May, 2015, Part 1, Why No American Should Pay Another Penny In Taxes

Hundreds of times we have shown in this blog how the Federal government and the Washington political class have wasted untold trillions of dollars of taxpayer wealth over the years. This has left the taxpayers nothing in return to show for their money except a whopping $18 TRILLION national debt. Many times the money was spent on one time, wasteful projects:

• The Navy built two new ships almost to completion at a cost of $300 million only to spend another $10 million to junk them immediately.
• Hillary Clinton’s State Department spent $40 million to build a U.S. consulate in the hinterlands of Afghanistan only to find out after spending the money that it had to be abandoned because it could not withstand a terrorist attack.
• The TSA purchased hundreds of millions of dollars of equipment for airport security in order to get a bigger discount but ended up not using a high percentage of the equipment anyway, leaving it stacked in a warehouse never to be seen or used.
• The National Science Foundation has spent millions and millions of dollars on such inane projects as building a video game to simulate prom week, studying when dog became man’s best friend, determining if dating sites were racist and other equally useless projects.

But many of these one time wastes of money pale in comparison to the money that is consistently wasted in the same manner year in and year out:

• Medicare and Medicaid lose upwards of $100 billion every year due to inefficiencies and outright criminal fraud.
• Social Security loses upwards of $100 billion every year due to inefficiencies and outright criminal fraud.
• Other welfare programs such as Federal housing support and food assistance lose billions and billions of dollars every year due to inefficiencies and outright criminal fraud.
• The IRS loses billions of dollars every year to identity theft in the income tax filing system every year.
• The IRS is so inept that it openly admits that it fails to collect almost $400 billion a year from tax evaders.
• The President’s debt reduction commission easily identified $100 billion a year that could be removed from the Pentagon’s annual budget without endangering national security.

Thus, it is pretty obvious that no American, no matter how rich or poor, should pay a penny more in taxes, given that the Federal government and the Washington politicians that operate it easily waste or fail to collect a whopping $800 billion or so EVERY YEAR.

But this reality is apparently lost on a Georgia Congressman. 

Congressman Hank Johnson recently stated that when it comes to taxes, “we [Washington politicians] don’t have enough [taxes] to do what the government - and do what the country needs the government to do and that’s the problem.”

The Congressman went on: “If everyone is paying their fair share of taxes than we certainly should and can live within our means. But our problem now is that taxes are being paid by the middle class. The rich, the wealthy and the corporations are not paying their fair share and so therefore we don’t have enough to do what the government and do what the country needs the government to do and that’s the problem.”

Note: before you consider whether the Congressman’s position has any merit, remember that this is the same Congressman who claimed in public:

• That the island of Guam might tip over in the middle of the ocean if too many U.S.military resources were placed on the island. That’s right, he actually stated in a Congressional committee meeting that an island could tip over.
• He also lamented the possibility that there would not be enough helium gas to blow up birthday balloons if Congress stopped funding a Federal storage facility for helium.

Okay, back to the issue at hand.

There it is again, the rich do not pay enough. But is that true, in light of how much money and taxpayer wealth people like Congressman Johnson waste every day:

• CNS News reported in 2014 that taxpayers earning over $100,000 a year pay 71.6% of all Federal income taxes every year.
• The Tax Policy Center estimates that the top 1% of Americans will pay 32.4% of all Federal taxes in 2016.
• Using Congressional Budget Office and the IRS, the Heritage Foundation reported in April, 2015 that the top 1% of Americans pay 24% of all Federal taxes and a whopping 35% of Federal income taxes.

But there is more. Consider the following detailed breakdown of tax payments by earnings band, as reported by Pew Research using IRS data:



Summarizing these results:

• The top 15% of American earners paid about 78% of Federal income taxes in 2013.
• Thus, the remaining 85% of American earners paid only 22% of all Federal income taxes in 2013.
• The top 2.4% of earners paid almost HALF of all Federal income taxes.
• The 63.4% of Americans earning less than $50,000 paid only 6.2% of 2013’s Federal income taxes.
• The highest earn 2.4% paid about 24 times more their percentage of Federal income taxes than their share of earnings.

You get the idea...even if Johnson does not. The problem is that the political class spends way too much, not that any American is not taxed enough. They waste so much money and now this guy has the gall to ask for more without cleaning up the mess he and others inside the Beltway have created.

As we have reported a few times in this blog, the number of Americans renouncing their citizenship and moving overseas is still pretty small but has been growing steadily during the Obama years. And you can be sure that the thousands that renounce every year are not those earning minimum wage. It is the high income, and high wealth individuals who are tired of being blamed for the ills of the country by politicians who are the cause of those same ills. 

And when these high wealth citizens leave and take their Federal tax dollars with them, it is the rest of us lower earners who will be paying more in taxes to make up the difference. And the problems of overspending will still be there, with Johnson and those like him still having no clue on how to operate an efficient government.

Remember, his priorities are trying to make sure Guam does not tip over and that birthday balloons have enough helium. Tomorrow, we will explode the Johnson increase taxation fantasy by showing that no matter how much you tax the high earners and wealthy in this country, it will make absolutely no difference in the quality of life for every citizen or the financial chaos of the Federal government.

