon and the private businesses and contractors that live off of its massive annual budget. Here are is a famous quote from President Eisenhower from over fifty years ago: "In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist."

As a result, Sachs concludes that “America has been condemned to militarization, useless wars and fiscal waste on a scale of many tens of trillions of dollars since then.'' I would say he has gotten that right:

• Useless wars: Vietnam, Granada, Yugoslovia, Lebanon, Iraq I, Iraq, II, Afghanistan, and probably a few I have forgotten.
• Fiscal waste: you cannot spend over $600 billion a year on a world wide operation and not have fiscal waste. Rather than run down the many examples that we could list, let me refer to our most popular blog post ever regarding the Navy nonchalantly wasting over $300 million of taxpayer wealth:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2011/07/us-navy-ships-for-sale-cheap-never-used.html

Additionally, if you go to the website www.simplywired.com you will find that the average salary for an individual defense contractor is about $64,000. Since the average American household annual income is just under $50,000, you begin to see why defense contractors want the status quo to be maintained.

2) The second gang, according to Sachs, the Wall Street-Washington complex, a complex which has steered the nation’s financial system towards monopoly control by just a handful of politically connected Wall Street firms including Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and a few other financial firms. Despite the financial meltdown of the Great Recession, despite the useless, but long and cumbersome, Dodd-Frank financial industry reform legislation, despite the public’s disgust with the banking industry in general, these few banks control as much or more of the financial industry than they did five years ago. These few banks control over 50% of banking deposits, banking assets, and just about any other measure of banking value.

How were they able to do this? Let’s look at just two examples of how the “gang” works:

- Congressman Barney Frank used to be a powerful chairman of a House banking committee. His committee was supposed to oversee and make sure banks did not get out of control. But how motivated was he in this role when:

• According to an October 22, 2010 article in the Boston Herald by Dave Wedge, Massachusetts Congressman, Barney Frank, accepted $40,000 in reelection campaign donations from financial institutions that received bailout/TARP from the government. Two things make this action so despicable. First, Congressman Frank was at the center of the whole taxpayer bank bailout activity since he was chairman of the lead House of Representatives committee that was determining which institutions got how much taxpayer money, if any.
• Second, in 2009, Mr. Frank told the Washington publication, Roll Call, that he "won't take any PAC money from banks that took TARP funds, nor would I take it from the top executive." However, according to Mr. Wedge's research he did not fulfill this statement.
• According to Mr Frank's own campaign disclosure reports, he accepted a campaign donation of $7,000 from top executives from Bank Of America. Bank of America received $45 billion in taxpayer bailout funds."
• He received $5,000 for Bank Of America's Federal PAC fund.
• He received $10,000 from the Bank Of New York Mellon Corporation which received $3 billion from the bailout fund.
• He received $2,000 from the Financial Services Roundtable PAC that includes representatives from TARP recipients Bank of America, JP Morgan, Chase, and Wells Fargo.
• He received $1,000 from U.S. Bancorp's PAC which received $6 billion in bailout funds.
• These details and further discussion of “gangster politics” can be found at:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2010/10/conflicts-of-interest-and-lies-that-are.html

Let’s move on to another example, this one where Congressional members got sweetheart mortgage deals from Countrywide Financial, the poster child for the bad  mortgageloans that were the underlying cause of the Great Recession. The following members of Congress and their senior staffs received this preferential treatment, as outlined in an Associated Press report:

