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

Only In America Retro Post

Back in May, 2012 we did a post entitled, "Only In America." It used an old rock and roll song byJay and The Americans as its basis. But rather than celebrating the tradional good things about America, e.g., "go to sleep a pauper and wake up a millionaire," we changed the essence of the song to reflect the crazy things that American politicians do that are so inane, wasteful, and stupid that only in America could that type of behavior happen. 

We repeat the post today for two reasons:

• Over three years later, the antics, idiocy, and ineptness we documented back in 2012 is still relevant today.
• Today's retro post gets us in the spirit for tomorrow's post where we will update the list with all of the antics, idiocy, and ineptness the political class has displayed since 2012.

FRIDAY, MAY 18, 2012

Only In America

In the early 1960s, a musical group called Jay and the Americans had a big hit song called "Only In America." It was an upbeat song that extolled the virtues of our country where only in America could a poor person grow up to be President, a pauper could become a millionaire, and everyone could attain their dreams, including their dream girl:

Only in America
Can a guy from anywhere
Go to sleep a pauper and wake up a millionaire

Only in America
Can a kid without a cent
Get a break and maybe grow up to be President

Only in America
Land of opportunity, yeah
Would a classy girl like you fall for a poor boy like me

Only in America
Can a kid who's washin' cars
Take a giant step and reach right up and touch the stars
Only in America
Could a dream like this come true
Could a guy like me start with nothing and end up with you

Only in America
Land of opportunity, yeah
Would a classy girl like you fall for a poor boy like me

It was simpler time and probably a more hopeful time. Since then, the country has become nastily divided against itself as a result of self serving politicians and our freedoms and opportunities available back then seem to have become scarcer over time. More obvious, our political class has led the country down some pretty ludicrous, bewildering, wasteful, and noneffective alleys:

1. Only in America can politicians talk about the greed of the rich at a $70,000-a-plate campaign fund raising event.

2. Only in America can politicians pour more taxpayer money into education per child than any other country in the world but still severely under educate U.S. kids relative to the rest of that world.

3. Only in America can politicians talk about reducing the nation's escalating health care costs while simultaneously implementing health care reform legislation that will add hundreds of billions of dollars to the country's national debt.

4. Only in America could we have had  two of the people most responsible for our tax code — Timothy Geithner, the head of the Treasury Department and Charles Rangel who once ran the House Ways and Means Committee — turn out to be tax cheats who are in favor of higher taxes.

5. Only in America would we make people who want to legally become American citizens wait for years in their home countries and pay tens of thousands of dollars for the privilege while we discuss letting anyone who sneaks into the country illegally immediately become American citizens for free.

6. Only in America could the people who believe in balancing the budget and sticking by the country’s Constitution be thought of as “extremists.”

7. Only in America could you need to present a driver’s license to cash a check, buy alcohol, rent a car, or board an airplane but not to vote.

8. Only in America could politicians insist the government investigate whether oil companies are gouging the public because the price of gas went up when the financial return on equity of a major U.S. oil company (Marathon Oil) is less than half of what a company that manufactures sports shoes and apparel (Nike) makes.

9. Only in America could politicians demand the government investigate whether oil companies are gouging the public because the price of gas went up when government taxes per gallon of gas are multiple times higher than the profit per gallon of gas for the oil companies.

10. Only in America can politicians tell you that they support freedom and liberty but then try tell you not to have an abortion, not to be gay, not to smoke dope, impose their will on your religious beliefs, not to call Islamic terrorists Islamic terrorists, force you to pay into a retirement system (Social Security) that is an absolute horror show of a retirement plan, force you to pay into a retirement medical plan that (Medicare) that is rapidly going bankrupt, control who gets a student loan, and wants to control your non-retirement health insurance and health care (Obama Care).

11. Only in America could the government collect more tax dollars from its citizens than any nation in history of the world, still spend a trillion dollars more than it receives every year for total spending ($7 million PER MINUTE), and complain that it doesn’t have nearly enough money.

12. Only in America could the rich people who pay 86% of all income taxes be accused of not paying their “fair share” by 45% of the citizenry who don’t pay any income taxes at all.

13. Only in America can a supposedly free people not be free from paying all forms of government taxes until late April every year.

14. Only in America can the political class constantly try to dictate moral standards but itself be rife with adulterers, tax cheats, and liars.

15. Only in America can politicians spend trillions of dollars over the years without winning the war on drugs, without implementing a coherent national energy plan, without sealing our borders, and without repairing our crumbling infrastructure.

16. Only in America do you have to prove to the government that you have health insurance (under Obama Care rules) but not prove to that same government you are legally here in this country.

Only in American did we used to aspire to hope, freedom, and the chance to attain a better life for ourselves and our family. Today, in America we are subjected to self serving, ill-equipped, and ill-performing politicians, that squash hope, restrict freedom, and who make it ever more difficult to attain a better life for ourselves and our family. 

To get back to the Jay and the Americans sense of country, we need to start the process of implementing Step 39 from "Love my Country, Loathe My Government." Step 39 would implement term limits for every Federal politician so that they would be "one and done." The vast majority of current people in Congress have been there for ten, twenty, thirty or more years. Since they are obviously not part of the solution, they then must be part of the problem. Eliminate them, starting by signing the petition at: 

www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com

and make America "the land of opportunity" again.

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

Part 3: Why The Obama Administration Deserves To Be Rated The Worst Presidency Since 1945

A recent public opinion poll conducted by Quinnipiac University, a traditional and unbiased source of public opinion, asked a sample of Americans who they thought operated the worst Presidency since 1945. Barack Obama won a plurality of votes in that poll for being the worst U.S. President since 1945. 33% of respondents named him as the worst President over the past seven decades with George W, Bush finishing second at 28%.

