Showing posts with label markey. Show all posts
Showing posts with label markey. Show all posts

Tuesday, November 18, 2025

November, 2025, Part 2, Political Class Insanity: Yet More Corruption In Ukraine, A Congressman Views Porn on a Plane, Biden Pays Off The Federal Workforce and More

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

1)During the Biden Presidency, he sent untold billions of dollars to the Ukrainians to help fight the Russian invasion. Unfortunately, while he found it easy to send American taxpayer wealth into an endless war, he never made one attempt to try and end the war. And as we have discussed before, we have evidence that much of that taxpayer wealth was siphoned off via corruption:

  • A former colleague of Ukrainian President Zelenskyy, Tymur Mindich, has been accused of heading up a $100 million embezzlement operation.

  • His alleged scheme was uncovered by the country's anti-corruption watchdogs.

  • He and others were fingered for corruption involving the country’s government run nuclear power company.

  • He allegedly used his government position to pressure contractors to pay kickbacks in order to bypass government requirements and hurdles.

  • However, before he could be  arrested for corruption, he fled the country,  possibly to Israel.

  • While Zelenskyy has not been implicated in the corruption scheme, he apparently is a long term associate of Mindich.

Another day another chapter of Ukrainian government corruption, a government that Biden and the rest of Washington poured billions of dollars into, a country with a reputation of being one of the  most politically corrupt governments in the world.

2)The Federal government shutdown is finally over after 43 days. Millions of Americans suffered, going  without their government paychecks for over a month, from air traffic controllers to members of  the military. They struggled while the clowns in Congress posed and primped and strutted in news broadcasts with empty rhetoric and just plain  idiocy, focusing more on public relations and political  posturing than fixing what they broke.

But one group of Washington employees did  not financially suffer during those 43 shutdown days:

  • Members of Congress, those responsible  for the shutdown, collected  more  than  $20,000 of their salaries during the shutdown.

  • During the shutdown, 1.3 million active-duty service members, over 750,000 Guard and Reserve troops, and roughly 1.4 million Federal workers faced furloughs or worked without pay while lawmakers continued receiving their salaries.

  • While some members of Congress did the right thing, either  declining to accept their salary checks or  donating their wages to charity, the majority of them continued to accept their pay as if nothing else was going on in the country.

  • In fact, one member  of Congress, senator  Ed Markey, actually blocked a bipartisan attempt to suspend Congressional pay during the shutdown.

  • Even the leader of the shutdown,  Chuck Schumer, did not accept a salary but most members of Congress did.

Just another example where the priorities of those in Washington are not on resolving problems, making  life easier for Americans,  or doing anything else positive for the country.  It is always about their self enrichment and their reelection.

3)One  of my favorite pieces of advice goes as follows: “When stuck in a hole, stop digging.” It has so  many real life applications but apparently a California Congressman did not heed this advice when trying to  explain his way out of a wild and pretty disgusting situation:

  • Brad Sherman  is a California Congressman who was recently traveling on a commercial  flight.

  • Unfortunately, other passengers caught the Congressman watching explicit sexual images of scantily clad women on his tablet.

  • And those passengers decided to  take some photos of the Congressman’ indulgence and post them on  the Internet, photos that garnered over 12 million views very quickly

  • Rather than own  up to his perversion, the Congressman’s  office decided, for some unbelievable reason, to  blame Elon Musk and Twitter/X for his viewing and apparently enjoying his indulgence while traveling.

  • The office claimed that the Congressman was just leisurely scrolling his  social media accounts when out of nowhere, Twitter/X forced him to watch the scantily clad women images.

  • It went on  to say that Elon Musk corrupted the platform’s content  delivery system, forcing people to watch material they never requested.

So many problems  with this situation and explanation:

  1. Why was the Congressman so stupid to linger and view these images in an enclosed public situation?

  2. By lingering on  them he  allowed other passengers to see what he was  looking at, make the  connection  he was a member of Congress, and snap multiple  pictures of what he was viewing when that all could have been  avoided if he shut down immediately.

  3. Twitter/X is not  some rogue AI  agent that forces someone to watch something they do not want to see, the  algorithms are apparently built around a user’s browsing history which means this is probably not the  first time that the Congressman viewed this type of material which led to the Twitter/X platform to feed him more of what he probably already viewed.

When you are in a hole, stop  digging.  By  coming up with a ridiculous and  non-viable excuse of what happened he has just dug this embarrassing hole deeper and  deeper and  kept his  name and this disgusting incident in the news.

4)Quite possibly the only issue facing the country today is the ever exploding national debt of the Federal  government, currently over $38,000,000,000,000 (38 trillion dollars). This means that every man,  woman,  and  child in the country would have to pay out over $110,000 each to cover the debt, an impossibility.

