July, 2014 Political Class Insanity, Bonus Post: Pelosi Flunks Geography, Biden Claims Poverty, Voter ID Laws Are Good For Voting and More

I know that we promised yesterday would be the last post in this month’s update to our political class insanity series. However, since we made that vow, more insanity from the politicians across the country has come tumbling in. Rather than wait another month to review it, let’s try to finish this past month’s insanity up today.

1) We have often successfully made the case that politicians are more interested in extending their careers in office and self enrichment than resolving the major issues facing the country today. Given that the current set of politicians have never resolved any major issue, the back half of that statement is easy to verify.

The front half is also pretty easy to prove. The news show “60 Minutes” did the best job of that a little while ago when they showed how insider trading was against the law for every American except the Washington political class and their staffs. This loophole, created by the Washington political class, has enabled them to trade stock and legislative favors for self enrichment while in office. 

We have also reviewed how sitting politicians act on laws and government activities that benefit their spouses and their spouses businesses. The most recent case of such spouse enriching involves New Hampshire Senator Jeanne Shaheen. The Boston Globe recently reported that in 2009, Jeanne Shaheen’s husband served as a consultant for a company named Ultrawave Labs.

It seems that in 2009, Ultrawave Labs received $78,000 in Federal stimulus funding for company research. No big deal there, lots of companies got economic stimulus funding. However, rather than recuse herself from a conflict of interest perspective, Senator Shaheen voted to approve the funding to a company that her husband had an active financial interest in. As always , worse than the crime is the cover up after the crime, as illustrated by the Globe’s reporting: “The Shaheens declined multiple requests for interviews and would not answer most detailed questions about their investments and connection to the firm.” 

A New Hampshire paper followed up with an editorial that correctly points out how this type of behavior is typical of the crony capitalism that perverts and pervades Washington: [Senator Shaheen] “should have recused herself from voting on the stimulus bill because of its funding of Ultrawave. She will have to answer for the consequences of that vote. But it seems to us that the real issue here is Shaheen’s willing participation in the pay-for-play scheme that is the federal appropriations process. Shaheen complains about big-money influence in politics while engaging in the very behavior that encourages companies to hire lobbyists and senators’ spouses to obtain the connections necessary to access federal money. This is crony capitalism – and Jeanne Shaheen is one of the cronies.”

And that kids is just one way to get rich being a politician in America.

2) What would a political class insanity post be without a quote from Nancy Pelosi? Given a recent visit to see firsthand the growing crisis and humanitarian disaster that is expanding at our southern border, Ms. Pelosi showed her complete lack of geography and history skills: "This is a community with a border going through it. And this crisis — that some call a 'crisis' — we have to view as an opportunity," Pelosi said at her press conference in Texas. So, in other words, the United States and Mexico are just one big happy country that some poor fool drew an arbitrary boundary right through the middle of? Out of this world thinking.

3) We recently a short series talking about how things are not what they appear to be, that the political class makes up myths to energize their base and keep themselves in office by keeping myths and falsehoods alive. The post in that series that discussed voter id laws can be accessed at:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2014/06/destroying-political-class-myths-part-2.html

In two instances, Georgia and Texas, we disproved the political class myth, using real data and research, that reasonable voter id laws do not inhibit voting by minority groups. In fact, in two states that had recently implemented voting id laws, voting by people in those minority groups actually skyrocketed, debunking the efforts of Eric Holder and President Obama to overturn laws that may actually help increase minority voting turnout.

To follow up on that reality, consider a list of actions that every American cannot due without providing official government identification. The list was put together by Ashe Schow on August 14, 2013, writing for the Washington Examiner:

1. Purchase alcohol

2. Purchase cigarettes

3. Open a bank account

4. Apply for food stamps

5. Apply for welfare

6. Apply for Medicaid/Social Security

7. Apply for unemployment or a job

8. Rent/buy a house, apply for a mortgage

9. Drive/buy/rent a car

10. Get on an airplane

11. Get married

12. Purchase a gun

13. Adopt a pet

14. Rent a hotel room

15. Apply for a hunting license

16. Apply for a fishing license

17. Buy a cell phone

18. Visit a casino

19. Pick up a prescription

20. Hold a rally or protest

21. Blood donations

22. Buy an "M" rated video game

23. Purchase nail polish at CVS

24. Purchase certain cold medicines

But according to certain people in this administration, requiring an id to vote should not be needed even though it affects an underpinnings of our democracy and freedom. Insanity.

