The Obama Era, Part 3: Memories From The Worst Presidency Ever?

We are coming up on the end of another year so I thought it might be a good time to review everything that I remember about the Obama administration. He has been in office for seven years, seven long years that in my opinion have been horrific in so many ways. This was someone who entered office with approval ratings that were above 70% and who represented the so-called “hope and change” that many Americans were seeking.

Seven years later hope has become very scarce and change has almost always been for the worst. Now, before someone says that I am just a sour grapes Republican, conservative, or neo-con, understand that I have never voted for a Republican for President in my life (I started voting in the 1970s). Up until 2010, I had never voted for Republican for national office in my life. I fully support gay rights and respect a woman’s legal right to an abortion. Thus, none of what you are about to read over the next few days comes from a Republican sour grapes perspective.

But unless you have had completely had your head in the sand or elsewhere, this has been the worst Presidency that I have experienced in my lifetime. From horrid legislation (e.g. Obama Care) to a failed foreign policy (e.g. Syria) to daily lawlessness on the part of this administration (e.g. use of unsecured email accounts by high ranking administration members), the ineptness and ineffectiveness of this administration is mind boggling.

Thus, given this set up, in no particular order, this is what I will remember about the Obama Presidency:

- I remember that Obama found time in his first term, a period of time, marked by high unemployment and stagnant economic growth, to film a television commercial for the George Lopez show, to appear on The View television show, to appear on Oprah’s television show, to jet off to Europe to lobby for his home town of Chicago to get a Summer Olympics (an effort that failed miserably), and to conduct an untold number of photo ops with athletic teams, college and professional, despite promising that if elected President he would devote his entire life to serving Americans. 

- I will remember how peeved Obama was when American aid worker James Foley was beheaded by ISIS since it forced him to hold a perfunctory press conference in order to not miss his golf tee time.

- I will remember how the number of Americans receiving monthly food assistance has increased and stayed 50% above the levels they were at when he became President, indicating that his economic policies are a failure or his ability and plan to curtail food assistance fraud is a failure.

- I remember that this administration was also not able to produce anything close to an enduring peace arrangement between the Israelis and Palestinians.

- I will remember how this administration allowed North Korea and Iran to get seven years closer to becoming a nuclear weapons power.

- I will remember how Obama’s Afghanistan policies and strategies has not come close to defeating the Taliban after seven years, requiring him to continue to deploy thousands of U.S. troops in the country into an indefinite future.

- I will remember how this administration presided over the first credit agency downgrade of the Federal government’s creditworthiness in the history of the country.

- I will remember how this administration’s economic policies failed to improve the economic plight of minorities in this country, both on an absolute basis and relative to non-minorities.

- I will remember how Obama promised not to appoint high powered lobbyists to positions of power in his administration and once elected, promptly installed high powered lobbyists in his administration.

- I will remember how Obama ignored existing law forbidding foreign military aid to any country that is toppled by a military coup when a military coup toppled an elected government in Egypt but still received American military aid.

- I will remember how Obama illegally allowed lucrative taxpayer funded financial credits to Congressional members and their staffs to pay for Obama Care policies in violation of the Obama Care legislation.

- I will remember how this administration abused Federal government resources to inhibit and harass companies and businesses (e.g. Gibson Guitar and Boeing) whose business agendas did not line up with the President’s political agenda.

- I will remember how this administration intentionally violated the WARN act by telling companies to not announce layoffs that were in compliance with the WARN Act prior to the 2012 Presidential election, promising to pay any WARN Act fines in the future with taxpayer money those companies may incur as a result of violating the WARN as requested by the Obama administration.

- I will remember how this administration violated the Welfare Reform Act of 1996 by illegally allowing able bodied welfare recipients not to fulfill the weekly work requirements of that legislation.

- I will remember how Obama failed to fire James Clapper, a high ranking member of the President’s national security team, after Clapper lied to Congress about how much electronic information the National Security Agency (NSA) was collecting on every American citizen.

- I will remember how Obama personally signed off on the assassination of American citizens in foreign lands, e.g. the killing of American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki via a drone attack in Yemen, denying him and other citizens a fair trial by their peers, negating the rights, and lives, of al-Awlaki and at least three other American citizens, violating their right “to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” the Fourth Amendment, and the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution.

- I will remember how Obama failed to fire Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius after she allegedly pressured insurance companies to illegally contribute to the promotion and advancement of Obama Care.

- I will remember how Obama failed to fire Kathleen Sebelius after she violated the Hatch Law when she campaigned/endorsed a Democrat for office in North Carolina.

- I will remember how Obama failed to fire Kathleen Sebelius for general incompetence in overseeing the horrid rollout of Obama Care.

- I will remember how Obama slandered and cast slurs to Americans who happen to have a valid different opinion than his relative to global warming.

- I will remember how this administration violated the Federal Information Security Information Act (FISMA) by giving the Obama Care information systems infrastructure “authority to operate” even though it failed the required FISMA’s security control assessment.

- I will remember how Obama promised to use the Justice Department to go after any American who insults a Muslim but ignores Louis Farrakhan’s threat to gather 10,000 African-Americans to kill white Americans.

- I will remember how this President always took great interest when a white person killed a young black man but took no interest when black Americans killed black Americans, when a black person killed a white person, or when illegal immigrants he allowed to stay in this country killed American citizens.

- I will remember how Obama and his family spent hundreds of millions of dollars jet setting around the world for vacations, often disguised as pseudo government events.

- I will remember how Obama insulted Special Olympics children and their families when early in his term he compared his horrific bowling skills to the athletic skills of a Special Olympics athlete.

- I will remember how this administration and this President intentionally manipulated U.S. intelligence data regarding terrorism and ISIS to make it appear that their current foreign and military policies were performing better than they actually were.

