Love My Country, Loathe My Government: lockdowns

Showing posts with label lockdowns. Show all posts

Sunday, May 23, 2021

May, 2021, Part 7,Political Class Insanity: Another Washington Law Breaker Avoids Jail, Karma For a Rochester Politician, and The Political Class Blows The Pandemic Crisis

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

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

1) Possibly at some distant point in the past, Washington politicians and bureaucrats were focused on honestly doing their jobs and helping Americans. Seems like a long time ago, given today’s poisonous political atmosphere and the reality another Senate staffer has been found guilty of crimes:

A second member on the staff of Senator Maggie Hassan has been found guilty of hacking government computers for political gain.
The staffer, Samantha DeForest-Dave, assisted another Senate staffer, Jackson Cosko, in breaking into the Senator’s office where they hacked Congressional computers.
The result of that hack was to download the addresses of Republican Senators and then make that information public, endangering the lives of those Senators and their families.
Jackson has already pleaded guilty and is serving four years in a Federal prison.
Apparently, he was angry because Brett Kavanaugh was being confirmed to the Supreme Court so, of course, endangering the lives of others was a rational reaction.
DeForest-Dave initially lied to police investigators about providing keys to Cosko to get access to the Senator’s offices.
According to Courthouse News: “After Hassan fired him in May 2018, Cosko lent Deforest-Davis money for her rent but requested a favor in return. That summer, spurred by anger over Kavanaugh’s Senate confirmation hearings, Cosko repeatedly used Deforest-Davis’ keys to access the senator’s office after hours and hack the congressional computers.”
He then published addresses and phone numbers of Congressional Republicans on Wikipedia and Twitter.

Nasty and dangerous stuff but like most lawbreakers in Washington, she got no prison time, just a suspended sentence, 200 hours of community service, and two years of probation. Imagine what would have happened to us if you or I facilitated a hack into a restricted Federal computer system, downloaded secret information, and then published that information, endangering lives. Doubtful we would have avoided prison time.

2) As we have pointed out so many times in this blog, politicians talk a good game but often fall short of their own espoused ideals and goals:

Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot shut down almost all small businesses in Chicago during the pandemic but forced her own hair salon to open to get her hair done while the rest of the city residents could not get that luxury.
The Beaumont, Texas mayor did a similar antic, forcing her nail salon to open to get her nails done while forcing the rest of the city to stay shut down, the need for nails to be done by ordinary citizens be damned.
The governor of California forced all of his millions of residents to wear masks during the pandemic while he partied and frolicked at a high end French restaurant with friends and supporters who did not wear masks.
The governor of Michigan restricted travel in and out of her state during the pandemic but treated herself to a private vacation in Florida, to the tune of a $26,000 airfare cost, while her residents were stuck back at home.

Yes, the hypocrisy of the American political class often knows no limits. But every once in a while one of them gets hit up the side of the head with hypocrisy karma for their pompousness:

Rochester, New York mayor, Lovely Warren, has a history of wanting to get guns off of the streets of her city.
She has supported state laws that probably violate citizens’ Second Amendment rights and was all excited about a gun buyback plan her police force executed.
She recently claimed that “getting guns off our streets must be a priority.”
Specifically: "That’s why I’m glad our police department is partnering with the Attorney General’s Office and our churches to host a gun buy-back event next week. I know Chief Herriott-Sullivan and her team are working with their partners in law enforcement to stop the flow of illegal guns into our city. We must continue working together with our citizens to take these guns off our streets so our residents can feel safe in their neighborhoods and live the lives they deserve.”
Certainly her right to have this opinion and the position it would help protect her citizens, a primary function of her office.
But while she was out pontificating about getting illegal guns off of the street, it turns out she has illegal guns in her own home.
When the New York State Police recently raided her home they found her husband, Timothy Granison, in possession of 31 grams of cocaine and in possession of a firearm.
The firearm was illegally in his possession because of a conviction he received for armed robbery 24 years ago, a conviction that voided his right to be in possession of a weapon, which makes it an illegal gun, the kind his wife is campaigning against.
He was arrested with seven other folks as part of an ongoing illegal drug investigation.
The investigation executed seven searches including the Mayor’s home where, in total, they found two kilos of powder and crack cocaine, four guns including a semi-automatic rifle, and over $100,000 in cash.
The rifle was found at the mayor's home.

Looks like the mayor should have cleaned up her own illegal gun act before trying to clean up the city’s gun population. The Zerohedge website summed up the mayor’s predicament quite nicely: “Well, I suppose the good news for Warren is that there are two fewer guns in Rochester today. Too bad for her that they were seized from her own home. I wonder if Warren is still big on ensuring that there are consequences for possessing a gun illegally in the city she oversees, or if she’s suddenly had a change of heart over the past 24 hours.”

Karma can be a bitch.