1. Former Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd, D-Conn.
2. Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D.
3. Mary Jane Collipriest, who was communications director for former Sen. Robert Bennett, R-Utah, then a member of the Banking Committee.
4. The AP report said Dodd referred Collipriest to Countrywide's VIP unit. Dodd, when commenting on his own loans, has said he was unaware of the discount program.
5. Rep. Howard "Buck" McKeon, R-Calif., chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.
6. Rep. Edolphus Towns, D-N.Y., former chairman of the Oversight Committee. Towns issued the first subpoena to Bank of America for Countrywide documents, and current Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., subpoenaed more documents. The committee said that in responding to the Towns subpoena, Bank of America left out documents related to Towns' loan.
7. Rep. Elton Gallegly, R-Calif.
8. Top staff members of the House Financial Services Committee.
9. A staff member of Rep. Ruben Hinojosa, D-Texas, a member of the Financial Services Committee.
10. Former Rep. Tom Campbell, R-Calif.
11. Former Housing and Urban Development SecretariesAlphonso Jackson and Henry Cisneros; and former Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala. The VIP unit processed Cisneros' loan after he joined Fannie's board of directors
12. Former Fannie Mae heads James Johnson, Daniel Mudd and Franklin Raines. Countrywide took a loss on Mudd's loan. Fannie employees were the most frequent recipients of VIP loans. Johnson received a discount after Mozilo waived problems with his credit rating.

Details of this corruption and more can be found at the following link:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2012/07/washington-corruption-train-keeps-on.html

Still do not believe the Wall Street/Washington gang exists? Consider the following graphic that shows the incest that exists between the Federal government and Wall Street banks (double click on the picture for a larger view):

The overlap is the incest of the government/Wall Street gang.
Maybe President Wilson had it right about a hundred years ago when he said: "The government, which was designed for the people, has got into the hands of the bosses and their employers, the special interests. An invisible empire has been set up above the forms of democracy."

Are you beginning to see how the feedback loop works? Corporations support incumbent politicians via financial donations and once back in office, incumbent politicians cut special deals for those same donors and their businesses and interests. Everybody gets wealthy and secure, the gang and their loop keeps rolling along, an invisible empire above the forms of democracy.

Unfortunately, it is all subsidized by American taxpayers, who are not getting wealthy and secure. In fact, if anything, they are getting less secure (high, chronic unemployment) and declining household income and wealth (less secure). That is why there is no urgency on any politicians to upset the process since they do not pay for the process, we do. And that is why our national debt is $16.4 TRILLION and climbing, and cuts in government spending would make the gang members less wealthy and less secure even if it helped save the country’s economy and democracy.

That’s enough bad news for today. We will continue with the selling and buying of America tomorrow when we reveal the identities of the last two gangs and provide some common sense suggestions on how to bring the gangs down, restore our freedom and bring some sanity to our out-of-control government spending and get it under control. In the meantime, see if you can name the other two gangs.

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

Has The Political Class Ever Accomplished Anything? Take The Quiz And Find Out

Another pop quiz today. This quiz asks you to name the approximate year or era of the following New York Times headlines. After the headlines, I will tell you when those headlines appeared and you may begin to recognize a pattern, namely, after decades of paying for thousands of politicians to go to Washington, the value and successes we have gotten in return is pretty measly.

1. Calm In The Middle East Urged by The President
2. Cigarettes Peril Health, U.S. Report Concludes, 'Remedial Action' Urged
3. President's Farewell Sees Threats To Liberties In Vast Defense Machine
4. Congress Expects Accord This Week On Tax Cut Bill
5. House, 382-4, Votes To Help Consumer
6. OPEC Parlay Weighs New Oil Price Rises and Cuts In Output
7. Sun Powered Airplane Crosses Channel
8. AMA Says Plan Would Drive Many Doctors Out Of Medicare
9. City's Teachers Perform Poorly On State Exam
10. Tax Plan Offered To Curb Evasions, Raise $237,000,000
11. Jerusalem's Fate Held Main Issue In Settlement Of Palestine Question
12. North Korea Calls U.N. Order Illegal
13. President In Midnight Statement, Take Up Oil Scandal, Promises Facts Will Be Revealed, Guilty Punished, Special Counsel From Both Parties To Bring Our Truth
14. U.S. Forces Take Control In Baghdad, President Elated, Some Resistance Remains
15. 178 Nations Reach A Climate Accord, U.S. Only Looks On

As you might expect, every one of these headlines could have occurred today. Middle East strife, a military budget and industry out of control and wasteful, no energy breakthroughs or coherent national energy policy to make us energy independent, bad teachers, health care problems, tax issues, failed government bureaucracy in the consumer protection field, North Korea, political class corruption, etc. It makes you wonder what these people in Washington have been doing all these decades if the issues we have faced through the years are still unresolved today.

