May, 2023, Part 3, Political Class Insanity: FBI and Biden Save Hillary, Biden Babbles About the Great Depression, Another Voting Screw Up and more

 Every month we devote posts to just general political class insanity that is running rampant through the country. The members of the American political class continue to show that they are incapable of operating any level of government in this country. 

Even their best efforts are almost always inefficient and ineffective at resolving any problem facing Americans. They spend a great amount of time not trying to improve the lives of their citizens but continually ensuring their reelection and enriching themselves, their families, and their friends in the process, all at taxpayer expense.

Lately it seems like the insanity is getting more frequent and more intense as politicians continue to fail us all. Let’s look at just for of the latest examples of political class insanity:

1)At  one point in the past, the FBI had a sterling reputation as a first rate, non-political law enforcement agency. As we showed in our previous post, those days are long gone as it is now known that in the recent past they violated the law and Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights over a quarter million times.

And we now know that that was not the only infraction of their agents and supervisors:

• In August, 2021, the Biden administration suddenly shut down the government/FBI investigation into the crime family known as the Clintons.

• In addition, the New York  Times has reported that the FBI had either returned information back to the Clintons or destroyed all evidence they had collected in that investigation.

• The investigation was related to the possible illegal connections that the Clinton Foundation had with foreign based donors to the Foundation while Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State.

• Emails uncovered during the aborted investigation indicated that Hillary gave special, positive treatment to said donors in exchange for financial favors.

• No reason was given for why Biden shut down the investigation, especially since a lot of time, energy, and taxpayer wealth had already been put forth, leading to the obvious assumption that the Clintons had acted inappropriately but Biden did them the political favor of blocking any further action.

Another classic example of the politicians' favorite motto, “do as I say, not as I do.” Hillary apparently abused her position as Secretary of State for personal gain, something that most Americans would have gone to jail for if they had done the same.

2)Let’s face it, Joe Biden was not the sharpest tack in the box over the years and as his cognitive abilities have severely declined over the past few years, he has gotten even  worse with his incoherence. This inability to understand reality was again recently demonstrated in an other embarrassingly display of ignorance:

• Nancy Pelosi was born in 1940. 

• The Great Depression ran from 1929 throughout most of the 1930s.

• In 2023, Biden praised Pelosi for rescuing the economy during the Great Depression.

• Specifically: “Nancy had the votes! She had the votes! She helped rescue the economy during the Great Depression!” 

I did not vote for Trump either time he ran, I have never voted for a Republican for President in my life. But seriously, have we ever had such a President in Biden that was so incoherent, out of touch, and just plain wrong in his daily doings? Nancy Pelosi, the Great Depression, she saved the economy about 85 years ago, seriously? 

He, and by extension us and the country, are the laughing stock of the world. His babbling can be seen at the following link:

https://www.thefirsttv.com/watch-biden-says-nancy-pelosi-saved-america-during-the-great-depression-of-1929/

3)We have made the case dozens of times over the past few years that the 2020 Presidential election was hijacked and that Biden did not win the Presidency; he was installed as President after an election that reeked of criminal fraud, cheating, and statistical impossibilities and improbabilities. 

On top of the intentional cheating and fraud of the election, Americans witnessed the incompetence of many voting processes across the country. One would  hope that after more than  two centuries of voting that the government at every level would know how to do it right, legally, and without fraud.

But asking for the simple concept of integrity in an election is a little too much to ask for a county in the state of New York:

• Recently ALL registered voters in Nassau County, New York were identified as Democrats even if they were not.

• The accused culprit was an error by a printing company that the county government had hired.

• This resulted in hundreds of thousands of county residents being sent their voter registration card, needed to vote in upcoming elections, which designated them as Democrats even if they were Republicans, independents or associated with another party that was not the Democratic party.

• According to Nassau County Executive, Blake Blakeman: “We’re already starting to get phone calls from people, saying ‘I’m a registered Republican, I’m a registered conservative—how come I’m being identified as a Democrat? Who changed my registration?’ And they’re quite upset about it. There’s a lot of confusion, there’s a lot of people emotionally upset about this.” 

• The printing company took full responsibility for the screw up.

• This is not the first time this company screwed up since in 2020 they sent screwed up absentee ballots to 99,000 voters in Brooklyn where the return envelopes had names and addresses of other people.

• What is especially disturbing is that party primary elections are coming up in June and under New York law, voters can only vote in the primary races that they are registered for.

• Thus, unless something is done, hundreds of thousands of  county voters will not be legally allowed to vote in the primary races they are entitled to vote in because of a “printing error.”

None of this instills confidence that government entities know how to operate legitimate elections given the fraud in the previous Presidential election and in the governor's race in Arizona. According to Pew Research, only 56% of Republicans feel elections are administered well.

Another sad part of this mess is that Nassau County knew that the printing company already had a history of screw ups and still went ahead with them anyway. The incompetence is amazing.

4)Not only do many, many Americans less and less faith in government voting processes, they apparently are having less and less faith in Biden’s economic policies:

• An Associated Press poll found that only 24% of those polled think that the country’s economic condition is in good shape.

