September, 2025, Part 5, Political Class Insanity: the Sate Government Race To Bankruptcy Court Continues and They Lied About The Covid Vaccine

 There is a lot going on in the world: Obama and Russiagate findings, Middle East powder keg, the Russian/Ukrainian war, etc. But through all this, the American political class continues to  constantly deliver its own special brand of insanity, stupidity, wasteful taxpayer spending, and ineffective government programs.

1)We have often discussed the race to bankruptcy court that a number of states (California, New Jersey, New York, Illinois) and cities (New York  City, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco) are currently competing in. These cities and states have been run by politicians that have caused mass migration of residents and businesses out of these states and cities because of a number of common problems:

• High crime rates.

• High taxes.

• High energy costs.

• High  homelessness rates.

• Failing public schools.

• Crumbling infrastructure.

As residents and businesses leave these locales, the tax base shrinks which causes their politicians to raise tax rates and burdens to  make up for the shrinking tax base which drives more residents and businesses out of the cities and states which further reduces the tax base and eventually the city or state goes bankrupt.

Over time, the  best candidates to make it to bankruptcy court first changes as events unfold. And it looks like California continues to have a strong position:

• From the most recent government unemployment statistics we see that California has the worst unemployment position of all 50 states.

• According  to the San  Francisco Chronicle newspaper, the California unemployment climbed up to 5.5% in July.

• The most populous state in the country was only able to add 15,000 jobs in  July.

• The state’s unemployment rate is about 28% higher than the national average which came out as 4.2%.

Given that we have already discussed the reality that companies like Tesla, Toyota, Schwab, Bed, Bath, and Beyond etc. and many others have already moved operations and jobs to other states, it should not be a surprise that the unemployment rate in California is higher and possibly trending higher. This could be a good leading indicator that California may be the leader in the race to bankruptcy. And yet, the state politicians' apparently have  no clue how to lose this race. The unemployment numbers do not lie.

The only good news for California is that other states heading to bankruptcy are not doing that great either:

• New Jersey’s current unemployment rate is 4.9%, making it the 44th worst rate.

• Illinois’s current unemployment rate is 4.6%, making it the 40th worst rate.

• Only New York is in decent unemployment shape, ranking 28th with an unemployment rate of 4.0%.

Thus, the race to  bankruptcy court is still too close to call.

2)Staying with likely state and city government bankruptcies, a recently released analysis from the database, “Vote With Your Feet,” analyzed the migration patterns of citizens from  state to state and what each state is  losing, or gaining, from a wealth perspective, wealth that feeds the tax coffers of local and state governments. 

The analysis is based on IRS data from 2012 to 2022 which  not only tracked residents moving in and out of states but also what the IRS calls aggregated gross income (AGI) that moved with these moving citizens. And not surprisingly, as we pointed out above and other times, four states stand out as losing their tax base, which  makes it easier for them to win the race to bankruptcy court:

• New York was the top, and unfortunate, loser of citizen AGI over the decade, with net migration of citizens resulting in New York’s economy losing over $111 billion in AGI.

• California was also a big loser,  losing $102 billion in AGI during the decade.

• Illinois lost $63 billion and New Jersey lost $31 billion.

• Thus, the four states that we predict will lead the fight into bankruptcy, New York, California, Illinois, and New Jersey combined to lose over $300 billion in AGI according to the analysis.

• This is $300 billion that cannot be taxed, cannot contribute to the growth in the economy  and reduces the job creation capability of these states.

• Not surprising, between New York and California, these two states saw their tax base shrink by 3.4  million residents.

• And these states are the ones with heavy taxation burdens, heavy business regulation burden, high crime rates, high homelessness problems, and other issues that have heaped convince residents to seek  out  better quality of life for their families, a life that has less taxation, less  regulation,  lower crime rates, and lower homelessness situations.

• Florida and Texas, states with better quality of life measures including lower taxation, were the big AGI winners.

• Florida gained a whopping $198 billion in  AGI and 1.6 new residents over the decade and Texas gained $54 billion in AGI.

Thus, we still stand by our assertion that four states, Illinois, New York, California, and New Jersey are the top candidates to bankrupt their state government in the relatively near future as they continue to  hemorrhage residents, businesses, and taxable wealth.

3)Over the years we have covered so many instances where government officials and politicians flat out lied about an issue or topic. A good summary of one politician’s lies, Joe Biden, was summarized in the following post:

https://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2023/01/38-times-that-joe-biden-blatantly-lied.html

But he is not close to being the only one. Recent big lies that the government put forth were connected  to the  covid epidemic. Government folks and politicians told us that the virus occurred naturally (it likely did not), wearing a mask would prevent the spreading of the disease (it likely did  not), if you got the vaccine for covid you would not get the disease (certainly not true) and  other lies that we will not review now.

James O’Keefe is an undercover journalist that gets important  people to  give up their truths and these truths are videotaped and made public. One of his latest captures was when a high level scientist on  the Johnson and Johnson vaccine team candidly and honestly admitted that the covid vaccine his company put out was probably useless and the long term health effects were unknown.

Thus, those actually working on the  vaccine knew their work was bogus but it was making their drug company rich with taxpayer funding.  At the same time,  politicians were lying and telling us that the vaccine would be a life saver and prevent you from  getting the virus. Given the vaccines in real  life did not work, I gotta believe the  Johnson and Johnson researcher was telling the truth and the  politicians and government  officials were again lying.

The distressing reality of their lies can be seen at the following:

https://secure.anedot.com/okeefemediagroup/omg-jj-unsafe-mb-em?source_code=db-omg-em48-006&utm_source=omg-jj-unsafe&utm_medium=em&utm_campaign=mb&amount=25

Enough insanity for today: the government lied again and the race to  bankruptcy court continues unabated.

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Senate Democrats and Their Hypocrisy On Trickle Down Economics

I had wanted to do this post for a while but the constant political class insanity from our political class and the fallout from the worst piece of Washington legislation ever passed, Obama Care, has pushed this piece of political class lunacy to the back burner.

However, it is a good time to do this review of political corporate cronyism for a number of reasons. First, it is always good to see how our politicians in Washington are handing out our tax dollars to their business and union cronies, usually for a return payment to their perpetual reelection campaigns. 

Second, House and Senate politicians have been in secret negotiations over the past few months, trying to finally come up with a formal and rational Federal budget, something they have not done for the past five years. I expect to hear the President, and Reid and Pelosi start yelling really soon that they see a need for tax increases in order to have a sound budget. 

Today, we will again rebut this insanity by showing how billions and billions of dollars could be trimmed from the Federal budget spending stream by stopping the massive corporate welfare that the Federal government indulges in with our wealth. Our constant assertion that no American, rich or poor, should pay an additional penny in taxes as long as the Federal government is as wasteful, petty, and fraud infested with our tax wealth and, as we will see today, as long as they continually give out our tax wealth to their cronies in big business is still valid.

The main basis for this post is an article that was written by Tim Carney in a March Washington Examiner piece: “Trickle-down Dems would line pockets of big business.” He took a detailed look at the budget plan that Senate Democrats had put together.

Remember, Democrats have always tried to position themselves as the protector of the common citizen and that the evil Republicans were in bed with the big, bad corporations that were abusing American citizens and workers in every way possible. As you will see, every politician, including Democrats, are very good at abusing us, as illustrated by their proposed budget back in March, an approach that I bet has not changed at all since then.

When reviewing the following corporate welfare programs the Senate Democrats were propping in that early 2013 budget proposal, keep in mind how they tried to set up the budget philosophy, in their own words: "The Senate Budget takes the position that trickle-down economics has failed as an economic policy and that true national prosperity comes from the middle out, not the top down." 

Trickle down economics has failed? That is their position in the intro to their budget. But they then go off and start giving away billions of taxpayer dollars to rich corporations in the weak, often vain, hope that this will some how trickle down the corporate ladder and create jobs. Hypocrisy at its worst.

1) The so-called Federal Export-Import Bank is supposed to support U.S. exports by lending taxpayer money or guaranteeing private loans to foreign buyers of U.S. goods. Yes, the American taxpayer, via the Federal government, gives our wealth to foreigners to buy products from U.S. companies. The Democrats wanted to keep that entity in existence in their budget proposal.

This might be a good idea except for the fact that like many years before, in 2012 Ex-Im dedicated more than 80 percent of its loan-guarantee dollars to subsidizing Boeing sales. The overwhelming majority of the program’s dollars goes to a single company. Shouldn’t the shareholders and owners of Boeing be the ones helping finance the purchase of its products, not the American taxpayer? 

The writer, Tim Carney, points out the hypocrisy quite nicely: “Democrats may argue that these Boeing subsidies -- and Boeing just got a $1.2 billion guarantee last week -- create jobs. But a party that "creates jobs" by giving taxpayer subsidies to Boeing should not complain about "trickle-down economics."

2) Another crony infested proposal by the Senate Democrats was a $20 billion "investment" in broadband -- laying fiber optics, especially in rural areas. But the New York Times published a story last February about an 11-student schoolhouse in rural Colorado, eleven students total, which received three fiber-optic Internet lines, funded by a whopping $100 million taxpayer grant to a consortium featuring IBM. That comes out to about $33 million for each line, about $9 million for each of eleven students. 

Who's really benefiting here, the students or the companies? And how many “jobs” were created with this $100 million “investment? Probably none, if only three lines were installed. Imagine how much money would be wasted if the Senate actually gave out $20 billion in the same manner.

3) Back within that early 2013 budget attempt was a call to spend money on "Investing in life science research." To prove their point and the priority for spending more on life science research (whatever that means), the Senate Democrats referenced an important sounding group called United for Medical Research (UMR). 

Who or what is UMR? UMR represents two of the biggest lobbying organizations in Washington: the Biotechnology Industry Organization and the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America. Sounds like those folks might have a stake in spending billions on “life science research.” 

But this is the same inane argument as the Ex-Im Bank is for Boeing: if this research is so important and so lucrative, than the businesses and companies behind the UMR should be funding the research out of their shareholder bucket of cash, not the American taxpayer. It is the shareholders who will get the eventual big payoff from the research with likely very few jobs created in the process.

4) Also cited in the Democratic budget proposal is the Alliance for a Stronger FDA, which is another group funded by BIO, PhRMA, Pfizer, Merck, Eli Lilly and Johnson & Johnson. So the big drug companies are at the teller’s window also, looking to get the American taxpayer to fund what they should be paying for from a research perspective.

5) Not mentioned in the article is the hundreds of other sweetheart deals that corporations get from Washington. Solyndra and other crony infested alternative energy companies wasted billions of dollars of taxpayer wealth with nothing in return from an alternative energy perspective. Last week, we talked how General Motors will never repay the American taxpayer the $10 billion it still owes us. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac at last count were approaching almost $200 billion worth of taxpayer bailout costs. Democrats had no problem funding these major corporations with taxpayer payer wealth.

True capitalism requires a level playing field where all the competitors live, thrive or die based on their own hard word, abilities, and innovation. Crony capitalism, as practiced by the Senate Democrats in their budget proposal and day-to-day activities, intentionally tilts the playing field to the advantage of connected companies, usually big companies, that milk the capitalism culture in Washington to their own benefit and the detriment of the American taxpayer and other, more honest competitors.

Consider some information from the political campaign tracking website, Open secrets. According to their analysis, the following companies contributed the indicated amounts of money to politicians:

• In 2012, the Boeing corporation contributed $3.4 million to election campaigns and spent $15.6 million on lobbying.
• Their level of political contributions placed them in the top 99.6% of all contributors and their lobbying expenses placed them in the top 99.7% of all companies that spent money on lobbying.
• In 2012, Johnson and Johnson contributed $1.4 million to election campaigns and spent $5.9 million on lobbying.
• Their level of political contributions placed them in the top 98.7% of all contributors and their lobbying expenses placed them in the top 98.2% of all companies that spent money on lobbying.

You get the idea. In this country today a company can spend a few million dollars on incumbent politicians’ reelection campaigns and lobbying and get billions of dollars in benefits back, courtesy of the American taxpayer. Rather than spend money on new factories or new research like they should be doing, they can now get better financial returns and results, more tax breaks, free use of taxpayer money, etc., by contributing and lobbying rather than investing.

The most insulting part of the whole Senate Democrats’ budget process was the thought that this was NOT trickle down economics. It is the exact definition of trickle down economics, give taxpayer money to preferred corporate friends and cronies and hope that some incremental jobs might get created, enough to get the incumbents reelected. 

I hate it when they think we are too stupid to recognize their lack of integrity and depth. A pathetic way to run a country. A way that leads to wasted spending, declining investment, $17 TRILLION debt loads, crony corruption, and just a slimy feeling of what Washington is all about. 

So when the Democrats emerge from the current secret budget talks, ask them how 1) how much is Boeing, General Motors, Merck, and others getting from the taxpayers this time, and 2) why should we swallow any tax increases on any common American citizen while these corporations are getting billions for spending millions. 

Keep the following image in mind while you wait for the answers to these questions, courtesy of Tim Carney:

There's a colorful description for this sort of policy: feeding the horse to feed the birds. If you want to feed birds, you could set out birdseed in a bird feeder. Or you could throw some hay to the horses, and let the birds feast on what comes out the other end.

Here's a more polite term for the Democrats' economic approach: "trickle down."

BS is BS no matter what you call it. Or in Mr. Carney's example, we have horses rather than bulls so HS is HS no matter what you call it.

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