November, 2019, Part 5, Political Class Insanity: The Tragedy Of The Minimum Wage, The Delusions Of California Politicians,and The Failure Of Common Core

It is another month which means it is again time to review the latest political class insanity from Washington and around the world. Political class insanity takes many forms including the wasting of taxpayer wealth, criminal fraud within government programs, inane and stupid political quotes and actions, the inability to create and implement effective and efficient government programs, stupid and ill performing economic policies and strategies, and other forms of insanity that continue to evolve and surprise and shock us.

Let’s get started:

1) We have often discussed the fallacy that raising the minimum wage rate results in better lives for those affected by that raise. Our latest expose’ was in the following post:

https://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2019/11/november-2019-part-3political-class.html

Donald J. Boudreaux, writing for the Mercatus Center on October 31, 2019, showed, again, how bad it can become when politicians do not know the consequences of raising the minimum wage too fast:

• He starts off by stating what we have always said: “Minimum-wage legislation artificially raises firms’ costs of employing low-skilled workers. In consequence, some workers who would have jobs in the absence of the minimum wage are cast by the minimum wage into the ranks of the unemployed.”
• In other words, the good news is that you got a pay raise. The bad news is that you no longer have a job.
• The majority of economic studies on the topic of politicians raising the minimum wage arbitrarily support the reality that for the most part, raising the minimum wage results in less economic prosperity, especially for those at the lower end of the wage scale.
• And that lessening of economic prosperity is not just the reduction in the number of jobs available or the number of hours available to work.
• Many times to make up for the increase in the wage expense line, in order to survive, employers reduce other expenses to stay in business.
• Depending on the industry, employees end losing fringe benefits that have economic value to both the employer and employee including free meals, free employer supplied uniforms, employee discounts, overtime work, company picnics, comfortable break rooms, employee recognition programs, reduction in leaving early or coming in late to work opportunities, Friday happy hours, etc.
• According to Mr. Boudreaux: “When government raises the minimum wage, employers can reduce the amount of nonwage benefits paid to employees. And so even workers who keep their jobs at the higher minimum wage might nevertheless be made worse off because of reductions in the value of their nonwage benefits.”
• Thus, to offset the arbitrary increase in wages from economically ignorant politicians, employers will make up to five business operations adjustments: employ fewer workers, reduce the number of workers’ hours, cut the value of workers’ fringe benefits, work employees harder or mechanize workers’ processes.

And yet, politicians continue to think they know best, i.e. raise the minimum wage, and they always ending hurting the ones they think they are helping, the low income workers in the economy.

2) We have recently discussed the reality that California Democrats/liberals/socialists have turned the state into a stinking (literally) mess:

• There is widespread homelessness across the state with almost 90,000 homeless Americans in just the two cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco.
• The large homeless population and resultant garbage issues in Los Angeles have led to the resurrection of the Medieval disease, typhus, and a real concern that the bubonic plague might be next.
• The pipe dream to build a high speed rail line the length of the state resulted in the wasting of untold millions of dollars before it failed miserably.
• The state is about $200 billion short of what it will need to pay future unfunded state government financial liabilities.
• Due to the state’s politicians allowing homeless folks to defecate and urinate in the streets of the state’s major cities without consequences, this has resulted in severe environmental crises as the cities power wash away the feces and urine into storm sewers which washes into rivers which is in turn used for irrigation.
• And finally, due to mismanagement of the state’s forests, the state is being ravaged by wildfires, killing people and destroying homes and businesses, wildfires that have caused utilities to intentionally cause blackouts to minimize the chance of wildfires.

Thus, it is pretty obvious that the state’s politicians, and the government bureaucracies it oversees and manages, is not only useless in California but actually dangerous. New diseases, wildfires, wasted taxpayer wealth, homelessness, they have failed at everything they have touched.

And yet the state’s politicians still do not get it:

• A lot of the wildfires in the state have been caused by sparking malfunctions of the Pacific Gas and Electric’s electric grid, sparks that have caused the wildfires.
• As a result, the state’s governor, said that changes have to be made, changes that may include having the state government take over the utility.
• Governor Gavin Newsom said the objective goal of any changes was to transform, Pacific Gas & Electric, into “one that better reflects our California values and will advance massive safety transformations beginning before next fire season.”
• Newsom has appointed an energy czar to figure out what to do including taking over the utility.
• Given the inability of the state’s politicians to get anything right, as illustrated by the list of failures above, does anyone really think that the state government and the politicians who operate it could efficiently, effectively, and safely operate an electric utility? Keep in mind that Pacific Gas and Electric is a regulated utility which means that the state government has always had oversight of the utility’s operation. 