Okay, let's see how you did on the quiz. The headlines are repeated below along with the first paragraph of the New York Times article that followed the headline. I will provide some brief commentary after each headline capsule:

1. Calm In The Middle East Urged by The President - April 1, 1954: President Eisenhower called on Israel and Arab states to restrain their extremists and permit other nations to help them settle their disputes.

Commentary - 57 years after Ike issued his plea, the two sides are no closer to a long term peace agreement than back in 1954. Fifty seven years of fruitless negotiations, resulting in untold suffering and deaths on both sides as a constant state of conflict has existed since this headline. No one in he political class has found a way to solve this problem since Ike's plea.

2. Cigarettes Peril Health, U.S. Report Concludes, 'Remedial Action Urged - January 12, 1964: The long awaited Federal report on the effects of smoking found today the use of cigarettes contributed so substantially to the American death rate that "appropriate remedial action" was called for.

Commentary - One of the primary drivers of bad health and high health care costs in this country today is the millions of people that smoke tobacco products in America. While the rate of smoking has come down over the decades, millions still smoke to the detriment of their own health and the health care costs of us all. The government correctly  identified the threat over 47 years ago, the political class has yet to come up with a way to eradicate the threat and the associated costs.

3. President's Farewell Sees Threats To Liberties In Vast Defense Machine - January 18, 1961: President Eisenhower cautioned the nation in a farewell address from the White House tonight to be vigilant against danger to its liberties implicit in a vast military establishment and a permanent armaments industry unparallelled in peacetime.

Commentary - this statement is really scary, given Ike's military background. Here was an insider to both the political class and the U.S.military correctly forecasting that unless kept in check, this "military/industrial complex" would continue to eat up more and more resources even though there was no world wide war or conflicts going on, wasting resources while endangering our freedom.

Unfortunately, his accurate warning went unheeded by the political class, so much so today that our military budget eats up about 25% of the revenue the Federal government collects. This 25% is far too much for the defense needs of the country today, resulting in an overgrown Pentagon bureaucracy, foreign deployments of U.S. troops that are not needed, and billions of dollars of taxpayer waste every year.

4. Congress Expects Accord This Week On Tax Cut Bill - February 17, 1964

Commentary - No need to go through the first paragraph of this article since it is basically the same as the other tax cut historical articles I did not need to cite. 47 years ago the political class was still wrestling with the proper tax code to have and that wrestling match continues on today. The constant adjusting and fighting over the code has resulted in a tax plan that is overly complex and overly simple to cheat on, resulting in unfairness across all income ranges.

5. House, 382-4, Votes To Help Consumer - February 2, 1968: The House passed today a comprehensive "truth-in-lending" bill designed to give consumers full and clear information on how much they pay in interest and other finance charges on loans and credit purchases.

Commentary - Hey, wasn't this one of the main reasons for Obama to push through the Dodd/Franks financial industry reform bill last year? Wasn't that bill and the consumer protection agency bureaucracy it created supposed to do the exact same thing? What happened between last year and 1968, why do we need this new consumer protection law when we had one back in the 1960s? Didn't anybody in D.C. learn anything from 1968's action?

6. OPEC Parlay Weighs New Oil Price Rises and Cuts In Output - March 27, 1979: Pressure for another large increase in world oil prices built up today at the opening of a meeting of oil ministers of the Organization Of Petroleum Exporting Countries.

Commentary - given that gas prices have risen considerably in just the past year, it appears that 32 years after this headline appeared, the political class and its useless Department of Energy are no closer to removing us from these OPEC threats than we were back in 1979.

7. Sun Powered Airplane Crosses Channel - July 8, 1981 - After several earlier unsuccessful attempts, the first solar powered plane succeeded today in crossing the English Channel.

Commentary - Let me add that the crossing was accomplished with only the solar power the plane could generate during the flight. The plane contained no batteries to store any solar power it created and there was no other means of power on the plane.