• And the trend is not good either since in one month that result had dropped to 24% from 30% in the previous month.

• 41% of Democrats said the economy is in  good shape while only 7% of Republicans think it is in good shape.

• Even the 41% number is not good for Biden in that less than half of his supporters think things are going well.

• Only one third of those polled approve of Biden’s handling of the economy, two thirds think he is not handling it well.

Again, the American political class has been doing voting and economics for centuries and they still have not gotten either right. My feeling is how can  anyone think that Biden is handling the economy well: inflation is still ravaging household budgets, prices for everything are up, from gas to eggs, high paying jobs are being cut across the country, the average mortgage rate just topped 7%, the petrodollar is in danger because of Biden ticking off the Saudis, his budget will add trillions to the already out of control national debt causing more inflation, etc. 

There is insanity at every turn: Biden’s economic policies, screwed up voting processes, Biden continues to ramble incoherently, and the FBI goes rogue 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:

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.reason.com

http://www.cato.org

http://www.openthebooks.com

http://www.conventionofstates.com

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

 

The Fallacy and Disgrace That Are Farm Subsides, Part 2: Why Do The Subsides Persist?

Yesterday we explored the inner workings of the latest farm subsidy bill being cooked up in Washington. The bill continues the ugly tradition of using taxpayer wealth to serve the political needs of both Democrats and Republicans in Congress. This perversion of what was supposed to be a temporary government program during the Great Depressions has morphed into a corrupt, take form the poor and give to the rich government redistribution of wealth.

As we reviewed yesterday, struggling farmers are no longer the primary beneficiaries of the government's farm subsidies. Most of the money goes to giant farming companies whose revenue streams are in the billions of dollars annually. 

Individual millionaires in America who just happen to own what the government considers farm land get paid hundreds of thousands of dollars and in some cases, millions of dollars, to not farm. These rich Americans getting farm subsides include rock and rollers Bruce Springsteen and Jon Bon Jovi, former Presidents like Jimmy Carter, media magnates like Ted Turner, and thousands of people who live in NYC, hardly prime farm country. 

Today we will consider the reasons why these egregious examples of enhancing the rich continue to take place. Consider Archer Daniels Midland. According to the Open Secrets website that tracks campaign contributions, in 2012 Archer Daniels Midland-related campaign contributors forked over $864,374 to political campaigns and politicians. This ranked them 472 of 21,023 companies which contributed campaign funds, which put them in the top 2-3% of all political donors. 

They also spent over $1.4 million in government lobbying expenses in 2012, which ranked them 350 of 4,374, which put them in the top 8% of lobbying entities. Is there any surprise then that they are a major recipient of taxpayer farm subsidy wealth when they funnel this kind of money to the Washington political class for the benefit of their bottom line?

Springsteen, Turner, and Bon Jovi have been major supporters of the Democratic politicians in Washington over the years. The Rockefeller family has historically been involved in politics on the Republican side. You scratch my back with subsidies, I will scratch you back with political campaign funding, and together we can both screw the American taxpayer. 

Disgraceful and pathetic. Which gets us back to our original set-up: Should the Federal government continue to support a very small number of wealthy American companies, wealthy American celebrities, and wealthy American farmers with billions and billions of taxpayer dollars every year or should the money be repurposed to serve a much wider array of American citizen interests such as debt control, tax relief, job retraining, or disease prevention and cure research?

To me, that answer is simple and has two parts. First, farm subsidies, while they may have had a purpose seven decades ago in the midst of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression, they have no role today for the vast amount of the American farm industry since most of the American farm industry is no longer small American farms. This is a political fundraising front, nothing more.

If society thinks it is a good idea to support family farms, than that is what the program should be about. But it should be for active farmers, not celebrity farmers, it should be for non-millionaire farmers, and it should not be for farming entities that have tens of billions of revenue dollars flowing to it annually.

Second, given that seven decades worth of American politicians have not had the gumption, integrity, and intelligence to stop this rip off of the American taxpayer, the need for term limits is even more obvious. We must find a away to eliminate the perpetual incumbent reelection cycle that needs the farm subsidy program to help fund and finance the perpetual reelection campaign. Term limits would go a long way to ending this needless waste of taxpayer money.

You can join this term limit effort at:

www.howmuchworsecoudlitget.com

Because really, today we are already unnecessarily giving our taxpayer money to larger corporations, rich musicians, rich farmers, wealthy New Yorkers, bankers, and doctors, how much worse could it get if we had term limits for all Washington politicians?

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

March, 2013 Political Class Insanity, Part 5: Political Class Insanity In Their Own Words and Voices

For the past few days we have been describing the ridiculous, asinine, and idiotic antics and insanity of the American political class. They continually waste our taxpayer wealth, they never resolve any significant problems, whatever solutions they come up with usually make the original crisis and problem worse, and they continue to be more concerned with their personal enrichment than the needs of Americans.

