Part 3 -The Continuing Failure Of Biden's Immigration Policies and The Violence It Has Unleashed On Americans

We have  often talked about how illegal immigrants continue to get FREE food, shelter, medical care, cell phones, and other benefits paid for by American citizens. In the meantime, millions and millions of Americans are homeless, hungry, in need of drug addiction support, in need of health care and health  insurance, and other struggles.

In addition, many Americans have suffered physical harm such as robberies, rape,  and murder at the hands of criminal and  violent illegal immigrants. Thus, our logical conclusion is that many liberals in the American political class care more about illegal immigrants, including criminals within that group, than the safety and needs of the American citizens they are supposed to serve.

We continue this discussion today:

1)Let’s start today’s discussion in Massachusetts, one of the  most aggressive sanctuary state:

• An illegal immigrant from the Dominican Republic was recently arrested in the state with over $1 million worth of fentanyl and an AR-15 rifle.

• The illegal  immigrant was living in a state taxpayer subsidized housing under the Massachusetts emergency housing program.

• He was charged with possession of a firearm and 10 pounds of illegal fentanyl.

• He was arrested at a Quality Inn where he was staying with his family.

Fortunately, the good news is that he was arrested before his illegal drugs or firearm injured or killed an innocent American. The bad news is we have  no idea how many other illegal immigrants also are armed and pushing fentanyl.

2)Out of Massachusetts and down to New York:

• An illegal immigrant living in Queens in New York City was recently arrested on sex trafficking charges.

• He is alleged to have forced a woman into years of prostitution by threatening to show her family a video of her with a prostitution customer.

• According to the New York Post, the illegal immigrant from Mexico was allegedly running the prostitution effort since 2019.

• He  also had two other women involved in  his prostitution ring.

• He has been  charged with sex trafficking, second degree promoting prostitution and third degree  promoting prostitution.

• He faces up to 25 years in prison if convicted on the most serious charge.

The abuse of women by an  illegal immigrant,  another example where citizens are being placed in danger by an illegal immigrant.

3)We have often pointed out numerous times on how liberal members of the American political class very often take better care of illegal immigrants than needy American citizens. They think nothing of spending billions and billions of taxpayer dollars to provide free food, shelter, medical care, and cell phones to illegal  immigrants than hungry, homeless, medical needy Americans.

This view was recently and dramatically reinforced in Congress:

• A recently proposed law in Congress wanted to legalize the deportation of any illegal immigrant COVICTED of sex crimes.

• I emphasize the word “convicted” since the proposed bill would not have affected anyone who had not been convicted of ex crimes in a court of law.

• Seems pretty straightforward, a simple and  logical way to prevent sex crime in the country.

• And yet, 145 Democrats in Congress actually voted against the proposed legislation.

• South Carolina Congresswoman, Nancy Mace, herself a victim of a sexual assault, went off on these 145 members of Congress: “I abhor anyone on the left … who doesn’t want to protect women and girls who are victims of rape, who are victims of pedophilia, the murderers who are here illegally”

• Fortunately, 274 members of Congress voted in favor of the legislation.

I dare any of those 145 people to justify why they voted this way. Sickening priorities.

4)From DC to Missouri:

• An illegal immigrant accused of causing the death of a 12 year old Missouri boy was released from prison last December 19th, just in time to spend her time with her family over the holidays.

• Endrina Brachol is an  illegal immigrant from Venezuela was  driving the wrong way on a Missouri at 75 MPH when she caused a car crash.

• The crash resulted in the death of a 12 year boy and injuries to two other people.

• Despite being charged with first degree involuntary manslaughter, second degree assault, and first degree child endangerment, local circuit court judge, Bruce Hilton,  reduced her bond so much that no cash was required and thus, she spent the holidays with her family.

• Meanwhile, another American family was spending the  holidays mourning the loss of a loved one.

More bad priorities from the American political class, from Massachusetts to New York to DC, to Missouri. And more heartache for Americans who continue to be  victims of Biden’s failed immigration policies.