Both of them far outpolled who I generally consider the two worst Presidents of the past hundred years, Jimmy Carter (8%) for being a President who was clueless and totally ineffective, and Richard Nixon (13%) for simply being a vindictive crook. America has to be pretty disgusted with your Presidential administration when you are mentioned 2-4 more times than either Carter or Nixon as the worst president since 1945.

Over the next few days we are going to explore the overwhelming number of reasons while this result for President Obama is not only rational but is well deserved. Before anyone starts with their counter arguments or disputing my list of Obama policy failures, criminal acts, economic ignorance, violations of the Constitution, and broken promises, keep in mind the following facts:

• I have never voted for a Republican for President in my life and I am over 60 years old.
• Up until November, 2010, I had never voted for a Republican for national office.
• In the first two years of his Presidency, Obama’s party was in control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate with filibuster proof majorities in both places, I.e. he could have done anything he wanted politically and legislatively without any assist from any Republican.
• I am not saying that anyone else would have resolved all of the issues listed below but it is difficult to think that at least some of these issues would have been resolved by people such as Truman, Kennedy, or Reagan. The Obama Presidency has been so bad that just about every issue and problem listed below is actually far WORST rather than BETTER since the onset of the Obama administration.
• Consider an old saying: “Don’t tell me how rough the seas were, just tell me you brought the boat safely into the harbor.” In other words, a true leader takes the blame and gives the credit. No one forced Obama to become President, he knew the situation he was getting into. He should be judged on how well he managed the situation he inherited going forward. Unfortunately, instead of leadership and looking forward, he chose instead to whine, look backwards, and to blame others for his failures rather than focusing on moving forward from whatever adverse situation he inherited.

Okay, so that sets out the preliminaries: I am not a conservative, a Republican, or a neocon trying to tear down this President. This President could have done anything he wanted in the first two years of his tenure, he cannot blame the Republicans for blocking anything he failed at since he had a historic window of political opportunity. Instead of leveraging the window and leading the country, he chose to blame the previous President, the Japanese tsunami, ATM machines, and a whole host of other factors in the absence of Presidential leadership.

Thus, without any further delay and in no particular order, consider the following XXXX reasons why the Quinnipiac public opinion poll is probably an accurate view of why America rates the Obama administration as the worst Presidential administration in the past 70 years or so (the first 36 reasons were listed in the previous two posts starting with XXXXX):

37) He has constantly reinforced his masculinity by staging dozens of photo ops with professional and college athletic teams but has had minimal photo ops with outstanding teachers, heroic soldiers, or other outstanding American citizens. 

38) He embarrassed the country and his administration by not sending a high level representative to represent the country at Margaret Thatcher’s state funeral, just another in a long line of snubs against our allies around the world. 

39) His failure to come up with a sane and compassionate drug program, continuing the long failing war on drugs, has lead to the continued enlargement and enrichment of foreign drug cartels who have now established themselves firmly throughout the country, peddling their drugs and getting richer. 

40) His failure to live up to his campaign promise of not having high powered lobbyists in positions of power in his administration, a campaign promise that he promptly broke when he placed many high level lobbyists in his administration. 

Relevant Obama quote (Anthony Holm): “More than forty former lobbyists work in senior positions in the Obama administration, including three cabinet secretaries and the CIA director.” 

41) He failed to live up to his promise of reducing the obscene number of earmarks in the annual Federal government expense stream, with the value of earmarks at almost the exact same level of waste as when he took office five years ago. 

Relevant Obama quote: “We need earmark reform, and when I'm President, I will go line by line to make sure that we are not spending money unwisely.” 

42) He signed the renewal of the Patriot Act with little discussion or change, a piece of legislation that has caused a significant drop off in freedom and privacy in this country. 

Relevant Obama quote: "We will revisit the Patriot Act and overturn unconstitutional executive decisions issued during the past eight years." 

43) His administration has, at times, incurred MONTHLY deficit spending levels that were higher than almost every other ANNUAL spending deficits from every other President including Bush. 

Relevant Obama quote: “Today I’m pledging to cut the deficit we inherited in half by the end of my first term in office. This will not be easy. It will require us to make difficult decisions and face challenges we’ve long neglected. But I refuse to leave our children with a debt that they cannot repay — and that means taking responsibility right now, in this administration, for getting our spending under control.” 

44) He failed to foresee the Arab spring, resulting in an unpreparedness that has considerably weakened the American influence in the entire Middle East region. 

45) His Obama Care legislation has resulted in many new taxes being directly or indirectly imposed on EVERY American. 

Relevant Obama quote: “If your family earns less than $250,000 a year, you will not see your taxes increased a single dime. I repeat: not one single dime.” 

46) The national debt has increased almost $8 TRILLION during his first six years in office, imposing an individual debt burden of over $50,000 on every man, woman and child in the country. 

Relevant Obama quote: “Nobody wants to put the creditworthiness of the United States in jeopardy. Nobody wants to see the United States default. So we've got to seize this moment, and we have to seize it soon.” 

Relevant Obama quote: "America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better. I therefore intend to oppose the effort to increase America’s debt limit." 

47) Of his many lies, one the biggest lie was to blame Congress for the impacts of the sequester, an idea that he proposed, and an idea he later denied ever proposing despite the public record of his proposal. 

Relevant Obama quote: “The sequester is not something that I’ve proposed. It is something that Congress has proposed.” 

Relevant Obama quote (Bob Woodward): “What the president said is not correct [that he did not propose the sequester]. He is mistaken. And its refuted by the people who work for him.” 

48) In cahoots with Congress, he secretly signed legislation that modified the STOCK Act, a secret signing that allowed Congressional members and their staffs to again conduct stock trading based on their insider secret knowledge of legislation that was pending, proposed or possible in the future. 

