March, 2019, Part 3,Political Class Insanity: Economic Nonsense In NYC, Political Idiocy in Virginia, And Americans Say Government Is The Biggest Problem

It is another month which means it is again time to review the latest political class insanity from Washington and around the world. Political class insanity takes many forms including the wasting of taxpayer wealth, criminal fraud within government programs, inane and stupid political quotes and actions, the inability to create and implement effective and efficient government programs, stupid and ill performing economic policies and strategies, and other forms of insanity that continue to evolve and surprise and shock us.

Let’s get started:

1) Probably not a surprise, given the incompetence of those politicians and government bureaucrats that operate the government in this country, a recent Gallup tracking poll found that the top problem facing the country was not gun control, climate change, poverty or education. The biggest, by far, problem in Americans’ minds is “the government/poor leadership.” 

More than a third of those polled, 35%, said that the government and those leading the government were the top problem facing the country today. The second biggest problem as cited by those polled was immigration, a distant second at 19%, almost half of what was perceived as the top problem. A distant third place problem was healthcare at a mere 6%.

The 35% was the highest level ever attained by the government/poor leadership in all of the tracking done by Gallup. In other words, our politicians have been getting worse and more of a problem over time. 

I think that this survey shows that Americans are pretty smart in that they recognize that if our politicians and leaders were better, the other problems might just take care of themselves if good, smart leadership could somehow miraculously arise out of the current of politicians. Get a better, smarter set of politicians into government and the failing public education processes in this country get fixed. Elect some smart people who care more about the country than their own greed, and maybe the poverty/hunger/homelessness problem gets fixed.

A few years ago a famous Brazilian clown ran for public office and actually got elected. His campaign slogan was “how much worse could it get” if a clown got elected. Which reinforces our desire for term limits for our politicians, “one and done.” How much worse could it be, given how badly the current members of the political class have screwed everything up?

2) Sometimes when it comes to American politicians you just have to smack your head and say: “What in the world were they thinking?” Which leads us to our next piece of insanity:

• The media and this blog have extensively covered the major racism scandal surrounding the governor of Virginia, Ralph Northam.
• Someone came across the medical school yearbook page of the governor where two very racist items were printed.
• One item was a photo of two young men at a party, one dressed as a KKK member and one dressed in black face makeup, both of which are extremely racist and insensitive.
• The governor first admitted that he was one of the men in the photo and 24 hours later said he was not in the photo which made the scandal even worse by adding a layer of lying to it.
• The second tem was the mention that the governor’s nickname in school was “Coonman,” another racially insensitive situation.

So, two major racially insensitive items to have in your background. There was a groundswell of disgust and calls for him to resign, which so far he has refused to do. But given the scandal and furor, one would have expected him and his wife to be extremely sensitive and careful relative to their actions and words and just go low profile until the current scandal calms down.

But according to the Gateway Pundit website, while low profile may have been the smart thing to do, politicians rarely do the smart thing:

• Jim Holt, writing for the website on February 27, 2019, reported that his wife made a major and again, racially insensitive move, when a bunch of kids were coming through the governor’s mansion on a tour.
• It has been alleged that the wife handed out cotton balls to some African American kids on the tour, obviously invoking the specter of black slavery in the South.
• A state government employee was rightfully upset as a result of her eighth grade daughter being upset after being handed a ball of cotton by the governor’s wife who then asked the kids to imagine being a slave and having to pick cotton.
• The state employee, Leah Dozier Walker, wrote to the governor’s office and state politicians with the following message: “The Governor and Mrs. Northam have asked the residents of the Commonwealth to forgive them for their racially insensitive past actions.But the actions of Mrs. Northam, just last week, do not lead me to believe that this Governor’s office has taken seriously the harm and hurt they have caused African Americans in Virginia or that they are deserving of our forgiveness.” 

My gosh, the stupidity of the political class really knows no limits. After all of the racist blowups over the yearbook stuff, the subsequent calls across the country for the governor to resign, the embarrassment of such racially insensitive behavior, the wife thought handing out cotton balls and invoking the image of slavery to some African American kids was a good idea?! Insane.