Today, rather than describe the latest political class insanity, let’s spend today letting our politicians speak for themselves. Hearing them talk makes a much more forceful impact of how incompetent and out of touch they are. These are the people that have not resolved a major issue over the past forty years (e.g. failed war on drugs, no national energy policy, failing public schools, escalating health care costs, etc.). Listening to their own words proves why none of these problems have any chance of getting resolved when these people are in Washington.

1) Let’s start with California Congresswoman Maxine Walters. This is the same Congresswoman who said a subset of Americans should just go to hell in reference to Tea Party members. No American, no matter how different their political views might be, should be told to go to hell by an elected official in a democracy.

But she has outdid herself with her latest hysteria. In the following video link she proclaimed that 170 million Americans would lose their jobs as a result of the sequester. Think about this insane comment:

• About 150 million Americans are employed across the country.
• The sequester was only 2% of the Federal government budget.
• The sequester had no direct impact on private market jobs.
• But somehow these facts are going to result in 20 million more Americans losing their jobs than are actually employed because of the sequester.

Insanity:

http://michellemalkin.com/2013/02/28/maxine-waters-jobs/

2) Unbelievably, Ms. Walters’ bad math skills are even better than Nancy Pelosi’s math skills. Back in the heat of the Great Recession, Pelosi shrieked that 500 million Americans were losing their jobs every month and applying for first time unemployment benefits. Given that the number of Americans with a job is only about 150 million and even worse, the population of the entire country is just over 300 million, it is mathematically impossible for 500 million Americans to lose their jobs every month. Incredibly bad math skills, no wonder she resolved no major issues when she was Speaker of the House.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UR5M5teyQ0

3) I believe that most true American treasure their freedoms. Most true Americans recognize that our freedoms, as established by the Constitution and Bill Of Rights, have resulted in the most prosperous and liberated country in the history of mankind.

Apparently though, this fact of life is lost on the Vice President of the United States, Joe Biden. In the following video clip, he makes the most asinine statement that no ordinary American cares about their Constitutional rights.

I guess that if a politician actually believes that Americans do not care about their Constitutional rights, there is no need for politicians to respect those rights. That may be why we see our rights getting destroyed every day by the American political class via the NDAA legislation, the PATRIOT Act, TSA body gropes, imprisonment without due process, assassination of American citizens without due process, etc. VP Joe, we do care about our rights regardless of how inane and out of touch you are from reality:

http://www.westernjournalism.com/biden-no-ordinary-american-cares-about-their-constitutional-rights/

4) One of the things that makes me crazy is that if Bush was doing some of the same things that the Obama administration is up to, the Democrats and liberals would be up in arms and besides themselves. However, they not only sit by and do nothing when Obama does them they actually are co-conspirators in the trampling of freedom.

This gets us back to Nancy Pelosi. In the following clip, she states that it may not even be necessary for the Federal government to tell the American people if the government assassinated an American citizen without due process. So now, not only can politicians kill Americans without due process, they do not even have to own up to the assassination. George Orwell is smiling in his grave, his nightmare novel, “1984,” is coming to life:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/14/nancy-pelosi-drones_n_2685891.html

5) For good measure, let’s look at some historical pieces of political class insanity that we have had to experience over the past few years. Possibly one of the best pieces of insanity was when a Georgia Congressman publicly voiced his concerns that he was concerned that the island of Guam might actually tip over in the middle of the ocean if the U.S. put too many Navy resources on the island.

If you did not know this was true you would not believe a person, never mind a Federal politician, actually thought this was possible and stated it out loud.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNZczIgVXjg

6) Vice President Joe Biden, always a great source for political class insanity quotes, apparently never went to his American History classes in college. In the following interview clip, he confidently states that when the Great Depression started, President FDR went on television to reassure the American people that everything would be okay and the nation would survive and recover.

However, the Vice President of the United States, first in line of succession, is completely wrong. The Great Depression started during the Hoover administration, FDR was not even in office when it started. When the Depression started, in 1929, television was not a viable or widespread technology. Thus, it was impossible for FDR to go on television to reassure the American people in a year when he was not President on a technology that did not exist. How embarrassing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Jf17Yo7hBM

7) And last but not least, consider Congressman John Conyers from Michigan regarding Obama Care. Not only does this Congressman readily admit that he did not read the Obama Care legislation, legislation that is likely to screw up the lives of most Americans, he actually sounds like it is an insult to think he actually should have read the bill. What else do these people do besides research, debate, write, and READ potential legislation? No wonder nothing ever gets resolved, these people never even read the bills they vote on, how insane is that?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BH43LVm_m0

Bad math skills, bad history skills, bad appreciation of freedom, bad reading skills, just bad, bad, bad.
 

Bad Economic Numbers Vs. Presidential Apathy, Which Is Worse?