49) He allowed his administration to spend millions of dollars to buy fake Twitter and Facebook hits and followers while at the same time signing legislation that reduced the pension benefits of our veterans. 

50) Despite wining the Nobel Peace prize, according to Gallup's international polling, 23% of world citizens in a recent opinion poll still view the United States as the biggest threat to world peace, almost three times more than the next nearest threat (Pakistan), and more than four times higher than either Russia or China. 

51) Despite promising to have the most transparent administration ever, Transparency International recently proclaimed that corruption in the United States was growing faster than anywhere else in the world except Cuba, Dominca, and Burkina Faso. 

52) Analysis of IRS records showed that 36 Obama White House employees owe over $800,000 in back taxes and over 300,000 Federal employees owed about $3.5 billion in back taxes but all of whom were allowed to continue to draw their full Federal salaries and benefits; which should not be a surprise since he nominated any number of tax evaders and/delinquent tax payers to important government positions including Kathleen Sibelius (head of Health and Human Services), Timothy Geithner (Secretary of the Treasury), YYY Solis (head of the Labor department), Tom Daschle (who ended up not working for this administration) and others. 

53) He broke his promise not to sign non-emergency legislation before it had been posted on the Internet for at least five days. 

54) He broke his promise to televise the Congressional hearings regarding Obama Care debates and proceedings on C-SPAN so the entire country would understand what was going into the legislation. 

55) He lied when he stated that the Supreme Court had never overturned any law that had been passed by Congress., he lied when he said the auto bailouts he supported prevented Detroit from going bankrupt (it did go bankrupt), he lied when he said that Al Qaeda was almost defeated since we now know that Al Qaeda controls more physical territory in the world than it ever has before including battlegrounds in Iraq that cost Americans hundreds of lives and billions of dollars, he lied when he denied saying that he had ever declared a “red line” regarding Syria’s use of chemical weapons. (relevant Obama quote: “A red line for us is when we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around.”), he lied when he falsely claimed that health insurance companies were the cause of millions of insurance policies being cancelled when in truth it was the Obama Care legislation requirements that legally forced the cancellations, and he lied when he falsely claimed that an insurance company had refused to pay for his mother’s cancer treatment. 

56) Three years after the Dodd-Frank financial industry reform legislation has been passed, less than half of the needed regulations required by the legislation have been written by the executive branch. 

57) He vindictively shut down White House tours and DC war memorials during the sequester and government shutdown, claiming lack of government funds, but somehow found government funds to keep his favorite government run golf course open the whole time. 

58) He insulted the families who had loved ones die or be wounded by the Fort Hood terrorist attacker, Nidal Hasan, by claiming they were merely victims of “workplace violence” and not terrorism; this cold designation resulted in those families and victims not getting just compensation for their losses and suffering while at the same time paying over $200,000 in government salary and benefits to the shooter and terrorist Hasan as he awaited trial. 

59) He refused to fire the IRS employees who lost $67 million from an Obama Care slush fund, he refused to fire ATF employees who lost over 400 million cigarettes in their position, he failed to fire anyone connected with the $600 million Obama Care website that did not work, he failed to fire anyone who was connected with the botched rollout of Obama Care including Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, etc. In fact, in a time of massive government corruption, fraud, and incompetence, his administration has failed to fire or prosecute any government employee for any breach of conduct or laws.

60) He refused or did not care to rein in absolutely stupid and unnecessary government spending including research money used to build a robotic squirrel, development of a video game to simulate prom week, conducting pottery classes in Morocco, determining when dogs became man’s best friend, constructing a million dollar bus stop in Arlington, Virginia, keeping a dog handler (earning over $100,000 a year) on the White House payroll to handle the Obama family’s dog’s needs, keeping three full time professional calligraphers on staff, and other such extraneous, unnecessary and wasteful spending and nonsense. 

61) He criticized waterboarding and secret rendition of suspected terrorists but then went forth and simply just killed suspected terrorists and collateral damage civilians directly by drone attacks. 

Relevant Obama quote: "We will not ship away prisoners in the dead of night to be tortured in far off countries, or detain without trial or charge prisoners who can and should be brought to justice for their crimes, or maintain a network of secret prisons to jail people beyond the reach of the law." 

62) He failed to anticipate and then manage the growing humnaitarian crisis on our southern border with the invasion and assaulting of that border by tens of thousands of kids and adults from Central and South America, an assault that is straining border security, straining medical resources, and opening up the country to the potential for terrorist infiltration and disease introduction.

Sixty two reasons which justify why this Presidential administration deserves its ranking as the worst Presidency since 194. And we are not even close to completing the case that more and more of Americans are coming to understand. We will need at least a few more days to finsish up the list of failures and corruption of this Presidency. 

However, the remaining reasons we are going to list out in the coming days are actually more serious than the first 62 reasons. The remaining justifications for proving this is the worst Presdiecney since 1945 are actually actions and reasons for impeachment and removal from office. So far, we have just examined corruption, incompetence, broken promises, inept economic policies, inept foreign affairs management, etc. Going forward, we document and discuss dozens of reasons for both being ranked as the worst Presidency since 1945 and reasons justifying the termination of the Obama adminstration.

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

February , 2013 Political Class Insanity, Part 4: Trading Principles For Oil, Identity Theft Courtesy Of The IRS, And More

Okay, I thought I could keep the February political class insanity to three posts. However, by the time I finished writing the third post, more insanity had poured in and needed to be documented for this month. So, hopefully the following acts of lunacy will finally complete the political class insanity for February, 2013:

1) According to news reports, New York-based designer Thom Browne designed the dress that Michelle Obama wore during her husband’s second inauguration ceremonies, a dress that was estimated to cost at least $10,000. The average American household would probably have to work 3-4 months to afford such a dress. As we have reported previously, the entire inauguration event likely cost American taxpayers around $150 million. During the Christmas season, the White House was decorated with 54 Christmas trees.

