September, 2021, Part 7, Political Class Insanity: More Political "Do As I say, Not As I Do" Hypocrisy, More Congressional Insider Trading Shenanigans, and The Sinking Biden Presidency Ship

Before we get to today’s insanity, please consider the following proposition: as many of you know, the withdrawal from Afghanistan has been a historic and fatal endeavor. But the failure did not start just in the past few weeks, it has been a twenty year disaster. It has cost American taxpayers about a trillion dollars, has left thousands of our brave armed forces folks dead, maimed, or wounded and has resulted in an unknown but substantial number of civilian deaths.

Afghanistan has been a collective failure of multiple Presidential administrations and multiple sessions of Congress. Thus, please consider signing the petition below that calls for the immediate resignation of every member of Congress that has at least twenty years of service and the resignation of President Biden, Vice President Harris, and critical, and failed, members of the Biden Administration. They do not deserve to serve any longer given their miserable twenty year track record of death, destruction and waste in Afghanistan.

Also, if you are passionate about this topic and effort, feel free to pass the link along to others who might also feel the same way, i.e. incompetence should not be rewarded:

https://www.change.org/p/american-citizens-demand-immediate-congressional-resignations-for-the-twenty-year-afghanistan-debacle

Biden and others need to resign for dereliction of duty, incompetence and total lack of empathy. Nothing short of resignation is acceptable. Thank you.

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

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

1) Far too many times during the pandemic we have seen politicians demand that regular citizens obey dictatorial edicts by the politicians while at the same time they ignored the very restrictions on freedom and behaviors they imposed on the rest of us:

• Chicago mayor, Lori Lightfoot, shut down all non-essential businesses during the height of the pandemic including hairdressers, but forced her hairdresser to open to get her hair styled while denying that right to others.
• The mayor of Beaumont, Texas did the same thing but forced her nail salon to open to get her nails done while denying that pleasure to everyone else in Beaumont.
• California governor, Gavin Newsom, forced citizens to wear face masks whenever they were out and about but attended a fancy dinner at a fancy indoor restaurant where he and no one else in his dinner party were wearing masks.

You get the idea, “do as I say, not as I do,” the motto of the American political class. And that tradition of hypocrisy and elitism continues today with Biden’s latest idiocy relative to the pandemic:

• Biden has declared that just about every American needs to get the covid vaccine regardless of their religious, medical, and personal freedom reasons for not taking it.
• Of course, millions of Americans object to being dictated to with a highly likely illegal and unConstitutional order.
• But the real hypocrisy is who is immediately exempted from getting a mandatory vaccine.
• The over one million illegal immigrants that have illegally entered the country since Biden took office are exempt from the vaccine decree.
• The tens of thousands of Afghan refugees Biden is bringing into the country are exempt from the vaccine decree.
• At least initially, the untold thousands of postal employees were exempted from the vaccine decree; there is some confusion if that exemption is still in place.
• And the worst exemption of all: all members of Congress and their 31,000 Congressional staffers are also exempt from the vaccine decree.

Unbelievable. The regular tax paying, heart of the country citizens are being dictated to stick chemicals into their body whether they want to or not. Illegal immigrants, Afghan refugees, postal workers and anybody associated with Congress get exempted. A prime “do as I say, not as I do” hypocrisy.

2) The “STOCK Act ''was enacted so that members of Congress do not trade on insider government information to sell and buy stocks and other investments, a habit that made many, many members of Congress quite wealthy. After the original legislation was passed, Congress and Obama silently weakened the tenets of the act and provided loopholes for members of Congress to still get wealthy, just made it more difficult to do.

And even with the lessened stringency, members of Congress are still getting caught with some shady financial dealings:

• A DC watchdog group recently asked the Office of Congressional Ethics to investigate Congresswoman Katherine Clark.
• The claim is that the Congresswoman did not disclose $285,000 in financial transactions in a timely manner.
• Ms. Clark is not a newbie member of Congress, she is the assistant Speaker of the House.
• And she is not the only one who is under the STOCK microscope including Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee.
• Specifically, Clark is alleged of not properly disclosing 19 personal stock transactions within the required 45 days that her husband transacted.
• The value of the transactions were substantial, ranging from $19,019 to $285,000.
• The Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust allege that Wasserman Schultz, Congresswomen Kathy Castor and Lori Trahanm, and Senator Mark Kelly also didn’t disclose financial transactions in a timely manner.