Unfortunately, the economic numbers over the past few weeks have bad. In fact, that is probably an understatement, they are have been horrible:

• As with the past untold number of weeks, about 420,000 Americans filed first time unemployment benefits last week.
• The private sector of the economy produced only 54,000 jobs last week, a fraction of what had been created in previous months and weeks and about a third of what had been predicted.
• A Morgan Stanley report estimated that 30,000 or so of the 54,000 jobs were created by McDonalds.
• Unemployment popped up to 9.1% last week, continuing another long term trend, a trend that has had unemployment constantly around 9% for a very long time.
• This constant 9% unemployment rate translates to about 14 million Americans without a job.
• However, according to an article in the latest issue of AARP magazine, while unemployment is about 9%, underemployment is about 19%. In other words, about one in five U.S. workers cannot find a job even though they are looking for a job, have given up looking for a job, are working at a job that is inappropriate for their skill level or education level or are working in a part time job but want a full time job.
• The national debt continues to grow unabated ($14.3 TRILLION) with a Federal government default scheduled for early August and no political solution in sight (or being aggressively worked by the political class.)
• This $14.3 TRILLION debt comes out to well over $100,000 debt burden for every U.S. household.
• A recent CNN poll found that about 50% of those Americans surveyed feel that America will suffer another Great Depression within the year.
• Home prices dropped another 4% last month, indicating that the housing market will not start getting contributing to an economic turnaround any time soon.
• In the past two years or so, national debt is up 35%, gas up is 104%, and unemployment is up 25%.
• The Associated Press (AP) reported yesterday that retail sales dropped for the first time in eleven months including the largest drop in auto sales in 15 months. The biggest retail gains came from thrift stores and stores that sell used goods.
• An AP article on June 13, 2011 reported that some of the largest states are more than 20% short of the revenue they need to cover their current expenses and all 50 states have over $1 TRILLION worth of unfunded liabilities in state employee pension and health care obligations.
• A round table discussion of ten money manager and financial market experts, recently published by Barron's magazine, were unanimous in their conclusion that economic growth will slow down in the second half of 2011.
• Bill Gross, the head of Pimco, the largest bond trader company in the world, recently pronounced that the United States has over $50 TRILLION in unfunded liabilities and debt and that the country's financials are actually in worse shape than Greece's, the poster child for fiscal mismanagement.
• Nouriel Roubini, an economist at New York University, recently stated that a perfect storm of bad economic trends, fiscal/debt problems in the U.S., economic growth slowdown in China, serious European debt issues, and the stagnating economy in Japan will contribute to a serious slowdown in economic activity no later than 2013.
• USA Today recently reported that unfunded debt liabilities of the U.S. government is over $60 TRILLION, mostly due to escalating Social Security and medicare costs.

Wow, how depressing can you get. Various sources with different agendas and responsibilities all come to the same conclusion: we are in dire economic straits. One would have hope that the leaders of this country would be hard at work at mitigating the circumstances, trying to understand root causes of the multiple problems, and coming up with solutions.

Alas, that is a little too much to ask. First of all, some politicians do not think that there is much of a problem at all:

• On last Sunday's "Meet The Press" program, Democratic National Committee Chairperson, Debbie Wasserman, stated: "We were able to, under President Obama's leadership, turn this economy around." We may have turned it around but Ms. Wasserman does not say we turned it in the right direction, which is doubtful, given the points above.
• President Obama himself recently explained that he is not worried about a double dip recession although he has no idea of what to make of the recent downturn in job creation numbers but that the nation is on a path of solid recovery. 14 million Americans out of work, 400,000 or more filing for unemployment benefits every week, anemic job creation, funny definition of solid recovery.
• The buzz word from the administration over the past week is that the recovery has just "hit a bump in the road." Pretty big bump if you ask me.

This aura of denial is one thing to cope with. If you are in denial, you are unlikely to look for problem resolution as strongly and as aggressively as you would if you confronted the problems head on. But possibly worse than denial, is apathy, as illustrated by the following Presidential actions of recent days and weeks:

• Despite all of the economic woes, it seems the President is more concerned with running his 2012 Presidential campaign as his top priority with the inane trip to Ireland to prove he is part Irish, his recent trip to a political fund raiser in Puerto Rico, and his many stateside fund raisers that now seem more important than the economic problems most average Americans face.
• Rather than continue with his daily economic highlight briefings from his economic team, he has eliminated these daily meetings from his schedule, despite the economic horror story outlined above, and has replaced the face-to-face meetings with daily documents from his National Economics Council. One would have thought this is a good thing to do only if the economy was humming along without any problems, not something to do in this time of crisis.
• However, rather than get economic briefings from his Economic Council, he instead gets daily briefings from Vice President Joe Biden. This is the same Vice President who proclaimed six days before the 54,000 creation number came out that the economic recovery was working and "gaining traction." Enough said.
• However, the most blatant example of apathy occurred during his meeting this week with his Jobs and Competitiveness Council, a group of high ranking business people the President created to give him advice on he economy. In responding to a discussion that his stimulus package was supposed to pump money into "shovel ready jobs" and how, for many reasons, this shovel ready approach did not work, the President flippantly responded that "Shovel ready was not as shovel ready as we expected." At that point those in the room broke into laughter. I doubt that the 14 million unemployed Americans broke into similar laughter or appreciated the President's flip, sarcastic answer.

Apathy and denial, a bad combination. A President more interested in his political career and re-election than the economic clouds gathering over the nation. A President who gets his economic updates from Joe Biden. A President whose chairman of his White House Economic Advisors, Austan Goolsbee, is leaving his post at this critical time, joining just about every other original member of the Council who have also resigned.