There are tens of millions of Americans that need food stamps to survive. 23 million Americans are unemployed or under employed. Tens of millions of Americans do not have health care insurance.

Does anyone really think that Washington is in tune with the rest of America? Disgraceful

2) A January 21, 2013 article in the New York Post discussed the contents of meeting notes from the Federal Reserve from 2007. The article lays out its case that then Vice Chairman of the Fed, Tim Geithner, who would soon become Secretary of the Treasury, probably provided insider trading information, relative to the Fed’s plans for the economy, to his friends in the major banks.

The article contains the transcript words of a telephone conversation between Geithner and another member of the Fed, Jeffery Lacker, where Lacker discusses the fact that the head of Bank Of America already knew what the Fed intended to do to the Fed’s discount rate before it was made public on August 17, 2007. Suspiciously, the stock values of financial stocks moved substantially higher on August 16, the day before the announcement on the discount rate was to be made.

Let’s review: ordinary American citizen deals insider information, ordinary American goes to jail. Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board deals insider information, Vice Chairman becomes Secretary of the Treasury.

3) Freedom House is a Washington, DC-based think tank that conducts research on democracy, liberty, freedom, and human rights. It recently published its latest report on the state of freedom around the world. The report is entitled, "Freedom in the World 2013," and the seven nations with the lowest possible rankings for both political rights and civil liberties included North Korea, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Sudan, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea and Saudi Arabia.

And here’s the kicker to this dubious list for freedom anemic countries: the United States provides substantial economic, military and/or diplomatic support to four of them. So much for being a beacon of hope and freedom to the rest of the world. We cannot claim that high ground when we are supporting the corrupt governments in Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan, Equatorial Guinea, and Turkmenistan.

Freedom atrocities that occur in these four countries, as researched and identified by Freedom House, include torture, denial of legal counsel, non-existent women’s rights, public lashings and death for such offenses as homosexuality, adultery, prostitution, and renouncing Islam, horrific prison conditions, rigged elections or no elections at all, etc.

Why does the U.S. government and political class support such wretched regimes? Could it be that all of them are major sources of oil and natural gas? Could it be that one of the gangs we talked about in early January,

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-selling-and-buying-of-america-part_14.html

Big Oil, and their collusion with the Washington political class, has something to do with our not standing for freedom, liberty, and equality? Insanity.

4) In the February, 2013 issue of Reason magazine we find out that someone in the U.S. Justice Department decided to issue a Federal order/regulation that decided in 2011 the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) requires hotels, restaurants, and airlines to accommodate “pygmy ponies” as service animals. Really, pygmy ponies? Ask yourself a couple of questions:

• How many people in the world with disabilities do we think that this regulation would effect? Two people, three people?
• How much will this regulation unnecessarily cost American businesses and our economy as they have to educate their employees about pygmy ponies and the ADA?
• Is that the right use of taxpayer money for high priced lawyers, to determine that pygmy ponies is a pressing issue?
• Did these lawyers have nothing better to do in light of a $16.4 TRILLION national debt due to decades of wasteful government spending?

Ridiculous priorities.

5) Walter Jones used to be a member of the House of Representatives. He had his fifteen minutes of fame when he inanely championed the cause for Congressional cafeterias to rename their French fries to Freedom fries when the French did not support the Bush misadventure into Iraq.

However, ten years later, as quoted in the recent issue of Reason magazine, he has become a big advocate for minimizing foreign military involvement in faraway places such as Iraq. Relative to Afghanistan, he thinks that it has been a mistake, is a mistake, and will continue to be a mistake. It wastes American lives, runs up spending for no conceivable positive end, and worst of all, he observes that we have been funneling money and training resources into the country with little discernible benefit: “No one’s changed Afghanistan [through history] and no one’s going to change it. If you are just waiting to train the Afghans to be policemen and the military, it’s taken 11 years already. You can train a monkey to ride a bicycle in less time.”

And you can train that monkey and have somehting to show for your efforts for probably far less money than what the failure in Afghanistan will end up costing us.

6) Another example that proves when Washington and the politicians that inhabit it try to do the right thing, they still almost always get it wrong. The IRS has spent a lot of time and effort to make it simple for Americans to file their tax returns and efficient for the IRS to process those returns via electronic filing. Simple and efficient, two words that anyone would want their government to be.

However, a Wall Street Journal report, of which a summary appeared in the January 25, 2103 issue of The Week magazine, describes how the Treasury Department has found out that as a result of electronic filing, the government has made identity theft so much easier and lucrative from a crime perspective.

In 2011, IRS had to deal with more than 1.1 million cases of tax return identify theft. In 2008, just three years prior to 2011 and prior to widespread use of electronic filing, there were only 51,700 cases of tax-related identity theft.

Thus, within three short years the Federal government was able to increase the frequency of identify theft crime in this area by 20 fold. And this “efficiency” came at a cost of the government paying out more than $5 billion in bogus tax refunds, money that is likely never to be seen again. It would all be so funny if it was not so tragic.

That should do it for this month. Four posts of Keystone Kop like performances from our elected officials and the bloated and inefficient government it operates.

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

The Slime, The Sleaze, The Immorality, and The Corruption Of The American Political Class - Part 1

I have gotten to a point in this election cycle that I will physically get up from a chair, walk across the room, pick up the TV remote and change the station if a political advertisement comes on. None of these sleazeball ads have anything to do with fixing what ails the country or addressing the major issues of our times. The vast majority are nothing but baseless and degrading school yard taunts and name calling, politics for the sake of politics not for the sake of addressing our troubles.