These folks should know better. They receive training on what they need to do and how quickly they need to report transactions. Wasserman Schultz waited almost a year to report her family’s transactions, far beyond the 45 day requirement. But we should not be surprised. American politicians always seem to think that laws and regulations are merely suggestions for them, not hard core rules. More “do as I say, not as I do” hypocrisy.

3) Eight months into the Biden Presidency and it has been a mess:

• A debacle of a withdrawal from Afghanistan that unnecessarily killed many many Americans and Afghanis.
• Biden’s incompetence has antagonized our friends around the world while emboldening our enemies, Russia, China, North Korea and Iran.
• There is raging inflation across all aspects of life.
• A covid, drug cartel, drug addiction, humanitarian, human trafficking, criminal gang, and juvenile sexual abuse crisis continues on the border.
• A government covid mandate that is dictatorial and unConstitutional.
• A President that has the mental capacity of a seven year old after suffering severe elder abuse by his wife, his family, and his political handlers.

It is a sinking ship and many of those on that ship are already abandoning the sinking ship only eight months into the term:

• Chief of staff for the Department of Homeland Security, Karen Olick, has decided to resign.
• Given the disaster on the border, who can blame her, somebody is going to take the fall for this fiasco and she probably wants out before she catches the blame.
• Why else would someone resign from such a high profile job just 8 months into it?
• Two highly trained FDA vaccine experts, Philip Krause, and Marion Gruber, have also resigned because they did not agree with Biden’s plan for a third covid booster shot.
• Again, it must be bad if trained scientists resign from likely high paying government jobs because of the ignorance of the President.
• Biden, untrained in science, vaccines, medicine, or any relevant discipline wants everyone to get a third covid shot while these trained scientists recently wrote a paper that stated, “current evidence does not, therefore, appear to show a need for boosting in the general population, in which efficacy against severe disease remains high.”
• Given that Secretary of State Anthony Blinken came off as a total incompetent in front of Congress recently, he may also be heading out.

For whatever reason, the rats seem to be abandoning ship just eight short months into the cruise, giving up careers and high paying jobs. The Biden Presidency is a disaster already and shows no sign of getting better anytime soon, another failed set of political hacks and career bureaucrats.

More “do as I say, not as I do” from the American political class, more greed and self enrichment from the same set of people, and the sinking Biden Presidency.

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/Love-My-Country-Loathe-Government/dp/1604942789/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=love+my+country%2C+loathe+my+government&qid=1607716020&sr=8-1

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.reason.com

http://www.cato.org

http://www.openthebooks.com

http://www.conventionofstates.com

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

 

 

January, 2019, Part 2,The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: Why Trump's Dismantling of Obama Care is A Good News Story

Every month for years now we have had to discuss how bad Obama Care is turning out to be under the continuing theme, “the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care.” This month is no different. As the legislation continues to march through America, driving up health care and health insurance prices as it serves as dead weight on economic growth, it cements its rightful place as the worst piece of legislation Washington has ever produced.

It never had a chance to be successful since it really never addressed the underlying root causes of our ever increasing health costs in the country:

• Americans eat too much of the wrong kind of food, resulting in obscenely high obesity rates for the country.
• Our food chain is infested with overdoses of high fructose corn syrup, salt, sugar, and other unhealthy additives.
• Americans smoke too much.
• Americans do not exercise enough.
• The country is in serious need of health care tort reform.
• Barriers to insurance company competition across state lines need to come down.
• Obama Care never “followed the money” to find out who is actually profiting from the ever escalating healthcare costs in this country and how to get those factors under control.
• Obama Care never got the immense amount of fraud and abuse in current government healthcare programs, Medicare and Medicaid, under control in order to save money to efficiently fund other government health care initiatives.
• Obama Care never put serious research money towards curing the major diseases that drive high healthcare costs such as high frequency cancers and dementia type diseases.

You cannot resolve any problem unless you understand and address the underlying root causes. No difference here: Obama Care legislation never addressed these listed root causes and thus, has no chance of ever being successful.

But it is not just missing the root causes of our healthcare costs that makes Obama Care so horrible. It resulted in millions of Americans losing access to their favored doctors, hospitals, and insurance policies. It has caused insurance premiums, deductibles and copays to escalate substantially. It will likely add trillions of dollars to the national debt. It has exposed millions of Americans to higher than necessary identity theft chances. It has created government bureaucracies that are wastefully spending taxpayer wealth and being exploited by criminal elements. It has stifled economic growth and job creation.

