Showing posts with label hank johnson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hank johnson. Show all posts

Saturday, September 24, 2022

September, 2022, Part 3, Political Class Insanity: The Mayor Parties While NYC Tanks, Hank Johnson with Another Stupid Statement, D.C. Mayor Whines About Illegal Immigrants, and Biden's Horrid Economic Score Card

 Let’s continue our discussion from the past few blogs as we review the insanity, ineptness, and stupidity that American politicians continue to display and their hardships they impose on all Americans:


1)New York City is  not in good shape:


  • Homelessness is growing everyday.

  • Crime of all types has been rising by double digits amounts for the past few years.

  • Riders take their lives in their hands when riding the crime infested city subway system.

  • According to Orkin, there are probably 2 million rats in the city as sanitation goes lacking.

  • High paying jobs, especially in the financial sector, have moved out of the city and state, with a lot of those jobs reforming in Miami, Florida, a city and state without a local and state income tax, allowing workers to keep more of their hard earned wages.


The city is in crisis so one would hope that the local politicians in office would be doing all they could to resolve these issues. But apparently these crises take a backseat to Mayor Eric Adams social activities:


  • The mayor recently attended the upscale Michael Kors fashion show.

  • He hosted his own fashion show at Gracie Mansion with celebrities and well known fashion designers.

  • He also recently partied at the high end Aman New York Club.


Dangerous streets, dangerous subways, dwindling tax base, and skyrocketing crime and the mayor is hanging out with the fashion world dignitaries and other famous folks, Just another day and another politician with horrid priorities.


2)But it  is not just a big  city mayor that  is failing at his job. Consider the following and recent national economic numbers that Biden has wrought on the country:


  • Total household wealth has declined a whopping $6.1 TRILLION since Biden became President.

  • This means that on average every American citizen, including kids, is about $20,000 poorer since Biden took office.

  • The NASDAQ stock market index is down 26% and the S&P 500 is down 18% since Biden took office.

  • In January, 2021, when Biden took office, the average mortgage rate was 2.86% and today the average mortgage is more than double, over 6%.

  • In January, 2021, when Biden took  office, the annual  inflation rate was 1.4% and today the inflation rate is about six times higher, 8.3%.


You have to be really bad at your job or actually trying to fail to turn in  results like this. Unfortunately it does not matter why to most Americans as they struggle to buy food, gas, and utilities as inflation ravages household budgets, budgets that are a lot poorer than they were about two years ago.


3)Democrats are constantly pushing the country towards using only electric vehicles. California’s nutcase political class recently passed legislation that will require that all new cars sold in the state beginning in 2035 be only electric cars, no gas powered cars. Never mind that these cars are beyond the financial means of the majority of state residents or that flooding the state with electric cars will constantly crash the state’ electric grid or that electric cars, and other vehicles such as electric buses, have been known to spontaneously catch fire, fires that are very difficult to get under control.


Higher, unaffordable prices, electricity blackouts, and fires endangering lives, and yet the state’s politicians think that this is a good idea. And tragically, transportation batteries exploding into hot fires and endangering lives is not restricted to cars:


  • Eight year old Stephanie Villa Torres was recently riding her electric scooter in Queens, New York City.

  • Unfortunately and tragically, the battery powering her scooter unexpectedly burst into flames, resulting in her death.

  • This was the third fatality attributed to an electric scooter battery fire in the past year.

  • Stephanie’s brother suffered burns and smoke inhalation trying to save her.

  • The NYC Fire Department determined that the cause of the fatal fire was the lithium battery powering the scooter.

  • The Fire Department said the latest fire was one of many, many scooter fires in  the city in the past two years, at least 60 incidents.

  • The situation has gotten so bad that some landlords are banning scooters from their buildings.


Our kids are dying from this technology and yet California politicians and others are pushing this technology down the throats of Americans, forcing us to buy and use dangerous and unproven and unsafe products. Insanity.


3)Congressman Hank Johnson once made quite possibly the most inane and stupid comment by any politician of all time a few years ago. During Congressional testimony regarding U.S. armed forces on the island of Guam, he stated he was worried that the island of Guam could actually tip over if too many armed forces resources were stationed there. 


Think about that: a sitting U.S.  Congressman stated in public that he was worried a Pacific island could tip over. You could not make this up. 


But somehow Johnson is still a sitting Congressman. And he recently put forth another stupid sentiment:


  • He showed utter disdain for parents who take an interest and show concern for their kids’ education by attending board of education meetings and sometimes opposing education programs that they disagree with.

  • He lashed out and  categorized these concerned parents as “MAGA Republicans…after January 6.”

  • He managed to  insult broad groups of Americans, Republicans and parents and somehow tying tens of millions of Americans to the D.C. riot on January 6, 2021.


Tough to respect any view of someone who actually thinks an island can tip over but he really crosses a despicable line by attacking concerned parents. He is part of the American political class who thinks the government is in charge of our  kids’ lives and anyone who questions that perceived authority needs to be branded and wiped out. Disgusting behavior and attitude.


4)Probably thousands of times in this blog we have shown American politicians to be liars, inept, and hypocrites. So it should come as no surprise that the current mayor of Washington D.C. fulfills these last two traits:


  • As you probably know, the governor of Texas has gotten so fed up with the Biden administration letting millions of illegal immigrants cross into this country that he has begun busing some of those illegal immigrants, with their permission, to so-called “sanctuary states and cities” that have boasted for years that illegal immigrants are always welcome to their states and cities.

  • The Texas governor has decided to take advantage of their self-proclaimed sanctuary claim and reduce the humanitarian burden on his small and overwhelmed towns on the southern border.

  • Now, one would expect these cities and states to welcome the illegal immigrants into their fold, having claimed how compassionate they would be if immigrants came to them.

  • Well, that claim and boast is valid as long as illegal immigrants do NOT arrive in their states and cities, as illustrated by the mayor of D.C., Muriel Bowser.

  • Once Bowser was confronted with the reality of Texas busing illegal immigrants to her sanctuary city, she flipped out at the challenge of handling them: "We’re not a border town.  We don’t have an infrastructure to handle this type and level of immigration to our city. We’re not Texas.”


She obviously fails to see the hypocrisy in her statement. Small border Texas towns are even less equipped to handle over 2 million illegal  immigrants that have flooded into this country over the past year. These towns have been overwhelmed with crime, sanitation issues, and deaths from Biden’s ill fated and stupid immigration policies.


If Bowser did not want these illegal immigrants coming into her sanctuary city maybe 1) she should not have bragged that her city was a sanctuary for illegal immigrants and 2) helped Texas and Arizona cope with the flood of illegal immigrants. By sitting there and whining about illegal immigrants coming into her city she shows herself to be just another inept, hypocritical petty politician.


That will  do it for today: a mayor who whines about illegal immigration, a mayor who wines and parties with celebrities as his city goes down the drain, a Georgia politician still making stupid statements, and Biden’s insanely horrible economic record after less than two years in office.


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Sunday, May 9, 2021

May, 2021, Part 2, Political Class Insanity: The Post Office Gets Into The Spy Business, Defunding the Police Continues To Be Dangerous, and Ocasio-Cortez's Latest Insanity

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

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

1) At one point we followed the antics and idiotic comments often made by Congresswoman Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez. Her ignorance was actually pretty funny at one point:
  • Despite having a business college degree, she did not know the basic definition of unemployment, something a high school economics student was probably taught the first week.
  • Despite running for Congress, she didn't know what the three branches of the Federal government were.
  • By not keeping her mouth shut, she helped scare Amazon away from locating one of its headquarters buildings in her Congressional district, an act that would have brought untold wealth, jobs, and opportunities to her constituents.
  • In the process of scaring away Amazon, she showed her ignorance by not understanding the difference between a future tax credit and a tax reduction.
But we got tired of her idiocy and ignorance and have not talked about her much recently. She grew tiresome, framing every issue, every action as one that was based in racism not matter how stupid the connection was. As we have discussed previously, when people like her try to connect everything to racism then nothing is racist if everything is racist.

But let’s take a short visit with her latest idiocy. To her, the myth of climate change is rooted in racism. Read her following statement and then try to explain to yourself what sense, if any, she makes. Note: do not waste a lot of time with that effort since her view on climate change and how it is racist is ridiculous: “The climate crisis is a crisis born of injustice, and it is a crisis born of the pursuit of profit at any and all human and ecological cost, which means that we must recognize in legislation that the trampling of indigenous rights is a cause of climate change, that the trampling of racial justice is a cause of climate change because we are allowing people and we are allowing folks to deny ourselves human rights and deny people the right to healthcare, the right to housing and education.”

My gosh, what nonsense. Climate change, racism, housing, education, healthcare, indigenous rights, she hit all the liberal hot buttons in one incoherent rant. The problem is that she votes on legislation that affects us all despite this type of tripe she pushes. Between Congressman Hank Johnson who thinks it is possible for a Pacific island (Guam) to actually tip over to Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee who thinks that South Vietnam and North Vietnam still exist to Ocasio-Cortez and her wildly incoherent and unhinged from reality views, heaven help us form their incompetence.

2) As an example of Ocasio-Cortez’s denial of reality, she is a co-sponsor of proposed legislation that would spend a whopping $172 billion to make 950,000 public housing homes climate friendly:
  • The money would be spent over ten years and affect 2 million people living in public housing.
  • The legislation sponsors claim that this $172 billion would reduce water bills on these 2 million people by 30%.
  • It would supposedly reduce energy bills by 70% and would create 240,000 union jobs.
This is an organization, the Federal government, that has operated the Postal System for over two hundred years and still has not gotten it right since it currently loses billions of dollars a year. It is an organization that has operated the Social Security system for about 90 years and is driving it into bankruptcy. It has operated a Medicare system for about 50 years and is driving that into bankruptcy. It has operated a Do Not Call list operation for about ten years that does not prevent unwanted calls. It put forth a Cash For Clunker program that failed miserably.

And we are to believe that this government program will slash utility bills at a cost of $172 billion. I don't think so. Oh, and by the way, to think that the Federal government can miraculously create almost a quarter of a million jobs is insanity. Government does not create jobs, the market creates jobs. How many jobs would be created if that $172 billion would be left in the market and not hijacked for an inane government program like this? Again, Ocasio-Cortez, much like Johnson, Jackson Lee and about 500 other people in Washington have no concept of reality and the real world or even an inkling of competence.

3) We have often discussed the insanity of the whole “defund the police” movement that has driven liberal politicians in major cities to slash police forces and resources without having a back up plan to deal with criminals and violence. As a result, as we have discussed, crime, violence, murders, rapes, etc. has jumped up significantly in cities like Portland, Seattle, Minneapolis, New York City and other cities where liberal politicians, in an effort to appease organizations like Black Lives Matter, have placed their citizens in much more danger.

A recent study estimated two bad impacts of such political behavior:
  • UMass PhD candidate, Travis Campbell, has published a study related to urban crime and the relationship to Black Lives Matter.
  • He did find that police shootings dropped between 15-20% in cities that suffered through Black Lives Matter riots.
  • If true, this drop in police shootings would reduce about 300 shootings over a five year period, about sixt a year, a little more than one police shooting a week nationwide.
  • While that is good news, a reduction in police shootings, the increase in crime via homicides in those cities is estimated to claim an additional 1,000-6,000 lives.
  • In addition, his study found that cities with Black Lives Matter riots caused a loss of black police officers to the tune of about 6%, a shrinking resource that could be used to help bring minority communities and police forces together.
Again, a fundamental responsibility of any government entity is to protect the lives of the citizens it serves. This is just another piece of information that shows how big city mayors and their priority of looking good and pandering rather than serving the safety of their voters is resulting in the continued increase in the homicides of those they are supposed to protect.

4) The United States Post Office is tasked with delivering the mail. Given how it runs up operating deficits of billions of dollars a year, it does not do that sole job very efficiently.

Which makes the following story from Yahoo News all that more distressing and bewildering:
  • Apparently the Post Office under Biden is running a “covert operations program” to spy on citizens’ social media posts.
  • Why the Post Office would be putting resources on such nonsense and not trying to better deliver the mail is ridiculous.
  • The program is supposed to be looking through conservative social media postings and finding “inflammatory” posts which are then shared with other government agencies: “Analysts with the United States Postal Inspection Service (USPIS) Internet Covert Operations Program (iCOP) monitored significant activity regarding planned protests occurring internationally and domestically on March 20, 2021,” says the March 16 government bulletin, marked as “law enforcement sensitive” and distributed through the Department of Homeland Security’s fusion centers. “Locations and times have been identified for these protests, which are being distributed online across multiple social media platforms, to include right-wing leaning Parler and Telegram accounts.”
Such a waste and misuse of resources:
  • Deliver the mail, that is your charter, not anti-domestic terrorism.
  • Who thinks you can possibly do this better than the FBI and trained police forces?
  • And if you are going to do it, spy on Americans, why focus only on conservative social media posts when Black Lives Matter and Antifa sources are burning down cities and attacking police officers and civilians?
How successful were these efforts? According to Yahoo, the effort uncovered two Parler users, yes, TWO, who discussed attending an event to possibly engage in a “fight” and to “do serious damage.” Two people, not two hundred, not two thousand, two. Furthermore, the effort concluded: “No intelligence is available to suggest the legitimacy of these threats.” In other words, this unnecessary and possibly illegal spying on Americans resulted in nothing worthwhile.

Stupid stuff but serious stuff also. Why does the Biden administration need yet another government agency intruding into our lives and not doing what they are supposed to do: deliver the mail on time at a reasonable cost. Insanity.

That will do it for today: another government spying operation, more insanity from Ocasio-Cortez, and defunding the police movement continues to endanger innocent lives.

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Wednesday, May 13, 2020

May, 2020, Part 6, Political Class Insanity: Bodily Function Issues In New Jersey, Looking a Gift Horse In The Mouth In NYC, and Tesla Fights The Bureaucracy

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

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

1) We have often pointed out how stupid and ignorant American politicians can be. Congressman Hank Johnson once stated in a Congressional hearing that he was worried that the island of Guam could actually flip over in the Pacific Ocean if too many Navy resources were stationed there. Sheila Jackson Lee, a Texas Congresswoman, once stated that the Constitution was 400 years old and that her very own Congressional district was 50 feet below sea level (it isn’t). New York City mayor Bill de Blasio was shocked that when he allowed hardened, convicted criminals out of jail because of the corona virus many of them committed more crimes, shocking. And of course, New York Congresswoman Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, whose ignorance and verbal gaffes are far too many to review here.

In the context of such stupidity, the governor and other political figures in New Jersey have recently upheld this long tradition of being so out of touch with reality:
  • As a result of the coronavirus, which hit New Jersey very hard, the governor had shut down all state parks and most other forms of recreation for New Jersey residents.
  • Of course, this type of stay at home edict likely resulted in extreme cases of cabin fever for state residents.
  • But the governor, Patrick Murphy recently reopened the state parks as the virus started to subside and as a result, New Jerseyans flocked to the state parks to get out of their homes and get some fresh air.
  • But for some stupid reason, the governor decided that while he would agree to reopen the parks, he ordered that the restroom facilities at those parks remain locked and not usable by park visitors.
  • Of course, any sane person would know what would happen, as an article on the Godfather Politics website explained with the following title: “New Jersey Opens Parks, Closes Restrooms, Complains About ‘Inordinate Amount of Urine and Feces’ in Park”
  • Government officials were hopping mad that an “inordinate amount of urine and feces being left behind.” in the recently reopened parks.
  • What did they think was going to happen as residents started hiking through the parks that they were going to hold their expulsions until they could drive out of the parks and find another place to go to the bathroom?
  • Well, they actually did believe that, since State Police Superintendent Pat Callahan said: “We understand restrooms are closed, but people should be planning accordingly and should not be urinating in bottles and leaving them behind,”
  • He went on to say there would be “zero tolerance” for anyone not holding it in until they could leave the park to find other facilities.
  • Even the governor got into the act threatening that the state police would cite you for a violation and that “you’re not going to get a warning if we catch you.”
  • The insanity continued in that 1) he threatened to shut down the parks if this behavior continued and 2) continued to order that the restrooms continue to be locked and off limits to park visitors.
  • Nowhere have state government politicians or officials explain and defend why the restrooms were locked to begin with and will continue to be locked even though the parks are open.
Now there will be state police resources on potty patrol rather than actually protecting people from real crimes because of this unreal stupidity. Just when you think that the insanity could not get any worse, my former state of New Jersey proves that assumption wrong.

2) There is no doubt that New York City was not only the hardest hit metro area in the country from the coronavirus but the politicians in that city were the worst when it came to coming up with smart policy and advice to minimize the damage. The mayor told his citizens in early March to go out to restaurants and bars since the virus was not passed on by food or drink, an inane and probably fatal suggestion to make. 

The city board of health as of late January/early February insisted that maybe there was one case of the virus in the city, and that was it, a statement that was obviously and fatally wrong. The state governor decided it would be a good idea to send elderly virus patients or potential patients to nursing homes, a breeding ground for the virus. As a result over 5,000 New Yorkers died in nursing homes, well over 20% of all virus nursing home deaths in the country.

And last but no least, the mayor and governor pleaded for help from anyone that would provide it for what they falsely assumed would be a tidal wave of infected NYC city people, causing the Federal government to ship them a large number of ventilators, send in a Navy medical ship to the city, and rush in other supplies.

Other folks and charities also chipped in personnel and resources. But one charity who set up a facility in NYC to help those in need because of the virus was treated pretty harshly by local politicians:
  • Samaritan's Purse is a Christian charity organization.
  • They set up a FREE medical facility in conjunction with the city’ Mount Sinai hospital to care for the sick.
  • The organization happens to oppose lesbian and gay causes.
  • And for that, not the fact they helped and healed the sick for free, they are getting heat from city officials who only recently were crying and pleading for help in treating the ill.
  • At no point and under no accusations did the charity refuse to medically treat anyone regardless of their religion or sexual orientation.
  • Despite setting up free medical services, despite not denying those medical services to anyone, New York Governor Cuomo recently said that the charity would have to pay taxes in the state.
  • The charity has also come under attack for their anti-gay and Christian orientation despite the need and their charitable efforts to indiscriminately help others.
  • Keep in mind that Mt. Sinai asked for the charity’s help and they set up a 68 bed field hospital, again not charging anyone or any organization the expenses for doing so.
  • Despite all of this, Cuomo is somehow holding the charity financial liable or offering free services, ‘I am not in a position to provide any subsidies right now,” in other words, the charity will have to pay state taxes, including any taxes on income they might earn while operating in NYC, despite the fact that state politicians and state medical facilities asked them to come into the state and city to help out in the crisis.
  • Cuomo hid behind the state’s large budget deficit to justify the taxation: “{We] have a $13 billion deficit. So there’s a lot of good things I’d like to do, and if we get federal funding, we can do, but it would be irresponsible for me to sit here looking at a $13 billion deficit and say I’m gonna spend more money when I can’t even pay the essential services.”
  • The governor ignores the two realities that 1) any taxes paid by this charity would be a nit of a nit relative to $13 billion and 2) the city somehow found the money to pay for 500,000 free meals for Muslims, a cost that I would bet far exceeds and tax revenue the charity would pay.
  • But Cuomo is not the only state politician to look a gift horse in the mouth, with state senator Brad Hoylman describing the charity’s relationship with Mt. Sinai “poisonous” and city Council Speaker Corey Johnson said he found it “extremely troubling “ that the charity was offering free medical service to over 300 people of all religions and sexual orientations.
I have no idea how to respond to this political class insanity. People are dying, people are very sick, the government asks for help, a charity responds by erecting a 68 bed field hospital at its own expense, it medically treats over 300 people at no cost and shows no discimsintaiton based on sexual orientation or religion. And yet, some politicians somehow, some way, actually find a problem with that situation in the middle of a medical crisis, with at least one of them indicating they would rather have citizens go untreated than have them healed by a group that they have an issue with its religion position.

So sad that we have gotten to the point when allowing people to go sick or die is more important in a time of crisis than making a political point with a segment of the population.

3) We have often talked about how the state of California is going down the tubes in oh so many ways:
  • It has by far the largest unfunded budget deficit liability in the country.
  • It has the worst public schools systems in the country.
  • It has the worst homeless problem in the country.
  • It has made it not illegal to publicly defecate, urinate, or shoot up illegal drugs anywhere at anytime including in public venues and streets.
  • The results of power washing the public defecation and urination from city streets down the storm drains has led to increasing levels of deadly water pollution in the surrounding bodies of water.
  • Medieval diseases such as typhus have reemerged at least in LA because of the massive homeless problem.
  • Average wage levels are so low in LA that 40% of the population make so little that they qualify for Medicaid.
  • Its dream bullet train concept died after gross mismanagement by government officials and millions and millions of wasted taxpayer dollars resulting in….nothing.
  • It has one of the highest overall taxation levels, if not the highest, in the entire country.
  • It has made petty theft such as shoplifting non-criminal resulting in an explosion of crime.
  • Its restrictive housing rules and regulations have made the cost of housing go sky high, pricing many people out of the home ownership and rental markets.
  • Many state residents have escaped to other, more reasonably priced, lower taxed, safer, and better places to live and do business, putting even more pressure on the budget fiasco.
One of the best descriptions I have heard of present day California is that it “is North Korea with a tech industry.” Masking a lot of the problems is the reality that a lot of large and small high technology firms are based on California which results in a lot of business tax dollars and high earner technology worker tax dollars. 

In fact, we have previously reported that if a relatively small number of California’s wealthiest people leave the state, the state government revenue stream would take a tremendous hit. And we may be seeing the very beginning of the wealthiest actually take those steps to leave, as measured by the words of one of the country’s richest individuals and California state resident:
  • Elon Musk is one of the great business thinkers and innovators of our time.
  • Besides being most famous for creating a major luxury car brand from scratch, Tesla, he has been an innovator in many other areas.
  • He is not a dumb man and he is a very wealthy man who pays a lot of California taxes both business wise and personally.
  • But now he is a very angry man in that Alameda County in California, the county that is home to his Tesla car manufacturing facility, will not let him open up his factory because of the virus crisis even though he says he will comply with all of the rules and standards of social distancing on the job.
  • The state has set forth parameters for manufacturing businesses to open that Tesla could meet but that state has allowed local counties and towns to overrule the state guidelines and refuse to let him business like Tesla to reopen.
  • To which Musk said screw it and claimed that he will be moving his Tesla assets to another state, taking workers, himself, jobs and a lot of state tax revenue with him.
  • In addition he has filed legal actions against the county: “Tesla is filing a lawsuit against Alameda County immediately. The unelected & ignorant ‘Interim Health Officer’ of Alameda is acting contrary to the Governor, the President, our Constitutional freedoms & just plain common sense! Frankly, this is the final straw,. Tesla will now move its HQ and future programs to Texas/Nevada immediately. If we even retain Fremont manufacturing activity at all, it will be dependent on how Tesla is treated in the future. Tesla is the last carmaker left in CA.”
  • Texas and Nevada politicians were more than happy to welcome this news and Tesla's potential economic boost to their states.
  • Politicians in California, however, do not seem to recognize what this means, with one state politician tweeting, “F#$2 Elon Musk,” hardly the type of mature, adult conversation one should probably have to save the jobs and the tax revenue for the state.
Remember, if California loses its tech industry, then it is nothing more than North Korea: poor, under educated, tax starved, and a horrible place to live. And right now, it looks like the state’s politicians are fine with that potential and growing reality.

That will do it for today: government reacting childishly to a big source of tax revenue, politicians abusing a charity that was saving lives, and politicians who have no common sense when it comes to bodily functions.

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Saturday, December 21, 2019

December, 2019, Part 7, Political Class Insanity: Whistleblowing the Clinton Foundation, IMpeaching Trump Because He Is Too Tall, and More Insanity and False History from Ocasio-Cortez

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) After impeaching Trump for virtually nothing, it should be interesting to see what Democrats think about the financial shenanigans that were recently uncovered relating to the Clintons:
  • According to a recent interview by Congressman Mark Meadows, three whistleblowers have come forward and provided hundreds of pages of information relating to possibly illegal and unethical financial activities relative to the Clinton Foundation.
  • The whistleblower documents allege misuse of charity funds and quid-pro-quo promises made to rich Foundation donors.
  • Meadows has called for Congressional hearings relative to an already investigation going on relative to the Foundation.
  • That investigation has been going on since 2018 and is being led by U.S. Attorney John Huber.
  • Huber recently requested documents from MDA Analytics LLC, a company that has been investigating the Clinton Foundation.
  • MDA recently contacted the FBI in Arkansas, the Department of Justice and the IRS to share the findings that their analysis has turned up.
  • Back in 2016, Clinton Foundation CFO, Andrew Kessel, allegedly told MDA that, “one of the biggest problems was [former President Bill] Clinton’s commingling and use of business and donated funds and his personal expenses” and that Bill Clinton “mixes and matches his personal business with that of the foundation. Many people within the foundation have tried to caution him about this but he does not listen, and there really is no talking to him.”
  • What is also interesting and suspicious is that back in 2016, when Hillary was running for President, the Foundation pulled in $62.9 million in donations but once she lost out to Trump, the Foundation only pulled in $26.6 million in 2017, about a whopping 60% decline in a single year.
  • Meadows believes that this sudden drop off “raises grave concerns their operations were not above board as the American people have been led to believe. Whenever we look at the possibility of ‘pay to play’ by government officials, current or former, it demands answers, and anyone who uses public office to sell access for their own financial benefit must be held accountable.” 
Should be interesting to see if Nancy Pelosi has any integrity at all and supports an investigation into the Clintons and the possible phony front charity foundation. Given her history of strictly bitter and partisan politics, I doubt it. It is only political opponents that she goes after, integrity and trust be damned.

2) Georgia Congressman Hank Johnson was the laughing stock of Congress, and quite possibly the nation, several years when during a Congressional hearing he wondered and worried out loud that the island of Guam could tip over. Yes, during a hearing on the deployment of naval resources to the island, he asked a high ranking Navy official if the island would tip over if too many resources were deployed there.

If this is not enough to show how perverted and insane our political processes have become, that someone like this not only got elected once but has been reelected since showing these extreme ignorance, than nothing is.

But that does not stop him for continuing to speak silliness and ignorance:
  • During the debate on Trump’s impeachment, Johnson stated that Trump should be impeached because he is taller that Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
  • Specifically, “Colleague from Georgia talks about how Democrats are trying to make Zelensky look weak. Well, I’ll tell you. That brings to mind the picture of President Trump and President Zelensky meeting in New York in September at the UN — and a big chair for President Trump — a little chair for President Zelensky.” 
  • Forget high crimes and misdemeanors as outlined in the Constitution, let’s impeach Trump because he is taller than another nation’s leader.
  • Johnson did not know when to shut up, going on to describe Trump as, “Big, 6’4″ President Trump and 5′ 11″ Mr. Zelensky.”
  • And he is not even right with his “facts” since if you look at the picture of the two leaders shaking hands, the chairs are identical in size and style, one is not bigger than the other.



You cannot make up this nonsense. During the very serious process of impeachment this guy is focused on Trump’s height rather than reality. To see this foolery in action, go to the following link to see that Johnson is actually this out of touch with reality:

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2019/12/democrat-village-idiot-hank-johnson-wants-to-impeach-president-trump-for-checks-notes-being-too-tall-video/

3) So many times we have had to review the insane comments, logic, and positions of Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Despite having a college business degree she did not know the simple definition of the unemployment rate. Despite running for Congress, she did not know the three branches of government. The list goes on and on and can be reviewed by simply putting her name in the search box above.

And despite her history of speaking from a position of ignorance, she continues to stick her foot in her mouth as recently illustrated:
  • She recently asserted that the Democratic Party should go back to the way the party used to be and the values it represented, specifically citing the Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
  • She also said that the party needed to return to its roots during the passage of the Civil Rights Act back in the 1960s.
  • Specifically, “I want to be the party of the New Deal again. The party of the Civil Rights Act, the one that electrified this nation and fights for all people. For that, many would call us radical. But we aren’t “pushing the party left,” we are bringing the party home.”
  • She obviously does not realize that FDR did not fight for the rights of tens of thousands of Japanese American during World War II since he shipped them off to internment camps in one of the most egregious violations of human rights in this country’s history.
  • She obviously does not realize that Democrats opposed the Civil Rights Act and filibustered the bill for 75 days until Republicans were able to get it passed through the Senate.
  • She obviously does not realize that a higher percentage of Republican in Congress voted for the Civil Rights Act than the percentage of Democrats in Congress that voted for it.
  • She obviously does not realize that it was a Republican President, Eisenhower, who made tremendous strides in breaking the back of segregation in the 1950s.
  • She obviously does not realize that the Democratic Party was the party of the Ku KLux KLan and Jim Crow laws after the Civil War.
The ignorance of this member of Congress continues to boggle the mind just about every time she speaks. Combine her erroneous rantings with the Georgia Congressman who thinks a Pacific island can actually tip over...a Texas Congresswoman who thinks the Constitution is 400 years old AND who wanted to know if an exploring vehicle on Mars was going to be near the area where Neil Armstrong walked on the moon... a Speaker of the House who actually said a piece of legislation had to be passed in order to find out what was in that legislation and you can see why we feel our political processes are so broken that these types of people actually hold public office.

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:

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






Tuesday, April 30, 2019

April, 2019, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: More Government Health Care Intervention Equals Less Quality Health Care

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

It never had a chance to be successful since it really never addressed the underlying root causes of our ever increasing health costs in the country:
  • Americans eat too much of the wrong kind of food, resulting in obscenely high obesity rates for the country.
  • Our food chain is infested with overdoses of high fructose corn syrup, salt, and other unhealthy additives.
  • Americans smoke too much.
  • Americans do not exercise enough.
  • The country is in serious need of health care tort reform.
  • Barriers to insurance company competition across state lines need to come down.
  • Obama Care never “followed the money” to find out who is actually profiting from the ever escalating healthcare costs in this country and how to get those factors under control.
  • Obama Care never got the immense amount of fraud and abuse in current government healthcare programs, Medicare and Medicaid, under control in order to save money to efficiently fund other government health care initiatives.
  • Obama Care never put serious research money towards curing the major diseases that drive high healthcare costs such as high frequency cancers and dementia type diseases.
You cannot resolve any problem unless you understand and address the underlying root causes. No difference here: Obama Care legislation never addressed these listed root causes and thus, has no chance of ever being successful.

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

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

Let's continue with more disasters today:

1) Although Obama Care and its socialistic tenets turned out to be a massive failure, liberals and Democrats want to go further down this road of failure to a single payer, socialistic health care system in this country. They like to point out that other countries, usually using the Scandinavian countries as an example, have a single payer system and thus, based on that fact alone, we should have it in this country.

But numerous times we have shown what a failure the single payer system is. Long delays to get in to see a doctor, waiting months to get a simple diagnostic test done. Higher and higher healthcare taxes to get less and less healthcare coverage. Citizens leaving a country to come to the U.S. because the wait times for a procedure is so long in a single payer system. Basically, expensive healthcare that makes you die younger.

But the Legal Insurrection website recently ran article that shows that single payer systems in Scandinavian countries are not all that liberals think they are or dream they are:
  • The Washington Free Beacon reported: The government of Finland collapsed Friday “due to the rising cost of universal health care and the prime minister’s failure to enact reforms to the system.”
  • This caused Prime Minister Juha Sipila and his entire cabinet to resign after his governing coalition could pass the necessary laws to reform the government’s single payer health care system.Much like the U.S., Finland has an aging population with 26% of its citizens expected to be over the age of 65 by 2030.An aging population almost always means higher and higher healthcare costs.
  • To head off financial disaster, Finland has tried to cut costs and boost health care efficiency for years but has been unsuccessful in doing so, resulting in more and more financial distress for the government.
  • And according to Reuters, Finland is not alone in this crisis: “Nordic countries, where comprehensive welfare is the cornerstone of the social model, have been among the most affected. But reform has been controversial and, in Finland, plans to cut costs and boost efficiency have stalled for years.”
  • Other Nordic countries with single payer systems such as Sweden and Norway are facing similar health care financial stress.
Nasty stuff, people getting older and their government likely not going to be able to fulfill its commitment of health care. And yet, liberals and Democrat in Washington continue to champion a losing approach to healthcare with a recent tweet by Bernie Sanders showing just how ignorant he is of reality and finance: “In the United States it costs on average $12,000 to have a baby. In Finland it costs $60.”

So Sanders thinks that for $60 you can give birth to a baby in Finland and that $60 will cover hospital, doctor, nurse, and medicine costs for the birth. It does not cost $60, Bernie. It costs much more, it is just that the couple having the baby pay less while the rest of Finland society and taxpayers pay much more than $60. Are you that ignorant of finance or are you just a flat out liar? In either case, single payer systems are not efficient, effective, or healthy for sick citizens. Obama Care proved that and the Scandinavian countries, along with England and Canada, prove that every day.

2) Chris Pope, recently writing for the National Review website, wrote an excellent article that not only showed how bad Obama Care was but how bad Medicare For All would be, which is really Obama Care on steroids. Rather than review all aspects of his in depth and well researched and reasoned article, I encourage you to read it at:


My trying to summarize his analysis and logic would not do it justice. But let me pull out some facts and realities from his work that prove again that Obama Care is nothing more than a series of unfolding disasters, much like Medicare For All would be:
  • Mr. Pope reminds us that Obama and the entire set of Washington Democrats promised us that Obama Care would reduce costs and improve medical and health care delivery.
  • Obama actually promised that an average American family could actually see their annual health care insurance costs go down by up to $2,500 a year.
  • Of course that did not happen, health insurance premiums skyrocketed, health insurance copays skyrocketed, millions of American lost access to their favorite doctors and hospitals and drug costs continued to escalate.
  • By the numbers, health insurance premiums for individual health insurance programs under Obama Care doubled within three years of the legislation being passed.
  • Premiums for Obama Care health insurance plans now average $4,700 a year, almost $400 a month, hardly the $2,500 reduction Obama promised.
  • And yet Democrats want even more government intervention in the market even though Obama Care’s intervention was a disaster.
  • The state of Vermont, a very liberal state that is the home of Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders, a big Medicare For All advocate, tried to implement a single payer system in 2014.
  • Thus, if any part of the country had any chance of making a single payer system work, it was Vermont.
  • And yet, when the liberal politicians in Vermont ran the numbers and actually looked at the reality, they decided they could not afford a single payer system.
  • The costs on a national level, costs that Vermont found out quite rudely, would add $3 TRILLION to the Federal government operating costs every year, more than double the amount that the Federal government collects in personal income taxes.
  • This $3 TRILLION annual incremental cost was independently arrived by analysis done by both the liberal leaning Urban Institute and the conservative leaning Mercatus Center.
  • Even Nancy Pelosi’s health policy advisor, Wendell Primus, notes that, “recently noted as fundamental obstacles to Medicare for All the large number of potential losers, widespread opposition from stakeholders, and the desire to reserve funds for other priorities. As the party’s presidential candidates for 2020 have jockeyed for position, many have endorsed proposals in full knowledge that they cannot be implemented. Indeed, even Bernie Sanders of Vermont, whose state enacted single-payer but abandoned the plan when the scale of associated tax increases became clear, has refused to advocate abolishing the filibuster in order to enact Medicare for All.”
  • One version of Medicare For All that is less expensive than the full blown Medicare for All theory is to allow people of all ages to “buy in” to the program, a facet of Medicare that already exists for senior citizens that have not contributed enough in payroll taxes over their lifetime to qualify for regular Medicare.
  • However, this program would cost Medicare For All customers to currently pay $974 a month for Medicare Parts A,B, and D, hardly affordable for most Americans.
  • Many Obama Care programs cost much less than $974 a month so things would be worse, not better, under Medicare For All.
  • But as soon as liberals decide that the $974 should be subsidized then we are right back to an incremental $3 TRILLION a year in cost.
  • And liberals never seem to talk about the reality, that according to Gallup, 80% of Americans rate their current health care as excellent or good so why would the vast majority of Americans want to give up their current excellent or good health care for a long shot, long odds program like Medicare For All?
  • Plus, the average out of pocket costs that Americans pay as a share of average household consumption (3%) is actually slightly less than the average among developed countries, another reality that liberals like to ignore.
But consider another reality that the article does not cover: do you really think that Washington, like the following idiots, should be trusted with every aspect of your medical care:
  • Democratic Congressman Hank Johnson actually stated in a televised Congressional hearing that he was worried the island of Guam could tip over in the Pacific Ocean.
  • Democratic Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee thinks the Constitution is over 400 years old, that her Congressional district is 50 feet below sea level (it is not), and wondered out loud if a Mars Rover mission would drive by the place where Neil Armstrong planted the flag on the moon.
  • Democratic Speaker of The House Nancy Pelosi once proudly stated that the Obama Care legislation had to be passed so that she and the rest of the country could see what was in it, like a Christmas present.
  • And of course, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez does not know the simple definition of the unemployment rate, does not know how tax credits work, chased Amazon and its 25,000 high paying jobs out of her Congressional district, etc., etc., etc.
So, Scandinavian countries’ single payer healthcare plans are going bankrupt, with costs increasing as quality goes down, and Medicare For All is so stupid and ill fated along every dimension imaginable. It is a no brainer that the ore government and the politicians who operate it the less healthy and less wealthy people become.

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:

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