There is a lot going on in the world: Obama and Russiagate findings, Middle East powder keg, the Russian/Ukrainian war, etc. But through all this, the American political class continues to constantly deliver its own special brand of insanity, stupidity, wasteful taxpayer spending, and ineffective government programs:
1)We have previously discussed the idiotic proposals and views of New York City mayoral candidate, Zohran Mamdani: free public transportation, free health care, free child care, tax the rich and businesses to fund the freebies, abolish Second Amendment rights, anti-Israel, anti-Jewish, etc.
One of his more inane ideas is to have the city government run grocery stores in the city in order to theoretically make food less expensive. This is stupid on various levels:
The city has no core competencies in running any business, never mind a business like grocery stores, that have low margins to be financially viable.
The city government has no buildings, no inventory management processes, no grocery management experience, no retail cash management experience or systems, no employees, the list is almost endless.
And if they do succeed in getting up and running and slash prices, then privately owned grocery stores and corner bodegas will shut down and leave since their profitability will go negative, causing so-called food deserts to arise around the city.
Stupidity at its worst. But maybe not the worse, considering that Mamdani’s grocery store proposal is built on fictitious data and reality that he apparently did not understand:
Apparently his idea for government grocery stores is based on his misunderstanding of current city government finances, another reason for him not to get into office.
He proposes to redirect city government tax revenue from what he thinks is currently going to "corporate supermarkets” and take that $140 million to build out city grocery stores.
$140 million would be a good start to creating a network of city run grocery stores, no doubt.
Unfortunately that $140 million in city government funding does not exist, the $140 million is primarily non-government/private money that supports the current FRESH program, “Food Retail Expansion to Support Health initiative.”
In fact, only $1.3 million of that $140 million, less than 1%, is city taxpayer funds, i.e. he does not have a pot of $140 million to build out his city grocery stores.
Thus, his plan is already almost $139 million in the hole before getting started.
Plus, apparently the FRESH program has been very successful using private funding for the most part to get more stores opened in the city, which has created jobs and better food access in all parts of the city, a success that goes away if he allows the city to get into the grocery business.
So a stupid idea in theory becomes even more stupid because the guy did not understand current food programs and what they cost the city, i.e. very little, while they deliver positive food results. Probably do not want someone in charge who does not understand basic math, basic government funding.
2)The COVID era keeps proving time and time again how inept and criminally infested most Federal government programs are. They waste taxpayer wealth and rarely deliver what they promise. Consider the latest COVID scandal that was recently uncovered:
More great work from DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency, it found that 5,500 COVID loans, totalling $312 million were made to people who were 11 years old or younger.
Yes, pre-teen kids were granted Federal loans courtesy of the ineptness of the Small Business Administration.
Conversely, DOGE found that 3095 loans, worth $333 million, were made to people listed as being over 115 years old.
One $36,000 loan was made to a person who was listed as 157 years old.
Terrible incompetence and wasting of taxpayer wealth. Makes you wonder what other government programs are being ripped off as easily as this nonsense by the Small Business Administration.
3)But it is not just the Federal government that can lose and misspent millions and millions of dollars in just a single government agency:
The Los Angeles city government has lost track of billions of dollars in spending for homelessness service programs in the city.
That was the bottom line finding of a recent audit by an independent entity.
The audit company said it could not completely quantify how the city spent approximately $2.3 billion because of incomplete and inaccurate bookkeeping and tracking.
Specifically: “Repetitive information gaps, coupled with a lack of accurate and complete data and documentation, posed significant obstacles to this assessment. Insufficient financial accountability led to an inability to trace substantial funds allocated to the City Programs. Fragmented data systems across LAHSA, the City, and the County and inconsistent reporting formats made it challenging to verify spending and the number of beds or units reported by the City and LAHSA, track participant outcomes, and align financial data with performance metrics.”
The report also pointed out specific problems such as failure to monitor homeless programs, ambiguity about what contractors were supposed to be doing, inability to track contractors expenses, etc.
The auditor recommended that the city appoint an independent financial manager to try and fix an obviously broken accounting and accountability process.
According to the county health department, on average seven homeless individuals die every day in Los Angeles and the death rate among city homeless people is about 4.5 times higher than the overall death rate in L.A. County. Thus, this is a critical, life and death issue, and the city politicians and government employees are running a slipshod, probably corrupt process, to help these folks and the results are not good, financially or realistically.
4)Not to brag, but we previously wrote about the following topic and correctly predicted what would happen:
California recently rolled out a new minimum wage law that raised the minimum wage for fast food workers to $20 an hour.
At the time the law was proposed and moving towards enactment, we predicted that such a large jump in the salary expense for fast food outlets would reduce the number of hours available and the number of job slots available to fast food workers as fast food owners cut expenses to contend with the new minimum wage law.
In other words, “the good news is the starting minimum salary for your fast food job is now $20 an hour, the bad news is you no longer have a job.”
And according to an analysis released by the National Bureau Of Economic Research, that is exactly what happened.
They estimate that the state saw an 18,000 reduction in fast food jobs as a result of the higher minimum wage.
Furthermore, the Employment Policies Institute estimated that fast food workers lost 250 hours worth of employment annually as a result of the minimum wage increase.
Thus, fewer fast food jobs available and those that kept the job lost 250 hours of work on average which means that despite the increase in pay, they lost $4,000 in annual wages according to the study.
The California Globe wrote that "thousands of fast food jobs were shed by companies in anticipation for the higher [labor/salary] costs.”
These lost jobs included 1,200 Pizza Hut drivers that were let go as a cost saving measure by the company.
The Globe went on to discuss the reality that owners cut hours, cut employees, automated processes that they could, or closed their establishments altogether because of the higher salary requirement.
Stanford University early on estimated that 10,000 fast food jobs had been extinguished.
Just as an aside, California continues to have the highest unemployment rate in the nation at 5.4%, quite possibly because state politicians have no economic sense at all.
And the damage is probably still not done. As businesses succeed with automation of previously fast food human jobs, more and more employees may see their jobs disappear.
Okay enough insanity for today: California politicians are economically ignorant, L.A. politicians cannot find the money they spend on their massive homeless problem, the Small Business Administration apparently will give out anyone a loan including 10 year olds and 157 year olds, and Mamdani screws up his numbers right out of the gate.
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If you agree that we need to deseat every member of Congress for their lack of success and accomplishment, then please consider going to the following petition link to help the cause:
https://www.change.org/p/deseat-congress-reset-freedom
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