Thirty years after a solar powered plane proved viable and successful for quick air flights, how come the political class, Federal government, and its Department Of Energy have not been able to find a way to solar power a car that never leaves the ground, given that some English folk thirty years ago powered a plane just on solar?

8. AMA Says Plan Would Drive Many Doctors Out Of Medicare - October 4, 1995: After months of public silence, the American Medical Association expressed the concern about Republican proposals to redesign Medicare, saying new limits on payments would make the program unattractive to many doctors.

Commentary - as with the other headlines, this headline could have occurred quite recently, specifically right in the middle of the Obama Care negotiations. It is an issue now, it was identified in the Times as an issue sixteen years ago, and nothing was done in that time frame to make it a non-issue by the political class.

9. City's Teachers Perform Poorly On State Exam - November 16, 1999: Not only does New York City have a disproportionate number of uncertified teachers, but those that do pass the state certification exams tend to score much lower than their counterparts in the suburbs and upstate.

Commentary - Nowhere have I seen any glowing reports about how effective the New York City schools are today. It could be that I missed them and the city's schools are temples of learning but if not, twelve years after the world knew the city teachers were not measuring up, nothing has apparently changed.

10. Tax Plan Offered To Curb Evasions, Raise $237,000,000 - December 6, 1933: Broad based tax reforms designed to increase the Federal revenue by $237,000,000 and prevent avoidance and evasion of the internal revenue laws was recommended by the House Ways and Means committee. 

Commentary - I love this one. 78 years after trying to get tax evaders under control, we are no closer to that goal today than we were back in 1933. A March, 2008 issue of Money magazine quoted an IRS study that estimated that the Federal government fails to collect $197 billion every year from tax cheats. Thus, nothing has changed in 78 years except the number of zeroes in the amount of money the government fails to collect as stipulated by its own tax laws.

11. Jerusalem's Fate Held Main Issue In Settlement Of Palestine Question - December 21, 1949: The place to study both sides of the Palestine conflict is in Jerusalem. Here are two distinct cities, as far apart in aspect, time, outlook and way of life as they are near in space.

Commentary - 62 years later, Jerusalem is still the same flash point of conflict and hatred that it was back when Truman was President, eleven Presidents ago.

12. North Korea Calls U.N. Order Illegal - June 28, 1950

Commentary - 61 years later, nothing has changed, North Korea still defies the world with the only major difference being is that now it is a nuclear player, certainly not an improvement from 1950.

13. President In Midnight Statement, Takes Up Oil Scandal, Promises Facts Will Be Revealed, Guilty Punished, Special Counsel From Both Parties To Bring Our Truth - January 27, 1924: President Calvin Coolidge will name special counsel representing the Republican and Democratic parties to prosecute those guilty of fraud in connection with the leasing of oil lands in the Naval reserve areas of Wyoming and California.

Commentary - 87 years ago the political class and the oil industry were already in bed together, cutting deals, both illegal and legal, in order to benefit themselves rather than doing the right thing for the country. Today, the same things goes on, with oil companies always making hefty donations to both political parties to influence government behavior to their benefit, with the latest embarrassment being the fact that BP oil donated more campaign money to Barack Obama in 2008 than any other candidate.

14. U.S. Forces Take Control In Baghdad, President Elated, Some Resistance Remains - April 10, 2003: Much of Baghdad tumbled into American hands on Wednesday as Saddam Hussein's image was pulled down from pedestals and portraitures around the city. But American and British commanders said the war in Iraq, including the battle for Baghdad, was not over and faced critical days ahead.

Commentary - this was probably the easiest headline to date, given the Baghdad reference but I thought it important to include anyway. Unfortunately, the estimate of days ahead became weeks ahead which became months ahead and seven years later we are still there, spending money, and losing troops to sporadic battles. Why we are still in country, given the current President's pledge to get us out quickly, is beyond me.

