July, 2017, Part 6, Political Class Insanity: Clueless (And Gross) In Seattle, Overreaching In D.C., And Still Poor In California

As we do every month, we review the latest idiocy, lunacy, ineptness, and general insanity from the American political class. The members of the political never cease to amaze us with their greed, idiocy, gumption, and criminal activities. And just when we think there is no new way to disappoint us and tick us off, they manage to find a way to do it, wasting our tax dollars and destroying our freedoms in the process.

The political class has been very busy this month so let’s get right to it:king county,

1) Sometimes politicians are so idiotic, inane, and weird that it is difficult to even begin to argue with their position it is so stupid. Consider a recent National Review article describing the position of a Seattle councilman:

• Seattle sits in King County in the state of Washington and near its Superior County county courthouse is a homeless shelter and other social services organizations.
• According to the the Seattle Times, the area around the courthouse has become an “unsanitary and potentially frightening” scene , one “that reeks of urine and excrement.”
• Too fix this very nasty and more importantly, unsanitary condition, two of the judges who serve at the courthouse have asked the city of Seattle to power wash away the excrement, urine, and associated smells and unhealthy conditions, which seems like a reasonable and simple solution.
• But even a simple solution is usually at odds with the warped mind of some politician somewhere, even when citizens’ health is involved.
• According to the Seattle Times,  Council member Larry Gossett “said he didn’t like the idea of power-washing the sidewalks because it brought back images of the use of hoses against civil-rights activists.”

You cannot make this idiocy up. Seriously? A simple solution to a very dangerous situation from a health perspective and this is what an elected official is worried about, that somehow power washing down excrement from a street is equivalent to fire hosing civil rights demonstrations from over 60 years ago? As always, it does not appear this politician has an alternative solution, he is just insulted that that the proposed situation is somehow offensive to him. In his mind apparently, walking around and avoiding human excrement and the smell of urine is preferable to washing down the area and making it safe for people. Totally, totally insane.

2) The Convention of States website recently listed the three worst abuses of power that the Washington political class has heaped upon the country. We have reviewed these abuses many times before but let’s do it again quickly, using the Convention of States article as a template:

1. Although the current national debt is about to hit a whopping $20 TRILLION, there is another $100 TRILLION that the Washington political class has promised to pay out over the coming years that currently cannot be funded for Social Security, Medicare and other programs. Even if you confiscated every American’s wealth in an extreme tax program, you still could not fund the $100 TRILLION in unfunded liabilities. Spending must be cut, increase taxation cannot fix this dreadful problem, a problem made doubly worse by the Obama administration which basically doubled our national debt during its tenure.
2. Not only are Americans and American businesses over taxed to fund the overspending of Washington, the Washington political class has created a government bureaucracy that is overwhelming and stifling. According to research from the American Enterprise Institute, since 1949 Federal regulations, most of which are unnecessary, have lowered annual real GDP growth by 2% and made America 72% poorer.
3. The Constitution set up the American government system as a minimal national government that was supposed to have minimal powers and pass most of the governing power to the states. But as the Washington bureaucracy and craving for power has grown, it has changed our governing system from one in which states were mostly sovereign to one in which state governments are more and more subservient to the whims and wishes of distant Washington politicians and bureaucrats.This has greatly diminished the rights and freedoms of all of us. Or as the Convention of States says, “The Founders believed that the structures of a limited government would provide the greatest protection of liberty. Not only were there to be checks and balances between the branches of the federal government, power was to be shared between the states and federal government, with the latter only exercising those powers specifically granted in the Constitution. Collusion among decision-makers in Washington, D.C., has replaced these checks and balances. The federal judiciary supports Congress and the White House in their ever-escalating attack upon the jurisdiction of the fifty states.”

Insanity and why the Convention of States effort is so necessary to reign in the out of control Washington political class.

3) For some reason, this month’s political class insanity has had a lot to say about how more and more political power (i.e. more and more socialism) usually results in less and less freedom and less and less economic upside for citizens. We have discussed the reality that high taxation and meddling by politicians in Denmark has made life much more rigid, less wealthy, and more depressing for citizens of Denmark. We have shown that socialistic countries like Sweden and Germany would be some of the poorest states if they were part of the United States. We have reviewed how the most socialistic state in the union, California, has the highest poverty rate in the union, some of the worst schools, and that its biggest city has made its citizens so poor that 40% of them qualify for Medicaid’s low income levels.

Let’s continue this discussion today, returning to socialistic California for our example of how life gets worst as politicians’ reach gets longer:

• According to the American Outlook website, 33% of the nation’s welfare recipients live in the state of California.
• Given that only about 13% of the country’s citizens live in California, something is very out of synch.
• Almost 25% of the state’s residents live below the poverty line.
• Could it be that having an intrusive, overreaching, over taxing, and socialistic political class reduces the economic opportunities and living standard of citizens in that state?