3) We have often discussed the reality that one area of life where politicians almost always screw up is in the field of economics. Their economic policies are usually overly expensive, ineffective, and often make the situation worse. Their economic policies have given us a $22 trillion national debt, have put Social Security and Medicare on a road to insolvency, gave us an economic stimulus program after the last recession that wasted over $800 billion without stimulating anything, and have raised the minimum wage level which has resulted in higher unemployment and depressed economic growth.

This latest economic failure of upping the minimum wage was recently discussed on the Godfather Politics website about the situation in New York City:

• According to Warner Todd Huston, with the arrival of the city’s new $15 an hour minimum wage, the city has now lost more jobs now after the minimum wage level went up than the number of jobs lost after the 9-11 attacks, attacks which dealt the city a substantial economic blow.
• A recent research report form the Foundation for Economic Freedom found that since the new $15 wage level took effect, the city has suffered through the steepest decline in restaurant jobs in almost 20 years.
• The report concluded that since the restaurant industry operates on very low profit margins, usually between 2 and 6 percent, a major, 40%, increase in the wage line of this type of business results in a severe profit challenge.
• In order to stay in business, restaurant owners are forced to cut expenses elsewhere which means fewer jobs, reduced hours, and higher prices which in part wipes out the wage gains of some industry workers.
• A NYC Hospitality Alliance survey found the three out of four city restaurants plan on reducing the hours that retained workers will work and nearly half said they will reduce some restaurant jobs in 2019.
• Mark Perry, discussing the report found that: “December 2018 restaurant jobs were down by almost 3,000 (and by 1.64%) from the previous December and the 2.5% annual decline in March 2018 was the worst annual decline since the sharp collapse in restaurant jobs following 9/11 in 2001.”

So whether it is in Seattle, as we have previously discussed, or now in NYC, the following discussion almost always follows when politicians raise the minimum wage arbitrarily: “The good news is that you have a higher hourly wage rate. The bad news is that you no longer have a job...or you will not have as many hours to work since the business needs to cut other expenses to meet your higher wage rate.” 

In either case, a lost job or a fewer hour job, the net change in economic well being is usually worse after the politicians get done tinkering with their economic levers. Let the market decide what the right wage level is, it is much smarter than any American politician.

That will do it for today: economic tomfoolery in NYC, political insensitivity and idiocy in Virginia, and politicians continue to being the biggest problem facing America today. More insanity to follow.

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

October,2017, Part 2, Political Class Insanity: A Delusional Hillary, A Major Taxpayer Win and The United Nations's Bad Priorities.

It is the beginning of another month which means it is again time to review the latest political class insanity from Washington and around the world. Political class insanity takes many forms including the wasting of taxpayer wealth, criminal fraud within government programs, inane and stupid political quotes and actions, the inability to create and implement effective and efficient government programs, stupid and ill performing economic policies and strategies, and other forms of insanity that continue to evolve and surprise and shock us.

1) It is not just the American political class that is insane, inane, and incompetent, working on issues that will make no one’s life any better. The folks at the United Nations also do a great job at doing nothing and having screwed up priorities. According to a September 26, 2017 article on the Fix This Nation website:

• Apparently the United Nations has recently told Canada that it needs to pay reparations for slavery that ended over 150 years ago.
• The United Nations Human Rights Council has told Canada to “apologize for black slavery and pay reparations for their role in the slave trade and other forms of “anti-black racism.” In a report that was published this week, the special UN group said this about Canada’s current systemic racism:“History informs anti-black racism and racial stereotypes that are so deeply entrenched in institutions, policies and practices, that its institutional and systemic forms are either functionally normalized or rendered invisible, especially to the dominant group.”
• Seriously? Canada did not become a self governing country until after Britain had banned slavery.
• Canadians were active participants in operating the Underground Railroad that helped get runaway slaves to freedom in Canada.
• No one involved in Canadian slavery is still alive so who is going to get the reparations?
• Christians and other minority religion adherents are being murdered and enslaved across the Middle East and this is what the UN is working on, 150 years after the fact?
• Women in dozens of Arab and other countries are repressed and denied basic freedoms and liberties and this is what the UN is working on 150 years after the fact?
• There is a huge refugee problem in the Middle East and this is what the UN is working on 150 years after the fact?
• But it gets even worse since not only does the UN want Canadians to pay reparations, it wants them to also erect monuments to the preserve the history of slavery: “It is important to underline that the experience of African Canadians is unique because of the particular history of anti-black racism in Canada,” the report says. It recommends that the Canadian government “take concrete steps to preserve the history of enslavement and the political, social and economic contributions of African Canadians by establishing monuments in their honour.”

It is impossible to predict what politicians and bureaucrats will do to make themselves look busy and important, creating stupid issues that do not exist while ignoring real issues that negatively affect millions of people. Such insanity.

2) One of the dozens of campaign promises that Obama made, all of which never came true, was that he was going to go through the Federal government budget “line by line” to ferret out wasteful spending. Noble gesture but non-follow up. Under his leadership, the Federal debt almost doubled from $10 TRILLION to an amazing and dangerous $20 TRILLION.

One of the most wasteful spending entities in the entire Federal government, the Pentagon, has such screwed up financial systems that trained auditors threw their hands up in frustration when they tried to audit the Pentagon's books, that is how screwed up they were. Obama did nothing that would have helped fix a dysfunctional Pentagon or any other Federal agency when it comes to wasting taxpayer wealth despite his promise to get rid of wasteful spending.

A prime example of how the Federal government wastes taxpayer money, both under Obama and previous administrations, was outlined in a recent article on the Occupy Deplorables website by Kirsty Jane on September 23, 2017.:

• Traditionally, submarine periscopes have relied on clunky hard to find and use expensive joysticks/hand grips.
• The Navy’s most advanced submarines, Virginia class,  are equipped with so-called photonic hand grips that are made by Lockheed Martin and cost the American taxpayer about $38,000 each.
• These hand grips are designed for use only on Virginia class submarines and would be impossible to replace in an emergency.
• To someone’s credit somewhere in the Navy, the Navy asked some junior officers what could be done to make their life easier and a consistent complaint was the clunky hand grips.
• That led to a little research and it was found that hand controllers from a standard X-Box video game system worked just as well as the $38,000 custom made, clunky hand grips and and the X-Box controllers sold for only about $30.
• Not only is the X-Box controller ridiculously less expensive than the current handgrips, but if they break a replacement is easily obtained from the local toy or electronics store.
• In addition, since many current Navy personnel grew up playing video games on their own X-Box systems, training costs are also greatly reduced.

There Mr. Obama, was that so hard? A price reduction from $38,000 to $30 in the blink of an eye? How many other thousands of opportunities to save taxpayer wealth exist throughout the gigantic Federal bureaucracy and you could not come up with a single one despite your promise to go through the Federal budget line by line? Pathetically insane.

3) Yesterday, we discussed the insult and condescension that Michelle Obama heaped on American women who voted for Donald Trump last November. But she is not the only Democrat/liberal to blame others, and blame them in a truly insulting way, for Hillary’s defeat to a first time candidate. Hillary herself got into the blame game, finding someone else to blame for her humiliating loss last November.

According to Hillary, over 30 million American women voted for Donald Trump because they were too weak to stand up for themselves, that they allowed the men in their lives, their husbands, their brothers, their boyfriends, to force them to vote for Trump and not her. How much more insulting can you be to the women in this country to outright state that they are scared of the men in their lives and too afraid to vote for whom they want to vote for, obviously Hillary. Not a good way to win friends and influence people, calling them stupid and weak.