These are just a sample of the types of idiocy that we have been reviewing for the past several years in this blog relative to Obama Care. To read those past posts, just enter the phrase, “the unfolding disaster,” in the search box above.

We talk a lot about how bad Obama Care is and deservedly so. It kicked millions of Americans off of their existing and satisfactory healthcare plans. It denied access to their favorite doctors and hospitals. It raised premiums and deductibles while reducing coverage and options. It’s data systems operations exposed millions of Americans to increased identity theft threats. It caused many doctors to leave the profession, worsening an already bad doctor shortage. It added trillions of dollars to the national debt. It treated a public health problem as an insurance problem, leading to its inevitable failure.

Fortunately, there has been some movement to fix this monstrosity of a law to give Americans a break financially and medically regarding their health and health insurance:

• Let’s start with the following link which does a good job explaining why Obama Care was never going to work in the first place:

https://www.libertyplanet.com/articles/why-obamacare-was-never-going-to-work/

• Deroy Murdock, writing for the National Review on October 26, 2018, explains how the Trump administration is trying to fix what Obama broke.
• By signing the “Right To Try” legislation, Trump okayed the rights of terminally ill Americans to try experimental drugs not yet approved by the FDA in a last attempt to save their lives, an act that will positively affect over one million sick Americans a year.
• According to Trump this act will stop the following desperate practice: “People who are terminally ill should not have to go from country to country to seek a cure. I want to give them a chance right here at home.”
• Sadly, only 22 Democrats voted for this act in the House, raising the question why the other 169 Democrats would not give sick Americans a chance at life?
• Congress eliminated the individual mandate penalty that Obama Care imposed, a penalty that fined and made criminals out of ordinary Americans if they did not choose to obtain healthcare insurance, which according to Trump: “People are paying a lot of money for the privilege of not paying a lot of money for bad health care. And we’ve ended it.” 
• Trump signed legislation that killed Obama Care’s Independent Payments Advisory Board, also known as the “Death Panel,” which would have rationed health care in this country based on costs.
• Last June the Trump administration re-established “association health plans," which will allow entrepreneurs, small employers, and civic organizations to ban together to get reduced insurance groups rates from insurance companies, plans that extend across state lines, something that Obama Care killed.
• The Trump administration extended the length of short-term, limited health insurance plans from three months to one year, with renewals permitted up to three years. 
• According to the article, the cost savings from these short term plans are significant because of this extension: “For example, according to E-Health, the average lowest premium for an Obamacare plan for a 40-year-old woman is about $4,200 per year,” Trump noted. “By contrast, the average lowest premium for short-term coverage for this individual is about $1,300 a year — a savings of $3,000,” or 69 percent off.”
• These short term plans are cheaper because they are more customized and narrow to a person’s individual health needs: “Every Obamacare plan must include pediatric vision coverage — even if the policy holder is childless, sterile, and mortally terrified of small, screaming objects.”
• Trump now requires hospitals to post their prices for health care online so that customers can finally shop around for the best prices for their hospital needs and force hospitals to become more efficient because of the visibility of their costs.
• In addition, the President signed two pieces of legislation that increase drug price transparency: “Our great citizens deserve to know the lowest price available at our pharmacies. They’ll be able to see pricing. … And as they start leaving certain pharmacies, those pharmacies will be dropping their prices.”
• Trump removed so-called “gag clauses" on Medicare Part D drug plans so that now pharmacists can tell patients about more cost effective drug options.
• The current administration sped up the FDA drug approval process, so much so that in 2017 the FDA approved over 1,000 generic drugs, the most in its history, which should reduce Americans’ drug costs.
• The administration has already approved seven state waivers that give states more flexibility to serve their sickest patients by allowing insurance companies to lower premiums: “We have approved seven state waivers that provide federal assistance to help states pay for the sickest patients and allow insurers to keep premiums lower, all without increasing taxpayer burden,” Seema Verma, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), wrote last week. “These waivers appear to be working. For example, Wisconsinites will see their individual market premiums decrease by an average of 11 percent, due to the waiver.”
• The administration loosened the reins on Health Reimbursement Accounts, allowing employers to more easily deposit up to $1,800 into an employee's HRA account each year to offset healthcare costs, killing a stupid Obama Care ban on such plans.

All good steps, much of which begin to address the root causes of high healthcare costs we listed above. A lot more has to be done: we need public health efforts to get Americans to stop smoking, start eating right, start exercising and doing a number of other things to address this public health problem. But fortunately, the overbearing, one size fits all monstrosity and bureaucracy of Obama Care is starting to fall away and being replaced with more rational, effective, and efficient processes.