But let’s not jump to conclusions. Maybe California socialism and its ruling politicians have created a paradise in the state in other respects. Maybe the obscenely high taxation and the loss of individual freedom in the state has been made up in other ways.

Ah, nice try but not even close if you are to believe a recent article by the Investors Business Daily website:

• 62% of the state’s roads are currently rated poor or mediocre.
• There are huge cost overruns on the state’s high speed train line before the first mile of track has even been laid.
• One third of Bay area residents in a recent poll stated they are hoping to leave the area soon.
• Despite high taxation rates, California schools and infrastructure status ranks near the bottom of the fifty states.
• California residents pay some of the highest rates in the country for gas and electricity.
• The unfunded liabilities of the state’s pension funds are sky high.

So what did we learn, again, from all of this: the more that politicians meddle in our affairs, our economic well being, and our freedoms the poorer, less free, and more difficult life is with lower economic growth, higher poverty, worse roads, horrendous schools and a high degree of overall pessimism on life.

Pretty depressing stuff, as it always is when discussing our out of control political class. One more political class update for this month to follow but you can be sure that next month we will be back with more.

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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:


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

By The Numbers: Government and Political Class Incompetence, Part 4: 40 Stats to Blow Your MInd and Depress Your Emotions

This is the final in a four part series where we have looked at the state of our country, our government, our freedom, and our future “by the numbers.” Using a wide variety of solid sources, we compiled and commented on the sorry state of the nation that the American political class has gotten us into, as measured by the financial, economic, and other statistics of our day. From a skyrocketing national debt to persistently high unemployment, to childhood poverty levels never seen before, we are facing a difficult upward climb to fix what ails our country and our future.

This final post of “by the numbers” comes from the website, FedUpUSA. Specifically, the following depressing set of numbers can be accessed directly at:

http://networkedblogs.com/LHxUy

One reason for providing the link directly is that all of the original sources of the following depressing statistics can be accessed directly at that link. We have covered some of these negative trends previously in the other three posts so I apologize for the little bit of redundancy. However, if desired, you can access the original sources of these repeated numbers and trends.

I have included the opening remarks of the author of the article at FedUpUSA since he sets the table on a historical basis of where we were as a nation, from a statistics perspective, and how fall we have fallen, from a statistics perspective, over the past few decades as a result of political class incompetence.

The author’s writing does get a little emotional at times as he reviews the state of the country today and its negatively trending statistics but I chose not to temper that emotion and passion. It is going to take this type of anger and passion to reverse the numbers and trends we are feeling and experiencing today so it might as well start here.

After the review of the 40 statistics, we will make our case again that the numbers are in and they are not good: the need for term limits for the gang and gangsters in Washington, the need to dump the incumbents that created this mess, has never been stronger.

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If you know someone that actually believes that the U.S. economy is in good shape, just show them the statistics in this article. When you step back and look at the long-term trends, it is undeniable what is happening to us. We are in the midst of a horrifying economic decline that is the result of decades of very bad decisions.

30 years ago, the U.S. national debt was about one trillion dollars.

Today, it is almost 17 trillion dollars.

40 years ago, the total amount of debt in the United States was about 2 trillion dollars. Today, it is more than 56 trillion dollars.

At the same time that we have been running up all of this debt, our economic infrastructure and our ability to produce wealth has been absolutely gutted. Since 2001, the United States has lost more than 56,000 manufacturing facilities and millions of good jobs have been shipped overseas.

Our share of global GDP declined from 31.8 percent in 2001 to 21.6 percent in 2011. The percentage of Americans that are self-employed is at a record low, and the percentage of Americans that are dependent on the government is at a record high. The U.S. economy is a complete and total mess, and it is time that we faced the truth.

The following are 40 statistics about the fall of the U.S. economy that are almost too crazy to believe…

#1 Back in 1980, the U.S. national debt was less than one trillion dollars. Today, it is rapidly approaching 17 trillion dollars…

#2 During Obama’s first term, the federal government accumulated more debt than it did under the first 42 U.S presidents combined.

#3 The U.S. national debt is now more than 23 times larger than it was when Jimmy Carter became president.

#4 If you started paying off just the new debt that the U.S. has accumulated during the Obama administration at the rate of one dollar per second, it would take more than 184,000 years to pay it off.

#5 The federal government is stealing more than 100 million dollars from our children and our grandchildren every single hour of every single day.

#6 Back in 1970, the total amount of debt in the United States (government debt + business debt + consumer debt, etc.) was less than 2 trillion dollars. Today it is over 56 trillion dollars…

#7 According to the World Bank, U.S. GDP accounted for 31.8 percent of all global economic activity in 2001. That number dropped to 21.6 percent in 2011.