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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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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:

https://www.amazon.com/Love-My-Country-Loathe-Government/dp/1604942789/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=love+my+country%2C+loathe+my+government&qid=1607716020&sr=8-1

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.reason.com

http://www.cato.org

http://www.openthebooks.com

http://www.conventionofstates.com

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

September, 2016, Political Class Insanity, Part 3: Wishing Terrorism Away, Too Much Cheese, and More

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.

The current monthly record for the number of days needed to cover one month's worth of insanity is ten. We almost equaled that record last month when we needed nine days to cover one month’s worth of political class insanity. There is a very good chance that the ten day record could fall this month since as we get closer and closer to the election, the volume of ineptness grows almost exponentially. 

But today and for all of the posts this month, let’s start off with a welcome piece of honest political dialog. It comes from a State Department spokesperson, Mark Toner, who is about to start the daily State Department press briefing. In a joking matter, he makes the following quote: "Welcome to the State Department. I think we have some interns in the back. Welcome. Good to see you in this exercise in transparency and democracy." 

He then burst out laughing at his own quote, indicating he also knew what a joke the Obama administration has been, especially Mr. Toner’s State Department, when it comes to cover ups, lack of transparency, denial of Freedom of Information Act requests, the prosecution of whistleblowers, etc. But at least it was a little refreshing to finally hear some actual honesty out of Washington as we see from the actual clip of the news conference:

http://www.againstcronycapitalism.org/2016/08/when-even-the-state-department-spokesperson-cant-keep-a-straight-face-about-things-anymore-video/

With that context of honesty, let’s see what other insanity has been going down:

1) Two days ago we discussed the reality that politicians basically have no intelligence when it comes to economic principles and strategies. Specifically, we discussed what happens when politicians impose a very high minimum wage on businesses and the market: some employees get pay raises but a lot of employees get laid off because the businesses and industries affected by a sudden increase in their wage expenses have to make business cuts, including reducing the number of employees, to remain viable.

Specifically, we discussed what happened to American Apparel in Los Angeles, a thriving apparel business, when the state government of California made the minimum wage $15 an hour. Almost immediately, 500 LA American Apparel workers were laid off and their work sent to other, more profitable manufacturing options.

This insanity is repeating itself in the Washington DC area according to a recent Washington Free Beacon article by Bill McMorris on August 24, 2016. In DC, restaurants are going through the worst hiring period in the past 15 years. There were 1,400 fewer restaurants jobs in the city in the first six months of 2016, a rate of about 8 lost jobs every day in the first six months of 2016. This is a 3% overall decrease and the worst loss of jobs since the 2001 recession. This analysis comes to us courtesy of Mr. Mark Perry of the American Enterprise Institute.

Conversely, restaurants in the DC suburbs added almost 3,000 restaurant employees during the same period. Could it be that the wages mandated under minimum wage laws in DC, which are usually about 30% higher than minimum wage levels in the suburbs, have anything to do with this difference? According to Perry: “The preliminary evidence so far suggests that DC’s minimum wage law is having a negative effect on staffing levels at the city’s restaurants. If the DC restaurant industry can’t easily absorb an $11.50 an hour minimum wage without experiencing the greatest job losses over the last six-months than in any comparable period in 15 years, just imagine the troubles adjusting to further labor cost increases of more than 30% (and $3.50 an hour) for minimum wage workers in the coming years to the full $15 an hour.”

And things might soon be getting even rougher for DC restaurant employees as the DC government recently decided to adopt a $15 minimum wage level which would put DC’s minimum wage differential even higher vs. the suburbs. Imagine the job losses under this new working requirement. Again, same old economic insanity: the good news is that you now have to be paid at least $15 an hour. The bad news is you longer have a job. Economic insanity courtesy of your economically illiterate political class.

2) We have often pointed out that the Social Security Administration is often one of the worst run, most wasteful Federal government entities in existence. A recent Washington Free Beacon article by Elizabeth Harrington lends credence to this observation. 