And thus, the state, and indirectly the state’s politicians, have been a major factor in the failure of the utility to modernize and minimize wildfires. Yet, the governor thinks that he and the state government can get the job done. 

He and the state’s politicians have resurrected extinct diseases, have not resolved any aspect of the homeless problem and could not build a single track railroad system and yet then think they can operate a utility: State government representative Ro Khanna recently said in an interview that the state should nonetheless consider a takeover. “This is a case where public ownership would be much better.” Much better than what? Talk about being disillusioned and insane.

3) Common Core was a major Federal government undertaking that was supposed to make the U.S. public education system one of the best in the world. It is certainly not close to that today. Our kids usually do miserable on standardized tests when measured against kids around the world despite us spending so much more on education than other countries.

We have shown over the years what a failure Common Core has been when deployed around the country:

• Within a year or so of deployment in Maryland, the test scores of kids in every county plummeted rather than get better.
• Prior to being deployed in the state of Massachusetts, the schools in that state were ranked the best in the nation when it came to educating its kids.
• However, once Common Core was deployed it dropped to seventh best in a very short timeframe.
• Damning evidence that this approach to education was a failure despite spending billions and billions of dollars on it. 

And the latest results do nothing to disprove this failure:

• According to a recent article on the Western Journal website, the latest national standardized test scores were only marginally better than the results in 1992, 27 years ago despite spending untold billions and billions of dollars to improve those results.
• Math test results were trending upwards nicely until 2015 when that upward trend stopped suddenly.
• Not coincidentally, 2015 was about when Common Core was quite well established in our public schools.
• Results actually started going negative with fourth graders latest standardized test scores, just a little above previous scores.
• Eighth grade math scores were actually below where their scores were two years ago.

So, the Federal government, the bureaucrats that operate it, and the politicians that fund it and oversee it have been a complete failure when it comes to public education for at least the past 27 years. Common Core made our education processes worse, not better. We spent billions and billions of dollars to achieve this result. In the bigger picture, over the past three decades I would venture a guess that have spent trillion(s) of dollars to maintain a mediocre education system in this country. Insanity.

Okay, we learned today that: politicians continue to be ignorant when it comes to raising the minimum wage and the negative impacts it has on lower earning American workers, politicians continue to be arrogant, thinking they can run a utility company when the have proven they cannot operate anything else effectively or efficiently, and politicians continue to prove they have no idea how to improve education despite having and spending trillions of dollars to do so.

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

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

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:


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

February, 2019, Part 6, Political Class Insanity: Medieval Disease In LA,Yet Another California Tax, and 1000+ Obama Failures

It is another month which means it is again time to review the latest political class insanity from Washington and around the world. Political class insanity takes many forms including the wasting of taxpayer wealth, criminal fraud within government programs, inane and stupid political quotes and actions, the inability to create and implement effective and efficient government programs, stupid and ill performing economic policies and strategies, and other forms of insanity that continue to evolve and surprise and shock us.

Let’s get started:

1) One of the basic functions of any government entity is to protect the citizens it represents. Whether it is police protection, armed forces protection, or public health protection, that is a very basic government function. Unfortunately, according to a recent Daily Wire website article by Emily Zanotti, the city government of Los Angeles is failing miserably when it comes to this basic function:

• The city is suffering through a break out of typhus disease, a malady usually associated with the Middle Ages and also homeless populations.
• This should not be a surprise since the local politicians have governed in such a horrific way that the homeless population in that city has exploded over the past few years.
• Typhus is carried by fleas and flea feces.
• 57 cases have been reported just in downtown Los Angeles and 120 total cases within city limits.
• This is up from 6 cases reported over the summer with all six cases associated with homeless folks.
• Latter cases have not been confined just to the homeless population but for some reason have started to show up among city employees.
• According to Deputy City Attorney Liz Greenwood, who came down with typhus: "It felt like somebody was driving railroad stakes through my eyes and out the back of my neck. Who gets typhus? It's a medieval disease that's caused by trash."
• She suspects that she got the disease from rats that infest city buildings:"There are rats in City Hall and City Hall East. There are enormous rats and their tails are as long as their bodies."
• While the city has tried to collect more garbage more often, breeding grounds for fleas, obviously it is not enough as the number of cases increases.
• According to the LA Times: "People in Koreatown step outside their fancy condos to find tents, rotting food and human feces at their doorsteps. Buses and trains have become de facto shelters, and thousands of people sleep in fear and degradation."
• Despite this efforts, local news organizations have continued to report on and photograph piles of trash on the city’s streets.