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

April, 2015, Part 4, Political Class Insanity: Lying, Economic Ignorance, Mistrusting The Government and Staying Alive

Every month we do a regular series under the theme, “political class insanity.” We look at the many, many different, and often original, ways that the American political class wastes our tax dollars, undermines our freedoms, and generally act in the most idiotic ways possible, via their quotes, actions, and laws. For past examples of hundreds of instances of political class insanity, just page through the historical listings on the right side of this page at the beginning of each month or enter “political class insanity” in the search box above.

This should our last insanity post for this month but as always, we should be back strong again next month with the next installment of political class insanity.

1) Yesterday we discussed the example of the Baltimore mayor making a statement one day and claiming two days later that she never made that statement despite the fact that the statement was caught on video tape. We raised the issue of how politicians think we are too stupid to remember when they say conflicting things for political expediency or to further their goals.

Another relatively recent example of that two faced type political trickery came out of the mouth of New York governor Andrew Cuomo. Speaking at his father’s funeral he stated: “It’s time to stop the negative energy and move forward. And that’s just what we’ll do, I promise you that, pop.” 

But earlier in 2014 Cuomo had this to say about New York citizens that did not share his political views: “Who are they? Right to life, pro-assault weapons, anti-gay — if that’s who they are, they have no place in the state of New York because that’s not who New Yorkers are.” So which is the truth governor? Stop the negative energy and move forward or tell those that have different views to screw off and leave the state, a throwback to the old “love it or leave it” rhetoric of the 60s? 

That is why the vast amount of Americans do not trust the American political class. Whether it is the President telling us if you like your current insurance plan you can keep it or a governor calling for an end to negative energy while piling it onto his own citizens or a mayor saying I never said that when it is obvious she did say that, the lies and the insanity of their gall continues to sow mistrust in the country.

2) Continuing on this theme of mistrust of today’s politicians, consider a compilation of public opinion polls that appeared in the May, 2015 issue of Reason magazine [the sources of opinion polls include Gallup and Pew Research]:

• 72% of those recently polled viewed big government as the number one threat to the U.S. in the future.
• This result has been trending upwards from less than 40% in 1965 and the upwards trend has accelerated during the Obama administration.
• Only 21% view big business as the largest threat, a level that has been relatively constant since 1965, and only 5% view big labor as the largest threat, a level that has been trending down slowly.
• Only 18% of those polled said government does the right thing almost always or most of the time while 82% said government does the right thing some of the time or never.

The number of Americans that consider themselves independent voters has increased from 33% to 43% since 1988 while those that consider themselves Republicans or Democrats have declined, inferring a growing dissatisfaction with the established political class.

It is insane that in a democracy such as our we have devolved to such a sad state that we fear the government far more than other factors, we rarely trust the government to do the right thing, and we are fed up with the established political class which operates the government we fear and feel does not do the right thing often.

3) At the height of the recession, Nancy Pelosi made the inane comment that unemployment benefits were one of the top ways to grow the economy. Taking this stupid opinion to the limit, the more people that are unemployed and collecting unemployment benefits, the greater the economy will grow. You cannot make this stuff up.

The statement is insane on its surface and insane statistically, especially when you consider a recent analysis done by economists Marcus Hagedorn and Iorii Manovskii that looked at this question and had their results published in the National Bureau of Economic Research. They wanted to see if state that had shorter unemployment benefit eligibility periods did better or worst than states that had extended.longer unemployment benefit periods, an approach that once and for all answer Pelosi’s claim.

Their analysis focused on the Federal cut in unemployment benefits that happened in 2013. Their conclusion: “1.8 million additional jobs were created in 2014 due to the benefit cut. Almost 1 million of these jobs were filled by workers outside of the labor force who would have not participated in the labor market had benefits extensions been reauthorized.”\

The details fo their study, their test and control approach,is discussed in detail in the May, 2015 issue of Reason magazine and will not be reviewed here. But assuming that their in-depth analysis is true, then Pelosi’s inane quote is indeed inane and ridiculous. As we have discussed many times in this blog, is you give people free money, they will take it even if they do not need it. 

We saw it in Britain when they tightened their government disability, which resulted in a large drop in people drawing disability without a hardship on those that truly had a disability. We saw it in the state of Maine recently when a work requirement was added into food stamp eligibility and those drawing food stamps dropped by about 80%. Same thing here. Stop giving people free money, i.e. unemployment benefits, and they actually go out and find a job to survive.

Sounds pretty simple and logical for most people but is an elusive comment for people like Pelosi who often speak without proof or any economic sense.

4) We often talk about the incompetence of the IRS. They readily admit that they cannot collect upwards of $400 billion a year from tax evaders. This past week we have reviewed how inept the organization is when it comes to providing taxpayer support during tax filing season, answering less than 50% of the calls coming into it customer help lines and when the call does get answered it is often after at least a 30 minute wait.

