Showing posts with label ireland. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ireland. Show all posts

Friday, April 21, 2023

The Biden Presidency: Worst President, By Far, In My Lifetime.

 I have been voting in Presidential elections since the mid-1970s. I have never voted for a Republican for President and thus, I did not vote for Trump either time he ran. However, it is my opinion that the country has never been served by a more inept, useless, and feeble minded President than Joe Biden. His racist, sexual predator, and pathological lying history before being elected to President is legendary and was listed out in the following post:

https://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2020/10/october-2020-part-3-political-class.html


And his behavior and effectiveness once installed as President has proven that his lackluster Congressional record and history have now translated into a lackluster, failed Presidency. His Presidency has resulted in much more Federal  government debt, unnecessary deaths, constant embarrassments on the domestic and international scene, more and more burdens on ordinary Americans, a failed international diplomacy, and just an overall performance to failure. Don’t agree? Please consider the following situation of this Presidency and the country two years plus into his administration:


1)Overall inflation during his tenure had  reached levels not experienced in this country in 40 years and even though the rate of inflation has subsided from those record high levels, it still is running about two and half times higher than when Biden took office.


2)Gas prices at one point were over 100% higher than when Biden took office and while they have subsided somewhat they are still about 75% higher than when he took office.


3)Food, utility and other basic life needs have also seen their prices increase dramatically during the past two years or so.


4)Biden has weaponized the FBI and IRS, using those agents to harass and threaten ordinary Americans who were simply expressing their Constitutional First Amendment rights on a variety of issues including the Second Amendment, abortion, religion, and other topics.


5)Biden has sent the FBI and Department of Justice to harass parents who were legally and non-violently challenging the policies of their local school boards.


6)Biden has so alienated the Saudis that they have completed an agreement with the Chinese that will result in oil sales being completed in the Chinese yuan currency, an agreement that threatens the petrodollar and which will likely result in more inflation in this country.


7)Brazil has also just completed a major  trade and oil deal with China that will also have negative petrodollar and  domestic inflation implications.


8)Biden has done nothing to diplomatically end the Ukraine/Russian conflict, having had no direct discussion and negotiations with Putin and his Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, waited over a year to have any contact with Russia’s foreign minister regarding the war, despicable and inept diplomacy.


9)Biden’s lax border policies have allowed massive amounts of illegal drugs, especially fentanyl, to flood into this country, resulting in the incremental and unnecessary deaths of thousands and thousands of Americans.


10)Biden’s lax border policies have caused many, many deaths of illegal immigrants in their attempt to enter the country and who have perished because of drowning, harsh desert travel conditions, and violent human traffickers.


11)Biden’s lax border policies have allowed criminal and terrorist parties to enter the country and set up shop in cities and states across the country, endangering the lives of regular Americans.


12)Biden’s lax border policies have strained local and state budget resources in order to feed, house, and process millions of illegal immigrants, resources that could have been spent to help hungry, homeless, and drug addicted Americans.


13)Biden claimed to be the “unity President” but his actions and silence have proven that he is looking for the exact opposite of unity, threatening to attack innocent Americans standing up for their Constitutional rights with Air Force F 15s and remaining silent while numerous liberals and Democrats have called for the murder and for violence against Americans who simply have a different opinion than them:


  • Musician Stevie Van  Zandt - Republicans are cockroaches that need to be exterminated.

  • Wayne State professor Stevie Shaviro - in reference to republicans and conservative Americans: "Although I do not advocate violating federal and state criminal codes, I think it is far more admirable to kill a racist, homophobic, or transphobic speaker than it is to shout them down."

  • Press Secretary to Arizona governor - Josselyn Berry, tweeted: “Us when we see transphobes,” accompanying an image of a woman holding a gun in each hand.


14)Biden has also sat passively by when Democrats, liberal news outlets, and others have called ordinary Americans with differing opinions than them Nazis, racists, white supremacists, and a whole host of other defamatory names, hardly the behavior you want from a “unity” President.


15)Since Biden became President, he has made a whopping 55 visits to his houses in his home state of Delaware, a total of 174 days, i.e. he has spent more than 25% of his time in office at home, away from Washington, away from the problems of the country.


16)Biden has failed to bring law enforcement aid to mostly liberal, Democratically controlled cities who have seen their violent crime rates skyrocket since he became President, endangering the lives and families of those residents in those cities.


16)Biden’s budget proposals for the coming years continue to add more and more debt to the $31,000,000,000,000 national debt, a debt load that will eventually crash the economy and our democracy if not brought under control.