The Social Security’s inspector general recently completed an audit which found that the Social Security Administration had paid dead Federal workers $1.7 million over the past several years despite the fact that they were DEAD. These dead people received SSA benefit for an average of seven years after they passed away.

And this $1.7 million was paid out to only 35 people, 35 dead people. The SSA so far has only been able to recover $112,557 out of the $1,720,464 that they mistakenly paid out. This is a recovery rate of less than 7%.

The SSA tried to downplay the lost $1.7 million by claiming that this amount is an “extremely small number.” Two things wrong with this type of attitude. First, if the inspector general did an audit, he or she likely took a sample, they probably did not have the time or resources to look at every SSA recipient. 

So that $1.7 million may ro not be a small number relative to the sample that was taken. For example, if the sample size of the audit was 70, then if 35 of the 70 were getting improper payments it is a big number since 50% of everyone in the SSA population could be assumed to be getting paid unnecessary funds, based on the percentage from the audit.

Second, $1.7 million is a large number. Imagine how veterans could get the medical care they are not getting today for that $1.7 million. Imagine how many meals that $1.7 million could buy for hungry Americans. Imagine how many drug addicts could be treated for that $1.7 million. How much shelter could be provided to our homeless for that $1.7 million. To slough off that $1.7 million as an extremely small number ignores the fact that this extremely small number could bring a lot of relieve and aid to a lot of hurting Americans.

3) Although we have quoted a lot of inane politicians in this blog making a lot of inane comments, there are several that constantly stick out as being the most inane. People like Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and Secretary of State John Kerry provide a steady stream of insanity to this blog.

John Kerry continued to cement his place on this list with the recent comment on terrorism and the media: “Remember this: No country is immune from terrorism. It’s easy to terrorize. Government and law enforcement have to be correct 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. But if you decide one day you’re going to be a terrorist and you’re willing to kill yourself, you can go out and kill some people. You can make some noise. Perhaps the media would do us all a service if they didn’t cover it quite as much. People wouldn’t know what’s going on.” 

“People wouldn’t know what’s going on.” Huh? Is he saying it is better to be ignorant of the threats around us so that we do not know what danger we could be in? Is he saying that if we ignore terrorists they will somehow magically disappear? Is he saying that if a potential terrorist will not get his name in the appear he will not commit an act of terror? Is he saying that I have no idea what I am talking about?

In order to best resolve a problem, you need to have the best and most accurate view of reality in front of you to make the optimal decision. Ignoring fatds or keeping people ignorant and oblivious of reality is no way to resolve problems, particularly a problem as bad as terrorism. This has to go down as one of his most stupid comments ever.

4) One last piece of insanity for today. Venessa Wong, recently writing for Buzzfeed, reported how there is a massive surplus of cheese in this country. Yes, we have too much cheese sitting in cold storage around the country. This is the biggest cheese surplus in 30 years. On a side note, can you believe that someone in the Federal government, someone being paid with taxpayer wealth, actually knows that there is more cheese in the country today than 30 years ago? What a waste of money.

Apparently, the dairy industry screwed up a few years ago when dairy farmers increased the size of their herds to take advantage of high milk prices at that time. However, since then the price of milk dropped substantially and the dollar's strength vs. other currencies depressed dairy exports to other countries. As a result, we have lots of good yet unused cheese stocks piling up.

But do not fear, the Federal government, using taxpayer money, is essentially doing a bailout of the dairy industry by buying a lot of the cheese, which will then be distributed to food banks. Which causes me two problems:

1. Why should the American taxpayer bailout an industry that made a bad business decision? Much like the taxpayers should not have bailed out the auto and banking industries in 2008 and 2009, there should not be a bailout of dairy farmers who made bad business decisions. Live with it and if you want to off load some cheese, donate it to your local food bank without taxpayer subsidies.
2. Second problem: according to the article, the U.S.government is going to waste $20 million taxpayer dollars to purchase 11 million pounds of cheese. But the surplus is 1.25 BILLION pounds of cheese. Thus, the government purchase is less than a measly .8% of the surplus. Not 8%, .8%.