- I will remember how this President labelled ISIS as a “JV” terrorist group right before it took over large swaths of territories and major cities in Iraq and Syria, how he assured the world that ISIS was “contained” right before a major terror cell, supported by ISIS, hit multiple targets in Paris France, killing over a hundred people and wounding hundreds, and how he boldly assured Americans that there was no credible terrorist threat on the horizon right before two terrorists killed 14 people and wounded at least 22 people in San Bernardino, California.

I will remember a lot about this Presidency, almost all of it very forgettable, regrettable and often disgusting, as we have discussed over the past three days. President Obama could have been one of the most impactful Presidents of all time. He came into office with sky high popularity and approval ratings. His party had a sizable majority in the House Of Representatives. He had a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. The country was ready to turn away from the Republican party.

But let’s review. We have had a President who sits silent and allows ordinary Americans with intelligent, informed, contrary opinions to be slandered and demeaned by his political allies. 

He uses deception as he tries to incite different segments of America against each other for his political gain. 

Every one of his economic policies have been failures. 

It is always all about him.

He tramples on the principles laid out in the Constitution, ignoring the rule of law as he sees as convenient, often trampling the liberties and rights of Americans in the process. 

Often it seems like his golf game, his fund raising trips, and his vacations are more important than running and leading the country.

His foreign policy activities have mostly been failures, failures that are dwarfed by the unfolding disaster known as Obama Care. 

He has not resolved, or even come close to presenting coherent plans to address the major issues of our times while the faulty operational aspects of the Federal government continue to be redundant, wasteful, inefficient, and ineffective. 

But the biggest reason for his disasters is his narcissistic inability to take personal responsibility for his actions and subsequent failures. It is never his fault. Someone else always ruins his plans. This lack of humility means a person never looks inward to see how he or she could improve. And a President without the ability to self evaluate and improve ends up leading a country that does not improve. 

And that is what I will remember most: this country, our freedoms, our democracy, and our financial well being are in far worse shape today than they were on that long ago day in January, 2009 when the Obama Error began.




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

July, 2015, Part 1:Political Class insanity: Expensive Helter Skelter Bombing, Lining Up The Next Bank Bailouts, and More

At the beginning of each month we take a week or so to review the latest insanity from the American political class. Insanity from them includes a wide range of very depressing actions which can include wasteful spending, idiotic quotes, an inefficient and ineffective government bureaucracy, failed economic policies, etc. Every month we continue to prove that we are being served by the worst set of politicians ever.

And as you will see, this month’s review and discussions do nothing to prove that this thesis is wrong in any way:

1) Many Americans, and possibly a majority of Americans, were against the political class using billions and billions of taxpayer dollars to bailout their Wall Street financial backers during the Great Recession. Most, like me, would have let them crash and burn since their greed and incompetence was what made their companies go to the brink of extinction and caused the great suffering of the Great Recession.

Despite that reality, it does not seem like the politicians are listening or if they really care. According to a Wall Street Journal article that was summarized in the June 5, 2015 issue of The Week magazine, the U.S. government (really the American taxpayer) currently stands behind 60% of the financial industry’s total liabilities. This total is a whopping $26 TRILLION.

This obligation includes both explicit and implicit backing, based on previous bailouts. And given that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were the main culprits in the collapse of the housing industry which led directly to the Great Recession, it does not feel good that the American taxpayer, via the Federal government, is still backing $5 TRILLION of their liabilities.

To put these insane numbers in perspective, the American political class has put each American family on the hook for:

1. Each American family on average is responsible for over $215,000 of the $26 TRILLION.
2. Each American family on average is still responsible for over $41,000 of the $5 TRILLION Fannie and Freddie liabilities.

The more things change the more things stay the same, especially if the politicians in Washington still try and take care of their political backers vs. doing the right thing for regular Americans.

2) According to the New York Times in an article that was summarized in the June 5, 2015 issue of The Week magazine, the American taxpayer via the Pentagon is spending about $8.6 million a day to bomb ISIS positions in Iraq and Syria. Combine this fact with the reality that the President has readily admitted that he does not have a final strategy for dealing with the ISIS terrorists. Thus, it would seem that maybe he should focus on finally getting a viable strategy in place since without one, spending $8.6 million a day, over $2.1 billion so far, seems like a waste of money if you do not know what your end game is.

3) According to Vox.com, as summarized in the May 15, 2015 issue of The Week magazine, in the poorer neighborhoods of Baltimore, the infant mortality rate is about 20 per 1,000, which makes it worse than the rate in the West Bank, Honduras, and Venezuela. One has to think that possibly spending $8.6 million a day within this country for problems like this is more worthwhile than randomly bombing targets in Iraq for no overarching strategic reason at all.

4) According to the July, 2015 issue of Reason magazine, back in February Hillary Clinton put forth the following quote: “I don’t throw anything away. I am like two steps short of a hoarder.” In light of the fact she had recently deleted a whopping 30,000 emails of hers in an attempt to thwart a Congressional investigation into possibly shady dealings in her State Department, it appears that she and I have a substantially different definition of what a hoarder is. 

5) We have often made the case that government bureaucracies have gotten so big and often so unnecessary that the bureaucrats who operate them make up regulations and take actions solely for the purpose of preserving their unneeded jobs. Such was the case of a recent directive by the Consumer Product Safety Commission. They put out an alert that required Kroger to recall a certain type of children’s hooded sweatshirt since according to the commission, “The sweatshirt zipper pull can detach, posing a choking hazard to young children.”

Great work, government bureaucrats. We certainly do not want kids choking. Even if it cost $1.4 million to recall the sweatshirts, certainly worth it for child safety.

Or was it? The basis of the recall was that ONE, yes ONE, zipper pull out of 140,000 sweatshirts had detached, resulting in NO ONE getting hurt. Really? Does not this government entity have better things to do than worrying about a one in 140,000 chance of maybe something bad happening? 