Unless this atrocity of wasteful  spending is gotten under control, the economy will crash, hyperinflation will overwhelm every American, and our democracy and freedoms will crash. And the saddest part of this financial  crisis is that the trillions of dollars that Washington spent to get us to this point never fixed anything in the country:

  • Social  Security is going bankrupt.

  • Medicare is going bankrupt.

  • Our nation’s infrastructure is crumbling.

  • Millions of Americans are homeless, hungry, and in need of medical care and  health  insurance.

  • Our schools severely under-educate our kids.

And despite this crisis, apparently no  one ever told Biden about the crisis:

  • From 2020 to 2025, most of which  happened during Biden’s term, the Federal workforce expanded by 5%, from 2.77 million to 2.90 million.

  • And yet despite that only 5% increase in  personnel, the salary costs of the Federal exploded by 24% during the same timeframe according to the Open the Books  organization.

  • The number of Federal  government  workers making over $100,000 a year increased an amazing 49% during the Biden Presidency.

  • Even worse, those Federal  employees making over $200,000 a year increased a whopping 82%.

  • And the ultimate taxpayer  insult, Federal  employees earning  over $300,000 a year increased 85%.

  • Across all 127  Federal government agencies, the AVERAGE salary of everyone in 117 of those agencies was over $100,000, an  average that includes clerks, secretaries,  janitors, etc.

  • In 2024, 31,452 Federal employees earned more than EVERY state governor, all 50 of them.

  • These salaries do not include benefits which on average increase the total compensation of  these outrageous numbers by another 30%.

  • The highest paid Federal worker is the director of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, Gary Gibbons,  and he somehow saw his salary go from $406,095 in  2021 to $519,246, a ridiculous 28% increase.

  • Although the Small Business Administration  saw its number of employees go down 26% it saw only a 3% decrease in its  payroll expenses.

With the soaring national debt, Biden obviously did not take the crisis seriously. While members of Congress were paid during the government shutdown they created, it is also the Federal  workforce that is being richly financially rewarded while not resolving any major  problems facing Americans. Must be good to work for the government, not so  good to  be a financially stressed taxpayer paying for their salaries.

Enough insanity for today: Government  workers get hefty raises, a Congressman likes pornography, Congress people do not feel the hurt that their shutdown caused, and the Ukrainians are still  corrupt.

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Friday, August 2, 2013

Part 1, August, 2013 Political Class Insanity: Roller Coaster Safety Insanity, A National Park On The Moon, Job Training The Youth...In Belize, and More

It is the beginning of another month, which means it is that time again to review the latest political class insanity from our politicians from all across the country. Each month we pause to take stock of the lunacy, idiocy, stupid statements, ineffectiveness, and wasteful spending of possibly the most inept and ineffective politicians in the history of our country.

The really depressing aspect of these reviews is that each month they get longer and longer in order to document all of the recent insanity. When we first started writing this freedom and liberty blog in 2009, we almost always could get the latest monthly political class shenanigans into a single post. Last month, it took eight days to accomplish the same task. This month, there is an excellent chance we will break that record of eight straight days of insanity, things are getting that bad.

We seem to be living a political nightmare where things get worse and worse at a quickening pace. Unemployment is still rampant, the war on drugs is still a losing proposition, our public schools still under educate our kids, our borders still leak, and our foreign policy is in tatters. All of these crises come together in this blog every month with no solution to anything in sight.

So buckle up, it is going to be a rough couple of weeks.

1) As we just said, lost war on drugs, skyrocketing national debt, chronic unemployment, stagnant economic growth, a disgraceful foreign policy, the Washington political class has screwed up a lot of things. However, have no fear, what is a prominent member of the U.S. Congress interested in working on? 

Congressman Ed Markey has the answer. He has recommended that the Federal Government step in and issue Federal Regulations on one of America’s most pressing issues: Roller coasters. Apparently, a woman recently was not properly secured in a roller coaster and fell to her death.

How big a problem is this? Data is sketchy but I did find a government report from the Consumer Product Safety Commission that found there were 52 deaths tied to amusement rides logged between 1990 and 2004. This comes out to about three and a half deaths a year. But these deaths are from all rides, only some of them are from roller coasters. Thus, we may be looking at only one or two deaths a year from roller coasters. 

Additionally, according to the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions or IAAPA, about 297 million people, both adults and children, safely rode 1.7 billion rides in the U.S. in 2011. The chance of being seriously injured on a ride at a fixed-site park in the U.S. is about 1 in 24 million. 

I feel sorry for anyone who dies while on a roller coaster.  But I also feel sorry for the hundreds of kids that die every year in Chicago from gang violence. I feel sorry for the thousands of kids that are physically and sexually abused every year. I see none of Markey’s enthusiasm in fixing these problems rather than a one in 24 million problem.