But underneath these numbers,which are bad enough, is the human side of their ineptness. According to a short article in the May, 15, 2015 issue of Reason magazine, American citizen Siegfried Meinstein is officially dead. He really is not dead but the IRS claims that he is.

It seems that when Mr. Meinstein filed his income tax return in 2014 the IRS refused to accept it since they were certain he was already dead. Even after several efforts to prove to the IRS he was still alive,the agency still refused to change his dead status. The IRS blames the Social Security Administration (SSA) for the foul up since it claims the SSA told them that Meinstein was dead but the SSA says it never told the IRS that IRS was dead. 

In the meantime not matter how much Meinstein invokes an old Monty Python line, “I’m not dead yet,” the IRS still refuses to acknowledge that he is alive. Insanity.

So what did we learn today? We have a politician that talks out of both ends of his mouth, we have an economically ignorant politician who should not talk at all, we have a nation that does not trust what politicians and the Federal government says and does, and we have a poor citizen trying, unsuccessfully, to prove to the Federal government that is is indeed still alive. More and varied insanity brought to you by the worst set of American politicians ever. More insanity next month.

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 3, By The Numbers: Millenials Getting Poorer, Tax Code Getting More Inefficient, and Politicians Still Out Of Step With America

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 the reality numbers to devastate the politicians’ opinions.

We thought yesterday would be our last update to the "by the numbers" stream but we uncovered enough numbers to add one final post to the “by the numbers” series.

1) In our first update to this series we quoted a recent President Obama quote on how well he has managed the economy during his tenure: "Since I have come into office, there's almost no economic metric by which you couldn't say that the U.S. economy is better," as quoted in a recent interview with the Economist. 

We have debunked that boast over the past two days and today we debunk it further. According to an article written by Ali meter for the website, cnsnews.com on December 15, 2014, one out of every five so-called millennials, young Americans aged 18 to 34 years old, live in poverty in this country, according to Census Bureau data. 

The Census data analysis and numbers found that: “More millennials are living in poverty today, and they have lower rates of employment, compared with their counterparts in 1980. One in five young adults lives in poverty (13.5 million people), up from one in seven (8.4 million people) in 1980.”

According to Census analysis, in 1980 14.1% of those Americans aged 18 to 34 were living in poverty while in 1990, the percentage of millennials in poverty increased slightly to 14.3%. In 2000, it climbed to 15.3 percent but by 2013 it reached the highest level ever recorded, jumping up significantly to 19.7%.

A lot of this poverty increase is due to the fact that today’s millenials have found it more difficult to find work. 1980, 69% of millennial were employee while that levels has decrease to 65% in 2013, the lowest level ever recorded by the Census Bureau.

So, two days ago we found out that the numbers told us that Obama administration economic policies have been bad for African-Americans and Hispanics. Today we learned that those same policies were bad for millennials. Does not seem that the President’s boast is working well for major segments of the population.

2) David Allen, recently writing for the Heritage Foundation, found some interesting numbers analyses to identify the hidden costs of our complex and ineffective tax code. The cost of our tax system is not just the taxes we pay via the Federal income tax, there are some hidden costs that end up taxing us in other, hidden ways and which inhibit economic growth.

Mr. Allen showed how analysis by Pete Sepp, president of the National Taxpayers Union; Jason Fichtner, a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University; and Dan Mastromarco, a partner at the Mastromarco Firm quantified these additional economic burdens:

- Accounting Costs. Since the Federal tax system requires Americans to compile, write, and submit their tax returns, there are additional costs beyond the bottom line tax payment. These additional costs in time come out to about 6.1 billion hours every year for the nation to fill out their tax forms, as estimated by a 2013 study by the Mercatus Center. 

These are 6.1 billion hours that cannot be spent on starting or expanding a business, finding a second job, working extra hours at a current job, etc., all of which impose an economic costs on every American who files a tax return. The monetary costs of these 6.1 billion hours according to the Mercatus study range from $67 billion to $378 billion, depending on what the assumption set is. These are billions of dollars that cannot be used to spike economic growth and expand the economy, it is stranded effort and costs just to feed an antiquated tax system. 

- Tax Gap (revenue loss). Talk about complex. According to the Taxpayer Advocate Servicer report, the Federal tax code is nearly 4 million words long. When printed, the IRS’ guidance explaining the income tax stands more than 1 foot tall.

The complexity of the tax code leads to predictable results: American taxpayers often fail to file returns on time, fail to pay reported taxes on time, or underreport the amount of tax they owe. This causes a major disconnect between taxes owed and taxes paid on time, creating a form of revenue loss known as the tax gap. The size of the net tax gap is roughly $452 billion (in 2012 dollars).

- Deadweight loss (economic cost). I will let Mr. Allen explain what deadwieght loss is: “Taxes further impose costs by distorting economic decision making, namely how individuals choose to spend and save. Economists call this deadweight loss. It can be thought of as all of the foregone economic transactions that would have occurred in the absence of the tax. This includes all of the products and services not purchased and investments not made. 

Deadweight loss is an implicit cost of taxation that slows economic growth. Although it is more difficult to calculate, estimates of this lost economic growth range from $148 billion to $609 billion.” 