#8 The United States has fallen in the global economic competitiveness rankings compiled by the World Economic Forum for four years in a row.

#9 According to The Economist, the United States was the best place in the world to be born into back in 1988. Today, the United States is only tied for 16th place.

#10 Incredibly, more than 56,000 manufacturing facilities in the United States have been permanently shut down since 2001.

#11 There are less Americans working in manufacturing today than there was in 1950 even though the population of the country has more than doubled since then.

#12 According to the New York Times, there are now approximately 70,000 abandoned buildings in Detroit.

#13 When NAFTA was pushed through Congress in 1993, the United States had a trade surplus with Mexico of 1.6 billion dollars. By 2010, we had a trade deficit with Mexico of 61.6 billion dollars.

#14 Back in 1985, our trade deficit with China was approximately 6 million dollars (million with a little “m”) for the entire year. In 2012, our trade deficit with China was 315 billion dollars. That was the largest trade deficit that one nation has had with another nation in the history of the world.

#15 Overall, the United States has run a trade deficit of more than 8 trillion dollars with the rest of the world since 1975.

#16 According to the Economic Policy Institute, the United States is losing half a million jobs to China every single year.

#17 Back in 1950, more than 80 percent of all men in the United States had jobs. Today, less than 65 percent of all men in the United States have jobs.

#18 At this point, an astounding 53 percent of all American workers make less than $30,000 a year.

#19 Small business is rapidly dying in America. At this point, only about 7 percent of all non-farm workers in the United States are self-employed. That is an all-time record low.

#20 Back in 1983, the bottom 95 percent of all income earners in the United States had 62 cents of debt for every dollar that they earned. By 2007, that figure had soared to $1.48.

#21 In the United States today, the wealthiest one percent of all Americans have a greater net worth than the bottom 90 percent combined.

#22 According to Forbes, the 400 wealthiest Americans have more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans combined.

#23 The six heirs of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton have as much wealth as the bottom one-third of all Americans combined.

#24 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, more than 146 million Americans are either “poor” or “low income”.

#25 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 49 percent of all Americans live in a home that receives direct monetary benefits from the federal government. Back in 1983, less than a third of all Americans lived in a home that received direct monetary benefits from the federal government.

#26 Overall, the federal government runs nearly 80 different “means-tested welfare programs”, and at this point more than 100 million Americans are enrolled in at least one of them.

#27 Back in 1965, only one out of every 50 Americans was on Medicaid. Today, one out of every 6 Americans is on Medicaid, and things are about to get a whole lot worse. It is being projected that Obamacare will add 16 million more Americans to the Medicaid rolls.

#28 As I wrote recently, it is being projected that the number of Americans on Medicare will grow from 50.7 million in 2012 to 73.2 million in 2025.

#29 At this point, Medicare is facing unfunded liabilities of more than 38 trillion dollars over the next 75 years. That comes to approximately $328,404 for every single household in the United States.

#30 Right now, there are approximately 56 million Americans collecting Social Security benefits. By 2035, that number is projected to soar to an astounding 91 million.

#31 Overall, the Social Security system is facing a 134 trillion dollar shortfall over the next 75 years.

#32 Today, the number of Americans on Social Security Disability now exceeds the entire population of Greece, and the number of Americans on food stamps now exceeds the entire population of Spain.

#33 According to a report recently issued by the Pew Research Center, on average Americans over the age of 65 have 47 times as much wealth as Americans under the age of 35.

#34 U.S. families that have a head of household that is under the age of 30 have a poverty rate of 37 percent.

#35 As I mentioned recently, the homeownership rate in America is now at its lowest level in nearly 18 years.

#36 There are now 20.2 million Americans that spend more than half of their incomes on housing. That represents a 46 percent increase from 2001.

#37 45 percent of all children are living in poverty in Miami, more than 50 percent of all children are living in poverty in Cleveland, and about 60 percent of all children are living in poverty in Detroit.

#38 Today, more than a million public school students in the United States are homeless. This is the first time that has ever happened in our history.

#39 When Barack Obama first entered the White House, about 32 million Americans were on food stamps. Now, more than 47 million Americans are on food stamps.

#40 According to one calculation, the number of Americans on food stamps now exceeds the combined populations of “Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming.”

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Bad, bad news and numbers. That is why Step 39 from “Love My Country, Loathe My Government,” has never been more needed or apparent. Step 39 would impose term limits on all Federally elected positions, “one and done.” Most of the people in Congress and the White House have traditionally been involved in Washington politics for most, if not all, of their careers. They are the culprits, not the saviors. They do not deserve any more time to fix what they broke.

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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.reason.com/
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w