3) Warner Tood Huston recently did an online article about how many of the policies and lockdowns that the American political class forced on us all made the super rich even richer, helped make the politically connected richer, and had dire consequences for the rest of us, consequences that in many cases were worse than anything the virus could have done:

According to Huston, the pandemic saw a bunch of power and money end up with the “overclass” of politicians, corporate managers, and government bureaucrats.
Small businesses were forced to shut down, many never to reopen again, while big, corporate businesses got themselves deemed “essential” and thrived.
High paid white collar workers got to work at home while others were forced into low paying delivery jobs, think Uber Eats, DoorDash, etc.
The national debt exploded which will force EVERYONE to pay higher taxes down the road, hitting the lower economic strata especially hard.
Politicians often exceeded and abused their lawful duties and responsibilities.
While the Chinese Communist Party used the cover of the pandemic and lockdowns to crush a righteous rebellion in Hong Kong, American politicians took similar actions.
Americans who protested the draconian and often illegal lockdowns and other political orders were called granny killers while others, whose political leanings were in line with sitting politicians, were allowed to do anything they wanted without consequences.
For example, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio allowed a massive Black Lives Matter protest while ensuring that the gates to a Jewish playground were welded shut.
States with draconian lockdowns and dictatorial political leaders were not healthier, and in many cases were less healthy, than states and cities that used more common sense in their pandemic reactions.
But that reality, realized early on, did nothing to change the often heartless and senseless lockdown rules of the stricter states and cities.
According to an analysis by the American Institute for Economic research, the lockdowns did more public health harm than good: businesses died, causing economic hardship and stress on individuals and families, mental health problems cases exploded, people opted out of routine and elective medical procedures such as cancer screenings with the obvious long term negative consequences yet to be realized, child and spousal abuse rates climbed and kids basically lost a year of schooling, with, again, long term consequences yet to be realized.
And while the country suffered, no politician, no government bureaucrat, no teacher union member lost a dollar in salary or compensation.

Look, the situation was challenging to say the least. Early on, no one knew what the virus consequences would be, how deadly the virus would be or not be, what was the best way to combat the virus, etc. But as time wore on, it became obvious what was working and what was not working: common sense from some states and cities that trusted their citizens to do the right thing voluntarily and produced procedures and guidelines that were based on common sense and the best info at the time.

At the same time, there were those local and state politicians that just went on a power ego trip and acted like the Chinese Communist party in Hong Kong: do it our way or else there would be dire consequences regardless of how stupid, and hypocritical our policies and ourselves are. As a result, economic disasters, business disasters and closures, unneeded alternative health issues, both physical and mental, and so much more.

As always, most American politicians approach every problem with a hammer when maybe a little more precision and elegance could be used to not make life so hard for regular Americans. And in the process protect our freedom to live our life as we see fit, not as some dictatorial governor or mayor sees fit.

That will do it for today: ego driven, power hungry politicians whose decisions were not optimal, a Rochester politician gets a brutal dose of karma, and another Washington lawbreaker gets off with basically no penalty.

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/Love-My-Country-Loathe-Government/dp/1604942789/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=love+my+country%2C+loathe+my+government&qid=1607716020&sr=8-1

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

Friday, February 12, 2021

February, 2021, Part 6, Political Class Insanity: Lightfoot Blames Trump...Again, Covid Orgy Safety In Pennsylvania, Bad Biden Priorities, and Freedom Beats Lockdowns

1) We have often discussed the reality that Chicago mayor, Lori Lightfoot, is possibly the worst big city mayor in the country. She has not been able to come up with solutions to the ever growing violence and crime in her city, allowing Chicago to continue to lead the country year over year in murders by a wide margin.

She has not been able to reduce overall crime rates also, leading residents and businesses to leave the city for their own protection and the protection of their employees, having recently had a sit down with city business leaders where she pleaded with them to not abandon the city. When George Floyd riots shook the city, she made sure that her neighborhood had extra police protection while not providing the same level of protection to her voters. And finally, she has had an inability to manage a budget with the city probably looking at a one billion dollar shortfall in the current fiscal year.

One of her latest problems has to do with the city’s teachers and their union:

Chicago public school kids have not yet returned to their physical classrooms since the beginning of the pandemic.
Lightfoot tried to get the schools reopened recently but was stymied by the teachers union in the city.
The union will not allow their members back into the classroom until every teacher has been vaccinated and if a teacher lives with a vulnerable family member then the union wants that teacher to not return to the physical classroom and continue to teach remotely.
Thus, another failure to add to her ever growing failure list.
But in her mind it is not her fault that she cannot get Chicago kids a good education, it is, of course, Donald Trump’s fault.
Rather than step up and admit she has failed, she stated that, “This is a very difficult situation and we’re in it, still, because of the incompetence of the previous administration. So I think it’s important for both sides to come to the table in good faith, recognize that we’re both trying to work through a very challenging situation but we must get a deal done.”
Never mind that it was up to the states to come up with a vaccine rollout plan that was best for their residents, never mind that Cook County, the county for Chicago, did not get around to getting its vaccine website up and running a month after it had access to vaccine supplies, never mind that other states have gotten their kids back into the physical classrooms without a problem, the Chicago disaster is Trump’s fault.
According to the Chicago Tribune. “Compared to other states, Illinois has among the lowest percent of its population which is vaccinated so far, although it ranks among the top in the total number of doses administered to date.”
Also, the city’s private, charter, and parochial schools have all been having in class teaching and they have been relatively problem free since last September but it is Trump;s fault that the Chicago public schools are still virtual.