Hillary, lets put forth just a few reasons why these women may have voted for Trump and not you:

• Given that you have condoned, abetted, and protected your sexual predator husband for decades, maybe they did not want to a sexual predator back roaming the halls of the White House.
• Maybe they did not trust you with vital information as the President since you obviously could not be trusted to guard and protect classified information when you were Secretary of State.
• Maybe they did not trust you when you deleted over 30,000 emails from an illegal and unsecured computer server and used a specific program to make sure those emails stayed deleted and were untrackable.
• Maybe they looked at your Senate record and found that in your entire tenure you were able to get only three pieces of legislation passed that you were a primary sponsor of, especially since of the three named a post office and another of the three named a highway.
• Maybe they looked at you hypocrisy of being critical of Wall Street banks in private but supportive of them in private, especially when they gave you very rich speaking fees.
• Maybe they were just tired of your lies, from the true cause of the Benghazi attack (it was NOT some obscure video) to you landing under fire when visiting Bosnia (you did NOT land under fire) to saying all of your grandparents were immigrants (they were NOT), etc.

Yeah, Benghazi lies, other lies, rich speaking fees from bankers, an obscenely poor Senate record, deletion of emails, illegal and unsecure computer server, a sexual predator husband, they had nothing to do with your defeat. It was strictly 30 million American women being subservient to their male masters. Give me a break from your pure insanity.

That will do it for today: a delusional Hillary, saving taxpayers money with video games equipment, and bad UN priorities. More insanity to follow.

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

August, 2015, Part 5, Political Class Insanity: Presidential Hypocrisy On Slavery, Ineptness at the SocialSecurity Administration, and More

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

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

1) As we have shown and proven many times, the current set of Washington politicians have a very low grasp of economics and economic theory, saddling us with economic policies and idiocy that inhibit economic growth and job creation. This was easily proven when after the Great Recession we have suffered through the worst economic recovery in ages despite spending over $800 billion on a failed economic stimulus program, living through an energy revolution, and having the Fed print TRILLIONS of dollars in fake money.

Despite those economic tailwinds and being many years removed from the recession, the latest economic statistics are still not good, according to a recent Reuters report:

• In June, nonfarm payrolls rose by only 223,000.
• At the same time these June results were announced by the Labor Department, the Department revised downward its May and April estimates of job creation by 60,000 jobs.
• While the outmoded U3 unemployment rate dropped to 5.3%, it was not because of economic growth but because a whopping 432,000 people left the labor force last month, wiping out any significance of the 223,000 increase in nonfarm jobs.
• The more accurate U6 unemployment measure, while down, is still a depressing 10.5%.
• This job weakness situation means that the Fed is still unlikely to raise interest rates soon: "While we've been seeing positive signs of the economy picking up moving into the second half, this report certainly isn't pushing the Fed to accelerate the liftoff timeline," said Ted Wieseman, an economist at Morgan Stanley in New York.
• The labor force participation rate fell again, this time to an anemic 62.6%, the lowest level since October, 1977.
• Overall wage growth was zero for the month.
• The only good economic news is that construction is getting stronger with construction spending hitting a six and a half year high.

Discouraged workers, low wage growth, poor job creation, just horrendous stewardship of the economy by the worst set of Washington politicians ever. 

2) Desperation in any walk of life is usually pretty evident. And desperation seems to be the way of life for the city of Chicago these days. In what smacks of a desperate grab for tax revenue from any source imaginable, Fortune magazine reports that: "Chicago officials are taking an aggressive new tax approach. Consumers will now have to pay 9% on Netflix, Amazon Web Services and more.

Chicago is marking Independence Day this year with fireworks, hot dogs – and sweeping new tax rules that require companies to collect a 9% levy every time consumers use streaming and cloud services such as Netflix or Amazon Web Services.

The rules, which went into effect today, came about after city officials expanded the interpretation of existing amusement and property lease taxes to encompass cloud-based technologies."

So if you are a Netflix fan in Chicago, the cost of enjoying a desired movie just got 9% more expensive because the local political class 1) “expanded the interpretation” of existing laws, 2) decided to target just a small sample of Internet access, and 3) desperately needs the money since the city of Chicago’s bonds are now rated at junk bond level.