But when I stop and think about why I am so repulsed by these ads, I catch myself and think about who is putting them forward. When you sit back and chronicle who is actually in the American political class today, you are overwhelmed by the lack of integrity, unwillingness to work hard at the issues, lack of respect for each other and the citizens of this nation, and the general inability of most politicians to solve a problem.

Whether it is fixing our losing war on drugs, finding a way to not under educate our kids, fix our leaky borders, or even prevent a government organization like the GSA from throwing itself lavish Las Vegas parties, the track record of success and of being upright, integrity based individuals is lacking. Don't believe me? See what you think about these people after reviewing our five part series on the slime, the sleaze, the immorality, and corruption of the American political class.

Today's Part 1 slime review is based on a article from the Independent Journal Review. The article can be found at the following Internet site:

http://www.ijreview.com/2012/08/12246-the-top-25-democrat-scandals-the-media-wont-discuss/25/

The article lists out 25 instances of sleazy behavior from our politicians. All of the examples are sourced back to the original news sources so this post is not based on the opinion of myself or the Independent Journal Review, it is based on other, universally recognized news sources.

However, I have not included all 25 instances since a few of the news sources are either not well known or come from what my liberal friends would vehemently disagree with as being unbiased. This does not mean these omitted sources and stories are wrong or inaccurate, just that they would offend certain liberal contingencies of my circle of family and friends. But that does not matter since there is more than enough immoral behavior and corruption to go around.

1. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was recently implicated in a new scandal, pushing for Federal government funding of the Chinese green energy company ENN Mojave Energy LLC, which is represented by his son. Earlier, Reid was involved in a land swindle that saw him make a reported $700,000. Source: Las Vegas Review-Journal, August 3, 2012. Note: this is not the last time that Mr Reid's name will appear in this series of corruption posts.

2. Solyndra, the now-bankrupt solar energy company, was able to procure and destroy $535 million in government loan guarantees. This was after the Obama campaign received over a $100,000 in donations from the “green energy” company, partly bundled for the Obama campaign by major investor and oilman George Kaiser. Source: Wall Street Journal, September 9, 2011.


3. Democratic Congressman Anthony Weiner confessed that he tweeted a bulging-underpants photo of himself to a young woman and admitted to “inappropriate” exchanges with six women, before and after getting married, at a press conference in New York shortly before resigning. Source: Huffington Post, June 6, 2011

4. Former New York Governor Elliot Spitzer resigned after it was discovered he had engaged in financial transactions with prostitute Ashley Dupre.  Spitzer later landed a short running, unsuccessful show on CNN. Source: New York Daily News, June 23, 2010

5. In 2008, John Edwards admitted he had cheated on his cancer-stricken wife, Elizabeth, with former campaign staffer Rielle Hunter during his second presidential campaign, with whom he had a child out of wedlock. He was later indicted June 2011 on Federal campaign finance charges, criminal charges that he was eventually found not guilty of even though he was guilty of any number of moral failures, especially relative to his wife. Source: Huffington Post, June 1, 2012

6. Former Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee Chris Dodd, the Congressional committee that was just one of the Washington entities that failed to foresee the greatest economic meltdown since the Great Depression, received favorable loans from Countrywide Financial, one of the biggest culprits in the housing industry meltdown, a loan that would have saved him up to $70,000. Source: NY Post, March 30, 2009

7. The General Services Administration or GSA held a lavish party during a five-day conference in Las Vegas, blowing over $820,000 in taxpayer dollars on shrimp and champagne, commemorative coins, and a mind reader/motivational speaker. Source: ABC News, April 16, 2012

8. Resigned Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee and current Congressman Charlie Rangel failed to report rental income from vacation property in the Dominican Republic as well as hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional income and assets on his financial disclosure statements. Source: Huffington Post, July 29, 2010

9. Congresswoman Maxine Waters was brought up on House ethics charges after personally lobbying for a bailout of OneUnited bank, where her husband had previously sat on the board and owned about $350,000 in the bank’s stock. Source: Bloomberg, August 11, 2010

10. Convicted criminal and Obama bundler Tony Rezko made a sweetheart real estate deal with Barack Obama, saving the future President hundreds of thousands of dollars. Obama later said it was a “boneheaded mistake.” Source: Townhall, July 16, 2012

11. Franklin Raines, Jim Johnson, Donna Shalala, Kent Conrad, and Richard Holbrooke, all prominent Democrats, received cut-rate mortgages from Countrywide Financial, as did the following members of the political class:

• Mary Jane Collipriest, who was communications director for former Sen. Robert Bennett, R-Utah, then a member of the Banking Committee. The 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, which we know is probably false, given the finding noted below.
• Congressman Howard "Buck" McKeon, R-Calif., chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.
• Congressman 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.
• Congressman Elton Gallegly, R-Calif.
• Top staff members of the House Financial Services Committee.
• A staff member of Congressman Ruben Hinojosa, D-Texas, a member of the Financial Services Committee.
• Former Congressman Tom Campbell, R-Calif.
• Former Housing and Urban Development Secretaries Alphonso Jackson and Henry Cisneros. The Countrywide VIP unit processed Cisneros' loan after he joined Fannie's board of directors. Source: July 5, 2012 Associated Press

12. Franklin Raines, former Fannie Mae CEO, received million dollar bonuses on top of $91 million salary at Fannie although the mortgage giant was at center of housing meltdown storm in 2008. Both Raines and former Fannie CEO Jim Johnson ($21 million salary) worked with the Obama campaign. Obama was the #3 receiver of campaign dollars from Fannie Mae, a so-called “private-public” partnership, a partnership that has already cost the American taxpayer close to $200 billion of bailout money between both Fannie and Freddie Mac. Source: Politico, October 31, 2011

13. Billionaire bundler for Obama and former New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine, former CEO of the imploded financial services firm MF Global, apparently perjured himself in Congressional hearings, because he ordered $200 million in funds to be moved from MF Global’s customer accounts to illegally cover brokerage accounts at JP Morgan Chase. Chase’s CEO Jamie Dimon is a close associate of Barack Obama. Sources: Politico, May 14, 2012 and Bloomberg March 23, 2012

14. U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner failed to pay Social Security taxes, even though he was advised by his employer to do so. He only admitted to the tax evasion after he was caught by an IRS audit. Source: Washington Post, January 19, 2009. Note: Is there a connection between this disdain for paying taxes by the Treasury Secretary and our $16 TRILLION national debt?