All of this raises the age old problem we have frequently pondered: are politicians that much out of touch with reality that they never see their own failings or do they think we are that stupid and believe the tripe they put forth like this excuse from Lightfoot? It is a question for the ages.

2) No doubt millions of Americans have suffered from the covid virus. Many have died, many have gotten sick, many have suffered severe financial setbacks. Thus, given the enormity of the problem, one would hope that politicians and the government entities and bureaucrats that they oversee would be laser focused on getting us through the issue as quickly as possible, focusing on the most important aspects of the problem.

Apparently, the good people in the Pennsylvania state government’s health department may have their priorities focused on a minor and insignificant part of the overall deadly problem:

Rather than spending resources educating the vast amount of people in the state on how to stay healthy (e.g. social distancing, cleaning one’s hands regularly, wearing masks, etc.), the health department spend time energy and resources putting together a list of things not to do when you engage in your next sex orgy.
Yes, it is their opinion that this activity had to be addressed to help prevent the spread of the virus.
Their recommendations for attending an orgy include limiting the number of people at the orgy, try to identify a consistent sex partner at the orgy, wear a face covering (which would possibly add some intrigue to the orgy!), avoid kissing at the orgy (which would obviously reduce the fun at being at an orgy), wash your hands with soap and water before and after sex at the orgy, consider replacing your in personal orgies with virtual, online encounters, etc.
So rather than focusing on getting vaccines distributed, working to make sure at risk populations are kept as safe as possible (e.g. nursing home residents, medical staff, state residents with respiratory problems etc.) the Pennsylvania state government is focused on orgy attendees.

So in the state you can go to orgies and the state will help you stay safe but in the same state you cannot go to church services where you maintain social distancing and wear a mask. Such bad priorities and waste of taxpayer resources.

3) Biden and Democrats are big advocates of reducing everyone’s carbon footprint and shutting down the economy to maybe prevent the spread of the virus. In fact, the CDC recently issued guidelines where they said they wanted people not to travel for two weeks to try and slow down the spread of the virus.

But apparently Joe Biden got neither message:

He recently got on a plane and flew from Washington D.C. to his home in Delaware, a plane flight that could not have taken more than thirty minutes.
Obviously cranking up a plane for such a short trip threw a lot of unnecessary carbon into the air.
And was this trip even necessary since, according to the Associated Press, he flew home to Delaware to work with his wife to decide what personal belongings they should move to the White House.
Yes, that was more important than the slow rollout of vaccines, it was more important than high unemployment levels, it was more important than Iran getting very close to having nuclear weapons, etc.
He could not do this via Facetime, speakerphone, or the best possible solution, let...his...wife...decide what to bring to the White House.

Like the bad covid/orgy priorities in Pennsylvania, Biden claims to be worried about carbon footprints and issues facing Americans and yet his priority is to decide what socks to bring to the White House. Bad, bad priorities.

4) Various state governments and governors have approached the whole pandemic problem in different ways. Some states went straight to dictatorship status, imposing draconian measures on its citizens and businesses. Some states went to a more measured, common sense approach, preferring to maintain as much freedom for its residents as possible while minimizing the virus impact at the same time.

Well, as always, freedom and commons sense appears to have won out:

According to the December state unemployment estimates, the states with the lowest unemployment rates were Nebraska, South Dakota, Iowa, Vermont, Utah, Kansas, Alabama, New Hampshire, North Dakota, and Arkansas.
The vast majority of these high performing employment states are operated by Republicans who did not go the dictator route to confront the virus.
The vast majority of states with the highest unemployment rates include Hawaii, Nevada, California, Colorado, New York, New Mexico, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey, Illinois, and Michigan.
All of these states are run by the more dictatorial side of the political class, the Democrats, and their residents suffered through some of the most oppressive shutdowns in the whole country.
And ironically, they had some of the highest covid infection rates in the country also with New York and California leading the way.
We have often talked about how state residents in California, New York, and Illinois suffered though some horrific freedom restrictions, ruining economies and businesses, while the politicians in those states often ignored the very rules and regulations they were imposing on their own constituents, the infamous “do as I say, not as I do” syndrome.

Freedom always does better than political control, never fails. And yet, politicians somehow think they always know better and the people they control always suffer. The unemployment numbers do not lie, freedom and common sense are often the traits that politicians ignore the most.

Enough insanity for today: freedom wins, Biden loses with his bad priorities, Pennsylvania moves to make sex orgies safe, and Lori Lightfoot is still failing and still blaming Trump.