But we have known that Chicago and the entire state of Illinois is heading quickly down a bankruptcy path, given the corrupt and irresponsible historical management of taxpayer wealth. I think that the bigger issue that Chicago citizens should worry about is since it is highly unlikely that desperate, local politicians will suddenly develop political will and economic sense, might they decide that taxing Internet activity is a good thing? Might we see taxing every Facebook post, a fee for every Tweet, etc.? I would not put it below the political class to do so.

3) It is always a close call each month to decide which is the most incompetent Federal entity. The finalists usually include the IRS, the TSA, or the Social Security Administration (SSA). This month it looks like the SSA has taken the early lead in ineptness. 

According to a recent report from the SSA inspector general, the SSA actually spends more money than it collects when trying to recover mistaken, illegal or fraudulent payments to people who received benefits they were not entitled to. Somehow, between 2008 and 2013, the SSA gave out $128.3 million in so-called “low dollar” overpayments, spent $323 million trying to recover the $128.3 million, and ended up collecting only $109.4 million. Thus, they spent $213.6 more money than what they collected. Insane.

4) A lot has been made about slavery in the past few weeks after the horrendous and terrible attack on a South Carolina church that left nine people dead. The President has weighed in many times with statements identifying the Confederate flag as a “symbol of slavery.” Such a statement does carry some moral weight given the ethnic background of the President.

But he then turns around and his actions are the exact opposite of what he says. The TPP is a treaty under consideration that would theoretically lower trade barriers across the Pacific basin including the U.S. Originally, the treaty had an anti-slavery provision in it that was written by U.S. Senator Bob Menendez, as reported by the Huffington Post: “The provision, which bars countries that engage in slavery from being part of major trade deals with the U.S., was written by Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.). At the insistence of the White House, Menendez agreed to modify his language to say that as long as a country is taking ‘concrete’ steps toward reducing human trafficking and forced labor, it can be part of a trade deal.”

“Under the original language, the country that would be excluded from the pending Trans-Pacific Partnership pact is Malaysia.”

“Why, in the year 2015, is the White House teaming up with Republican leaders essentially to defend the practice of slavery?” 

Again, greed wins out over principle in Washington. Obama often talks a good show, most transparent administration ever, we will reduce your annual healthcare costs up to $2,500, we will reduce the annual spending deficit by 50%, etc. but his actions almost always belittle and contradict his words. 

Slavery symbols from 150 years ago tick him off but slavery TODAY, with living breathing human beings, is okay as long as some nebulous meaningless steps, steps to be defined, are being taken sometime in the future to get rid of it. And he sacrifices his words and integrity for the country of Malaysia, a nit in the world economy. As always with this President, love his words, ignore his hypocrisy.

That will do it for today’s insanity. Hypocrisy on slavery from the first African American President, an inept Social Security Administration, Netflix desperation in Chicago, and continued tepid economic results. All in a day’s work for the American political class.

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

www.loathemygovernment.com

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

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

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

July, 2015, Part 2, Political Class Insanity: Presidential Hypocrisy On Slavery, Ineptness at the SocialSecurity Administration, and More

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

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

1) As we have shown and proven many times, the current set of Washington politicians have a very low grasp of economics and economic theory, saddling us with economic policies and idiocy that inhibit economic growth and job creation. This was easily proven when after the Great Recession we have suffered through the worst economic recovery in ages despite spending over $800 billion on a failed economic stimulus program, living through an energy revolution, and having the Fed print TRILLIONS of dollars in fake money.