The article goes on to estimate the combined cost to the country of these hidden tax system burdens. Using the lower end estimates from the three burdens above, the total burden from these three sources is still a whopping $667 billion. This is almost an additional $6,000 tax burden on every American household every year.

Since the IRS collected $2.855 trillion in taxes in 2013, this number analysis indicates for every $100 the IRS collected, over $23 was lost. If the higher end estimates of the three burdens above are used, the higher-end estimates, the additional total burden jumps to an incredible $1.439 trillion, or about $50 being lost for every $100 collected, an incredibly inefficient tax process. Additionally, this $1.439 trillion burden comes out to over $12,000 for every U.S. household.

The bottom line: our tax system is complex, expensive to operate, inefficient, and contrary to sound economic theory, resulting in numbers that are onerous to say the least on every American.

3) Often the numbers from reputable polling organizations such as Gallup and Pew show that the political class is often out of step with what Americans want done. For example:

• The majority of Americans have long disapproved of the entire Obama Care legislation and mess but it still lives on. 
• The majority of Americans have long indicated that Congress and the entire political class is broken and ineffective but the political process continues to become even more broken over time.
• The majority of Americans want government’s wasteful spending to be brought under control but the wasteful spending grows unimpeded, reaching a devastating level of $18 TRILLION at the Federal levels.

Americans want this and the politicians in Washington want to deliver that. The latest example of such a disconnect is when the Democrats in the Senate recently released a report that was critical of the CIA interrogation tactics that were used immediately after the 9-11 attacks.

But while the Democrats in the Senate were critical of the methods, the majority of Americans were not, according to Pew Research:

• Only 29% of those Americans polled said the interrogation methods were unjustified.
• A majority of 51% say those methods were justified.
• 56% of those polled feel that the intelligence gathered on terrorists’ plans stopped future attacks while only 28% disagreed that future attacks were thwarted.

Another issue and another example where the numbers show that the politicians in their constant need to satisfy their objectives are out of touch with what America thinks and wants. 

Now, some of you in the 29% might want to claim the high ground and believe that America should never resort to torture. I actually believe that also but that view is not consistent with what the majority of Americans believe. Plus, releasing the report now, more than ten years after the fact serves no purpose whatsoever:

• No one is going to be prosecuted for the methods so there is not a criminal reason for releasing the report.
• Our terrorist enemies will use the report as propaganda even though it is a highly skewed, highly politicized, and incomplete view of what happened.
• The report is taken out of context and the situation at the time. Much like when FDR locked up Japanese nationals in Word War II, the actions have to be considered in the context of the situation. Immediately after 9-11, it was unknown if other terror attacks were imminent. That question had to be answered as soon as possible in the context of the situation and the time frame.
• And one other thing to keep in mind. Those terrorists that were subject to the interrogation methods are still alive. How does a supporter of this report reconcile the fact that the Obama administration actually kills terrorists, with hundreds if not thousands of collateral deaths including hundreds of children, with its drone program? At least no one died with the CIA program, unlike the indiscriminant drone program of Obama.

That will do it for this update to the “by the numbers” series. Today we found out that millennials are getting poorer according to the numbers, taxpayers are paying a much higher burden for the antiquated IRS and tax code processes in place as the numbers show, and the country generally supports the fact that the CIA used unconventional interrogation methods to avoid a 9-11 follow up attack, as the numbers show. 

Too bad politicians do not understand what the numbers mean or choose to ignore the numbers for their own selfish gains and objectives.

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

October, 2014, Part 2, By the Numbers: the Numbers Say, "Hell In A Hand Basket"

Every month or so we do a regular feature in this blog called “by the numbers.” Rather than believe the drivel and spin that the American political class generates to make themselves look better than their actual performance in office, we go beneath the headlines to look at what is really going on by looking at the underlying numbers of our reality.

I once worked for a boss whose favorite saying was: “there is nothing more devastating to an opinion than the proper number.” that is what we do in this numbers series and what we will try to do today.

Today is the second update in the “by the numbers” theme. The first update ran yesterday.

1) I make a point never to quote news, data, or reports from Fox News, not because they are liars or wrong but because my liberal friends and family automatically assume what they are saying or reporting has to be wrong solely because it is Fox reporting it. However, I will make an exception to our first discussion point today since it is a Fox poll whose findings generally conform to what Americans are telling Gallup, Pew, and other reputable polling organizations.

A recent Fox poll asked a simple question with simple answer options: given the realities going on around the world, poll participants were asked if “everything will be fine,” or if it’s going “to hell in a hand basket.” A whopping 58% chose the “hell in a hand basket” option while only 32% said “everything will be fine.”