Keep in mind that Obama Care was supposed to “bend the cost curve” of ever increasing healthcare costs. Obama himself promised that many American families would see upwards of a $2,500 reduction in their annual health insurance costs. Instead, according to HealthCare.gov, average annual individual insurance premiums increased a whopping 105% from 2013 to 2017, from $2,784 to $5,712. 

But given the above changes, Obama Care premiums are actually expected to decrease 1.5% in 2019, the first decrease ever, with customers in Pennsylvania seeing a 16% decrease and those in Tennessee seeing a 26% decrease. More insurance companies are entering the individual insurance market, for the first time since Obama Care went into effect. 

So something good is going on. It is just a shame that Obama Care delayed the good news for seven years, causing havoc and financial strain on millions of Americans in the process.

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

April, 2015, Part 1, Will The Center Hold?

On a regular basis we discuss a continuing theme in this post. “Will the center hold?” Never in my life have I seen such a push back against an overreaching Federal government and Washington political class at all levels of government and at the individual citizen level. From Obama Care to gun control to education to Common Core to spying on innocent civilians, across the country people are finally saying enough and have started to rebel against Washington dictates and laws.

Which brings to two very interesting questions:

1. What if Washington passed a law and everyone the country simply ignored it?
2. Would the center hold or would the Republic splinter apart?

Don’t believe that the center is possibly in danger? Insert the phrase “will the center hold” into the search box above or read on today and for the next few days to see where the rebellion has spread to.

1) A major source of irritation and push back against Washington has been with Common Core, the Washington based overhaul of education in the country which attempts to dictate a top down approach to education. We have often discussed how badly this program educates are kids based on actually testing results and how states, schools and parents are rebelling against education dictates from a far away and out of touch Washington.

How deep is the push back? Well, on Long Island in New York, twice as many parents have taken their kids out of the the Common Core testing exams this year vs. the previous year. In one school district, over 80% of the parents decided their kids should not be subjected to the Common Core tests. Other school districts on the island have had opt rates over 50%. Thus, we are not talking about a small minority of rebellious parents, we are talking about the majority of parents in certain school districts.

Which gets us to the question: what happens if everyone takes their kids out of Common Core testing, does the Common Core program die a well deserved death? We shall see. For a look at the opt out rate for Common Core in every Long Island school district go to:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/12MKPf7x8-Xym-sLwEH2XJNqR6cN6KMGzjFx25k4-_ug/edit#gid=246053646

2) One movement that we have not talked a lot about in this theme but which is certainly related is the Convention Of States movement. This effort aims to put together a coalition of states that will press for Constitutional changes that include the annual balancing of the Federal budget and term limits for Federal politicians. Two thirds of the state need to pass legislation calling for a Convention of States and that movement is progressing nicely towards that number across the country.

A week ago, the Tennessee Senate formally passed legislation calling for a Convention of States by a vote of 23 to 5. The vote was this strong despite out of state efforts and money to derail it.

3) The Personal Liberty website posted some state by state efforts to rebel against the Feds in a March 24, 2015 article by Michael Boldin:

• In Arizona, legislation was recently passed in the state senate, by a vote of 17 to 12, that would ignore any restrictions that would inhibit the right to keep and bear arms in the state.
• A similar bill to protect Second Amendment rights in Montana was recently passed by both houses of the state legislature and is headed for the governor’s office for approval and enactment.
• Similar efforts are are underway in the Tennessee, Missouri, Texas, Ohio, and Pennsylvania state legislatures.
• Idaho was the first state in the country in 2014 to pass state level legislation designed to prevent any new Federal gun control efforts.
• In 2014, Arizona voters approved Proposition 303 which allow Arizonans to try experimental medical treatments that have not yet been approved by the Federal government.
• In 2015, Wyoming and Arkansas enacted so-called “right-to-try” laws and similar legislation is pending in Virginia, Montana, Indiana, Utah, and Mississippi, all intended to go around the FDA’s glacier drug approval process: “These laws are a no-brainer,” said Mike Maharrey of the Tenth Amendment Center. “When someone is on their deathbed, the fact that FDA regulations would let them die rather than try, has got to be one of the most inhumane policies of the federal government. Every state should nullify the FDA like this.”
• The Federal government allow hemp to be grown for medical research purposes only but it is currently being actively farmed in Colorado and Vermont in defiance of that Federal law.
• In addition, Tennessee, South Carolina, New Hampshire, Washington, Connecticut, Missouri, Texas, Florida and North Dakota are in various legislative stages of allowing widespread hemp farming in their states.
• Last year Utah and New Hampshire passed laws that ban each state from participating in any warrantless eavesdropping activity on its citizens by the Federal government.
• Texas, Alaska, Tennessee, Missouri, South Carolina and other states have introduced legislation to ban all “material support or resources” to all Federal bulk warrantless spying programs.
• Legislation is under way , Montana, New York, Missouri,Vermont, Massachusetts, and Oregon to block a nationwide car license plate tracking program.
• Legislation in Arizona and Texas is moving ahead to ban enforcement of an Obama Care tenet.