Despite those economic tailwinds and being many years removed from the recession, the latest economic statistics are still not good, according to a recent Reuters report:

• Last month, nonfarm payrolls rose by only 223,000.
• At the same time these June results were announced by the Labor Department, the Department revised downward its May and April estimates of job creation by 60,000 jobs.
• While the outmoded U3 unemployment rate dropped to 5.3%, it was not because of economic growth but because a whopping 432,000 people left the labor force last month, wiping out any significance of the 223,000 increase in nonfarm jobs.
• The more accurate U6 unemployment measure, while down, is still a depressing 10.5%.
• This job weakness situation means that the Fed is still unlikely to raise interest rates soon: "While we've been seeing positive signs of the economy picking up moving into the second half, this report certainly isn't pushing the Fed to accelerate the liftoff timeline," said Ted Wieseman, an economist at Morgan Stanley in New York.
• The labor force participation rate fell again, this time to anemic 62.6%, the lowest level since October, 1977.
• Overall wage growth was zero for the month.
• The only good economic news is that construction is getting stronger with construction spending hitting a six and a half year high.

Discouraged workers, low wage growth, poor job creation, just horrendous stewardship of the economy by the worst set of Washington politicians ever. 

2) Desperation in any walk of life is usually pretty evident. And desperation seems to be the way of life for the city of Chicago these days. In what smacks of a desperate grab for tax revenue from any source imaginable, Fortune magazine reports that: "Chicago officials are taking an aggressive new tax approach. Consumers will now have to pay 9% on Netflix, Amazon Web Services and more.

Chicago is marking Independence Day this year with fireworks, hot dogs – and sweeping new tax rules that require companies to collect a 9% levy every time consumers use streaming and cloud services such as Netflix or Amazon Web Services.

The rules, which went into effect today, came about after city officials expanded the interpretation of existing amusement and property lease taxes to encompass cloud-based technologies."

So if you are Netflix fan in Chicago, the cost of enjoying a desired movie just got 9% more expensive because the local political class 1) “expanded the interpretation” of existing laws, 2) decided to target just a small sample of Internet access, and 3) desperately needs the money since the city of Chicago’s bonds are now rated at junk bond level.

But we have known that Chicago and the entire state of Illinois is heading quickly down a bankruptcy path, given the corrupt and irresponsible historical management of taxpayer wealth. I think that the bigger issue that Chicago citizens should worry about is since it is highly unlikely that desperate, local politicians will suddenly develop political will and economic sense, might they decide that taxing Internet activity is a good thing? Might we see taxing every Facebook post, a fee for every Tweet, etc.? I would not put it below the political class to do so.

3) It is always a close call each month to decide which is the most incompetent Federal entity. The finalists usually include the IRS, the TSA, or the Social Security Administration (SSA). This month it looks like the SSA has taken the early lead in ineptness. 

According to a recent report from the SSA inspector general, the SSA actually spends more money than it collects when trying to recover mistaken, illegal or fraudulent payments from people who received benefits they were not entitled to. Somehow, between 2008 and 2013, the SSA gave out $128.3 million in so-called “low dollar” overpayments, spent $323 million trying to recover the $128.3 million, and ended up collecting only $109.4 million. Thus, they spent $213.6 more money than what they collected.

4) A lot has been made about slavery in the past few weeks after the horrendous and terrible attack on a South Carolina church that left nine people dead. The President has weighed in many times with statements identifying the Confederate flag as a “symbol of slavery.” Such a statement does carry some moral weight given the ethnic background of the President.

But he then turns around and his actions are the exact opposite of what he says. The TPP is a treaty under consideration that would theoretically lower trade barriers across the Pacific basin including the U.S. Originally, the treaty had an anti-slavery provision in it that was written by U.S.Senator Bob Menendez, as reported by the Huffington Post: “The provision, which bars countries that engage in slavery from being part of major trade deals with the U.S., was written by Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.). At the insistence of the White House, Menendez agreed to modify his language to say that as long as a country is taking ‘concrete’ steps toward reducing human trafficking and forced labor, it can be part of a trade deal.”

“Under the original language, the country that would be excluded from the pending Trans-Pacific Partnership pact is Malaysia.”

“Why, in the year 2015, is the White House teaming up with Republican leaders essentially to defend the practice of slavery?” 

Again, greed wins out over principle in Washington. Obama often talks a good show, most transparent administration ever, we will reduce your annual healthcare costs up to $2,500, we will reduce the annual spending deficit by 50%, etc. but his actions almost always belittle and contradict his words. 