Why would Americans be so pessimistic about the future? Consider what is going on around the world and how the current Presidential administration has failed to react to these crises or show any ability to formulate responses to these crises:

• China recently became the largest economy in the world, is quickly building up their military, and threatening the sovereign and economic interests of countries throughout Southeast Asia.
• Russia has annexed parts of the Ukraine with no one or no country having any kind of viable response that would discourage further Russia land grabs in the future.
• The Israelis and Palestinians just recently stopped fighting each other, not because they reached a peace agreement but because they got too tired to carry on.
• ISIS, the worst terror organization in the history of the world, is marching across broad stretches of land in the Mideast and threatening to export their terror agenda around the world.
• Libya is a failed state with different mobs and terror organizations carving up the country while being bombed by planes from Egypt and the United Emirates.
• Besides the obvious problems with the plague of Ebola in western Africa, different Islamic terror groups are weakening governments throughout the entire African continent.
• In Central and South America, political corruption and drug cartels are overwhelming governments, resulting in mass migrations up to the southern border of the united States and those many resultant problems. 
• Many European countries are all facing mountains of debt, high unemployment, and furious citizens who are finding out that government promises cannot be financially met. 
• In addition to an economic crisis, swiftly growing Muslim populations throughout Europe add to domestic stress and conflicts.
• Domestically, the Obama administration has turned into a beehive of scandals. Fast and Furious resulted in the death of a U.S. border agent and at least dozens of innocent Mexican citizens. Obama has turned the IRS into his own personal political harassment machine, stifling the First Amendment rights of millions of Americans. His administration abandoned over two dozen Americans in Benghazi, his administration has been the least transparent of any recent Presidency, he illegally exchanged five high value target prisoners for an Army deserter, etc., etc., etc.
• His economic policies have increased the number of Americans requiring food assistance by almost fifty percent, have allowed record high unemployment rates for record lengths of time, have added over five TRILLION dollars to the national debt, and wasted over $800 billion on an economic stimulus program that failed miserably.
• He has violated the Constitution and existing law so many times that he should have been impeached and removed from office any number of times over.
• Rather healing and narrowing the racial divide in this country, he has remained silently and thus, implicitly encouraging administration officials, Congressional allies, and others to play the race card against any American who dares to have a different opinion than this President, resulting in a widening and increasing bitterness of the country’s racial divide.
• Rather than fixing government so that basic government functions are provided in an efficient and effective manner, government waste, corruption and outright government fraud has grown and expanded, at a terrible cost to taxpayer wealth, under Obama.
• Obama helped develop and deploy the worst piece of legislation ever put forth from Washington, Obama Care. This legislation that will add over a TRILLION dollars to our national debt, has already caused 5-6 million Americans to lose access to their preferred doctors, hospitals, and medicines, narrowed consumer choice for their medical needs, created and raised taxes that affect every American, exposed millions of Americans to easier identity theft via a botched data systems approach and deployment, and caused a myriad of other problems while never having a chance to reduce medical costs in this country.
• Obama put forth lofty promises that ended up being empty actions or outright lies, lies that are too numerous to review here.

I wonder not why 58% of the country think the country is going to hell in a hand basket, I worry why far more Americans do not see the reality of the hand basket.

But the Fox poll is not the only poll and numbers crying out about the bad direction and karma of the country. Consider some recent results from a Politico poll:

• In a recent Politico poll that was done the hardest-fought states and Congressional districts of the year, two-thirds of likely voters polled felt that the United States has lost control of its major challenges. 
• Only 36% of those polled felt that the country is “in a good position to meet its economic and national security” hurdles.
• A whopping 84% of voters say that ISIS is a “serious” threat to the U.S. homeland with 43% saying it poses a “very serious” threat. Just 12% said ISIS is not a serious concern.
• Most voters believe their health care costs will rise under Obama Care.
• 57% feel they their personal health care costs will increase, while only 7% said they will decrease. 41% of Americans want the whole legislation repealed.
• 38% of those polled said George W. Bush was better at operating the Federal government while 35% said Obama did a better job. A quarter of respondents said the two men were equally competent, or incompetent, depending if you are an optimist or pessimist..
• Only 22% of poll respondents said they had a lot of confidence that the government is doing everything it can to contain the contagious disease. 39% they had some confidence, while a third said they had little or no confidence. 

Two different polls from news organizations, two different sets of numbers that usually reside on different ends of the political spectrum but the same basic set of numerical results and conclusions: we are not confident about the future and we are certainly not confident that the current members of the political class are able to contend with and resolve those issues. 

The numbers do not lie and either do the conclusions they point us to. “Hell in a hand basket” might be a crude description of the nation’s mood but it is an accurate one, the numbers do not lie even if Obama and most of the Washington political class do. When Fox and Politico agree, you know that their numbers and findings are probalby accurate.

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

Part 2: The Next Twenty Failures Of The Obama Administration That Are NOT Gorunds For Impeachment and Removal From Office

Twenty More Reasons (Reasons 21 through 40) For Which Obama Cannot Be Impeached and Removed From Office.

Let’s face it, the country is not in great shape these days. We have a government that cannot even develop a website despite spending well over $600 million to do so. We have a political class that is more concerned with their own welfare and perpetual reelection than the general welfare of Americans. We have a skyrocketing national debt that will burden Americans for generations to come. We have anemic economic growth. We have a President who claims he has no knowledge of the multitude of scandals erupting around him. Major safety nets such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are lunging towards insolvency. We have lost the war on drugs. The list seems endless some days.