4) Getting back to voter id laws. We have previously shown that when the states of Georgia and Texas implemented common sense voter id laws, the voting rate in minority communities actually went up substantially despite requiring legitimate citizens to prove they were legitimate citizens and voters.

Judicial Watch recently completed a similar study in North Carolina. They compared the voting of minorities in the 2010 elections, which were held prior to the state’s voter id law going into effect, and the voting rate of minorities in the similar 2914 elections after the law went into effect. They found the same trend: while voting rates increase across all sub groups of citizens, voting rates went up even higher in minority groups. 

Which makes you wonder while Eric Holder and the Obama administration want to gut this state law also, a law that actually does what Holder and Obama want to happen, increase the voting rate of minorities. Insane.

5) Vice President Joe Biden was recently speaking at the White House Summit on Working Families when he tried to show his connection and empathy with working class and middle class families. He claimed, despite being in Washington for decades, and drawing salaries during those years substantially higher than the average household income level that he supposedly owned no stocks and had no savings: “But I got a great pension and I get a good salary,” Biden said to applause.

What a man of the people, what a regular guy, struggling to survive like the rest of us, and Hillary Clinton, in these tough economic times. But is this truly the reality of Biden’s financial situation? Probably not since:

• Buzzfeed reported that when Biden joined the Obama ticket in 2008, he was indeed the poorest Senator but as the fact checker PolitiFact pointed out at the time, poorest Senator was still far wealthier than the average American.
• USA Today reported that in this year’s White House financial disclosure, Biden listed assets “valued at $276,000 to $940,000, including a rental property owned jointly with his wife, Jill,” 
• We have previously reported in this blog that not only do the Biden’s own this rental property but they have the gall to rent it out to the Secret Service to use to protect the Bidens, which of course is paid for by the American taxpayer.
• Time magazine’s Zeke Miller pointed out that contrary to what Biden stated at the meeting, Joe Biden definitely owns a savings account in his own name.
• And finally, other news sources claimed that the reason that Biden does not have a savings account or stock holdings in his name is because much of the family assets are listed not in his name but in his wife’s name. 

Thus, while technically correct in his statements, he is in a gray area when making such claims as long as he is married to his current wife and has access to the assets in her name. I always wonder what politicians are thinking when they try to push such stories that are really deceptions:

• Do they really believe their own deceptions and lies as reality? 
• Do they think we are too stupid to believe their own deceptions and lies? 
• Do they think no one will fact check their own deceptions and lies because they lie so well?

Insanity no matter how you cut it.

That will definitely do it for this month’s political class insanity. Today we learned that nepotism and crony capitalism is still alive, at least in New Hampshire politics, that Nancy Pelosi likely flunked geography in grammar school, that needing a valid id is necessary for most aspects of life even if some politicians find it necessary to vote as an insult, and Joe Biden plays fast and loose with words and claims about his family’s wealth. Insanity all around.

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

Today's News Outlets: Where Freedom of The Press and Integrity Has Been Replaced By Conflict Of Interest, Part 2

Yesterday, we took a first cut at examining our hypothesis that freedom and integrity of the press have been replaced by blatant conflict of interests on the part of our news outlets. We examined the family relationships that exist between high ranking officials in the Obama administration and their relatives, spouses, etc. who hold high ranking positions in news organizations that have generally given the Obama administration failures a free pass.

We discussed how many career journalists have forsaken their careers in journalism to take high ranking positions int he Federal government and how all of these former journalists came from news organizations that were almost always easy on and sympathetic to the Obama administration's many failures and shortcomings. In both areas. we raised the question of whether conflict of interest was becoming more important in today's press than integrity of reporting.

Today we will continue that loss of integrity question, starting with the old cover photo switcheroo tactics of Time magazine:

3) The September 16, 2013 issue of Time magazine in the United States had a picture of a football player and the question: “Is it time to pay college athletes?” Nothing suspicious there unless you find out what Time put on the cover of its non-United States covers for their September 16th edition:






Yes, the rest of the world got a feature article and cover that focused on the rise of Vladimir Putin and how he had rescued President Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry, and the rest of the world from a potential military fiasco if the U.S. had attacked Syria. We have already discussed what a mess the President had made of the Syria crisis in a series of posts starting with:

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

We will not go into those Syrian details here. The real story is how the left leaning news organization, Time magazine, has protected the President’s foreign policy bungling  by not carrying the same article about Putin’s rise to prominence at the expense of the United States in its U.S. edition.