But these efforts miss the real point, the root cause of the outbreak: homelessness. Whether it is through bad housing policies and laws, bad education policies and results, minimum wage nonsense, high taxes, etc., city politicians have managed to increase the number of homeless people by 75% since 2013, to a total of 55,000 people just in LA proper. It does not include another 55,000 in abutting communities. These thousands and thousands of homeless folks are living in 222 so-called encampments.

And these conditions exist and have grown so dramatically in the midst of an outstanding economy. Can you imagine what will happen when the economy dips into a recession? How many more people will get sick from typhus and other diseases that arise in the the homeless population? 

And rather than attack the root causes of homelessness that caused the outbreak, the city politicians focus on cleaning up the trash, a task they are not even up to doing well. Thus, as far as protecting citizens, a basic function of government and politicians, the city leaders of LA have failed miserably.

2) Let’s stay in California for the next piece of insanity. California is in pretty bad shape. Its infrastructure is crumbling, its schools stink, it has untold billions and billions of unfunded pension obligations, it has a wicked homelessness problem throughout the state, high taxes, a growing out migration problem, and other problems. 

Instead of focusing on these major problems, the newly elected governor did what most state politicians have done over time: introduced a new tax. New Governor Gavin Newsom has proposed that the state levy a brand new tax, this one on drinking water. He claims that such a tax would allow poor people to get access to safe and affordable water.

According to his official budget the tax would create a “safe and affordable drinking water fund,” to “enable the State Water Resources Control Board to assist communities, particularly disadvantaged communities, in paying for the short-term and long-term costs of obtaining access to safe and affordable drinking water,” SFgate.com reported.

The funny thing is that the organizations most likely to benefit from the water tax revenue, the Association of California Water Agencies, which represents more than 400 water suppliers across the state, thinks that the water tax is a stupid idea, calling it “highly problematic.” Seems like there is a disconnect between the governor and the agencies, which raises a question: is the water tax really for drinking water or will it eventually be channeled to another, unrelated purpose? 

The governor campaigned with a platform that included providing medical care to all illegal immigrants living in the state. Just saying, it would not be the first time that a politician did a bait and switch. Just another reason why even more taxpaying citizens will be living the state: another tax, a tax on drinking water, what is next: a tax breathing, a tax on walking, in California it appears nothing is off the table when it comes to taxes.

Side Note: according to California’s Legislative Analyst’s Office, the state lost over one million citizens over the past decade.

3) Okay, let’s get out of California and do a look back to the Obama administration and reminisce a little. Someone went to the trouble of compiling over 1,000 lies and law breaking actions that incurred during the Obama years by his administration. Yes, over a 1,000. The website where the compilation is listed can be accessed at:

https://lidblog.com/airing-obama-speech/

Let’s take a walk down memory lane and recall the massive lying and law breaking of Obama via just a small sample from the list of over 1,000:

- Obama led the country to war against Libya, a clear violation of the Constitution and the War powers act and destroying the Libyan society and government and turning it into a terrorist haven.

- He gave a no-bid contract to Haliburton just like Bush did.

- He promised not to appoint lobbyists to his administration and then went and allowed over 40 lobbyists to get administration assignments.

- Despite constantly criticizing Wall Street, he collected more in campaign contributions from Wall Street types than any politician over at least the past 20 years.

- He promised to close the prison for terrorist at Guantanamo Bay but it is still open, two years after he left office.

- He supported the bailout of banks while a Senator via the support of the TARP program.

- He waged the biggest government effort again medical marijuana once in office even though he campaigned in support of medical marijuana.

- He nominated a tax evader to run the Treasury Department, Timothy Geithner.

- He almost doubled the national debt even though he promised to go through the entire Federal budget line by line and get rid of useless and wasteful spending.

- He supported the indefinite detention of U.S. citizens by signing legislation to do so.

- He supported widespread, warrantless snooping on Americans.

- He ordered the killing of four American citizens without due process.

- He operated the illegal Fast and Furious operation that allowed guns to fall into the hands of drug cartels, resulting the deaths of at least dozens of Mexican citizens and one U.S.Border Patrol officer from the use of those guns.

- He lied about putting healthcare negotiations on C-SPAN.

- He lied about putting pending legislation on the Internet for national review before signing it.

- He lied about Obama Care allowing Americans to keep their current doctors, hospitals, and insurance plans.

- He illegally changed parts of the Obama Care law after it was passed.

- He illegally moved a financial donor and backer ahead of the American taxpayer in the Solyndra bankruptcy case.

- Falsely claimed that the Supreme Court had never overturned any law that had been passed by Congress.

- He illegally demanded money to fulfill Freedom of Information Act requests.

We could go on and on but you get the idea: looking back, as this website did, it is pretty clear that Obama and his administration was one of the most unlawful. lying, and dishonest administrations of all time beside being one of the least productive of all time also. Again, go the linked website above to read the 1000+ insults to come out of the Obama era.