In these desperate times, a person typically wants to find a culprit and make them accountable. The most obvious culprit is the leader of the country, President Obama. Unfortunately, there is a difference between incompetence vs. high crimes and misdemeanors that would allow the country to impeach and remove a sitting President from office.

Having stupid policies and programs, and mismanaging them to boot, are not grounds for removal from office. Maybe it should be, it would save the country a lot of suffering, but that is not allowed under our current legal system. The voting booth is supposed to be for that purpose. In order to remove someone from office, they must violate any of the tenets of the Constitution and Bill of Rights or existing laws under which they should have been operating.

We will try to make the distinction over the next few days. While many of us feel that the Obama administration has been the worse one in the history of our country, sinking even below the disaster that was the Carter administration, there are a load of failures that cannot be used for impeachment and removal from office. We will cover those failures and disasters in the next few days.

After we go through the myriad of reasons that cannot be used for impeachment and removal from office, we will go through a still substantial list of reasons while President Obama should be removed from office for high crimes and misdemeanors. Consider that list to be the list of charges that would be read at a potential lawbreaker’s arraignment. 

That list of charges would then go to a grand jury, i.e. the House of Representatives, where they would decide which charges, i.e. indictments, if any, would be brought forth. Those indictments would then be debated and voted on for conviction or non-conviction in the Senate. 

That is the process: arraignment based on likely criminal charges, grand jury-like action in the House to lock down substantial and provable violations of the law, Constitution, and Bill of Rights, leading to a formal indictment, and then onto the Senate for trial, based on the House indictments. 

But first, lets go through the many disasters and failures that cannot be put on the list of charges that are reviewed for indictments that are then part of a Senate impeachment proceeding. Keep in mind that you cannot remove a President from office:

• For having ineffective and/or stupid policies. 
• For being ineffective in executing his duties of office. 
• For being arrogant, narcissistic, and pompous.
• For waging class warfare and dividing the nation into voting blocs.
• For lying about his past or his promises.

That is the reason that the following failures are not grounds for impeachment and removal from office, they may be despicable, they may be embarrassing, they may be wasteful, they may be outright deceptions, but they are not grounds for removal under the Constitution.

[Note: associated with many of the failures listed we have attached notable quotes from the President and other reputable sources to show how far and how quickly his promises and assertions degenerated into lies, deceptions, and failures]

President Obama cannot be impeached and removed from office because…

21) He has done nothing to develop and implement a long term and strategic energy policy for the country, instead wasting tens of billions of dollars given away to his political contacts’ and cronies’ failed alternative energy programs and shutting down the coal industry with no viable energy replacement source to fill the gap.

22) He presided over economic polices that have seen median U.S. household income decline for five years in a row.

Relevant Obama quote: “I'm a warrior for the middle class.”

23) He intruded into the auto industry bailouts that still resulted in the city of Detroit having to file for bankruptcy and for General Motors to probably never pay back the $9.7 billion still owed to the American taxpayer, contrary to the President’s reelection campaign themes.

24) His failed foreign policies have allowed North Korea to get five years closer to having substantial nuclear weapon and delivery capability.

25) His failed foreign policies have allowed Iran to get five years closer to having substantial nuclear weapon and delivery capability.

26) His failed foreign policies have caused a significant loss of prestige and honor relative to the U.S. in both our allies and enemies’ eyes. A loss compounded by the unfathomable spying on the governments and leaders of our allies.

27) He has presided over economic polices that have seen the average price of gas go up about 70% since the day he took office.

28) He has remained silent and allowed political allies to call his political opponents and ordinary citizens all types of slanderous and foul names despite his promise to unite the country. Those slurs include but are not limited to, a__h____s, terrorists, barbarians, Taliban, racists, Ku Klux Klan members, knuckle dragging Neanderthals, sluts, whores, among others.

Relevant Obama quote: “There's not a liberal America and a conservative America - there's the United States of America.”

Relevant Obama quote: “We want everybody to act like adults, quit playing games, realize that it's not just my way or the highway."

Relevant Obama quote: “It's not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

29) He has failed to improve the tense situation in the Middle East, specifically the ongoing conflicts between Israel and the Palestinians.

30) He had no plan and not a lot of interest in quickly resolving the Gulf Coast/BP oil spill, given the number of rounds of golf, the number of vacations and the number of political fund raisers he attended as the crisis was destroying nature and jobs along the Gulf coats.

31) He has no plan for fixing the mess that is Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, who together have already gobbled up almost $200 billion in taxpayer bailout dollars, and he has no plan for the latest government housing entity in need of an almost $2 billion taxpayer bailout, the Federal Housing Authority (FHA).

32) He promised to run the most transparent administration of all time and ended up running the most opaque and paranoid administration since at least the Nixon administration, implementing executive privilege too often, hiding witnesses called to testify in front of Congress, persecuting more government whistle blowers than all previous Presidential administrations combined, hunting down legitimate whistle blowers and dodging legal Freedom of Information Act requests.