Which is worse, the bad economic numbers of Presidential apathy? This is really a pick your poison question. However, good economic numbers are the result of sound economic policy, an engaged political class, and bold, unselfish leadership, attributes we have yet to see from this Presidential administration. The horrid numbers prove this point.

Thus, given that these attributes have not yet happened in the first two and half years of this administration and the four years that the Democrats from the political class have run the Congress and the country, it is doubtful we will see these qualities anytime soon.



Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at http://www.loathemygovernment.com/. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.



Please visit the following sites for freedom:

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

Why, Why, Why? Random Questions For Our Political Class

As I listen to the constant drone that comes out of the political class in Washington, I rarely find anything within that drone that truly answers a real question or addresses a real issue. It is the same posturing and the same demagoguery all of the time.

Thus, rather than continuously hope for progress and answers from our politicians, I decided to simplify the task. Since they cannot formulate the right questions and right answers to our major issues, I have developed the following questions, in no particular order, that I would like to have addressed in a finite time, in a finite manner, without malice towards any other American, and in a way that eventually starts us down the path to solutions.

- Why do we continue to pay for and station tens of thousands of U.S. troops in Europe as a protection screen for western Europe? Isn't the Iron Curtain down and and an invasion from Soviet bloc armies highly unlikely? In these times of budget constraints, shouldn't we finally declare victory over communism, bring home the troops and save tens of billions of dollars a year?

- Why do we continue to pay for and station tens of thousands of troops in South Korea, fifty eight years after the Korean conflict ended? Can't South Korea defend itself since it now has one of the largest and fastest growing economies in the world and requires mandatory military service of its young people? Shouldn't we finally declare victory, let the South Koreans defend themselves, bring home the troops, and save billions of dollars a year?

- Why do we still have troops stationed in Iraq? Wasn't President Obama supposed to bring them home on a much quicker timetable than the Bush administration set up? Wasn't that one of the primary reasons for voting for Obama in the first place?

- Why don't ever see caskets bearing the remains of U.S. servicemen who died in Iraq or Afghanistan fighting any more? Wasn't that a big controversy when Bush was President, the need to see what we were dong to our armed forces? Why is that no longer a priority with the Democrats and the main stream media?

- Why hasn't the terrorist prison at Guantanamo Bay been closed down yet? Wasn't that a primary reason to vote for Obama, his passion to close the prison and remove it as a recruiting tool for terrorists around the world? Why is it still operating if it was that important during the 2008 Presidential campaign?

- Why is gasoline about to go over $4.00 a gallon again, with some experts predicting it will go to $5.00 this summer? It cannot be Libya since Libya supplies only 2% of the world's oil and virtually none of the 2% comes to the Untied States.

- Why hasn't the political class, decades after the oil crises of the 1970s and decades after the formation of the Energy Department, come up with a coherent, efficient, and cost saving national energy policy and program so that $4.00 a gallon for gas scenarios never happen again?

- Why hasn't the political class sealed the border with Mexico, 25 years after Congress ordered the Pentagon to seal the border within 45 days?

- Why do Federal politicians get paid during a government shutdown and why do Federal politicians get automatic annual pay raises regardless of how well or how badly they perform in office?

- Why do new Federal employees get a traditional pension program when hired but the vast majority of other Americans, who fund that pension program through their taxes, no longer have the opportunity to get the same benefit that they finance?

- Why does the Federal government only include people who are actively looking for a job in their unemployment calculation? Even if you get so discouraged that you stop looking for a job, aren't you still "unemployed?" Is it to make the political class look better when unemployment numbers are released?

- Why do we continue to fight the losing battle in the "war on drugs?" When will the political class finally come up with a coherent and effective policy and strategy on this scourge that actually addresses the growing threat of the Mexican drug cartels and the human plight of those Americans addicted to drugs?

- Why does our public education system still stink, while being the most expensive education system in the world? Why is U.S. public education a national embarrassment despite the establishment of the Department of Education three decades ago and the existence of a  blueprint to fix the situation that President Reagan's education commission produced in 1983, "A Nation At Risk?" Hasn't the risk grown greater 28 years after the problem was identified?

- Why does President Obama still want to fund the Headstart program when his own Health and Human Services Department published a report last year that proved it was ineffective in making our younger kids any smarter than those that were not in the Headstart program?

- Why do we continue to stick our neck, our national focus, and national resources into the affairs of other countries, e.g.. Libya, while our strongest economic competitors, China, India, South Korea, etc., continue to focus on building up their economies to our national economic detriment?

- Why do we continue to allow corporations, unions, PACs, and other groups of people to contribute obscene amounts of money to election campaigns which always end up overwhelming the needs and best decisions for ordinary Americans? Our founding fathers insisted on freedom of speech for individual Americans, not companies, unions, etc.

- Why do we not have term limits on Federal politicians in order to constantly flow through new people with fresh, new ideas through the legislative process, people that might actually have lived outside of the Beltway and understand the reality of life in America? Why can't we get rid of career politicians that do not know reality outside of the D.C. Beltway, whose reality is only their financial ties to lobbyists and campaign contributors?