15. The Office of Congressional Ethics found “substantial reason to believe” that Jesse Jackson Jr. attempted to buy Obama’s Senate seat from convicted former Governor Rod Blagojevich by offering campaign contributions. Source: Politico, December 2, 2011

16. Oregon Congressman David Wu resigned after the teenage daughter of a friend accused Wu of “aggressive and unwanted sexual behavior.” Source: CBS News, July 26, 2011

17. Former NY Governor David Paterson allegedly: “personally directed two female staffers to reach out to a domestic violence victim who was pointing the finger at his right-hand man,” his aide David Johnson. Source: NY Daily News, March 2, 2010

18. Former NY Representative Eric Massa resigned after sexual harassment allegations were made by a male staffer. Massa later confessed to the charges. Source: CBS News, March 5, 2010

19. Former Obama billionaire bundler Phil Falcone was a major investor in Lightsquared, a wireless technology firm that was given FCC exemptions to build out a 4G wireless network. Thousands of emails acquired under FOIA request suggest that the Obama administration pressured Air Force General William Shelton to stifle criticism of a potential Lightsquared military contract that the company’s operations could interfere with the military’s GPS positioning system. President Obama was an investor in the wireless firm when it was named Skyterra. Source: The Center for Public Integrity, September 14, 2011

20. Attorney General Eric Holder was held in contempt by the U.S. House for refusing to turn over Department of Justice documents related to the Fast and Furious gunrunning scandal, which led to hundreds of Mexican civilians being killed and U.S. border patrol agent Brian Terry’s death. The House Republicans intend to sue the Attorney General in civil court during the August recess. Sources: NBC News, August 3, 2011 and Independent Journal Review, June 29, 2012

Twenty instances of slime, sleaze, immorality and corruption is a good place to stop today. I am reminded of a wise saying by David Brin:

"It is said that power corrupts, but actually it's more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power."

Very wise. The trick, if we are to ever get this country back on the right track, is to change our political processes so that we start attracting the sane to run for public office and not the corruptible.

I am quite sure that after this series of posts you will see the wisdom of Mr. Brin and agree with our solutions to the corruptible state of Washington and those that infest it.


Please visit our Presidential website, "The United States Of Purple," at:

http://www.unitedstatesofpurple.com/

The United States of Purple is a new grass roots approach to filling the office of President of The United States by focusing on the restoration of freedom in the United States, focusing on problem solving skills and results vs. personal political enrichment, and imposing term limits on all future Federal politicians. No more red states, no more blue states, just one United States Of America under the banner of Purple.

The United States Of Purple's website also provides you the formal opportunity to sign a petition to begin the process of implementing a Constitutional amendment to impose fixed term limits on all Federally elected politicians. Only by turning out the existing political class can we have a chance of addressing and finally resolving the major issues of or times.

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.
Pse visit the following sites for freedomhttp://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment/

Economic Update, Part 1 - Debt Death Spiral, Queen Of The Pigs, Greece And More Negative Vibes

After spending the past two weeks dealing with wasteful government spending and the latest political class insanity, we have not had time to discuss the current status of our economy. Unfortunately, things have not gotten better as the Obama administration, and the Washington political class in general, struggle to figure out how to prevent the economy from getting any worse, never mind making it better.

Unemployment is still unnecessarily high for an economic recovery. More than ten million Americans are unemployed or under employed. Every week about 370,000 Americans are filing for first time unemployment benefits. Our national debt continues to skyrocket. Overall economic growth limps along at far below the historical average. The numbers are not good.

Since the President and Congress seem more concerned on getting reelected than serving the country in 2012, the following opinions and views of various experts are more likely to happen than not, to the detriment of all of us:

- Unless the political class takes action, a number of major financial, tax, and economic hits will occur early next year. These hits include the raising of taxes as the Bush tax cuts expire, the imposition of new taxes under Obama Care, the return of the income tax marriage penalty, the expiration of the temporary payroll tax reduction, government spending cuts, and a host of other issues.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, the U.S. economy would contract at an annual rate of 1.3 percent for the first half of 2013 if politicians take no action to prevent the looming tax hikes and spending cuts. This is in turn would likely push the economy into a recession in the first half of 2013.

Now ask yourself: what are the odds that the Washington political class will develop a coherent economic plan, approve a plan, and implement a plan between the election in early November and the end of the year? Given that they will have to contend with Thanksgiving, Christmas, a lame duck Congress, and the lingering bitterness of the election losers, I think it is a good bet we are looking to slip back into a recession shortly after the dawn of 2013.