This probability is approaching the chances of being struck by lightning, which according to the National Lightning Safety Institute is just a little higher at one in 280,000. And if they do not have anything better to do, than maybe it is time to save some taxpayer money and downsize or terminate this unnecessary government function.

6) When Obama took office, he made a big deal about minimizing the impact of lobbyists in his administration. As always with this President, this high rhetoric was quickly abolished by low actions. it is no secret that high powered lobbyists almost immediately took high ranking positions in his administration.

And a Washington Times article by Tammy Bruce, that was summarized in the April 10, 2015 issue of The Week magazine, pointed out how lobbyists and corporate interests had easy access, and probably easy influence, in the Obama administration. According to Ms. Bruce, thanks to a secret Federal Trade Commission (FTC) report that was accidentally sent to the Wall Street Journal (you really cannot make this incompetence stuff up it is so unreal, accidentally sent to the Wall Street Journal, geez) we now know how cozy the Obama administration was with Google during the time that the FTC was investigating Google for antitrust violations.

Since 2009, when Obama took office, Google executives and lobbyists had averaged an astounding one White House visit per week over the past six years. Given that visitation rate, is it just a coincidence that while the FTC staff had recommended in 2012 that the government put together an antitrust lawsuit against Google, the FTC commissioners vetoed such an action? Is it just a coincidence that former Google CEO Eric Schmidt personally handled customized voter turnout software for Obama’s 2008 Presidential campaign?

Or as Ms. Bruce concluded, “If you help Barack Obama with what he wants, the rule of law will bend, or even break, for you.”

7) In a little piece of political sanity in the enormous sea of political class insanity, and a very sad commentary on the country’s tax code, the National Football League announced that it would voluntarily give up its tax exempt status. While the 32 teams in the NFL have always had to pay taxes, somehow, the league office, which takes in over $300 million a year, somehow was able to be tax exempt on those revenues. 

Which raises two obvious, and depressing questions:

1. Why has this condition existed for so long?
2. And why did the league give up the status, why didn’t the Washington political class tax action long before this to ensure that a private, for profit enterprise like the NFL office paid its fair share of taxes?

That will do it for today, a good start to the bad news coming out of the American political class. Letting a for profit entity not pay taxes on $300 million in annual revenue for years, letting Google lobby the heck out of the Feds, creating sweatshirt crises when there is no crisis, expensive helter skelter bombing in Iraq and Syria, and the potential of another banker bailout. And we are just getting started.

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.loathemygovernmobama,washington post,politifactent.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

Part 1: Why Gay Marriage and The Confederate Flag Are Meaningless issues Relative To the Lobbyist Behind the Curtain

Later this week we will post our monthly series of political class insanity posts. Every month we gather and discussed the latest insanity, ineptness, wasteful spending, and corruption of the American political class. Unfortunately for us, over the years we have been doing this feature, every month we have needed more and more time just to cover one month’s worth of insanity.

Before we do that for July’s insanity, let’s look at some bigger picture, longer term issues that dwarf the wasteful spending, idiotic programs and laws, stupid quotes, and overall inept performance of the American class. Yes, it is important to point out how wasteful spending goes on in Washington, how government and political class programs never efficiently or effectively implement their goals, how stupid our politicians often sound when they open their mouths.

But the longer term two topics we will discuss in the next two days dwarf these issues. In fact, the top two social and political issues being hotly debated this these days are also nits relative to the two overarching issues we will be discussing today and tomorrow. It really does not matter what you think about gay marriage and the Supreme Court’s recent decision on it. It really does not matter what you think about the Confederate flag and what it stands for. 

Talking about them in the context of the bigger issues is a total waste of time since both issues pale in comparison to the two bigger issues. The gay and lesbian community consists of less than 5% of the nation’s population. Confederate flag supporters are probably comparable in numbers, small minorities in the country. 

But unless we address the major issue of political corruption in Washington (today’s topic) and the unrelenting build up of the national debt (tomorrow’s issue), then who can get married and who can fly a flag of their choice will become totally, totally irrelevant in our near future since these two bigger issues affect EVERY American, not just a small minority of them.

Today’s post is based on the writings of liberal former Senator and Presidential candidate Gary Hart. He is the author of 21 books and the following quotes come from his recent book, “The Republic Of Conscience.” While I have pulled out only a subset of quotes from his book that was discussed in a recent Time magazine article, I encourage everyone to go to that online Time article at:

http://time.com/3937860/gary-hart-america-corruption/

Mr. Hart eloquently and precisely points out how our democratic processes have been thoroughly corrupted by the American political class and the media, lobbyists, and organized political entities that feast on those processes and American tax dollars and freedoms. We have discussed this corruption of the democratic processes before,both in this blog and our book, “Love My Country, Loathe My Government.”

However, I think that you read the following quotes from his book, you will see that he is probably a little more eloquent than this blog in pleading the case that money and the infestation it is installed in our democracy has fundamentally changed America and that change has not been for the best. While it has enriched politicians and those that abuse the political process, it has left the rest of America poorer and less free in the process.