- Why do not have a coherent and effective immigration policy that would regulate the flow of new immigrants into this country, immigrants that can positively contribute to American society in many different ways?

- Why do mega-millionaires in Congress continue to draw a salary that is minuscule to the size of their personal wealth? If serving your country is such a noble calling, then serving it and not getting paid because you are rich beyond most Americans' dreams is an even nobler calling.

- If American companies have to adhere to strict accounting and financial standards, as laid out in the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, why isn't the Federal government, the largest financial entity in the country also subject to the same oversight and accountability since we know that the Federal bureaucracy easily wastes up to $100 billion a year through fraud and mismanagement?

- If every American and every American company is subject to EPA rules and laws, why isn't the biggest polluter in the country, the Defense Department, also subjected to the same scrutiny?

- Why is the Federal political class so unable to cut spending in the multitude of areas that would affect very few ordinary Americans? Could it be because it would affect military contractors, corporate welfare recipients, lobbyists, and incumbent campaign donations?

- Why do gay Americans not have the exact same rights in this country as straight Americans? Aren't they Americans also?

- Why does the Patriot Act even exist in a country that should pride itself on freedom and liberty?

- Why should rich Americans such as Bill Gates, Donald Trump, Warren Buffet and most hedge fund managers still receive a Social Security check? They can afford to live without that check while many Americans cannot afford to live without one, a possibility that could happen unless true, effective, and honest Social Security reform is implemented.

- Why isn't the retirement age raised to 70 for those more affluent Americans that can afford to wait? Isn't it better to have those with the financial resources to do without for a few years in order to save the system for those less fortunate?

- Why aren't all members of Congress and the executive branch required to take and pass a course on basic economics so they would at least know or have some appreciation how stupid their policies were before they are enacted?

- Why do the Democrats still allow the "Super Delegate" process to exist, a process that could usurp the freedom and wishes of millions of Democrats who vote in primary elections and caucuses?

- Why do we still have an electoral college process, a process that values the votes of some American citizens much more highly than other citizens?

- Why do we only have the candidates from the Democratic and Republican parties at Presidential debates, shouldn't we have any candidate present that holds a mathematical chance of winning?

- Why do we still allow politicians to gerrymander their own Congressional districts, usually ensuring their re-election time after time? Shouldn't the process be turned over to an independent process that makes sane, rational districting decisions?

- Why do taxpayers still foot a large part of the bill for the Democrats and Republicans to have their Presidential conventions?

- Why do we still have an embargo against the island of Cuba? Five decades after Castro came to power, five decades after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, five decades after the Cuban missile crisis, can we finally grow up and drop the embargo?

- Why do we still allow Congressional earmarks, which are nothing more than thinly disguised ways for incumbent politicians to pay out taxpayer money in return for campaign donations?

- Why do we still allow our politicians to use Federal tax money to build bike paths, do feasibility studies for indoor race tracks, build a Paper Industry Hall of Fame, research fish waste in Alaska, and other such nonsense in their home districts?

- Why has Health and Human Services had to issue over 1,000 waivers to Obama Care requirements in just the first year if this was such a great piece of legislation?

- Why does President Obama think that developing, discussing, explaining, and televising his NCAA basketball March Madness picks is such a good use of his time when he has to oversee three military actions in the Middle East, an imminent government shutdown, record high national debt, and a nation bitterly divided against itself?

- Why does the political class continually focus on the "Bush tax cuts for the rich" at the expense of everything else? The Republicans worry that the Washington political class will spend $1.42 for every dollar it receives and that is why they are against tax increases. The Democrats worry that richer Americans might actually spend their own money on things they want, not what the Democrats want.

Since the Bush tax cuts are a spit in the ocean of our national debt, why not create a virtual lock box so that money from the reinstated Bush tax cuts never reaches the political class? Instead, the money goes directly into a Treasury account whose sole purpose is to buy back U.S. debt to reduce our national debt. Get this issue out of the way in this manner and move on to real debt reduction issues for once.

- Why does the Federal government and the political class that operates it never seem to have any contingency plans in place to handle emergencies such as Hurricane Katrina and the BP oil spill? Don't we pay enough in taxes to get some protection preparation from the government ahead of time?

- Why is Tax Freedom Day so late in this country, normally sometime early in the second quarter? Doesn't the political class realize that there can be no personal freedom without economic freedom and a late Tax Freedom Day like we currently have is not conducive to freedom?

- Why have state governments and state politicians been so negligent or ignorant when it came to foreseeing how their rampant, wasteful spending would eventually come back to potentially bankrupt their respective states?

- Why did no one from Housing and Urban Development, the Federal Housing Authority, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the Senate committees on housing and banking, the House of Representatives committees on banking and housing, the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve, and the Securities and Exchange Commission foresee the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression until it hit them flat in the face?

- Why is Barney Franks allowed to receive campaign donations from the very banks his House committee was responsible for overseeing and why was Chris Dodd allowed to receive campaign donations from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, government entities his Senate committee was responsible for overseeing?