Slavery symbols from 150 years ago tick him off but slavery TODAY, with living breathing human beings, is okay as long as some nebulous meaningless steps, steps to be defined, are being taken sometime in the future to get rid of it. And he sacrifices his words and integrity for the country of Malaysia, a nit in the world economy. As always with this president, love his words, ignore his hypocrisy.

That will do it for today’s insanity. Hypocrisy on slavery from the first African American President, an inept Social Security Administration, Netflix desperation in Chicago, and continued tepid economic results. All in a day’s work for the American political class.

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

January, 2014 Political Class Insanity, Part 4: Blowing Up Animal Carcasses, Blowing Up The Budget, Door Knobs Criminalized, and More

This is the fourth, but not last, installment for this month’s review of political class insanity. The first post in this month’s series can be accessed at:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2014/01/january-2014-political-class-insanity_5.html

Unfortunately, a series that started as one post a month has grown into a series that needs 5-6 posts each month to capture the idiocy, wasteful spending, and ineffective government programs that our political class rules over. The ineptness of today’s politicians would be funny if their actions did not have such a detrimental effect on our wealth, our families, our health, and our freedom.

1) A December 23, 2013 article from the Washington Post had a very depressing view of what is likely to happen in Afghanistan after most of the international troops leave the country in 2014. The basis of the conclusions shared in the article come from the National Intelligence Estimate which included input from 16 different intelligence agencies within the Federal government.

Their main conclusion: after more than ten years of U.S. armed forces presence during which we probably spent billions of dollars and lost thousands of brave soldiers to fighting, our main enemy in the country, the Taliban, and other power brokers, will become increasingly influential and that the country will likely and quickly descend into chaos.

Another monumental waste of U.S. wealth and life for no discernible, long term benefit. Par for the course for our political class.

2) According to a New York Times article that was summarized in the December 20, 2013 issue of The Week magazine, about 440,000 Americans die as a result of preventable errors in U.S. hospitals every year. Viewed another way, one out of every six deaths in this country is caused by preventable hospital mistakes, making this form of death the third leading cause of death in the country every year. 

The third leading cause of death and the Obama Care legislation does virtually nothing to prevent this type of preventable health disaster, Instead, the legislation spends billions and billions of dollars on a Rube Goldberg like health insurance operation that has no chance of success. Insanity and certainly a bad case of priorities: the good news is that you now have health insurance via Obama care but have am excellent chance of dying when you go into a hospital to execute that health insurance option.

3) If it is any consolation, political class idiocy and uselessness is not confined to only American politicians. The Canadian city of Vancouver recently enacted new building codes that require that all new building construction have levers rather than door knobs on the doors within that new construction. Apparently, the politicians in the city had nothing better to do than debate, write and pass door knob vs. door lever legislation.

Rather than talk about fixing roads, improving schools, reducing the crime rate, and other important issues that are likely facing the good citizens of Vancouver, the city politicians are worried about door knobs. More bad priorities by a set of politicians that probably do not know how to solve the real problems facing their citizens and settle on making up and fixing fake crises and problems.

4) How out of control is government spending? We have often mentioned the fact that our Federal government national debt is a mind boggling $17 TRILLION. This is an individual debt burden of well over $50,000 for every man, woman, and child in the United States.

But consider another measure of how out of control government spending is, courtesy of a Washington Times article from late 2013. The writer went to the latest IRS tax return data publicly available, 2010, and added up the total income of those Americans who earned over $69,000 that year. This cutoff number obviously includes a lot of America’s middle class and all of the upper classes relative to income levels.

The total income of those earning more than $69,000 in 2010 was an impressive $5.1 TRILLION. Impressive until you realize that the annual Federal government budget is about $3.5 TRILLION. Thus, if you would have to tax the over $69,000 earning Americans at a whopping 68.6% just to fund one year of Federal government spending.