Many states and many issues, much rebellion and push back, will the center hold? 

4) Arizona has been one of the most active states in telling the Feds to pound sand. It is working on two new pieces of legislation in that vein:

• The first piece of legislation, Arizona House Bill 2368, prevents the state of Arizona from funding any executive orders issued by President Obama, or policy directives issued by the Department of Justice. The bill would prohibit “this state or any of its political subdivisions from using any personnel or financial resources to enforce, administer or cooperate with an executive order issued by the President of the U.S. that has not been affirmed by a vote of Congress and signed into law as prescribed by the U.S. Constitution.” It also “prohibits this state or any of its political subdivisions from using any personnel or financial resources to enforce, administer or cooperate with a policy directive issued by the U.S. DOJ to law enforcement agencies in this state that has not been affirmed by a vote of Congress and signed into law as prescribed by the U.S. Constitution.”
• The second bill, House Bill 2643, stops state and local governments from using state funds to enforce and implement the Obama Care. 

Both bills passed the Arizona House and will now move to the Senate. 

Wow, a state insisting that the Federal government and current Presidential administration follow the Constitution. Amazing and unfortunately, very rare. 

But maybe the tide is turning. Dozens of instances where states across the country are making a stand for the rule of law, common sense, and the protection of its citizens and their rights. The center is getting shaken on the edges, will it hold? More shaking 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

November, 2014, Part 1, Political Class Insanity: Terrorist Panties, Tic Tac Regulations, and More

It is the start of another month which means it is time again to review the latest political class insanity that has been dumped on us by the worst set of politicians to ever hold office in the history of this country. From wasteful spending to bad priorities to general ineffectiveness, the insanity rolling out of Washington and other political centers and government around the country seems to be accelerating as the idiocy of our political times increases.

Last month we set a record by needing almost two full weeks of posts to get all of the insanity documented and discussed. Given what I see today, we will be hard pressed not to get close to or exceed that record of insanity this month. It keeps getting worse and worse and the effectiveness of the political class gets less and less.

1) Before we start with this first piece of wasteful spending insanity, think back, if you are old enough to the late 1970s. At that time, the Statue of Liberty, the symbol of this country and its Constitutional freedoms and liberties, was in need of extensive and costly repair. 

Despite its place of honor in our history and collective freedom, not a single taxpayer dollar was used to restore it and refurbish it. The entire renovation cost was covered with private donations from citizens and businesses.

Now, consider the reality that Federal taxpayer dollars have been allocated to fund a Gammy awards museum in Cleveland, Mississippi. Forty years ago the Federal government would not fund the fixing of the Statue of Liberty but today the political class and Federal government will use taxpayer money to build a music museum in that thriving metro area of Cleveland, Mississippi.

According to research done for the 2015 publication of Senator Tom Coburn’s Wastebook 2015, the Federal government gave Delta State University $1.25 million, via the U.S. Commerce Department’s Economic Development Administration, to help build an access road and upgrade infrastructure in preparation for the 2015 opening of the $18-million Grammy Museum Mississippi.

If the state of Mississippi and the town of Cleveland wanted to build a Grammy Museum to hype tourism, than the state of Mississippi and the town of Cleveland should be for everything connected to the museum, the rest of America should not have to pay for such nonsense. 

As proposed in Step 44 of “Love my Country, Loathe My Government,” a step that says no Federal money should be spent on any project unless it materially effects and benefit’s the residents of at least five states, this money never, ever should have been appropriated for this project. It is the thousands and thousands of dumb, localized projects that end up wasting tens of billions of dollars every year, calumniating and contributing to our $18 TRILLION national debt.

If we did not have to pay to fix the Statue of Liberty we should not have to pay for a silly museum in the middle of nowhere in Mississippi. How many homeless and hungry Americans could have been given shelter and food instead of building roads for a local museum? How many ailing veterans could have gotten better medical care for that $l.25 million Federal tax dollars? 