- Why do politicians focus on irrelevant matters such as the noise volume of television commercials, the need for a better college football playoff system, iPhone and Android apps that tell users where local police speed traps are likely to be, and other such nonsense when all of the far more important questions listed above are unanswered?

- Why do we not have a process that would allow voters to remove politicians from standing Congressional committees for dereliction of duty? For example, in a perfect world, any politician sitting on a House or Senate Intelligence committee should have been removed from their post on September 12, 2001. Any politician sitting on a committee that oversaw FEMA should have been removed from their post within days after Hurricane Katrina hit.

- Why are we cursed to be ruled, not served by these types of politicians, politicians that would not know leadership even if it walked up and introduced itself. Politicians that have not solved any major problems, decades after the problems were identified. Politicians that see staying in office as more important than serving while in office. Why, why, why?


Note: Answers to many of these questions and the processes to attain those answers are outlined in the fifty steps in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government."




Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at http://www.loathemygovernment.com/. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.


Please visit the following sites for freedom:

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

Our Political Class: Still Clueless But Still Making Predictions

I really get a kick out of our politicians when they try to make predictions of any sort. They keep trying and they keep getting them wrong but they continue to show the fortitude to go on with more fruitless predictions. Before we review the latest prediction from Harry Reid, let's quickly review the recent past history of politicians' predictions:

- In the run up to the invasion of Iraq, I vaguely remember Bush predicting that the military effort would cost less than $100 billion. I do not remember the exact number, $60 billion sounds familiar, but it was less than $100 billion. Well, many years later we know he missed that prediction by hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars in ongoing expense before you even count the long term expenses of continuing care for our wounded and the interest on the debt that was incurred to finance the invasion. In all probability, the true cost of the invasion will exceed at least a trillion dollars, conservatively at least ten times higher than the original Bush prediction.

- When the Obama administration was hyping its economic stimulus package, the threat was if the package was not passed, unemployment could get as high as 8%. In hindsight, I am sure that the Obama administration would welcome 8% since the unemployment rate zoomed right past 8% and has hovered just under 10% for a long time. Missed that prediction by just a little bit.

- I also got some laughs out of another economic stimulus prediction, one that involved changing the rules as time progressed. The original intent of the stimulus package was to create a couple of million permanent jobs. However, as the stimulus money got spent, nowhere near a couple of million permanent jobs got created. That was when the prediction was changed from jobs created to jobs create and jobs saved. When that definition did not work, the prediction was changed from jobs created and saved to include jobs touched. Somewhere along the line the criteria for a job being permanent was relaxed to any job, permanent or temporary. Even with all of these definitional changes, this prediction still has not come true, given the much higher than expected unemployment rate.

- The bank bailout prediction was also pretty funny. Think back to the end of the Bush administration and how Bush and Treasury Secretary Paulson were claiming that unless there was a massive taxpayer bailout of the U.S. banking system, the financial system of the world would crash and we would see the coming of the next Depression. Nice prediction but apparently way off base as far as being accurate. The bailout bill did get passed and signed and by November, 2009, the first "failing" banks were receiving their TARP bailout money.

However, one of the criteria for receiving the money was that severe restrictions were placed on the wage levels of bank executives. All of a sudden, many of these banks were scrambling to give back the TARP money, so much so that a mere seven months after the first TARP checks were cut, many of the banks had already returned their bailout money.

But let's reason this one out. If the banks that received the money were in such dire financial shape, how were they able to return the money so quickly? Couldn't they have muddled through these few months somehow by slashing costs, issuing more stock, selling off assets, or taken any number of actions to get them through this short period of time? Or were these banks never really in trouble in the first place and just wanted a free lunch from the taxpayers via the political class and government? We could not have been that close to a Depression if the majority of the banks returned their TARP funds so quickly, mere months, so that their executive pay levels would not suffer.

- And now to the latest grand prediction, this one from Harry Reid, majority leader in the Senate. In an Associated Press article today, Mr. Reid was extolling the Senate's passage of the bill that would extend the Bush tax cuts on January 1, 2011 as well as do a number of other things. Mr. Reid is quoted in the article as predicting that passage of the legislation would result in the creation of two million jobs.

If this was such a good idea and will actually create two million much needed jobs, why was this legislation not passed long ago? Wouldn't the Obama administration and the Democrats in Congress wanted this passed before they got whooped on election night?

Also, with the exception of decreasing the Social Security tax for one year and adjusting the estate tax numbers, isn't the vast bulk of this legislation designed to keep the status quo? If the status quo so far has not generated two million incremental jobs, what makes Harry think that it will now? For a family with a breadwinner making $50,000 a year, their Social Security savings will be about $20 a week, hardly enough to create demand for 2 million new jobs.

Thus, I have no idea how Mr. Reid comes up with two million more jobs by keeping the status quo and giving American families back $20 a week. It makes you wonder how these people come up with these numbers. Just as the two million job number makes no sense, neither did the Bush Iraq number, the TARP prediction, the unemployment estimate, etc.