If you factor in state and local government spending, you would probably have to tax these citizens at an 80-90% rate just to cover one year’s worth of U.S. government spending. And even this high level of taxation would do nothing to start reducing the $17 TRILLION in national debt burden.

Despite these onerous facts and statistics, the Washington political class has no clue or inclination to reduce unneeded and wasteful spending. We are fast approaching a point of no return where there is no tax level high enough or wide enough that will be able to fund an ever growing government spending addiction and the resultant obesity of national debt. 68.6% tax levels and 80-90% tax levels are not taxation, they are repression and slavery.

5) The Hill’s website reported on October 4, 2013 that through unanimous consent agreements Friday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid passed resolutions, including Senate Resolution 266, which designates Oct. 7-13 National Chess Week. Yes, forget the $17 TRILLION deficit, the government shutdown, over 20 million Americans unemployed or underemployed, the crumbling infrastructure, our failing public schools. Let’s take up 100 Senators’ time and pass a resolution for the game of chess.

When asked about the resolution, Reid said that the Chess Resolution is important because, “The game is known to…enhance critical thinking and problem-solving skills.” Maybe the Senate should actually play a few games of chess because collectively it certainly lacks “critical thinking and problem solving skills."

6) The following piece of political class and government insanity comes to us from the 1990s but apparently is still part of a government publication  today. In case you never got around to disposing of dead animal carcasses last year, do not fret. The U.S. government has developed and published a step by step guide for doing just that. 

“The Government Guide For Exploding Animal Carcasses” was first published back in 1995 by the USDA and Forest Service. It is a how to guide for the obliteration of large, unwanted dead animals. Critical and important selections from the guide include: 

• “It is important to consider location, time of year, and size of the carcass when selecting the quantity and type of explosive to accomplish the obliteration task.”
• “Place 1 pound (1.36 kilograms) of explosives under the carcass in four locations. The carcass then can be rolled onto the explosives if necessary.”
• “Horseshoes should be removed to minimize dangerous flying debris.”
• “Carcasses that have been partially obliterated will generally not show any trace of existence the next day.” 
• “Consult a qualified blaster when explosives are to be used.”

Apparently, the booklet of instructions is illustrated to show you where to put the explosives beneath those pesky carcasses.

Of all the problems the country has faced over the past two decades, why do we think the need for government intervention was required to help citizens blow up dead, large animal carcasses? How many citizens could this instruction booklet possibly affect, ten, twelve, across the country? How many government employees were involved researching, writing, proofreading, approving, and publishing such nonsense? And worse of all, the last instruction is to hire a professional, “qualified blaster” to do this type of thing. Shouldn’t the professional know all of this without the government wasting taxpayer wealth spreading this type of information?

You cannot make this insanity up.

7) Back to the Federal budget before we close out the insanity for today. Consider the following graphic from the Heritage Foundation where they show how every dollar of Federal tax you pay is spent:

Observations:

• About 64% of every tax dollar we pay is shuffled around in the federal bureaucracy and then paid right back out again as checks for retirement, medical care, housing assistance, and food assistance to different types of Americans.
• 19% goes into a black hole called the Defense Department, an organization that government auditors have called so screwed up from an accounting perspective that the organization is incapable of being audited.
• 6% goes into repaying the $17 TRILLION national debt.
• Thus, if you are a younger, healthy, working American, about 89% of what you pay in taxes goes to other people and a near dysfunctional Defense Department accoutning disgrace. 
• That leaves only an 11% chance that you might see some immediate benefit from paying Federal taxes.
• The fact that only 3% of the Federal spending goes towards transportation programs and only 1% goes to education might explain why our transportation infrastructure is crumbling and our kids are severely under educated vs. the rest of the world.

How did we allow ourselves to get so screwed up or allow our politicians to get us so screwed up? The Federal government is now nothing much more than a massive, inefficient redistribution of wealth machine with no added benefit, wasting so much money that a mere pittance goes towards the greater good: sound transportation infrastructure and quality education for our kids.

That’s it for the insanity today but not for the month, more to follow tomorrow.

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