2) According to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, six out of ten people polled said they do not trust the government to do what's right. Additionally, a majority feel that government’s ability to deal with and resolve big problems has been on the decline for the past few years.

While this is probably bad news for Democrats heading into next week’s midterm elections since they have controlled most of the Federal government over the past eight years or so, does anyone really think that Republicans can reduce that level of pessimism? They are all members of the same political class, a class of people that are always more interested in their own careers and self enrichment than resolving the problems of the country.

The insanity here is that a majority of Americans, and I would bet that it is a growing majority of Americans, have lost faith in the Federal government to do anything right. And the losing of faith makes turning the country around that much more difficult.

3) After the 9-11 attacks, the Washington political class thought it would be a great idea to create a new, super large Federal bureaucracy called the Department of Homeland Security. These folks were going to protect us in the future from new terrorist attacks within this country.

With the rise of the super dangerous terrorists groups like ISIS, one would hope that this was a good idea. That the people employed by the Department of Homeland Security would be on the borders, focusing on threats in far away lands, and on the job of making sure that terrorists do not wreck havoc like they did on 9-11. One would hope that, but as always, with the political class and the federal government, one would again be wrong. 

But first, a little background. The Kansas City Royals just missed winning the baseball World Series in the past week. To commemorate their march through their season, the playoffs and into the World Series, Peregrine Honig, owner of Honig’s Birdies Panties shop in Crossroads, Kansas, said she designed the Lucky Royals women’s panties that were set to go on sale shortly after the world series ended. The panties read, “Take the Crown,” with “KC” across the bottom. She had a few dozen made to sell in her shop.

However, apparently her designs on the panties violated Federal copyright laws. By connecting the “K” and the “C,” she infringed on major league baseball’s copyright. How did she find out she had violated copyright law? Two, not one, Department of Homeland Security agents showed up in her store, flashed their badges, told her that her panties violated Federal copyright laws, and confiscated the few dozen offending panties.

Really? ISIS is marching across the Middle East beheading innocent people, threatening to invade America, wiping religious minorities in their path, and the Department of Homeland Security is physically sending agents into a small lingerie store to confiscate panties? Really?

The Commerce Department couldn’t send a registered letter telling Ms. Honig to cease and desist? How did the Department of Homeland Security even get involved in such a trivial matter? Insane. Are illegal panties that much of a threat to the homeland? You cannot make this nonsense up.

4) According to the December, 2014 issue of Reason magazine, in 1997 the Federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) set out to regulate what was said on the labels of Tic Tacs, Certs, and other breath fresheners. A whopping seventeen years later, those draft regulations are finally done, resulting in a 145 page document to regulate Tic Tac et al labels. Seventeen years and they have juts gotten to the DRAFT of the regulations.

During the process, the FDA consulted with the Centers for Disease Control, the Federal trade Commission, the Department of Agriculture, and other Federal agencies. All this for a final effort that probably will be ignored by every American but at a cost of probably tens of millions of dollars. 

Your tax dollars at work (over seventeen years): determining what to put on a label of a breath mint. How many of billions of breath mints does one thing were consumed over that time frame without any kind of catastrophic effects, despite not having a federal approved label? Insanity.

That will do it for today. But buckle up, we are in for a long ride of insanity in the days, and possibly weeks to come.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

And What Value Do We Get For Our $14 TRILLION Debt?

Many times we have discussed the fact that the major issues of our times never seem to get resolved by the political class sitting in Washington. The issues of failing public schools, the lack of a coherent national energy strategy, escalating health care costs, leaky borders, Social Security and Medicare heading for insolvency, a bloated military establishment, and other major challenges never get resolved. We have overspent our nation's resources by more than $14 TRILLION and we have nothing to show for it.


Even the politicians that have accomplished nothing realize their incompetence, if you believe the following quote from Colorado Senator Michael Bennet as stated in the Washington Post on September 3, 2010: "We have managed to acquire $13 TRILLION of debt on our balance sheet. In my view, we have nothing to show for it." How true.

As a side note, realize that it was less than a year ago when a politician was talking about "only" a $13 TRILLION national debt. In less than 12 months, the Obama administration and Congress have added another $1.3 TRILLION to that figure or about $11,000 per U.S. household.


Don't believe Bennet's opinion? Consider a quote from former President Bill Clinton, as quoted by the Associated Press on September 21, 2010: "Do you know how many political and economic decisions are made in this world by people who don't know what in the living daylights they are talking about?" How true.