Do we really need Federal  government Congressional resources being wasted on such trivial things like roller coasters when there is so many more issues affecting millions of Americans? There are fifty state governments and thousands of local government that can worry about roller coaster safety. Just another insanely bad example of priority setting by a Washington politician.

2) But by no means does Congressman Markey have the market cornered on bad Washington priorities. The Independent Journal Review had an interesting article of political class insanity on July 10, 2013. Two House of Representatives Democrats have proposed legislation that would establish a national historical park on the surface of the moon to commemorate where the Apollo missions landed between 1969 and 1972.

The proposed legislation from Congresswoman  Donna Edwards  and Congressman Eddie Bernice Johnson would create the Apollo Lunar Landing Sites National Historical Park. The park would be comprised of all artifacts left on the surface of the moon from the Apollo 11 through 17 missions. The bill says these sites need to be protected because of the anticipated increase in commercial moon landings in the future.

A national park on the moon. Really? We have solved all of the nation’s problems and there is nothing left to do but use Federal government resources and taxpayer money to establish a park on the surface of the moon, a park that every American living today and in the future is highly unlikely to ever visit. Beyond insanity, pure stupidity.

The Independent Journal Review article went onto do a nice comparison of priorities between putting a park on the moon and other, more pressing issues facing Americans:

1. ObamaCare: A national park on the Moon won’t protect Americans from ObamaCare or address any of the law’s failures.

2. Improve the Economy: A park on the Moon does not create jobs and improve education performance for Americans. 

3. Student Loans: How will a national Moon park prevent students loan rates from doubling?

4. IRS: Establishing a national Moon park won’t provide any oversight of the out-of-control and criminal IRS.

5. Energy: A Moon park won’t lower energy costs for Americans or help develop energy independence.

So many issues and these clowns are worried about and planning for a lunar park. Words fail me in these instance of lunacy.

3) The Federal government recently announced a half a million dollar program to help create jobs for young people. The grant announcement of the program included the following justification for the spending: “Marginalized youth are empowered when given a voice and opportunities. Equipping marginalized youth and their communities with economic opportunities and/or business training can help them reach their true potential as entrepreneurs and improve citizen security.”

Great idea. Unemployment rates for younger Americans, particularly African Americans, is much higher than the overall U.S. unemployment rate. Thus, this could be a good program for the youth in our country.

Oh, wait a minute. This $500,000 of American taxpayer is not intended for America’s unemployed youth. It is a State Department grant that is going to help the underemployed and unemployed youth in…. wait for it… in Belize. Why we would ship half a million dollars to a foreign country to help the employment opportunities of their youth when our youth are suffering so when it comes to jobs is way beyond me. 

Can anyone tell me where Belize is actually located? Can someone tell me if there are strategic, economic, or homeland security reasons for these expenses? I doubt it and I bet no one in the Federal government can either besides keeping their jobs doing dumb stuff and dumber spending like this.

4) The Weekly Standard on July 22, 2013 had another article on government waste. This article was for only $31,000 of wasteful spending but $31,000 might have been used to hire a teacher or teacher’s aide somewhere in America to start the job of fixing what is broken in our education system. 

Plus, as you will see, while this example is for “only“ $31,000, it is repeated very often, every time a high ranking government official retires or leaves office. Thus, $31,000 expenses are repeated over and over with no benefit to any American taxpayer.

The latest to waste $31,000 is former Secretary Of Defense, Leon Panetta. According to the article, $31,000 is being spent to paint an original oil portrait of Panetta that will hang in the Pentagon next to other former heads of the Defense Department. In my view, a totally unnecessary expense in times of trillion dollar annual deficits. The vast majority of Americans will never see Panetta’s portrait, much like they will never see the over priced portraits of many other unnotable or unworthy Washington bureaucrats.

Let’s change this process from a blank check where the taxpayer pays to the following:

  • Given the Statue Of Liberty used no taxpayer dollars when it was fully refurbished several decades ago, let’s use that same logic and say no taxpayer dollar swill be used for any Washington bureaucrat portrait, all of whom had less impact on America than the statue of liberty.
  • If a former bureaucrat wants his oil portrait done and hung, he could pay for it himself or do a fund raising campaign to get his or her “fans” to donate, much like fans of the Statue Of Liberty did for her refurbishment.
  • I would bet that you cold get a quality job done for a lot less than $31,000 if the bureaucrat had to fund the portrait themselves,, saving the taxpayer a lot of money over time.

Okay, that will do it for today. We are just getting warmed up with the latest insanity from the political class. But as you can see from today’s wackiness, national parks on the moon, job development programs for Belize’s youth, roller coaster regulation and more, it will be a long haul to cut through the insanity that the politicians have wrought in just the past 30 days or so.

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