Relevant Obama quote: "My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government. We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government." 

Relevant Obama quote: "Often the best source about waste, fraud and abuse in government is an existing government employee committed to public integrity and willing to speak out. Such acts of courage and patriotism . . . should be encouraged rather than stifled." 

33) He has failed to fix the massively expensive and stupid redundancy in the Federal government: 

• The Federal government has 15 different agencies overseeing food safety laws
• More than 20 independent Federal programs help the homeless
• 80 different Federal programs to help economic development
• 82 different government agencies work on improving teacher quality
• 47 different government agencies work on job training
• 18 different programs working on food and nutrition assistance

34) He takes all the credit but never the blame, placing blame on his failed policies and programs on everyone and everything from Bush to ATMs to the Japanese tsunami to Bush to the European fiscal crisis to Bush to Republicans to Bush, etc.

35) He has ignored the fighting going on Afghanistan and has not implemented a strategy that will withstand the withdrawal of Western troops in 2014, likely resulting in the Taliban taking over again and negating the blood and money the country has spent there over the past decade or so.

36) He has angered civilians all over the Arab world with his drone attacks on terrorist suspects that have ended up killing hundreds, if no thousands of civilians, including hundreds of innocent children. These drone attacks have not slowed down the growth of Al Qaeda and other terror groups while it has embittered civilian populations from Yemen to Pakistan.

Relevant Obama quote (from Pew research): "At the end of his first term, the level of confidence those nations [Middle Eastern countries‘ citizens] feel for Obama fell from 33% to 24%. When it comes to Obama’s policies, as opposed to his personality, the drop is even greater, falling from a high of 34% to a dismal low of 15%."

37) He has constantly reinforced his masculinity by staging dozens of photo ops with professional and college athletic teams but has had minimal photo ops with outstanding teachers, heroic soldiers, or other outstanding American citizens.

38) He embarrassed the country and his administration by not sending a high level representative to represent the country at Margaret Thatcher’s state funeral, just another in a long line of snubs against our allies around the world.

39) His failure to come up with a sane and compassionate drug program, continuing the long failing war on drugs, has lead to the continued enlargement and enrichment of foreign drug cartels who have now established themselves firmly throughout the country, peddling their drugs and getting richer.

40) His failure to live up to his campaign promise of not having high powered lobbyists in positions of power in his administration, a campaign promise that he promptly broke when he placed many high level lobbyists in his administration.

Relevant Obama quote (Anthony Holm): “More than forty former lobbyists work in senior positions in the Obama administration, including three cabinet secretaries and the CIA director.” 

Over the past two days we have come up with forth instances of Presidential neglect, corruption, lying, and wasteful spending, none of which are likely grounds for impeachment. They are only likely grounds for one of the worst Presidencies of all time. And the bad news: we are not done yet. We have another XXXX despicable embarrassments from the Obama administration for you tomorrow, none of which are grounds for impeachment.

However, after that, we will lay out the actual grounds for impeachment and removal from office, where this President knowingly violated actual laws and the tenets of the Constitution.

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

Political Class Insanity Special Edition Part 3: Syrian Madness,Nobody Wants War Except Obama and Other Realities

This is our third post in a series that is looking at the poltical class insanity idea of using U.S. military force against the government of Syria for allegedly using poison gas on its own citizens. Our first two posts that show how idiotic and dangerous such an intervention would be can be accessed at:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/09/political-class-insanity-special.html

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/09/political-class-insanity-special_8.html

Let us continue our discussion today, looking at more public opinion findings on such a military excursion and other sources of news and reality that continue to show how useless and potentially dangerous such a limited military attack would be.

1) Consider some research findings of Americans that would tend to be political aligned with President Obama:

• The Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC) recently released some survey results of its members.
• Their findings find that more than 57,000 of its activists weighed in, and 73% of them opposed the U.S. taking military action in Syria. 
• Just 18% supported strikes, and just 14% said the U.S. should go ahead unilaterally if it can’t find any allies.
• A majority of the PCCC activists don’t even believe President Obama and Secretary of State John F. Kerry are being honest when they lay out their justifications for taking military action.
• Four out of five said they believe U.S. action will lead to deeper involvement in the civil war.
• “In the last 72 hours, we surveyed PCCC members across the nation – in every state and congressional district. We’ve received over 57,000 responses so far, and a clear result: Your progressive base stands firmly against bombing Syria,” said Adam Green and Stephanie Taylor, co-founders of PCCC.

Another group of American check in with their  views and it does not support bombing Syria.