So even members of the political class acknowledge they do not know what they are doing and have been abysmally unsuccessful in addressing the major problems. But what about some of the smaller issues of our times, How is the political class doing with those? Not very well if you consider the following examples of horrible priorities, horrible wastes of taxpayer money, and horrible execution of government functions:


- Let's start with one horrible sense of priorities from California Congressman Howard Berman. Congressman Berman and his staff are working on legislation that would order the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to restrict helicopter flight paths and set minimum altitudes over some of the most exclusive residential property in Los Angeles. The affluent neighbors of Charlie Sheen, Lindsay Lohan, and Paris Hilton are upset about the sound of helicopters that these celebrities use and want the Federal government to intervene, a cause that Congressman Berman is working on.


Some serious problems on this issue. First, the country is about to go over a financial cliff and this Congressman is spending taxpayer resources on a matter that affects just a very small number of Americans. Talk about bad priorities.

Second, according to the Associated Press article that reported on this "injustice," the FAA already has existing rules in place to regulate helicopter traffic so the entire effort of Berman is unnecessary, especially since the legislation he is proposing has very few specific recommendations on how to regulate the southern California celebrity helicopter crisis. His proposed bill is leaving those ugly details to the FAA to figure out.

What a waste of time, energy, and taxpayer resources when hundreds of other, far more important issues need to be addressed. Thus, I think you can assume that a lot of our $14.3 TRILLION national debt was expended on these types of empty, very low priority initiatives.


- Second example of bad priorities this week comes directly from the President. With the nation on a collision course with severe fiscal problems in the beginning of August, one would hope that the political class would be in an "all hands on deck, 24 hours a day  mode," trying to solve the debt ceiling issue. They all should be locked in a room and not allowed to come out until they have reached a solution. This includes everyone from the President down to Congressman Berman, his helicopter issue be damned. However, that is not the case.


This past Monday, the President decided that spending a few hours to host the Major League Baseball World Series winners, the San Francisco Giants, at the White House was more important than staying deeply involved with debt ceiling crisis. Better to kill a few hours hanging out with very rich professional athletes than helping avoid the fiscal crisis. The Giants would still be champions two weeks from now and two months from now. Why was this meeting not postponed in light of the fiscal crisis? Bad, bad set of priorities, Mr. President.


It should be interesting to see if his bad sense of prioritizing continues this week: does the President leave Washington for a purely political birthday bash/election fund raiser event in his honor on August 3 or does he put the good of the country first if the debt ceiling issue is not resolved by then? I know what option I would be betting on, given what the President's less than proper priority usually is.


- Let's look at a few other services we get from the Federal government to see if we are getting real value for our $14.3 TRILLION of debt. The first example comes from the Briefing section of the July 29, 2011 issue of The Week magazine. This week the section focused on the medical evidence that is revealing, for the most part, antidepressant usage may be causing more problems than solutions.


An interesting part of the article was the description of how a drug gets approved by the Federal government, through the FDA, for use by Americans. It appears that when a drug company comes up with a new drug, the FDA requires that the drug company must show two drug trials where the proposed drug showed positive effects. If the drug company can show just two successful trials, the Federal government will approve the drug for use.

However, what most people do not know, the FDA does not set a limit on the number of negative trials that the new drug caused before it finally got to two positive trials. Theoretically, a drug company could conduct hundreds of trials and if any two of them showed positive results, the drug is approved.


The analogy to me is golf. If I hit 10,000 golf balls in a row on the same par three hole, I may eventually get a hole in one, not because I am a good golfer but because the odds of probability say if I do anything enough times, I may get a result I desire. Same thing with the FDA's approval process. Conduct enough drug trials, eventually you will get the answer you want. This is what we are paying for, an FDA that allows a golfer to do the same shot over and over until he gets it right. Hardly a valuable Federal government service.


- A while ago we reported on the ill fated and down right stupid program that was implemented by the Justice Departments' ATF division called "Fast and Furious." The objective of the program was to intentionally allow guns to be sold to the Mexican drug cartels and then track them to crime scenes where arrests could be made and the network of gun trafficking could be better understood.


The problems with this program were many. First, it turns out that the government really had not way of tracking the movement of the guns once they left the country so that once the cartels had them, they were lost to the trackers. Second, these were not a few, low caliber guns. There were thousands of guns, many of which were military grade, that our government allowed to easily get into the hands of the violent drug cartels.