- As U.S. national debt is fast approaching a mind numbing $16 TRILLION, the bond rating agencies are beginning to hint that they are not ruling out the very real possibility that they will downgrade the quality of our Federal government debt. Standard and Poors already did the first downgrade in the history of the country last August and Moody's and Fitch may follow that lead, according to recent news reports:

• “If Congress doesn’t put in place a process that assures people that this [national debt] will be addressed in a real manner . . . then there is no doubt in my mind that our sovereign debt will be downgraded,” said Steve Bell, the senior director of economic policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center. “Markets throughout the world are going to be looking at the action of the United States government.”
• Newsmax reported that "Fitch identified 2013 as a crucial year for the United States to take action on its debt. Currently, it sees better-than-even odds that it will downgrade the United States."
• Senator Tom Coburn was recently quoted in an interview with CBS News: "We’re going to get another downgrade. I can tell you right now. You can have a great legal case for suing the rating agencies for not downgrading us again because we have not demonstrated the political will to solve the problems."

If the downgrade does occur, it will be another body blow to the economy as the cost of servicing $16 TRILLION worth of existing debt will start to climb which will add more debt to our already pile of debt that will require more financing... In other words, we are very close to a debt death spiral.

- Confirming the thought that the United States economy is "queen of the pigs," i.e. well thought of only because every other economy is in worse shape, Euro Pacific Capital president Peter Schiff  recently stated in a Business Insider interview the only reason the dollar hasn't collapsed yet is that people think that Europe is in worse shape than the U.S.: "It doesn't mean that we're not going to have a day of reckoning. It just means when it comes, there's a lot more to reckon with. Things always happen to delay the inevitable. Since the dollar is still the perceived safe haven, we benefit from (Europe’s) problems. We end up with more rope to hang ourselves.”

Queen of the pigs and having enough rope to hang ourselves, two phrases you never want to hear that accurately describe our economic situation.

- Speaking at a recent Johns Hopkins University commencement event, Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner said “paralysis” in the U.S. political system has worsened the nation’s economic challenges:
“Our economic challenges are tough, but the critical test we face is a political challenge. We just need to rediscover the political ability to just need to rediscover the political ability to solve the big problems still ahead of us.”

Given that the political class over the past four decades has not shown the "political ability" to resolve the lost war on drugs, implement a coherent and effective national energy policy and strategy, seal our leak borders and address the illegal immigration problem, tame escalating health care costs, or solve any other major issue in our life times, do we really think that this current set of politicians has the political ability to formulate and implement coherent economic policies and programs? Doubtful.

- Speaking on CNBC recently, Swiss money manager and "Gloom, Boom and Doom" editor Marc Faber predicted the chance that the global economy falls into a recession is a 100% certainty. His expert view is that while investors are currently focused on Greece and impending Euro debacle, there are bigger economic threats beginning to form around the world, most importantly, China and India: "As an observer of markets — whenever everyone focuses on one thing — like Greece and Europe — maybe they miss issues that are far more important — such as a meaningful slowdown in India and China."


He pointed out that factory output in China has been slowing  which will have a much greater negative impact on the world economy than the Greece situation. As an example, he quotes the HSBC Flash Purchasing Managers Index which showed that it decreased to 48.7 for China in May, down from 49.3 in April. This became the seventh straight month that the index has come in below 50, a level indicating a contracting Chinese economy.

All right, enough negative news today. We will continue with the gloom and doom tomorrow but maybe provide some solutions so that the Washington political class finally finds some "political ability" to at last understand basic economics and find ways to get the economy rolling again. I am getting tired of being queen of the pigs  and am getting real worried about that rope the political class has in their hands, a rope that is definitely long enough to economically hang the entire economy.

Also, keep the following thought in the back of your mind: since we theoretically came out of the recession over three years ago and on average, recessions historically appear every four to six years, if we do not get our debt and economic house in order soon, probability and statistics predict we will enter the next recession in the near future without ever fully recovering from the last one.


We invite all readers of this blog to visit our new website, "The United States Of Purple," at:

http://www.unitedstatesofpurple.com/

The United States of Purple is a new grass roots approach to filling the office of President of The United States by focusing on the restoration of freedom in the United States, focusing on problem solving skills and results vs. personal political enrichment, and imposing term limits on all future Federal politicians. No more red states, no more blue states, just one United States Of America under the banner of Purple.

The United States Of Purple's website also provides you the formal opportunity to sign a petition to begin the process of implementing a Constitutional amendment to impose fixed term limits on all Federally elected politicians. Only by turning out the existing political class can we have a chance of addressing and finally resolving the major issues of or times.

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.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment/

Government Favors And Politicians For Sale! Election Year Specials! Act Now! Goldman Sachs

On Wednesday we discussed the basic approaches our political class in Washington use to gain favors and enrichment for their careers and their net worth. Yesterday, we looked at the institutional approaches the political class has used to establish rules, laws, and exemptions so that they are not affected by felonious behavior that would put most every other American in jail.

Today, we will look at the curious relationship between the premier banking establishment in this country, Goldman Sachs and the Federal government. You decide at the end of this post whether this is all only a coincidence or it is incestuous corruption.

The genesis of this discussion comes from a recent Bloomberg Markets Magazine story from November 29, 2011, written by Richard Teitelbaum and entitled: "How Paulson Gave Hedge Funds Advance Word." As review, recall that Henry Paulson was Treasury Secretary when the economy and financial markets collapsed towards the end of the Bush administration. According to the article and Mr. Teitelbaum:

• On July 21, 2008, Mr. Paulson was meeting with members of the hedge fund, Eton Park Capital Management LP in New York City.
• Bear Sterns had collapsed four months earlier and its remaining assets had been sold at rock bottom prices to JP Morgan. The stock and financial markets were in turmoil.
• At the same time, home prices had been crashing, foreclosures were approaching record levels, and the stock market was getting real antsy about the mortgage giants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
• A New York Times article July 22, 2008 said that the Fed and Office of The Comptroller were looking into the finances of Fannie and Freddie and quoted Paulson as saying he believed this examination would give "a signal of confidence to the market."
• Attending the Eton Park meeting were about a dozen hedge fund managers and other Wall Street executives, and at least five of them were Goldman Sachs alumni. These included Eric Mindich, the founder of Eton Park, was a former chief strategy officer at Goldman Sachs,  Dinakar Singh who was the former head of the Goldman Sachs proprietary trading desk, Daniel Och who once was the co-head of the Goldman Sachs equity trading organization, Stephen Mandel who worked as a retail analyst at Goldman Sachs, and Frank Brosens who worked at Goldman Sachs as an arbitrageur. However, an official list of those attending the meeting is not available, this list being unofficially obtained from someone who was in the meeting themselves.
• Paulson was chief executive officer chairman of Goldman Sachs from 1999 to 2006.
• Paulson's book about the financial crisis, "On The Brink," makes no mention of the Eton Park meeting despite the  high powered hedge fund managers and others who attended.
• Despite his "signal of confidence"public quote in the Times article, Paulson told the assembled group of a scenario where Fannie and Freddie would be taken over by the Federal government and placed into "conservatorship," wiping out the common and preferred stock value of Fannie and Freddie stockholders. According to a witness at the meeting, no one in the room had any doubt that this was the actual federal government plan that was going to be implemented.

The article states that there is no evidence that those attending the meeting traded on this sensitive, valuable, and non-public information or shorted the stock of Fannie and Freddie. However, the article also does state it is impossible to track company specific short stock sales since this information is not available through public documents. Also, this does not mean those attending the meeting did not pass the information along to family and friends.

Obviously, this type of behavior just screams of insider trading violations and abuses. Consider the quotes from outside experts on Paulson's behavior:

1. William Black, associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City: "You just never ever do that as a government regulator - transmit nonpublic market information to market participants."
2. Janet Tavakoli, founder of the Chicago consulting firm Tavakoli Structured Finance: "What is this but crony capitalism?" Most people have had their fill of it."
3. Larry Ribstein, professor of law at the University of Illinois: "The optics are awful, there's no doubt about it. Everyone knows that insider trading is a huge issue."
4. Adam Zagorin, senior fellow at the Project on Government Oversight: "The bottom line is that senior level people in Washington, in the name of keeping in touch with their stakeholders, are tipping their hands. You can't prosecute them for insider trading if they didn't trade shares. You may not be able to even reprimand them. What the hell are the rules?"

Thus, although most knowledgeable people know this was atrocious insider trading behavior by the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, it apparently happened anyway, according to the article. And what is the most common thread through all of the points discussed above? There is an obviously cozy Goldman Sachs connection between the highest levels of government and the highest levels of Goldman Sachs and those that used to work for Goldman Sachs.

Now, no one has been arrested or convicted relative to this meeting. However, as we have said many times in this blog, the appearance of conflict of interest is just as bad as the actual act of conflict of interest. Given everything else we have discussed over the past few days relative to corruption, this type of behavior just adds to the wretched smell of the political class.

But the Goldman Sachs/political class connection does not end with this disaster:

• Robert Rubin, who was also once the Secretary of the Treasury, worked at Goldman Sachs for 26 years, eventually serving as a member of the Board, and Co-Chairman from 1990-1992.
• Rajat Gupta, who was once a member of the Goldman Sachs board of directors, was indicted on October 26, 2011 for disclosing nonpublic information on Goldman Sachs and other companies.
• Goldman Sachs donated almost a million dollars to President Obama's 2008 Presidential election campaign, making it one of the biggest contributors to the campaign.
• According to the Center For Responsive Politics, Goldman Sachs employees have contributed almost $32 million to politicians' campaigns since 1989.
• Although the current Secretary of the Treasury, Timothy Geithner, never worked for Goldman Sachs, his chief of staff did.
• Jon Corzine is a former Goldman Sachs chairman, a former U.S. Senator, a former governor of New Jersey, and has recently presided over one of the biggest financial institution collapses in recent history, MF Global.
• Johusa Bolten is an ex-Goldman Sachs employee, he was the chief of staff for George W. Bush, and he was the one who recommended Henry Paulson, a former chairman of Goldman Sachs, be Secretary of the Treasury.
• According to the New American website, ex-Goldman Sachs employees Robert Hermats, Mark Petterson, Adam Storch, and Gary Gensler all hold high ranking positions in the Obama administration.

Again, I am not saying any of these people, Goldman Sachs, or any of these situations resulted in unethical or unlawful behavior. But I am also not saying that they did not. Given everything else we know, it just seems like there are too many coincidences and too many relationships for conflict of interest situations not to be going on left and right.

Adding insult to injury, the Goldman Sachs-related people have not performed in a stellar manner. As we discussed above, Corzine helped crash his company, MF Global, and there are several investigations underway into criminal activity at the firm. Henry Paulson apparently never foresaw the Great Recession until it was almost on top of him and the country, too late for any corrective action to be taken. I could not find an examples of an outstanding job being done by anyone from Goldman Sachs who worked for the Federal government (I would be more than happy to print one if anyone knows of such a case).


And why seemingly only Goldman Sachs? Aren't there competent people from JP Morgan, Bank Of America, Morgan  Stanley, Wells Fargo, or other big financial institutions, or anywhere else, that could serve the American people through the Federal government? Why does it seem that Goldman Sachs has a monopoly hold on the relationship on the American political class and the Federal government?

The answer to all of these questions is likely the same as the answer to all of the other corruption issues we discussed. Just follow the money and the campaigns for reelection that our politicians continually run. Money funds the campaigns and I would bet that Goldman Sachs is the best at leveraging the money it puts towards those reelection campaigns and leveraging the people it has gotten placed in the halls of government. Just ask the people at the Eton Park meeting.


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.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment/