October, 2020, By The Numbers: Why There Is Only One Issue In This Election, Nothing Else Matters

On a periodic basis we do some posts that fall under the theme of “by the numbers.” Rather than trust what the American political tells us about reality, we like to examine the real numbers and the real reality in the world to understand what is actually going on. Relying on politicians, and their cohorts in the media, to tell us what is reality is always a sucker bet. They have their own agendas and goals, usually centering around their needs and self-enrichment. So we need to look at the reality of the numbers to determine what is really going on.

Previous analyses of “by the numbers” can be accessed by entering the phrase in the search box above. This is the third and final post in this series where we look at the numbers to truly find out how good, not likely, or bad, most likely, the American political class is doing in managing our tax dollars, protecting our freedoms, and resolving major issues that affect all of us.

A short post today that involves the only issue that I believe matters when it comes to the Presidential election. Forget about abortion rights, gun rights, taxes, jobs, etc. The only overriding issue that matters is the incremental amount of debt that government entities across the country have incurred and continue to incur every minute of every day.

How bad is the debt problem that governments have today? Let’s do the numbers:

• The ‘regular” national debt of the Federal government is just over $27 trillion and counting.
• The first covid economic stimulus plan cost the Federal government $3 trillion.
• The next follow up stimulus plan is likely to cost about $2 trillion.
• Thus, in short order the Federal government will be servicing a debt of about $32 trillion, a number that will continue to grow. 
• Recent government analysis estimates that over the next few decades there will be about $82 trillion in unfunded liabilities in Social Security and Medicare, where unfunded liabilities is the difference between the money the government expects to have to fund these programs and the larger amount of money that will be actually needed to fund these programs in their current state.
• But state governments also have unfunded liabilities with a recent analysis putting those unfunded liabilities at around $7 trillion. 
• But this is before the unforeseen state government covid expenses so lets estimate that there are an additional $4 trillion in state government unfunded liabilities.
• Add up all of these debt loads and unfunded liabilities and we see that state governments and the Federal government have about $125,000,000,000,000 ($125 trillion) in some form of debt, a level that grows by the minute.
• How big is $125,000,000,000,000, let’s do some numbers.
• There are about 331 million people living in America today so if that $125 trillion debt load was spread out over every American, each American, including kids, would have to write a check for about $377,000 to cover the government debt load.
• Thus, a family of four would need to write a check for about $1.5 million to cover the $125 trillion government debt.
• There are about 129 million households in the country so if each household was to pay for the debt, every household would need to write a check for $972,000.
• But what about the liberal mantra of “tax the rich” to pay for the debt?
• Let’s start with Jeff Bezos, the richest man in the country.
• Although his wealth level varies according to what happens to Amazon's stock price every day, most estimates put his personal wealth at around $175 billion.
• Rather than increase his tax rate or put a tax on his wealth, let’s assume the government could seize his ENTIRE personal wealth ($175 billion) and sell it off to help pay for the debt.
• But his $175 billion, even if it could be liquidated and used to pay down the debt, would account for only .14% of the $125 trillion, no 14%, not 1.4%, a measly .14%.
• Elizabeth Warren once proposed a wealth tax on the rich of 2% of their total wealth and belongings, which means that if her stupid tax was applied to Bezo, that .14% would be 50 times smaller.
• Not convinced that taxing the rich would not pay for the $125 trillion, consider the latest estimate from Forbes which says the richest 400 people in this country are worth about $3.2 trillion.
• If we confiscated their entire net worth and somehow liquidated it we would be able to pay off only 2.6% of the $125 trillion.
• If we used Warren’s 2% number then the richest 400 people would only be able to pay off .5% of the $125 trillion.

Dang, we obviously cannot pay off the debt by the rich even if we steal their entire fortune and wealth. We cannot pay off the debt if every American household has to pay almost a $1 million each to pay off the debt.

And no one, absolutely no one, neither the Democratic Party or the Republican Party, cares about this dire situation. And like I proposed above, nothing else matters because when this debt bubble blows, assuming no one in a position of power ever gets around to attacking the problem, the consequences will be huge:

• There are analyses around that say in about five years or so, Medicare Part A will go belly up, meaning less affordable and less available medical care for Medicare recipients.
• Shortly after that, the Ponzi scheme known as Social Security will begin to implode which will likely result in a drastic reduction in Social Security benefits.
• Given that Social Security is now in a cash negative position which is growing steadily larger every day, this implosion is not that far off.
• In a desperate attempt to fill the debt hole in government budgets, state governments and the Federal government will raise taxes.
• But the raising or taxes will reduce consumer spending and business investment which will crash economic growth and result in lower, not higher, tax revenues.
• At the same time, desperate governments will start cutting spending, way too late, which will result in immediate draconian cuts in police and fire forces, reduced number of teachers, crumbling infrastructure, etc.
• In another desperate move, the Federal Reserve will start printing money which will likely lead to hyperinflation.
• And before you know it we look like Venezuela: high taxes, higher and higher prices, shortages of all sorts, reduced government benefits and services, and quite possibly the collapse of our democracy and freedoms.