17)Biden has shown no plans, intellectual ability, or intention of fixing the Social Security and Medicare programs that are hurtling towards bankruptcy and which will reduce retirement and medical support to tens of millions of Americans within the next decade.


18)Despite millions of Americans being hungry,  homeless, and fighting drug addiction, he has sent over $100 billion to the Ukrainians, much of which has never been used for its intended uses and siphoned off by criminals and political entities, to support the fight against the Russians, needy Americans be damned.


19)He has probably held fewer press conferences than any other President in recent history.


20)Biden has soured Americans on their quality of life with only 20% of Americans now unable to buy a house given the high mortgage rates of Biden’s economic policies, 70% of Americans say they are feeling financially stressed, and 58% of Americans say they are living paycheck to paycheck.


21)Biden’s exit plan from Afghanistan was the height of chaos and confusion, resulting in the unnecessary deaths of a dozen American servicemen and women, untold number of deaths of hundreds/thousands of Afghan citizens, an unknown number of American citizens left behind to deal with the chaos on their own, and the leaving behind about $80 billion worth of American taxpayer funded military equipment for the Taliban to use as they desire.


22) There have been more train derailments in just the past two years of the Biden administration than many preceding administrations combined, with Biden’s Secretary of Transportation having no clue and no plan on how to prevent future train derailments.


23)When a train carrying dangerous chemicals derailed near East Palestine, Ohio, catching on fire and spewing dangerous fumes across the countryside, Biden chose to visit the Ukrainian capital city of Kiev for a photo op rather than visit and help protect the lives of Americans affected by the derailment and dangerous fumes, a visit he has still not made.


24)Biden has constantly embarrassed himself and the country in public, domestically and on the world stage, with stupid and inaccurate statements and lies:


  • During a recent visit to Ireland, he confused the New Zealand  All Blacks rugby team with the Blacks and Tans, an English military force that terrorized Ireland early in the last century.

  • He recently said, “I may be Irish but I  am not stupid,” implying that Irish people are stupid.

  • At a White House speech celebrating a recent piece of legislation, Biden cried out, “Where’s Jackie?”, a reference to Congresswoman Jackie Walorski who had recently died in a car accident but whom Biden expected to be in attendance at the White House gathering.

  • In a recent visit to Rolling Fork, Mississippi to show support for area residents who suffered damages from recent storms and tornadoes, he constantly referred to Rolling Fork as Rolling Stone, the magazine.

  • Biden called former black Congressman, Cedric Richmond, “boy,” certainly a derogatory term for a black American, during a FEMA conference, "I'm here with my senior adviser and boy who knows Louisiana very, very well and New Orleans, Cedric Richmond.”

  • The list of similar Biden gaffes and embarrassments could go on and on but you get the idea, he continues to embarrass himself and the country with his inappropriate and just plain wrong assertions and comments.


25)Biden's economic sanctions on Russia, meant to punish them for their invasion of Ukraine, have been an abysmal failure with Russia recently setting a monthly sales record of their oil and natural gas, something that was never supposed to happen under Biden's sanctions.


26)Much like Afghanistan, it appears that the Biden administration will leave thousands of American citizens behind to cope and survive on their own in the midst of the violent civil war currently underway in the Sudan


27)At least one IRS whistle blower has come forward to accuse Biden of illegally interfering in an IRS investigation into potential criminal activities of his son.


28)Biden plans to hire and arm over 80,000 new IRS agents to hassle lower and middle class American taxpayers rather than hiring over 80,000 armed police officers to protect our schools and kids.


29)Biden is giving $2 billion of American taxpayer money to a United Nations group that is promoting green energy in countries around the world rather than feeding America's hungry, housing America's homeless, or treating America's drug addicted citizens.


I dare anyone create a similar list to disprove my theory that Biden is the worst President in my lifetime. People have unnecessarily died as a result of Biden's policies, Americans are still homeless, hungry, and drug addicted as a result of Biden’s policies, Americans are poorer as a result of Biden’s policies, and Americans’ lives are in a tougher position as a result of Biden’s policies. Worst President of my lifetime.


Post script: The latest NBC opinion poll shows that about 70% of Americans do not want Biden to run for President again including a majority of Democrats (51%) who were polled. Thus, if your own party does not want you to run again, it is a pretty safe assumption that the country is fed up with Biden's failures after just over two years in 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:


Friday, June 5, 2015

June, 2015, Part 5, Political Class Insanity: The IRS Is Still A Joke, The TSA Is Still A Joke, The Feds' Cash Management Is Still A Joke

It is the start of another month which means it is time to review the latest political class insanity that the American political class has dropped on our heads in the past month or so. We do this review every month in order to continually prove our view that we are currently being served by the worst set of politicians in the history of our country. Their inane quotes, their failed programs and laws, their wasteful spending, their ineptness, and continued focus on their own careers and self enrichment at the expense of taxpayers is constant and disgraceful.

This month could be one of the worst ever, given the backlog that needs to be discussed. The insanity will cover a full range of areas where today’s politicians continue to disappoint and fail us. As always, the news ways they find to screw up is never ending and always creative.

1) We have previously shown that the Defense Department is really good at wasting taxpayer wealth. Numerous times we have reported on how the U.S. Navy built two warships almost to completion at a cost of $300 million and then spent another $10 million to dismantle and scrap them before they were ever used. We reported earlier this week on how the construction of the latest U.S. Navy aircraft carrier is already $300 million over budget and it is not completed yet.

But according to a recent Politico article, the Defense Department can waste money in much smaller quantities but in a no less despicable manner:
  • According to a Defense Department audit analysis: “A Defense Department audit has found that a number of Pentagon employees used their government credit cards to gamble and pay for ‘adult entertainment’ — findings that are expected to lead department officials to issue stern new warnings.” 
  • That’s right, taxpayer money being used for gambling across the country, specifically Las Vegas and Atlantic City, along with it being used for hookers and “escorts.”
  • The wasteful spending was done by both military personnel and civilians working with the Pentagon.
  • Besides just plain wasting taxpayer money, the activities were also used to cover up gambling and escort service usage from spouses: “A Pentagon official briefed on some of the findings stressed that the federal government did not necessarily pay the charges; holders of the cards pay their own bills and then submit receipts to be reimbursed for expenses related to their government business. The official said that the employees may have used the government cards for gambling and escort services in order to shield the charges from spouses.”
  • The misuse and abuse of taxpayer money continued over the past three years despite a law that was passed in 2012 that was supposed to eliminate this type of waste.
  • Unfortunately, the abuse is not restricted to the defense Department since Politico also reported that Federal employees in other government entities, including Homeland Security, the Department of Labor, and Bureau Of Land Management, also abused their government credit cards.
  • The inspector general in the Department of Labor found that their employees in the Job Corps program charged nearly $100,000 to the government for haircuts, clothing, and personal cell phone service. 
  • In the Department of Homeland Security, Coast Guard employees charged more than $12,000 at a single California coffee shop on their government issued credit cards.
  • Three employees were fired and two resigned last year at the Bureau of Land Management after they charged a whopping $800,000 worth of gift cards on their government credit cards.
A few observations here:
  • First, are you kidding me? Three years after Congress passed a law cracking down on this type of taxpayer abuse it is still going on at such mind boggling levels and across so many Federal entities?
  • Why have these employees just been allowed to resign? They should have been prosecuted for breaking the law, made to pay back the money they abused, possibly go to jail, and forfeit any government pension or other benefits they may have been entitled to if they had not broken the law.
  • In addition, their bosses, who allowed this fraud to go on, should be at least fired.
Only in Washington and government jobs are there no consequences for breaking the law.

2) I would assume most of our readers fly on a domestic U.S. airplane flight at least once in a while. In which case, we are always witnessed to what looks like extensive security screening by Federal employees of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) when we check in at the airport. Makes you feel kinda safe, seeing all of those Federal employees patting down 85 year old grandmothers and five year old kids to make sure they are not carrying any weapons onto your flight.

Well, think again. According to a recent ABC News scoop, it appears that the TSA failed to identify and stop undercover government agents from smuggling fake weapons through TSA screening stations an amazing 67 out of 70 times. Another way of saying the same thing is that the TSA was successful in their jobs 3 times out of 70, a miserable success rate of just over 4%.

Ask yourself: if you were successful in your job 4% of the time, how long would you have that job? Not very long I bet. The TSA budget is easily billions of dollars a year and they cannot do better than 4%? Pathetic.

But typical for government operations and employees. Many countries around the world and some airports in the U.Sl. use private company screeners for the TSA job at their airports. History shows that private contractors do a much better job than TSA screeners when it comes to airport security. Of course, at a 4% success rate, it is not too hard to do a much better job than TSA screeners. 

It is obvious what needs to be done: we need to adapt the more effective ways of other countries and hire private contractors to do the job the TSA has failed at miserably for the past fourteen years. It is so obvious you can be sure that Washington politicians will never come up with this simple solution.

3) Earlier in this political class insanity series this month we discussed the situation where likely Russian hackers broke into IRS computer files and stole the vital personal information of about 100,000 taxpayers, making those taxpayers much more susceptible to identity theft. The IRS commissioner then had the nerve to claim that the IRS did not have a security breach...despite the fact that hackers stole private information of 100,000 Americans.

Well, apparently the IRS commissioner also has another security breach and it is not in far away Russia, it was in an IRS office in St.Louis:
  • An IRS employee in that office pled guilty recently to charges of tax fraud.
  • Apparently, employee Demetria Brown stole $326,000 from the IRS when she used stolen taxpayer personal information to create fake tax returns, file them, and have the IRS tax refunds sent six different bank accounts in five different states.
  • She carried out this embezzlement as an IRS employee for four years, from 2008 to 2011.
  • She now faces up to 42 years in prison and $75,000 in fines according to news reports. Why she does not face fines at least equal to what she stole from the IRS and American taxpayers is unknown.
I wonder if the IRS commissioner would consider this a security breach or just an IRS employee doing her job?

4) Let’s finish up today’s insanity with another kick in the stomach of the IRS while they are down. According to a recent article by Stephen Dinan of the Washington Times: 
  • A new audit of the IRS found that the IRS paid out at least $2.1 billion in bogus refunds in 2012 according to a new audit report.
  • In addition, the IRS somehow found a way to pay out refunds on 600 tax refunds that were filed from the same address in….Kilkennny, Ireland.
  • Let me repeat the previous example of insanity and ineptness: the IRS sent refund checks containing U.S. taxpayer money 600 times to the same address in Ireland.
  • In another piece of ineptness, the IRS paid refunds on 133 different tax returns that all had the exact same bank account number.
  • Just in 2012 alone that bank account was sent an amazing $800,000 form the IRS.
  • In a major understatement, the IRS inspector general stated: “Identity theft continues to be a serious and evolving issue.” Ya think???
I have a few questions for the IRS commissioner:
  • Is it too much trouble to have a little bit of computer code that says once you have sent a few dozen tax refunds to the same address in Ireland that maybe you do a little investigating?
  • Is it too much trouble to have a little bit of computer code that says once you have sent a few dozen tax refunds to the same bank account that maybe you do a little investigating?
  • Is it too much trouble to have a little bit of computer code that warns long before you send $800,000 to the same bank account?
Still hard to believe that the IRS commissioner does not think he has a security breach when people in Ireland are siphoning off thousands and thousands of taxpayer dollars.

That will do it for today’s insanity. We saw today that the IRS is still a joke, the TSA is still a joke, and the Federal government’s cash management is still a joke. Which makes every Washington politicians still a joke also.

More insanity tomorrow.

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


www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org

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




Monday, March 21, 2011

The New CBO Budget Numbers Are In And The New CBO Budget Numbers Are Not Good

From a historical point of view, we are in the  midst of three history making upheavals that will have long term impacts throughout the world, certainly interesting times. The first upheaval is the earthquake disaster in Japan and what the recovery time and costs will do to the world economy. Second, the quest for freedom in the Middle East and how this quest is likely to have both good and bad consequences for various parts of the world including the U.S. And finally, the financial integrity disintegration of the United States economy through the mismanagement of the country's financial health by the political class.

Today's post concerns the last history making event, the financial destruction of the United States. The Associated Press reported on March 19, 2011 that a new evaluation of the Obama administration's long term budget by the Congressional Budget office (CBO) revealed that we are much closer to our financial collapse than even the most pessimistic among us could have thought. Before going into the details of the article, let's review where we know our national financial health is today:
  • The Federal government national debt is around $14 TRILLION and climbing rapidly.
  • This debt places an average debt burden on each U.S. household of about $122,000.
  • The February, 2011 monthly incremental debt was about $225 billion or about $2,000 per household. In other words, in February, each American household was responsible for $2,000 that the Federal government spent that it did not have the tax revenue to cover.
  • In the past four years that the Democrats controlled Congress, the national debt rose over $4 TRILLION.
Nasty, nasty stuff. However, now the CBO has released its latest estimates and they are not good:
  • Obama's original budget estimate called for an additional $7.2 TRILLION worth of debt over the next ten years or about $63,000 per U.S.household.
  • However, the CBO estimates that this is a very, very optimistic number based on some faulty assumptions and that the increase in the national debt is likely to be $2.3 TRILLION higher or $9.5 TRILLION.
  • Thus, between the existing $14 TRILLION and the additional $9.5 TRILLION debt that the Obama budget will incur, every U.S. household will be on the hook for about $204,000 of the national debt within ten years.
  • This debt will be more than one and half times the size of one year's gross domestic product. In other words, the country would have to work more than 18 months to pay off the debt and not spend any money on anything else including food, products, services, etc.
  • The new CBO numbers estimate the Obama Care will also be $90 billion more expensive than previously hyped by the administration, substantially reducing any positive budget effects from the legislation, one of its main selling points originally.
  • The Obama administration estimates that the deficit will eventually be reduced to about 3% of the GDP number but the CBO disagrees, estimating that the deficit will never get below 4% of the GDP which would still make it unacceptably high.
  • The difference in estimates between the CBO and the administration is that the CBO does not believe in the "rosy" assumptions in the President's budget, it does not believe that the government will collect all of the increased tax dollars it assumed, it does not believe that the political class has the will power to reduce Medicare payments (which it has never had int he past), and there is no substantiation for "unspecified bipartisan financing," all very legitimate disagreements to have with Obama's budget.
  • The White House does not dare disagree with the CBO estimates or methodology since it used the CBO estimates to sell in its own health care reform legislation. Thus, if they vilify these CBO budget numbers they nullify the Obama Care numbers.
  • The situation has gotten so bad that 64 Senators, 32 from each political party, recently signed a bipartisan letter to Obama that called on him to take the lead in developing a strategic and comprehensive budget reduction plan along the lines of Obama's own deficit reduction commission's findings, the very commission that Obama commissioned and then almost completely ignored.
We are witnessing historical financial distress and the administration does not even acknowledge how bad the situation is by developing outrageous spending plans that add TRILLIONS to the deficit while ignoring its own commission that would help fix the problem. Both political parties, as witnessed by the Senators' letters, realize that the problem needs urgent attention. Only the White House and the current resident seem to see no urgency in this area.

If they do not reverse their attitudes, take the lead, and make some bold and courageous moves, we are likely to end up like the economy of Ireland, whose status was reviewed in the March 11, 2011 issue of The Week Magazine. According to an article by Colin Barr of Fortune that was summarized in that issue of The Week:
  • Ireland has imposed two years of painful austerity on its citizens for its mismanagement of the economy.
  • As a result, wages are falling, unemployment has tripled to 13%, and younger Irish citizens are leaving the country in larger and larger numbers.
  • Investors who are buying Irish government bonds are insisting on a return of at least 8%.
This is what has happened in Greece, has happened in Ireland and other European countries who let their government spending get out of control. Economic hardship, as the interest on the piles of debt get higher and higher and standards of living get lower and lower. It is a fate that we face unless the President somehow does a turnaround and starts leading for once and stops touring other countries, stops playing golf so often, and stops being just a typical Chicago politician.

And it is not as if most of the heavy lifting has not already been done for him. His deficit reduction commission appears to have done a fine job and detailed analysis of how to get spending under control. The Cato Institute has gone through the current Federal government budget line by line and has identified hundreds of billions of dollars that could be pared from the Federal government without undue harm to ordinary Americans. Think tanks, both convervative and liberal, have done the same. Step 1 from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" lays out a straightforward approach to systematically cut government down to size over a five year time frame so that the pain is equally shared across everyone. All that is needed is a leader, not a politician, to lead the way.

A famous Chinese saying goes as follows: "May you live in interesting times." On the surface this looks like a positive thought and intent, may you have an interesting journey through life. However, if you do a little research on the saying, it really is meant to be a curse and to be read as follows: "May you experience much upheaval and trouble in your life." From Japan to the Middle East to the precarious financial situation our politicians have put us into, we are expereincing much upheaval and trouble, neither of which will enhance our individual freedom and liberty in the long run.

For as the government's financial situation collapses, it will draw down/confiscate more and more wealth from its citizens in a desperate last attempt to prop up the financial system of the country which is buckling under over $20 TRILLION worth of debt. When government gets into the confiscation game to cover its own incompetent bungling, you are no longer living in a free country. Interesting, and troubling, and sad, and as the CBO numbers illustrate, not good.





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.repealamendment