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1. Four qualities have distinguished republican government from ancient Athens forward: the sovereignty of the people; a sense of the common good; government dedicated to the commonwealth; and resistance to corruption. Measured against the standards established for republics from ancient times, the American Republic is massively corrupt.
2. In the governing of a republic, corruption was self-interest placed above the interest of all—the public interest.
3. There has never been a time, however, when the government of the United States was so perversely and systematically dedicated to special interests, earmarks, side deals, log-rolling, vote-trading, and sweetheart deals of one kind or another.
4. What brought us to this? A sinister system combining staggering campaign costs, political contributions, political action committees, special interest payments for access, and, most of all, the rise of the lobbying class.
5. Worst of all, the army of lobbyists that started relatively small in the mid-twentieth century has now grown to big battalions of law firms and lobbying firms of the right, left, and an amalgam of both.
6. There is little wonder that Americans of the right and many in the middle are apoplectic at their government and absolutely, and rightly, convinced that the game of government is rigged in favor of the elite and the powerful. Occupiers see even more wealth rising to the top at the expense of the poor and the middle class. And Tea Partiers believe their tax dollars are going to well-organized welfare parasites and government bureaucrats.
7. Recent months have seen, in effect, the legalization of Watergate. Who would have thought, forty years after the greatest political scandal and presidential abuse of power in U.S. history, that the Supreme Court of the United States would rule the practices that financed that scandal were now legal?
8. And, of course, the ultimate victims of the corruption of the democratic process are not defeated candidates and parties but America’s citizens. 
9. The advent of legalized corruption launched by the Supreme Court empowers the superrich to fund their own presidential and congressional campaigns as pet projects, to foster pet policies, and to represent pet political enclaves. You have a billion, or even several hundred million, then purchase a candidate from the endless reserve bench of minor politicians and make him or her a star, a mouthpiece for any cause or purpose however questionable, and that candidate will mouth your script in endless political debates and through as many television spots as you are willing to pay for. All legal now.
10. To compound the political felony, much, if not most, campaign financing is now carried out in secret, so that everyday citizens have a decreasing ability to determine to whom their elected officials are beholden and to whom they must now give special access.
11. To add to the profound misdirection of American politics by the Supreme Court, we now have what might be called convergence in the garden of government influence.
12. The context is the lobbying maze in Washington and the convergence of dozens of noxious weeds in the garden of government into a handful of giant predator thornbushes now devouring that garden. Of this handful, the largest by far is WPP (originally called Wire and Plastic Products; is there a metaphor here?), which has its headquarters in London and more than 150,000 employees in 2,500 offices spread around 107 countries. It, together with one or two conglomerating competitors, represents a fourth branch of government, vacuuming up former senators and House members and their spouses and families, key committee staff, former senior administration officials of both parties and several administrations, and ambassadors, diplomats, and retired senior military officers.
13. Think of the banks that can be bailed out, the range of elaborate weapons systems that can be sold to the government, the protection from congressional scrutiny that can be paid for, the economic policies that can be manipulated.
14. The lobbying business is no longer about votes up or down on particular measures that may emerge in Congress or policies made in the White House. It is about setting agendas, deciding what should and should not be brought up for hearings and legislation.
15. America’s founders knew one thing: The republics of history all died when narrow interests overwhelmed the common good and the interests of the commonwealth.
16. What would our founders make of this nightmare of corruption? We only know, in Thomas Jefferson’s case, for example, that his distrust of central government had to do with the well-founded and prescient suspicion that its largesse would go to powerful and influential interests, especially financiers, who knew how to manipulate both the government and the financial markets. 
17. All they knew was how to respond to their industry lobbyists’ requests for very large contributions to compliant members of congressional finance committees and to do so quickly and often. And they did get their money’s worth.
18. Americans cannot hold ourselves up to the world as the beacon of democracy so long as we permit, as long as we acquiesce in, corruption so far beyond the standards of the true republic that our government cannot be proclaimed an ideal for other aspiring nations.
19. On a more personal level, how can public service be promoted as an ideal to young people when this sewer corrupts our Republic? 
20. But it is impossible to claim to love one’s country and not be outraged at how corrupt it has become. For former senators and representatives to trade a title given them by the voters of their respective states and districts for cash is beyond shameful. It is outrageous.
21. It is an error of serious proportion to dismiss corruption in twenty-first-century American democracy on the grounds that this has all been going on from the beginning, that boys will be boys, that politicians are always on the take. Past incidents of the violation of public ethics provide no argument for accepting the systemic and cancerous commercialization of modern American politics.
22. And, as scholars of ancient Greek and Roman political texts, they knew in their minds and in their hearts that a republic with leaders who lacked virtue would not long survive.
23. ...is to invite the eventual erosion of the ideal of the American Republic, to reduce this great nation and its heritage to the worst kind of mundane governance, to prostitute a noble experiment on the altar of expediency and greed, and to leave coming generations to ponder what went wrong.
24. “Just because it is legal doesn’t make it right” should be carved above every congressional doorway, every cabinet department, and even the White House itself. 
25. The fact that many former presidents and prime ministers of European democracies have enriched themselves in questionable ways after leaving office does not justify similar behavior on the part of American politicians. We hold ourselves to a higher standard.
26. We are in danger of becoming a different kind of nation, one our founders would not recognize and would deplore.
27. Because of the erosion of the integrity of our governing system, and the principles and ideals underlying it, the fiscal deficit increases. The government spending so many conservatives claim to abhor includes not only the social safety net of Roosevelt and Johnson, but also the war-making excursions of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. It is all government spending. And it includes favorite pork-barrel projects of every member of both houses of Congress of both political parties...
28. We were not created to be like other nations. We were created as an alternative to monarchy, aristocracy, oligarchy, and corrupt political systems. The more we follow the easy path, the one paved for the benefit of the wealthy and powerful, the more we stray from our originally intended purpose and the more we lose our unique purpose for existence.
29. The question is: By adhering to its highest principles and ideals, will America continue to have the moral authority to lead all people of goodwill? The answer remains to be seen. And that answer will have much to do with whether we have the courage to drive the money changers from the temple of democracy and recapture government of the people, for the people, and by the people.
30. Bad politics drives out good politics. Legalized corruption drives men and women of stature, honor, and dignity out of the halls of government. Self-respecting individuals cannot long tolerate a system of election and reelection so dependent on cultivating the favor of those known to expect access in return. Such a system is corrosive to the soul.
31. Campaigning is a major industry now that consumes hundreds of millions of dollars and, in national campaigns, billions of dollars. Almost all of it goes to the media, the same media whose commentators regularly deplore the costs of campaigns.
32. It [lobbying] is a great hydra-headed monster, one that is rapidly devouring American democracy.
33. The significant issue is the effect of this relatively recent conversion of a democratic process to a major industry that devours money. 
34. We are not the same country we started out to be. We cannot conduct our political process the way we are doing in the twenty-first century and claim to adhere to our earliest principles. We must decide who we are. And if that decision is to restore our highest ideals, then major changes must be made in the way we elect our presidents and our members of Congress.

*******************

In light of his comments, insights, and the massive corruption he correctly identifies, worrying about who marries who and who can fly a certain flag pale in comparison. Because in the end, if all we are left with in our democracy is a new type of marriage license and a piece of cloth on a flagpole, at the expense of our economic and political freedom, then who really cares? They are nothing more than small consolation prizes.

As Woodrow Wilson once said: "The government, which was designed for the people, has got into the hands of the bosses and their employers, the special interests. An invisible empire has been set up above the forms of democracy." Never has this quote from a hundred years ago been so right as it is today.

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

December, 2014, Part 2, By The Numbers: A Lame Congress, Food Stamp Mania, IRS Giveaways, and More

On a semi-regular basis we do a series of posts with the theme: “by the numbers.” As we all know, we can really never trust any politician to tell us the truth, especially if it does not fit their selfish needs and strategies. However, while they can lie, deceive, and skew their message, the realities of actual numbers always give us the truth of the situation. 

I used to work for a boss whose favorite saying was: “There is nothing more devastating to an opinion than the right number.” By looking at the raw numbers of a situation, we can look past the political spin and other BS that politicians constantly rain down us to divide us, trick, us, and insure their continued time in office. We try to dispel these myths and travesties by looking at reality's numbers to devastate the politicians’ opinions.

1) Let’s start with an easy one today. The current session of Congress is finally over. Without even looking at the numbers, one knows that this was probably the most inept, incompetent and worthless set of Congressional politicians ever to sit in Congress.

But let’s look at the numbers anyway. According to a recent Associated Press article, this Congress ended up passing about 200 bills into laws. The Congress that sat during the years 1947 and 1948 was infamously called the “do nothing Congress” by Harry Truman. That “do nothing” Congress passed over 900 bills into law, four and half times more laws that passed under this past Congress to give you an idea of how bad our current politicians are.

And many of these meager 200 laws had nothing to do with helping Americans. Many of them were simply for the naming of new post offices or Federal buildings or the renewal of existing laws. One of the bills that actually went before all of Congress and was passed was the decision to give golfer Jack Nicklaus a Congressional gold medal for sportsmanship. And for this type of meager performance, these people get over $170,000 a year in salary, very generous benefit packages, and probably work less than 150 days a year. Pathetic numbers from a pathetic set of politicians.

2) Yesterday, we reviewed some bad economic numbers that showed that no matter how much President Obama brags about his economic skills and policies, the bottom line numbers show that this economy has been stagnant and lethargic under the Obama administration. To verify that point, we recently came across some food assistance numbers that are very depressing and embarrassing.

According to the website, www.cnsnews.com, and the USDA numbers and data they pulled, the number of Americans who receive financial food assistance from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), otherwise known as food stamps, has been over an amazing 46,000,000 Americans for 37 straight months. 

In September, 2014, which is the latest data from the USDA, there were 46,459,998 Americans who received food assistance from the SNAP program. The number of beneficiaries has exceeded 46 million since September 2011, a total of 37 months, more than three years. And these numbers are occurring even though the recession ended about five years ago. You cannot claim that the economy is doing great, as Obama does, if more than 15% of the country needs Federal food assistance every month just to eat.

To visualize this embarrassment graphically, consider the following monthly graph of food assistance recipients, courtesy of the website, www.trivisonno.com:

As you can see, the number of people receiving food assistance grew steadily AFTER the recession ended. Even though it has dropped since its peak in 2013, it is still about 20 million people higher than during the recession. This means one of two things are happening: 

A) The economy really does stink for most Americans despite what the Obama administration is telling us. Or…

B) This is one of the biggest taxpayer ripoffs in the history of the country, meaning the Obama administration is totally inept at rooting out corruption and criminal fraud in the food assistance program. In either case, the Obama administration comes out as totally incompetent, either economic failures or managerial failures.

3) Another way to look at the food assistance numbers is as follows: There are more people receiving food assistance in this country than the TOTAL number of people that live in:

• Argentina, population = 42.7 million
• Poland, population = 38.5 million
• Iraq, population = 36.0 million
• Canada, population = 35.5 million
• Saudi Arabia, population = 30.8 million
• Malaysia, population = 30.4 million
• Venezuela, population = 30.2 million
• Australia, population = 23.7 million

In fact, the U.S. has more people on food assistance than the overall population in each of over 200 other countries.

4) How about some lobbyist numbers to review today? According to the Against Crony Capitalism website, up until around mid-1990s, Microsoft had practically no lobbyist presence in Washington, D.C. They also paid virtually no money to political campaigns. 

By 1998, the company was spending $3.7 million on lobbying and contributing more than $1.4 million to political campaigns. That is $5.1 million that Microsoft could not spend on creating better products, hiring more people and thus growing the economy, or rewarding their shareholders.

Instead, it went into the sinkhole that is Washington D.C. and the political class people that inhabit it, never to be seen again or to have any positive impact on Americans’ lives.

5) Imagine how many homeless Americans could be fed or housed with $6 billion, imagine how many drug addicts could be treated for $6 billion, imagine how many veterans could get the medical care they need for $6 million. Then imagine how angry you are when you learn that the IRS inspector general has recently found out that the IRS mistakenly gave out $6 billion to people who did not legally deserve the money.

Stephen Ohlemacher of the Associated Press wrote on December 9, 2014 that the IRS paid at out least $6 billion in child tax credits in 2013 to people who weren't eligible to receive them. The payments went to families that either erroneously claimed the tax credit or claimed the wrong amount, as well as taxpayers who committed fraud, according to an audit by J. Russell George, the Treasury inspector general for tax administration.

According to the article, for years the IRS had claimed that the risk for improper payments related to the child tax credit was very low. Oops. The inspector general report says that assessment is incorrect: "It is imperative that the IRS take action to identify and address all of its programs that are at high risk for improper payments," George said in a statement.

The $6 billion error was contained within the $57 billion that was paid out for the credit in 2013, resulting in a more than 10.5% error rate. And this is just the bad payments the inspector general’s analysis found, the error rate could be even higher.

6) Let’s finish this set of “by the numbers” update with a really depressing set of numbers. The following chart and analysis comes from a Heritage Foundation analysis of Social Security numbers:

Highlights, or lowlights, from the chart include the following:

• In 1983, the Social Security fund’s trustees estimated that the reforms instituted in that year would keep Social Security solvent for 75 years or until 2058.
• However, the latest trustees’ report now estimates that the Social Security program will go insolvent in 2024.
• This is a whopping 34 years sooner than originally estimated and even worse, that date of insolvency is only ten years from now, right in the middle of the Baby Boomer retirement years.
• And even worse than worse, the estimated insolvency date has been coming more and more immediate so that the 2024 date might even be too optimistic.

Very depressing numbers. And in reality, the program is already bankrupt since several years ago it started paying out more money than it was taking in and had started relying on general Treasury funds to make up the difference. The fact that it has not been declared insolvent already is because of inter-department government accounting tricks.

These numbers do not lie, something has to be done about the entire busted program or the reality of these numbers will hit within the next decade. Several steps from “Love My Country, Loathe my Government” would help avert this disaster. These steps include raising the retirement age for those that can afford to wait, banning wealthy people from receiving a Social Security check to save scarce resources for those that truly need the financial help, cleaning up the massive fraud within the system today, and uncapping the maximum Social Security income limit while dropping the Social Security tax rate. 

But this would require leadership and guts on the part of the Washington political class so forget about these solutions, just get ready when the whole program crashes on the numbers of reality within the next ten years.

That will do it for our “by the numbers” update this month. The numbers do not lie and the numbers are not good. From a failing Social Security system, to massively increasing national debt, to large budget overruns in the Veterans Administration’s operations, and more, the numbers tell a very disheartening picture of what the political class has wrought on the country and its citizens. 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:

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

Part 1: American Politicians Are "Just Not Into You"

Note: Today's post should have been posted yesterday since it is the first post in our theme, "American Politicians Are Just Not Into You." It was early yesterday morning when I mistakenly posted the third post and not the first one in the series. I apologize for not being awake enough for getting the series correct! However, regardless of the sequence, the message is the same: America politicians are just not into you and I, they prefer to take care of their monied backers and financiers and their own personal wealth and greed.

We are fast approaching the November midterm elections so the promises and vows from the American political class are starting to pile up. They are going to make life easier, reduce taxes, save the middle class, fix all of our problems, end poverty, and wondrously cater to all of our needs and fears for every single American. 

The problem with these promises is that probably about half of those politicians making the promises are already in office and for the most part, their failures have made the country as screwed up as it is today. Wasteful government spending, corruption, cronyism, ineffective and inefficient government programs, etc. all occurred while they were in office. Why would we believe them now that all of a sudden, if reelected, they would somehow now, miraculously fix all of the stuff they have either broken themselves or ignored during their tenure in office?

The reality of the American political system today is that our politicians do not really care about what you and I think, need, want, and require. We only serve one purpose for them: our votes at election time. Once in office, they have other masters and other entities that they focus on, not us. Those entities include their perpetual reelection campaigns, their personal financial gains, their business and union cronies, campaign donors, their five week vacations, etc. 

To prove our point, we will spend the next two days proving that you are rather insignificant to our political class. They have other interests, priorities, and focus points while in office. To borrow a movie quote, they are “just not into you.”

1) The main driver of our theme over these next few days is an article written by Mr. Wynton Hall. The title of his article is, “Study: You Have ‘Near Zero’ Impact on U.S. Policy.” Important points in the article include the following:

• The premise of the article is based on a new political science study, "Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens." 
• The study is will likley appear in an upcoming issue of Perspectives on Politics.
• It was authored by Princeton University Professor Martin Gilens and Northwestern University Professor Benjamin Page. 
• The bottom line conclusion of their research is that corporate interests and ultra wealthy Americans are really the controllers of U.S. government policy and direction.
• They have so much control that "the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy." 
• American University Historian Allan J. Lichtman, recently reviewed the work and concluded that the research is "shattering" and "should be a loud wake-up call to the vast majority of Americans who are bypassed by their government." 
• The research is based on the analysis of 1,800 policy issues which led the authors to realize that government policies and laws almost always ignore the viewpoints and wishes of average citizens.
• Instead, sitting politicians usually adopt views and preferences of wealthy business and other interests when enacting laws and regulations.

Gilens and Page make the following depressing, but probably accurate, observation: "If policymaking is dominated by powerful business organizations and a small number of affluent Americans, then America's claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened." 

In other words, politicians are “just not into you” making their election a charade of false promises in order to facilitate their own greedy and selfish interests, interests that are facilitated by the wealthy and few.

2) One of President Obama’s biggest election promises, or lies depending on your perspective, is that no big time lobbyists would hold any high ranking or important positions within his administration. This would appear to be a good thing since it would counter the trend we just discussed of wealthy business and other interests having too much say in American Federal politics.

But alas, like most, if not all, of Obama’s election promises and vows, this one is also a false promise or outright deception, depending on your perspective. Politico’s Byron Tau recently reported that the Federal Office of Management and Budget recently released a new government rule which will allow registered lobbyists to participate in policy making discussions. This is the result of a judge’s ruling from earlier this year.

As a result lobbyists for corporations and industry groups can now serve on more than 1,000 government industry boards, panels and commissions. providing the private sector a role in decision-making across the executive branch, according to a copy of the rule published on the Federal Register site.

While the judge forced this issue on the administration, two distressing observations arise. First, it does not appear the administration is going to appeal or fight this ruling, either in the courts or legislatively. It will just go along with it and allow business interests to have a much more substantial say and influence in government policy making. 

Given how passionate and convincing the President was on the campaign trail relative to blocking lobbyists’ influence on and how he has disregarded many other legal requirements at his whim, one has to think that this is not a big issue for him, it was just a campaign ploy.

Second, it is not clear how closely he was adhering to his campaign promise anyway before this lobbyist victory in the courts. According to a recent Politico count, despite campaign promises, around 70 corporate, for-hire or association lobbyists have all joined the Obama administration in significant position of influence.

Another campaign promise broken, possibly because the President is “just not into you.”

3) Unemployment is still high, average wage levels are falling, economic growth is anemic, household incomes are falling, and the overall economy is still weak, many years after the end of the recession. Americans are hurting. Well, most Americans are hurting. If you last name is Pelosi, and you still have a lot of influence in the Federal government, than life is pretty good, even if it is at the expense of the American taxpayer.

According to a recent Associated Press report:

• Nancy Pelosi helped to direct more than a billion dollars in Federal transit subsidies to a company operated by a wealthy Democratic party campaign contributor.
• By the way, Ms. Pelosi’s husband is a major investor in that transit company.
• According to the Associated Press report, Ms. Pelosi had worked for many years to steer Federal taxpayer funding to a light rail project in San Francisco’s Mission Bay neighborhood, significantly increasing the value of Mission Bay real estate.
• The transit company’s CEO, Marc Benioff, is a high-dollar Democratic donor with Pelosi and her leadership PAC among the recipients of his large campaign contributions. 
• A main contributor to the increase in property values in the Mission Bay area is the expansion of the city’s Third Street Light Rail line. Pelosi has been the expansion’s champion at the Federal government table. 
• Since 2003, she has secured well over a billion dollars for the project in the form of earmarks, Federal funding agreements, and economic stimulus program funding.
• Two transit stops on the extended light rail line are about three blocks from a four-story office building owned by her husband, Paul Pelosi, a reality that will further increase the values of property owned by the Pelosi family.
• Benioff made two $2,500 contributions to Pelosi’s reelection campaign, he gave $5,000 of Pelosi’s PAC, and he gave $15,000 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. 
• Those contributions happened just four months after Pelosi secured $967 million in Federal funding for the Third Street light rail project.

Since you and I are likely not able to contribute tens of thousands of dollars to politicians reelection campaigns, that may be why they are “just not into you.”

That will do it for today but we are just getting warmed up. Today we proved what we all have sensed all along: 1) statistical analysis and research conclusively proves that Washington politicians couldn't care less what you think and need, 2) despite the promises, high powered lobbyists representing wealthy interests continue to infect the Washington government bureaucracies, and 3) long term politicians like Nancy Pelosi are more than willing to trade off political favors and taxpayer wealth for personal gain.

Proving once and for all: today’s American politicians are “just not into you.” Except when you are voting.

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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

May, 2014 Political Class Insanity, Part 7: the President Lies Again, Rolls Royces All Around, Counting Space Junk, and More

Its day seven of our latest monthly political class insanity review with possibly an end in sight. Sometimes I think that is better when Washington politicians take long vacations because when on vacation they are far less likely to screw anything else up. A sad, sad commentary on the lack of leadership and ability of the current set of American politicians.

1) Let’s start today with some outer space political class insanity. Circling around the earth are thousands and thousands of pieces of space junk. Often, space junk collides with other space junk which creates thousands and thousands of new pieces of space junk.

Most of this space junk is traveling really fast so that even a little piece of space junk can cause big trouble when it hits another piece at speeds up to 17,000 miles an hour. This action even has a name, the Kessler effect. It is named after NASA scientist Donald J. Kessler, who wrote about it in 1978. It is a scenario in which the density of objects in low earth orbit gets larger over time, so that that a collision between objects causes a cascade. Each collision produces more space debris, which in turn increases the likelihood of further collisions. 

As the number of pieces of space junk gets larger, the probability of a piece hitting and disabling a working satellite gets larger and larger. Such an event, if it knocked out a satellite, could have severe commercial, telecommunications, and national defense issues. So this is serious stuff. To quote George Clooney from his character in the movie, “Gravity”: "Half of North America just lost their Facebook." 

There really is no way to solve the problem with today’s technology, there are just too many pieces of junk floating around and racing around in space. However, that will not stop the Federal government from wasting at least $6 billion to try and fix it. The Feds want to build something called the "Space Fence." It really isn't a fence. It's a $6 billion radar system that will monitor just a tiny fraction of the space junk. 

Let’s be clear. Spending $6 billion will monitor and track only a small portion of the junk load. It will not be able to prevent any collisions. It will not be able to predict when these collisions will occur. It will only be able to say: “There was a collision.” 

There is no known solution to this problem. There is no program to solve it. The "Space Fence" merely lets some Air Force person, who is staring at a screen, watch the chain reaction blow holes in the world's space-based telecommunications system, impact by impact. 

But you know that some aerospace company gave some money to some politicians somewhere along the line to get $6 billion for a project that basically looks out into space. Pathetic waste of money.

2) The Washington Examiner reported on May 7, 2014 how a former Congressman was able to turn his life around inside of ten weeks despite resigning from Congress under suspicious circumstances. Former New Jersey Congressman Rob Andrews was facing an ethics probe for allegedly using his political campaign funds for personal travel and other personal expenses. When Andrews announced a sudden resignation from Congress in February, some observers concluded that it was because of the ethics investigations, a conclusion the former Congressman denied, citing quality of life issues.

Within ten weeks after his last day in Congress, Andrews registered himself as a Federal lobbyist. And guess what? As a former member of the House Armed Services Committee, he will lobby for a New Jersey defense company, to help them "gain business opportunities with the Department of Defense and other federal agencies," as he puts it on his disclosure form.

Again, nice work if you can get it. Yesterday, we discussed the fact that an EPA employee was paid despite spending many hours everyday downloading and viewing porn on the job. And now this former, possibly ethics-challenged Congressman escapes out of Congress to land a sweet deal in the lobbying industry. Sweet for the former Congressman, disgraceful for those of us that paid his salary for a very long time and ended up allegedly being abused by his actions.

3) I love pointing out hypocrisy and the following data from the Federal government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics points out a big hypocrisy of the Obama administration. Recall that over the past six years or so, the Democrats via Obama have controlled the White House and have controlled the Senate so they are not idle sideline observers in the following labor situation.

The Obama administration is always crying out about the “war on women,” blaming Republicans for being insensitive to the needs of American women. This President tries to position himself as the champion of women and their well being. 

But is that true? Not if you consider the latest statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS):

• The number of women 16 and older not in the labor force climbed to a record high of 55,116,000 in April, according to a recent from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). 
• In other words, officially there were 55,116,000 women 16 and older who were in the civilian population who not only did not have a job, they did not actively seek one in the last four weeks. 
• That is up 428,000 from the 54,688,000 women who were not in the labor force in March.
• According to BLS, the labor force participation rate for women was 56.9%, down from 57.2% in March. The labor force participation rate is the percentage of this population that either has a job or actively sought one in the last four weeks.
• In April, according to BLS, the female civilian labor force was 72,835,000 which was down 340,000 from the 73,175,000 in March.

In other words, the economic policies of this administration and this Congress have not been good to the women of America. It is not the Republicans that are waging a war on women, as Obama likes to claim, it is the whole political class, including Obama and the Democrats and the Republicans, and their idiotic economic policies that are hurting the labor chances and opportunities of women. For him to claim that it is only the Republicans, more than five years into his administration, is ludicrous.

4) Speaking of hypocrisy and lying, the President was recently giving a speech where again he whined about the Republicans and how they had filibustered 500 pending pieces of legislation to thwart his plans for the country. Nice try, but the usually Obama-friendly Washington Post called him on yet another lie, giving this claim its top liar rating of four Pinocchio’s. 

Apparently, this claim is nowhere close to being reality with true filibusters occurring just a fraction of the time that the President claimed. But I guess we should not be too surprised that he lied or deceived again since he lied about how Obama Care would not cancel your existing policy or cut you off from your preferred doctors and hospitals, how he would close the prison at Guantanamo right after being elected but still has not, how he would cut the annual Federal deficit in half but has recorded record deficits since coming into office, how he would have the most transparent administration but really has the most secretive and opaque administration, etc. Remember that he was awarded three of the top ten political lies by the Post in 2013 and it appears that he is driving hard for a similar dubious record in 2014.

The really underlying problem is not just this lie. Independent polling organizations are now finding that a strong majority of Americans do not believe what the President says or they believe that he lies on a regular basis. When the country does not believe what the President says, his ability to lead is seriously impaired since no one will believe what he says, support what he says, or have any faith in his ideas, being scared of getting burned with yet another lie. That is no way to lead a country but that is what a multitude of Pinocchio’s will do for you, destroy your reputation for integrity and dignity.

5) One last piece of insanity for today. The nation’s Federal government debt load is now around a mind numbing $17.5 TRILLION as the Obama administration and the Washington political class continues to spend and waste not only the wealth of this generation but the wealth and well being of future American generations. Both the Congressional Budget Office and the new chairwoman of the Federal Reserve have warned that current government spending levels are not sustainable and will have dire consequences for the country in the future.

But how much is $17.5 TRILLION? It is so large it is almost incomprehensible, much like most of the political class. Given that this past week we celebrated Mother’s Day, the wonderful website Bankrupting America tried to quantify how much $17.5 TRILLION actually is:

• With $17.5 TRILLION, you Could Buy Your Mom 71 Billion Flower Arrangements From An Expensive NYC Florist. Matles Florist currently offers an orchid arrangement with a premium price of $245.
• With $17.5 TRILLION, you Could Buy Your Mom An Extravagant Private Island …Or 190,375 Of Them. Rangyai Island is a developed private island for sale off the coast of Thailand. It is currently listed for $160 million dollars.
• With $17.5 TRILLION, you could Buy Your Mom 11.7 Billion Jars Of Diamond Face Cream. If your mother has expensive taste for beauty products, Forever Flawless offers a face cream that is infused with diamonds for $1,500.

To this list we would two more ways to measure our national debt:

• With $17.5 TRILLION, you could give every adult resident of New York state a check for over $1.2 million, every adult, no exceptions.
• With $17.5 TRILLION, you could buy every resident of Massachusetts a Rolls Royce Ghost, starting price of $253,200. Thus, a family of four living in Massachusetts would have four Rolls Royces sitting in their driveway.

We are allowing the Washington politicians to spend and waste our country into a financial death spiral without any flowers, islands, face cream, or Rolls Royces to show for it. Pathetic.

That will do it for this month’s insanity, enough is enough. Today we learned that the President got caught in another obvious lie, the country is going broke for nothing in return, we are wasting time and money looking at space junk explode, and life is bad for the working women in this country but great for allegedly ethics challenged politicians. Sounds about right.

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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w