15. 178 Nations reach A Climate Accord, U.S. Only Looks On - July 24, 2001: With the Bush administration on the sidelines the world's leading countries hammered out a compromise agreement today, finishing a treaty that for the first time would formally require industrialized nations to cut emissions of gases linked to global warming.

Commentary - I included this one to show that the American political class is not alone in being unable to accomplish much of anything. Although this treaty was signed over ten years ago, it is my understanding that the vast majority of the signers of the treaty have failed to make any significant headway into reducing their emissions even though they signed off on the treaty. Thus, even when political classes around the world have clear cut objectives and goals, they still can't seem to be able to get anything done.

Pretty depressing. Decades go by and the major issues of our times go unresolved. Dirty politics, tax evasion, complex tax codes, Middle East hatred, an out-of-control military, the continuing energy crisis, the lost war on drugs, North Korea, escalating health costs, failing public schools, etc. No issue ever gets resolved despite the American taxpayer spending TRILLIONS of dollars and suffering through thousands of ineffective politicians.

What should be done? Several steps from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" would be a good start:

• Step 6 would not allow anybody or any organizations to contribute to election campaigns unless they were a single U.S. citizen. This would help remove the influence of businesses, unions, PACs, and lobbyists from political decisions and hopefully, make those decisions more focused on solving problems and not politicans' reelections.
• Step 34 would set up a review process that would remove Congressional committee members from their committee posts if their committees were unable to meet at least minimal standards of performance for their committee's responsibilities. For example, given the lack of a functioning and effective energy policy and the failure of the Department of Energy to deliver any value to the American people, Congressional energy committees would be prime candidates to be re-staffed with new people.
• Step 39 would impose term limits on Federal politicians so that they they focus only on the nation's issues while in office as opposed to focusing on their reelection. Also, the current Congress has members that have been in Washington for decades, the same period when the major issues of the country have not been resolved. Thus, these long term politicians can now be considered part of the problem and not part of the solution. They need to be removed via term limits and fresh people with fresh ideas and fresh enthusiasm brought in.

Hopefully, in the next twenty, thirty or more years the New York Times articles headlines above are not still as relevant as they are to us today, i.e. a monument to the inability of American politicians to solve a problem.




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/

Looks Like Ike Was Right After All

I found it interesting that two recent articles about our military establishment recently leaned heavily on the thoughts of former President Dwight David Eisenhower. As many of your should know, one of Ike's lasting catch phrases was the "military-industrial complex." His fear was that the military and the industries that support the military may grow in power and statue over time, and predicted (correctly) that these entities would cause the nation to spend more on defense than was actually necessary.

The first article was written by Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria. He described the modest reform goals that Defense Secretary Gates is trying to put in place in order to streamline and make the armed forces more efficient. Unfortunately, he has been opposed by a whole spectrum of parties including politicians whose home districts/states may lose the support of Pentagon dollars, defense contractors, the military establishment, and lobbyists. Why is Gates looking to make these moves? Consider some of the statistics from Mr. Zakaria's article:

• Military hardware costs are spiraling out of control with the cost of one new Navy destroyer costing between $2 and $3 billion a piece to build while the cost of just one new bomber costs $2 billion per plane.
• While the private sector of the economy has stripped away levels of management to become more efficient and responsive, the Pentagon management levels have grown considerably, from seventeen layers a decade ago to about thirty levels of redundant management today.
• We now have almost 1,000 general and admirals in our armed forces, up 13% in the past 15 years, even though the number of people in our armed forces has shrunk over the time period.
• Every management layer at the Pentagon is larger than it was during the height of the Cod War. As an example, the article cites a study from Professor Paul Light of NYU where he estimated that there were 78 deputy assistant secretaries of defense in 1960 and there are 530 today.
• There are more military musicians in the military's marching bands than there are members in the State Department's Foreign Service.
• The Pentagon has ten times as many accountants than the State Department has Foreign Service officers.
• In a recent speech Gates questioned whether or not we needed to spend the money for an additional 100 fighter jets when we already have over three thousand such aircraft, do we really need to build more multi-billion dollar Navy ships when we already have a navy that is larger than the next 13 navies combined, 11 of which are navies of our allies, and whether we need to build more billion dollar stealth fighters when by 2020 we will still have 20 times as many such fighters as China.