We are already seeing the beginnings of this type of debt collapse. Detroit, Stockton, California and other cities have already gone bankrupt. New York City and New York’s state government are desperately pleading for the Federal taxpayer to bail out their inept spending and budgeting skills which have resulted in massive debt loads. 

Illinois and California are looking to raise taxes even higher than their existing high rates to cover their out of control spending and debt even though there is a steady migration of state residents in both states moving out. Thus, these two states are already in a financial death spiral: they keep raising tax rates which drives taxpayers to other, more affordable states which reduces state government tax revenue which forces them to raise the tax rates more, etc. and the death spiral is in effect.

So, yes, please go vote, it is your responsibility to make your voice heard. But before voting for a Republican or Democrat, ask yourself if you really think that they will be able to resolve the debt bubble before it is too late. Given their history of only incurring more and more debt, I doubt that either party and all of their candidates they are putting forth have the wisdom, the courage, and political will to fix what is going to severely and negatively affect every American, a crisis that will make all other problems insignificant in comparison and a crisis that is going to likely happen pretty quickly.

If you do take that moment to pause and consider what the existing two party system will not do, may I suggest that you look into the Libertarian Party for an answer to the debt issue. The Libertarian Party is the ONLY national party that recognizes the tragedy that this debt issue will bring and actually has the plan and will to address it before it is too late:

https://jo20.com/issues/

Have a great day!

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

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=loce+my+country%2C+loathe+my+government&ref=nb_sb_noss

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

Is Hilary Clinton The Most Corrupt, Dishonest Presidential Candidate Ever?

We have not talked a lot about Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, the two national party candidates for President. One reason is that if you tried to follow all of the insanity, law breaking, name calling, inane quotes, and indicting-avoiding that both of them constantly do, you could write a non-stop post for years. I am obviously not a big fan of either of them.

Today, the focus will be on the nefarious doings of the Hillary Clinton camp, a camp that I find far more dangerous along every dimension imaginable than Trump. There has been some very interesting realities exposed over the past week as the Wikileaks website has published almost 20,000 emails that were hacked out of the Democratic National Committee computers that do not shine a positive light on Clinton. 

Specifically, the emails showed that the Clinton campaign staff was in close contact with the DNC executives and employees to help sabotage Bernie Sanders’s bid to become the Democratic nominee for President. Emails showed the DNC plotting to do various things to make Sanders look bad in the press, leveraging his religious beliefs against him, etc. If this were the early 1970s, we would be looking at the infamous “dirty tricks” tactics employed by Nixon as he ran for President.

,All nasty, dirty politics which shows how corrupt both political parties are today even when dealing with their own kind. But today’s focus will be on what I call the Clinton Crime Syndicate, otherwise known as the Clinton Foundation. I thought I was going to have to do a lot of research to pull together all of the nefarious, corrupt, immoral, and very likely illegal activities of the Syndicate/Foundation but I found that most of that homework had already been done by Reason magazine writer, John Stossel, on July 27, 2016. 

His entire article can be accessed at:

http://reason.com/archives/2016/07/27/clinton-cash

Highlights of his findings and research and how the Clintons’ got rich trading off of Hillary’s State Department position are listed below:

• Stossel gives credit to the recent documentary movie, Clinton Cash, which was based on the book of the same name by Peter Schweizer.
• It is Stossel’s opinion that the Clintons use “speaking fees” to get around bribery laws: "If somebody gave a politician or family member money for a favor, that's breaking the law. But if you say it's a speaking fee, and you pay double or triple the normal rate, that seems to be legal."
• The article claims, and other sources have made similar estimates, that Bill Clinton has made an amazing $126 million or more on speaking fees and giving speeches.
• If he can get someone to pay him to give what is likely a canned speech all the more power to him, it is supposed to be a free country.
• But Stossel points out how the Clintons were able to supercharge Bill’s speaking fees by coupling his speeches with Hillary’s influence peddling as the head of the State Department.
• Before Hillary was named as Secretary of State, Bill's speaking fees averaged just under $200,000. 
• But after Hillary became Secretary of State, Bill often got speaking fees upwards of over $700,00 PER speech.
• Schweizer is quoted in the article that this kind of jump in fees is "evidence that people paying him expect to get something in return. She [Hillary] becomes appointed secretary of state, a friend of the president of Nigeria suddenly offers (Bill) $700,000 apiece for two speeches. An investment firm in Moscow that's tied to the Kremlin who had never paid for him to speak before suddenly gave him $500,000."
• Stossel accuse the Clinton’s of using the Clinton Foundation to launder money and has had over $2 billion pass through the Foundation to “improve global health and wellness” even if only a meager 15% of that $2 billion was actually spent on needy causes (Source: Sean Davis of the Federalist who examined the actual Foundation accounting records).
• As an example of such nonsense, Stossel describes what happened after the Haitian earthquake that ravaged the country.
• The Foundation announced it would help rebuild the country and promised to develop an industrial park that create up to 60,000 jobs.
• That effort ended up creating a meager 7,000 jobs.
• But Clinton friends made out very well in Haiti. Irish billionaire Denis O’Brien, who runs a cellphone company named Digicel, paid Bill Clinton $225,000 to give a speech and within four months was given a Clinton Foundation grant and the job to operate Haiti’s cellular telephone operations.
• VCS mining which, according to Schweizer, "has no experience in mining, very little experience in Haiti, and it raises the question, of all the companies out there, why did the Haitian government pick this one company?"  got an exclusive gold mining contract for Haiti. Two simple answers to Schweizer’s questions: Hillary’s brother works for VCS and the chairman of the company just happens to be a campaign donor to Democratic politicians and causes.
• Maybe the most blatant form of extortion and influence peddling has to do with the Swedish telecommunications company, Ericsson.
• For a while, according to Schweizer, Ericsson had been viewed negatively and aggressively by Hillary Clinton's State Department because Ericsson sold telecommunications equipment to what the State Department considered repressive governments: "WikiLeaks cables show the State Department sort of busting up the Swedish foreign minister, saying you need to get Ericsson into line. Ericsson decides that this would be a great time to sponsor a speech by Bill Clinton. They had never done so before. They decided to go big, $750,000 for a 20-minute speech. Bill gives the speech and literally seven days later, the State Department comes out with a statement saying we're not going to take further action against Ericsson. We're going to ask them to police themselves."
• Let me repeat something that Wikileaks found: Bill Clinton got paid an amazing $750,000 to give a 20 minute speech. That’s $37,5000 a minute. 
• Soon afterwards, Hillary’s State Department basically said “never mind” when it came to Ericsson selling telecom equipment to repressive governments.

A few questions:

• Has there ever been an official candidate for President that has been so corrupt, so greedy, so criminal going into the battle for the White House than Hillary Clinton? 
• What will Bernie Sanders supporters do in November? The above activities are the very things and very corruption that they fought so passionately against.
• Why hasn’t Obama stepped in to stop this corruption since it occurred on his watch? 
• Instead, he has come out and endorsed Clinton, does she have similar corruption leverage on him that Obama needs to keep hushed up?
• How can all of this money laundering and corruption not be against some law someplace or against the racketeering (RICO) statutes? Please note, that the above discussion is not comprehensive when it comes to these kinds of Clinton antics, e.g. the selling of U.S. uranium interests to Russian interests, etc.
• And most of all, how can any American vote for Hillary, given her corruption, law breaking, greed, and lies, from the above racketeering charges, to lying in front of Congress, to breaking multiple Federal laws when it came to an unsecured email system, etc., etc., etc. Please let me know of you are one of those that are willing to overlook such slimy behavior.

Oh, an answer to that last question is that Clinton is less evil than Donald Trump is not acceptable. At the risk of overcliching, “the lesser of two evils is still evil,” consider voting for the Libertarian or Green party candidate, candidates that at least appear to have some degree of honesty and integrity. 

Write in Sanders name as a protest vote that keeps you within integrity. 

Ignore that Presidential ballot line as you vote for other, non-Presidential positions. 

Remember, never wrestle with a pig: the pig likes it and you both get dirty. Stay clean and vote for honesty and integrity, not someone who launders money and lies anytime it is self serving.

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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

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

Obama's Iraq Debacle

As a long term Libertarian both in mind and voting record, I was certainly against the Bush invasion of Iraq. It was none of our business what was going on within that country since it was highly unlikely to have any impact on America or Americans or place either in danger. And like every other Middle East U.S. excursion, both diplomatic and military, it was destined to end badly. Which it did.

So, understand that I am not about to get after Obama on Iraq because I am a hard core Republican, conservative, neocon, etc. I am about to get on him today about Iraq because of his inability to formulate a long term strategy. We constantly see this glaring deficiency in many other areas including health care with his failed Obama Care legislation (too many sub-failures to mention here), economic matters (e.g. still over 45 million Americans on food stamps), government efficiency and effectiveness (e.g. Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security likely lose upwards of $200 billion a year to criminal fraud), etc. 

His inability to formulate and execute a long term, winning strategy on any issue is not unique to Obama. This deficiency infects everyone in the Washington political class. But today we will focus on Obama's inability to formulate, communicate, and execute an Iraq strategy to defeat ISIS, the most violent and well financed terrorist group in the history of mankind. 

The basis of our discussion will be a well written article by Ethan Bartion and Erica Wenig earlier this month for the Daily Caller website. Now, many liberals will immediately go over the edge and claim that the Daily Caller is a biased, slanted, right wing rag and cannot be trusted to give Obama a fair shake. However, before you do go crazy, please read the entire article at:

http://dailycaller.com/2015/07/09/the-staggering-cost-of-a-largely-failed-fight-against-isis/

You will see that not only is the article well written and fair but that the information they use to prove that Obama is wasting our time and wealth in Iraq in the absence of a long term strategy is based on sources that have long been a favorite of liberals including the Washington Post, the Associated Press, and official government reports. The article sources from all of these sources and others and can be directly linked to from the article. 

Keep in mind two facts when reviewing the following disaster from the Obama administration:

1. The President himself has admitted, more than a year after first admitting the same thing, that he and his administration still do not have a strategy for defeating ISIS.
2. His military and diplomatic advisors had warned him in 2011 that withdrawing all U.S. troops at that time would create a power void since the Iraqi army was not up to snuff from a training and capability perspective. However, from a political Presidential campaign perspective, Obama decided to do the selfish political thing and not the proper military and foreign relations thing. As ISIS rose, it turns out that his advisors were right, Obama did withdraw U.S. forces out prematurely despite his promise that we were leaving behind a safe, secure, and democratic Iraq.

So what is this leadership failure and the subsequent lack of long term planning costing us in Iraq:

• According to the Pentagon, we have already spent $2.91 billion on this ISIS effort with little to show for it except temporarily stalling a few ISIS advances.
• This $2.91 billion comes out to about $9.2 million PER DAY so far.
• About half of these costs are directly tied to our airstrike missions against ISIS but according to Congressional sources, a whopping 75% of those missions return without dropping any bombs.
• Regardless, we are currently averaging only about 12 airstrikes a day, of which 75% do no damage to ISIS, in a vain attempt to cover an ISIS controlled land mass that is thousands of square miles.
• The reason is that the planes cannot find any targets without the U.S. having a substantial ground presence to identify targets. As a result, 75% of the missions return after burning millions of dollars of fuel without making any difference on the ground.
• The Obama administration put together a half a billion dollar training program to train and equip Syrian rebels to fight ISIS but so far that half a billion dollar program has resulted in training a grand total of 60, yes 60, rebels to fight ISIS, according to Obama's Secretary of Defense Ash Carter.
• Originally, the Obama administration had aimed to train 5,400 rebels per year, according to the Associated Press. This leaves them 5,340 short of their target goal for this year with 60 trainees representing a pitiful .9% of their goal.
• According to the article, $2.91 billion could have fed every family in Philadelphia for a year, could have wiped out the average student debt of 118,239 college graduates, or could have paid the average annual income tax bill for just over 200,000 American families.

So we have no strategy, no plans, no goals that would define victory, and it is still costing us billions of dollars. And with no strategy in sight, there is obviously no end in sight for spending billions of more dollars. But as we should expect, American politicians care only for themselves, their own short term glory, their own political careers, their own personal enrichment. That is why whenever career politicians like Obama make decisions based on their own political goals and aspirations and not the good of the country, we end paying for it big time in the form of wasted lives and wasted national wealth.

That is why we are big advocates of term limits for all Washington politicians, "one and done.” Because really, how much worse could it be to replace all of the existing career politicians with new people who might at least give us a chance of having a long term strategy for our issues, a strategy that would work and be cost efficient? We get neither with today’s political class and so far it has cost us almost $3 billion just in Iraq. 

Find out more at:

www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com

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