The foreign covers acknowledge Putin’s triumph over Obama, telling foreigners that Putin “doesn’t care what anybody thinks of him.” Another example of certain news outlets protecting “their” guys rather than being true journalists and reporting facts and realities.

Oh, by the way, Time editor Rick Stengel was a managing editor of Time magazine over the summer but recently fulfilled his decision to leave Time magazine for a position …wait for it…of running the State Department’s public diplomacy mission. He will be working for none other than John Kerry, one of the Obama administration bumblers who totally mismanaged the Syria situation. He apparently received the offer early this summer and immediately accepted but not leaving Time until very recently.

Makes you wonder if journalistic integrity took a back seat to a new job in the State Department when  Mr. Stengel got around to putting the latest Time magazine covers together, both domestic and foreign.

4) But apparently, this is not the first time that Time magazine has protected their guy on the left by having a  different cover in the U.S. edition of Time magazine from the covers shown across the world. On July 2, 2012, the overseas covers featured China’s fast-growing manufacturing sector, while the U.S. cover was about “The History of the American Dream.” Wouldn’t America have been better served if we had a better understanding of how well China was doing vs. our shrinking manufacturing base?

The Dec. 5, 2011 cover featured an alarming picture of Egyptian street protests, while the U.S. cover told increasingly worried U.S. readers that “Anxiety is Good for You.” Wouldn’t America have been better served to learn all it could about the dynamics and forces going on in Egypt, a situation that the administration never saw coming, than worrying about how good anxiety was for us? 

Yes, in both cases it would have been more beneficial and better journalism if these real world problems were presented to the American public. However, it would not have put the Obama administration in the best light so just like with the Putin/Syira cover switcheroo, Time magazine took the political way rather than the integrity way.

5) One last example of potential journalistic conflicts of interest. This one had baffled me for a while until I understood the underlying dynamics. To me, for the last five years, MSNBC has been nothing more than an extension of the Obama administration’s public relations arm. 

Everything Obama did, no matter how much it blew up and failed, was either a success or the result of Republican or conservative sabotage. If you did not agree with the President’s policies, according to MSNBC you were a racist. Facts, realities, respect for a difference of opinion did not matter, you were a racist or an idiot. Hardly the stuff of unbiased news reporting.

The nadir of MSNBC’s reporting occurred during the run up to the 2012 Presidential election. At that time, MSNBC put together a montage of movie scenes where buses exploded into a fiery death scenes. They billed the video as a wish that this would happen to the Mitt Romney Presidential touring bus. 

At that moment it became abundantly clear to me that MSNBC, more than any other news source in this country, had lost all journalistic and human integrity when it wished a fiery death on a political opponent. The details of this disgrace and our contempt and disgust for their behavior can be accessed at:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2012/06/hated-and-vile-polticial-dialog.html

But I still wondered what would make a so-called news organization behave so disgracefully. And then it hit me. Up until relatively recently, MSNBC and its sister news properties had been owned by General Electric. 

General Electric received hundreds of millions of dollars from Obama’s economic stimulus program. General Electric does a nice chunk of business with the U.S. government and the U.S. Military. The General Electric chairman sat on Obama’s economic development council. A council that accomplished nothing. But most importantly, General Electric generally makes billions and billions of profit dollars every year and usually gets a tax refund, rarely paying anything in U.S. business income tax. Details at:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2011/06/relationship-between-president-obama.html

Thus, there has been a very cozy relationship between General Electric and the Obama administration, one that likely extended into the world of journalism, given how rabidly MSNBC protects Obama’s image and interests, and how much, until recently, General Electric benefited from Obama’s policies and lack of any tax reform strategy.

As I said before, I am not making any accusations of conflict of interest, quid pro quo, etc. But I believe that we no longer have a free press in this country, we have a press that takes sides, distorts facts, ignores facts, and denies the American public the ability to make decisions based on the realities and facts of our issues.

And maybe that is one of the reasons why major issues of our times never get resolved. We are still losing the war on drugs after decades of failure. We are still under educating our kids relative to the rest of the world, a situation that Reagan identified as a problem thirty years ago. We still do not have a coherent national energy strategy, almost forty years after the Arab oil shocks. 

Quite possibly, as the examples over the past two days have shown, our press has been too busy concealing and spending much less time help us correct: “No matter how imperfect things are, if you've got a free press everything is correctable, and without it everything is concealable.” Tom Stoppard

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