Now consider an article by Boston Globe writer Peter Canellos, that was summarized in The Week magazine in the August 27, 2010 edition:

• Our current defense budget of $700 billion is six times larger than our nearest competitor.
• Our current defense budget is more than the next 18 largest defense budgets of other nations.
• More than $130 million of lobbyist money is spent ever year in an attempt to maintain and grow the country's spending on military hardware and other expenses.

Looks like Ike was right after all. We have allowed ourselves as a nation to build and maintain defense capabilities, and the resulting bureaucracy that goes with it, far beyond what is essential for our national defense. Just look at the numbers: a navy bigger than most of the rest of the world's navies combined, twenty times more fighters than our next nearest competitor, a bureaucracy that is bigger and more bloated than any time in our past, a $700 billion defense budget that costs each American household almost $7,000 a year to maintain, etc. The household income of the vast majority of the world's households is less than $7,000 a year whereas we spend almost $7,000 per household just for the Pentagon. It is out of control.

Think about how much better off we would be as a nation if we could cut that Pentagon budget in half. We would immediately inject $350 billion into the consumer economy if we could get half of that $7,000 per household expense back into the hands of our citizens. And this would not be a one time, ill-fated Obama stimulus-like plan, this would be an annual, ongoing $350 billion back into the economy that citizens could spend as they see fit, increasing our freedom of personal choice.

How could we attain this 50% reduction? The following steps, many of which are described in detail in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government," would be a great start:

• We need to realize that current, major U.S. troop deployments around the world are from another era and another time, and that these deployments are not longer strategic to our defense and should be terminated immediately. South Korea is now a very strong, democratic nation. Let them fight their battles with North Korea without the 30,000 or so U.S. troops presently stationed there. We no longer need 50,000 troops stationed in Japan, bring them home since 1) Japan is unlikely to attack Pearl Harbor again and 2) 50,000 U.S. troops in Japan would be no match for the 2,000,000 million Chinese troops if anything should happen in the Far East. There is no longer an Iron Curtain so stationing upwards of 60,000 U.S. troops in western Europe is no longer needed.
• Once these troops were returned home, all armed services recruiting would be stopped and the military vacancies and needs would be filled by the returning troops from Japan, South Korea, and Europe.
• The remaining 50,000 troops in Iraq need to be pulled back home also, as promised by the current President in his campaign rhetoric.
• We need to immediately stop producing hardware that we have no use for. The current size of our navy and our air forces needs to be frozen at current levels and that production be done for replacement of existing hardware, not the expansion of existing hardware volumes. A longer term plans needs to be implemented that starts reducing the hardware needs over time for only what is needed.
• A five year plan, as proposed in Step One of "Love My Country, Loathe My Government," would also be implemented in the Pentagon bureaucracy where the size of every Pentagon organization is reduced 10% a year for each of five years in order to get the military's management streamlined and more efficient.

This type of reduction in spending for defense will be very difficult to do. It has been fifty years since Ike issued his military industrial complex warning and since then, President after President has followed John F. Kennedy's lead, where in his inaugural speech he promised to "pay any price, beat any burden, meet any hardship" in defense of freedom. Unfortunately, based on this type of sentiment, the price has gotten very high, the burden on our economy has gotten very onerous, and the hardships continue to mount for no reason than to feed the interests of the military establishment and the politicians that support them. We have gotten to the silly stage now where we just waste money for the sake of tradition, i.e. we have always wasted money in this area.

It is time for the silly season to end and for our civilian military leadership to take back control of the Pentagon budget. We cannot afford this unwarranted military spending any more (remember how the same problem caused the collapse of the Soviet Union). The real question is whether our political class has the gumption to do their duty relative to the Constitution and civilian control of the military or they will fold their cards, as usual, in order to protect their re-election chances.



Our new 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.

Also visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.cato.org/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/