Third, and tragically, recent news reports are finding that weapons from this program have resurfaced in connection with at least 122 crimes in Mexico. The New York Times reported that on 48 different criminal occasions between 2009 and 2011, Mexican authorities found weapons from this operation.


At least two of the weapons were used in the killing of a U.S. border agent and who knows how many Mexican citizens were also killed as a result of this botched gun tracking program. Total incompetence that happened to be more than wasted taxpayer wealth, it was and will continue to be a fatal waste of human lives. I wonder how much of the $14.3 TRILLION was a result of insanely bad programs like this one?


- But the waste and incompetence of Fast and Furious gets even better. According to an article from McCatchy Newspapers that was recently reprinted in the St. Petersburg Times, six drug cartel gun runners, the exact kind of people that the ATF failed operation would be looking to apprehend, were actually paid informants on the payroll of the FBI and the DEA.

So let me get this straight: one part of the Federal government (ATF) is trying to catch Mexican gun runners who are actually working for another part of the government (the FBI and DEA)? How much of that $14.3 TRILLION was wasted because one part of the Federal government did not know what another part of the Federal government was doing? Thus, they were actually working counter to each others' objectives, accomplishing nothing in the process but expending a lot of taxpayer money to nothing.

- A scathing article by David Brooks of the New York Times that was summarized in the July 1, 2011 issue of The Week magazine is unmerciful when it comes to Fannie Mae, the giant Federal government mortgage facilitator. According to Mr. Brooks, Fannie was used for over a decade to funnel taxpayer money to Democratic party politicians and to the friends of of Fannie's chief executive, James Johnson.

By flooding the market with risky subprime mortgages, to eventually be backed by taxpayers when that market collapsed, Mr. Johnson was rewarded with over $100 million in compensation. According to a new book on the subject, "Reckless Endangerment," Johnson and his insiders "paid themselves lavishly and used Fannie funding to lobby Congressmen, falsify academic research, and suck in reputable figures such as Bill Daley, Ken Starr, and Larry Summers to defend Fannie's scam." All parties to this disgrace walked away from the nuclear economic meltdown they helped create.

Thus, part of the $14.3 TRILLION debt is a result of this type of criminal behavior backed by both Congressional involvement or Congressional laxity. In either case, nothing good came out of the whole Johnson tenure as head of Fannie, a tenure that will cost the American taxpayer billions of dollars to clean up for years to come.

- The last example of political class incompetence comes from Miami. A recent Miami Herald article reported on how south Florida has become the Medicare scam and fraud capital of the country. Since it is estimated that anywhere from $60 to $90 billion a year in Medicare funds are lost to criminals and fraudsters, why hasn't the political class, via Congress, made south Florida a focus point on cleaning up the taxpayer waste? 

According to the article, whenever there is a little heat put on the scammers, they just take their money and go to Cuba, South America, or Central American to live off of their ill gotten gains. If everyone knows what is going on, why isn't action being taken to crack down on those still scamming Medicare in south Florida and pressuring other governments to extradite those living abroad back to the U.S.? The problem is defined but no solution is forthcoming. In the meantime, the tens of billions of dollars lost every year via south Florida scams contribute to the $14.3 TRILLION debt.

Well, unfortunately, not only can the political class not solve the major issues of our time, they cannot solve any of the less important issue, all of which have contributed to that $14.3 TRILLION national debt over the years. The non-prosecution of criminals, both in south Florida and in Washington, the lack of cooperation and the redundancy across Federal government entities, the bad priorities that cause a loss of focus on what is really important, and government regulations that are not effective. Is there any doubt why we have the debt we do?

As always, three steps from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" need to be implemented immediately to rescue the country from the debt of the political class:

• Step 1 would reduce government spending by 10% a year over five years in order to get out of control government spending reined in. More importantly, it would require every Federal organization to do a ground up audit of itself to eliminate redundant functions, terminate bad or unneeded programs, and ferret out waste.
• Step 34 would hold members of Congressional committees responsible for the objectives of their committees. Failure to attain those objectives and adequately oversee the government functions their committees oversee would result in those committee members being removed from their committee posts.
• Step 39 would impose term limits for every Federal politician. If you have been in office more than ten years, you are now part of the debt problem and need to be removed.

The political class members currently in Washington have done nothing and are doing nothing to attack the cancer that is that $14.3 TRILLION national debt while providing no meaningful value while they waste TRILLIONS of dollars. No value, but high cost, a deadly combination.




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.
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http://www.reason.com/
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