I have a four part question that I would love to know the answers to:

1. Do our politicians really believe the numbers they spout out? 
2. Do our politicians even understand the derivation and the logic behind the numbers they spout out?
3. Are they ever embarrassed when the reality comes nowhere close to the numbers they so confidently predicted?
4. Are they aware up front that the numbers are bogus and use them just to get their way or legislation passed? If this is the case, then we have a more serious integrity issue with our politicians then we thought we did.

The bottom line is their track record is horrendous when it comes to predicting numbers and results and we would all be better off if we ignored future predictions from the political class. It is a waste of their time and credibility and usually a waste of our tax dollars. They should follow that old saying that goes something like this: "Better to remain silent and thought ignorant than to speak up and remove all doubt." Or in our case: "Better to not give a prediction and thought clueless of the future than to speak up and remove all doubt."







Our recent 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/

Is The Federal Reserve System Nohting But A Wild Guess?

Sorry about that last post, hit the send button prematurely. I was intrigued by an article written by Al Lewis that appeared in the Wall Street Journal insert to last Sunday's Tampa Tribune. He was talking about the Federal Reserve Board and System and had some interesting observations.

But before we see what Mr. Lewis was talking about, I decided to do some back ground on the Federal Reserve Board. From various online sources I came up with the following information:

• The Federal Reserve System was formed by an act of Congress, the Federal Reserve Act, in 1913 after a serious of severe bank panics.
• The Board appears to have four major functions:

1. Conduct the nation's monetary policy.
2. Supervise and regulate banking institutions.
3. Maintain stability of the financial system.
4. Provide financial services to depository institutions, the U.S. Government and others.

• Monetary policy usually involves manging the supply of money through interest rate manipulation to achieve a set of economic goals, which usually include low unemployment and stable prices.

Given these functions and background information, how well has the Federal Reserve System performed:

• Given that it was formed in 1913, it apparently did not perform very well in the 1930s, the time of the Great Depression, or the past few years, the time of the Great Recession.
• It does not appear that it has historically done a great job at regulating and supervising banking institutions since the high number of bank failures and banking instruments were the prime causes of both the Great Depression and Great Recession.
• It obviously did not do a good job at maintaining the stability of the financial system since it belatedly forced Congress to quickly pass the poorly written, poorly implemented and very expensive TARP legislation because the Federal Reserve did not foresee the gathering storm clouds leading up to the Great Recession.
• Regarding monetary policy, while prices have been relatively stable in the U.S., unemployment continues to be very high, earning the Fed a failing grade in this area of its responsibility. The scary aspect of their monetary policy management is the fear from both sides of the economic spectrum, those that say inflation will explode at some point in time and those that say we are facing a deflationary period. In either case, the Fed could be very close to missing on their stable prices responsibility.

Thus, I always felt that the Federal Reserve Board and System performed just as poorly as every other government entity when it came to the latest recession (FDIC, HUD, Fannie Mae, Freddie MAC, the Treasury Department, House of representatives banking and housing committees, Senate banking and housing committees, SEC, etc.). When you look at what we have been through over the past two years and compare it to the charter responsbilities of the Federal Reserve Board, you see that they have indeed been less than stellar in managing the economy.

But Mr. Lewis' column this past Sunday puts it all in perspective. He reviewed the following timeline in the Federal Reserve's position on our economic condition:

• In January, the Fed said that"economic activity has continued to strenghten and... the deterioration in the labor market is abating."
• In March, the Fed said that"activity has continued to strenghten ... and the labor market is beginning to improve."
• In April, "the labor market is beginning to improve."
• In June, "economic recovery is proceeding and...the labor market is improving gradually."
• But in August, "the pace of recovery in output and employment has slowed in recent months."

What does this all mean? Let Ben Bernanke, the Fed Chairman explain to us, according to Mr. Lewis: "My best guess is we will have a continued recovery but it will not feel terrific." The key words in the Chairman's statement is "my best guess." Given that the economy has continued to get worse since the fourth quarter of 2009 and the unemployment rate is just as bad now as it was in January, nothing has strenghtened, nothing has improved, nothing has abated, nothing. And now, the leading economist and bank regulator in the country has been reduced to giving his best guess as forecasts. We are not paying high taxes for guesses, we need foresight. I can get someone to guess for far less money that what we are paying the Fed.

Just another government entity that has not done its job. Whether it was the SEC staffers that were surfing the Internet for porn during the lead up to the Great Recession, the Interior Department employees that did not do their required due diligence in supervising oil drilling rigs in the Gulf, Federal consumer safety organizations that missed the Toyota and lead laced toys problems, etc., we pay high taxes for low performance across the board when it comes to the Federal government.

That is why Step 1 and Step 34 from "Love my Country, Loathe My Government" are so important. Step 1 would start downsizing government by reducing its size and reexamining the entire government structure to find ways to make it more effective, including the semi-independent Federal Reserve Board. Step 34 would remove those politicians that sit on Congressional committees from their post if those committees allow lax or sub par performance from government functions to continue. We can all do better than guessing when it comes to the business of the nation.

Our new book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at www.loathemygovernment.com. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Also visit the following sites for freedom:

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