That will do it for today’s insanity: medieval disease in LA, another tax in California, and the 1000+ plus failures of Obama. More insanity to follow.

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

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

January, 2019, Part 1, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: Bad Health Care Priorities in California and NYC

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.

Today's post is not so much the failures of Obama Care but the health care idiocy elsewhere in the political class across the country:

1) We have often talked about what bad shape California is in across any number of perspectives:

• It's unfunded state government liabilities is over $200 billion.
• Some of its larger cities have massive homelessness problems.
• In Los Angeles, over 40% of its residents make so little money that they qualify for Medicaid.
• The state’s infrastructure (roads, bridges, etc.) is falling apart, like every other state’s.
• It’s public schools severely under educate its kids.
• It has just suffered through massive wildfires that have killed, maimed, and made homeless many of its citizens.
• Like other states, many of its citizens do not have healthcare coverage.
• It’s high speed train dream project has been a massive and expensive failure.
• Out migration is a large problem has productive citizens flee the state because of its high taxes and shaky future.

Certainly a state in sad shape financially. But what does the new governor want to do in the face of these sever problems relative to its American citizens living in the state, at least those that are still there:

• Newly sworn in governor, Gavin Newsome, announced that he will expand the state’s Medicaid program to cover the health care needs of young adult illegal immigrants.
• Other illegal immigrants already are covered by the state’s Medicaid program so he has just added an extra expense to cover MORE illegal immigrants.
• Obviously, tax paying citizens at some point will have to pay for this additional coverage of illegal immigrants’ healthcare needs.
• According to Newsome: “People’s lives, freedom, security, the water we drink, the air we breathe — they all hang in the balance. The country is watching us, the world is watching us. The future depends on us, and we will seize this moment.”

Funny how another liberal politician seems to care more about illegal immigrants than his own constituents. Just once I would like to see people like Newsome have the same urgency, the same compassion, the same “seize the moment” energy about his own Americans. 

And the problems that affect real citizens that we listed above will have less resources to support and help real citizens’ needs in education, infrastructure, healthcare, etc. and those limited resources will go to help illegal immigrants.

2) Oh, but wait! In case you thought that illegal immigrant health care was strictly a California problem, you would be wrong. According to the Money and Markets website:

• J.T. Crowe, writing for the website on January 8, 2019, reviewed how New York City is thinking about taking taxpayer money to fund health care for all of its citizens including illegal immigrants.
• Mayor Bill de Blasio has proposed that $100 million of taxpayer wealth be diverted to provide affordable “health care for all” in the city.
• His plan would cover 600,000 people including illegal immigrants.
• According to the article: “The plan, called “NYC Care,” will offer public health insurance on a sliding scale based on income, and will begin later this year in the Bronx before being available to all New Yorkers by 2021. The plan will cost about $100 million once it reaches full enrollment, the mayor’s office said.”
• Apparently, if you are in this program, you would not have a choice of doctors, a doctor would be assigned to you whether you liked him or her or not.
• The theory is that this plan would eventually save the city money by reducing emergency room visits and by improving overall public health.

So many problems with this plan:

• Both Obama Care and its forerunner in Massachusetts promised that emergency room visits would go down once government intervened in the healthcare market.
• But those reductions never occurred and a case could be made that emergency room visits actually increased.
• De Blasio also said that, “We wanted one large solution for everyone. We are trying to avoid people getting health care the wrong way,’ which is another inane comment since “one large solution” will NEVER fit everyone’s needs (Obamacare prove that) and he pretends that he knows what is the “right” solution for everyone.
• But the really stupid aspect of this plan is the math.
• He wants to spend $100 million a year to cover the health care needs of 600,000 people.
• Do the math, Bill, $100 million means that every one of those 600,000 people will get….about $167 worth of healthcare a year, or a paltry $14 a month.

Either de Blasio is very bad at math and has no concept that $100 million will come nowhere close to covering the healthcare needs of 600,000 people or he is using the time tested political trick of low balling the cost estimate of a project, knowing that the cost will be much higher and by then the program will be embedded into the bureaucracy. If he is using the trick, then a lot more taxpayers are going to pay a lot more to cover the astronomical costs of 600,000 people, many of whom should not even be here from an illegal immigration perspective.

Obamacare, Medicare, Medicaid, and the Veterans Administration along with other countries' single payer health insurance plans have proven that politicians, government bureaucracies, and massive government programs have no chance of being efficient, effective, and worthwhile. And yet people like Newsome and de Blasio somehow think that they can do what massive government efforts in the past have failed to do. Insanity.

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