2) It is not just bombing Syria that Americans are overwhelming against, seems the country is also overwhelmingly against supplying arms to one side of the Syrian civil war, as identified by PEW research from this past June:

• Overall, 70% of those surveyed oppose the U.S. and its allies sending arms and military supplies to anti-government rebel groups in Syria.
• Only 20% favor supplying weapons to one of the sides in this civil war.
• These findings are little changed from December of last year (24% favor) and support is down slightly from March, 2012 (29% favor).
•  About two-thirds (68%) say the U.S. is too overcommitted to get involved in another conflict, and just 27% disagree. 
• The public also has questions about the opposition groups in Syria: 60% say that they may be no better than the current government.
• Majorities of independents (74%), Republicans (71%) and Democrats (66%) oppose the U.S. and its allies sending arms and military supplies to anti-government groups in Syria.
• Nearly identical majorities of Democrats (69%), independents (69%) and Republicans (68%) also believe that U.S. military forces are too overcommitted to get involved in another conflict.
• Independents (66%) and Republicans (64%) are most concerned that the opposition groups in Syria may be no better than the current government, but 52% of Democrats also agree with this statement.

No bombing and no getting involved by supporting the rebel side with military equipment. The findings and feelings prove that this is not a partisan argument, Republicans, Democrats, and Independent Americans are together in opposition to both military actions, supplying arms and sending in cruise missiles.

3) On August 24, 2013, the Heritage Foundation laid out five logical and fact based reasons why militarily attacking Syria is a very bad idea, both long term and short term (the following words are lifted directly from their post, I hope they do not mind since their reasoning was so succinct and to the point, much better than any summary I could have written):

1. The Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine is not adequate justification for direct military intervention. This dangerous doctrine, promoted at the United Nations, undermines U.S. sovereignty by arguing for an obligation of nations to intervene. As Heritage’s legal expert on sovereignty matters, Steve Groves, explains:

“A doctrine that compels the United States to act to prevent atrocities occurring in other countries would be risky and imprudent. U.S. independence—hard won by the Founders and successive generations of Americans—would be compromised if the United States consented to be legally bound by the R2P doctrine. The United States needs to preserve its national sovereignty by maintaining a monopoly on the decision to deploy diplomatic pressure, economic sanctions, political coercion, and especially its military forces.”

2. A vital U.S. interest is not at stake. The U.S. does have an interest in the resolution of the conflict, but military force should be reserved for areas where the U.S. has a compelling need to act in defense of its own interests. There are other and more prudent options for advancing U.S. interests to help resolve the conflict.

3. It would not be a wise use of military force. Military force should be used only if there is a clear, achievable, realistic purpose. Missile strikes are unlikely to deter the Assad regime and prevent further abuses. Rather, the U.S. risks escalating its involvement in the crisis.

4. Missile attacks would only make President Obama look weaker. Much like President Clinton’s ineffective cruise missile strikes on Osama bin Laden’s terrorist camps, strikes would only be seen as a sign that the U.S. is lacking a clear, decisive course of action. The Middle East would see this as another effort from the Obama Administration to look for an “easy button” and lead from behind rather than exercise real, constructive leadership.

5. It would distract from what the U.S. should be doing. Rather than attempting to intervene directly in the conflict, the U.S. should be working in a concerted manner with other countries in the region to hasten the end of the Assad regime and deal with the refugee crisis, the resurgence of al-Qaeda, and the destabilizing efforts of Iran and Hezbollah

Well said, virtually no upside and plenty of downsides.

4) Back on May 5, 2013, Reuters ran a report that cited United Nations experts concluding that rebel forces, not Syrian government forces, had used sarin gas in civil war action. U.N. human rights investigators had gathered testimony from casualties of Syria's civil war and medical staff indicating that rebel forces have used the nerve agent sarin.

The United Nations independent commission of inquiry on Syria has not yet seen evidence of government forces having used chemical weapons, which are banned under international law, said commission member Carla Del Ponte: "Our investigators have been in neighboring countries interviewing victims, doctors and field hospitals and, according to their report of last week which I have seen, there are strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof of the use of sarin gas, from the way the victims were treated," Del Ponte said in an interview with Swiss-Italian television.

"This was use on the part of the opposition, the rebels, not by the government authorities," she added, speaking in Italian.

This is not to say that the government did not use poison gas in the latest incident of civilian dying from exposure to poison gas. However, at least according to the United Nations’ experts, it is not out of the question by any means that the latest poison gas deaths were caused, either intentionally or accidentally by the rebel forces.

As we asserted in an earlier post, the Syrian government, with help from Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah is winning the civil war. Why would they want to get outside forces, like the U.S. military involved by using poison gas on its citizens when their side is winning? Makes no logical sense.

Thus, what have we learned today? The vast majority of Americans, across all political and geographic divides, think arming either side in the Syrian civil war and bombing either side in the Syrian civil war is a very bad idea. The Heritage Foundation laid out a coherent and logical argument why U.S. military action is the wrong strategy for Syria at this time. And rebel forces have in their possession and have used poison gas before/. Who is to say that the latest use was not theirs, given that the Syrian government had nothing to gain by deploying poisons gas attacks.

Tomorrow we will talk about Syria but use the words and quotes of Americans, both inside and outside of politics, to show that  helping Obama save face for his ill advised and ill prepared threat of a “red line” dare to Syria is a dangerous and stupid waste of time and resources. 

Until then, if you want to avoid getting the U.S. involved in yet another doomed Middle East military adventure, please call your Congressional representatives and tell them to not support giving Obama permission to drag this country into another unsinkable Middle East conflict.

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