So, the Feds are spending $20 million to relieve less than 1% of the surplus. No way this makes any difference in the bloated inventories of the dairy industry, it only wastes $20 million for virtually no market or economic impact. This is doing something just for the sake of doing something, no matter how dumb it is.

Now, you might say that the 11 million pounds will help feed the needy, which is correct. But let the dairy industry donate that 11 million pounds and get a tax write-off for far less than $20 million. The taxpayers should not be bailing out an industry, especially a bailout that is too small to make any difference. 

Day three of this month’s insanity is in the books. Another bailout, trying to wish terrorism away, more Socka Security incompetence, and killing jobs while granting wage hikes. Just another day of how many different ways politicians can find to screw things up. More 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.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

Fixing Public Education Despite The Washington Political Class

One of the great ills of our times is the less than adequate job that our schools do in educating our children. Consider some statistics that were researched in the development of our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government:"

•In 2006, the Program For International Student Assessment (PISA) conducted their tri-annual study of educational attainment by fifteen year old kids from fifty seven nations.

•In science literacy, the United States finished below the overall average and trailed the scores of kids from twenty two other nations.

•In mathematics literacy, the U.S. finished well below the overall average and trailed the scores of kids from thirty one other nations.

•Countries such as Estonia, Slovenia, and Macao finished higher than the U.S. in both categories.

Looking at more recent statistics on education, a December 26, 2010 issue of the St. Petersburg Times (now the Tampa Bay Times) also addressed the poor performance of our public school system. The main feature in the article was a bar chart that displayed the percentage of 15 year olds performing at the advanced level in math proficiency many countries, including the United States, and every one of our fifty states.

The output from the graph was based on the work of Stanford economist Eric Hanushek and two others. They were very careful to accurately adjust and slice the raw data from the testing that was done to exclude the impact of the following factors, factors that had been used as excuses for the poor performance of American kids in the past:

• They only looked at math test scores since math is math, it is not affected by language or culture, as much as language skills.

• They adjusted for household income and wealth using reliable proxies.

• They adjusted for whether or not the there was a college educated parent in the child's household.

• They adjusted for whether or not there was a race impact.

• They adjusted for how much each state spends per student in their states' public schools.

The bottom line conclusion after trying to look at the data from every conceivable angle? Now matter how you cut it, the United States does a horrid job of preparing public school students for proficiency in math. How bad is it:

• Only 6% of U.S. 15 year olds performed at an advanced proficiency in math.

• This places them behind 30 other nations including Estonia, Lithuania, Slovenia, and Slovakia, far poorer countries.

• The top three performing countries, Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, had about four times as many of their students performing at high math proficiency.

• Only two states, Massachusetts and Minnesota, had more than 10% of their kids performing at high levels which were behind sixteen other nations.

• New York state, which spends the most on public education per student, $17,000 per year per student, had only 6.3% of their students perform at high proficiency, trailing 30 countries and 15 other U.S. states.

• A 2010 study found a very high correlation between how well teachers are trained and how well students perform. In the United States, researchers tested 3,300 middle school math teachers-to-be in almost 40 states. They found that these future math teachers performed at about the same levels of would be teachers in Oman and Thailand and far behind teachers in Taiwan and Singapore. (Note: for Thailand, only 1% of their 15 year olds perform at a high proficiency level in math; for Oman, it was not even listed in the graph discussed above).

These horrid results have been attained even though the American taxpayer has probably spent over a TRILLION dollars at the Federal government level to try and do a better job of educating our kids. We have been doing the same thing and taking the same approach for decades without anything positive to show for it, bringing to mind a famous Albert Einstein quote: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.”

But we should expect nothing less from a set of politicians that care only about their own greed and ego, making sure that established entities such as teachers’ unions are protected and keep donating to incumbents’ reelection campaigns.

But what if did did education a different way in this country? Could we finally get our money’s worth and hopefully get some of our money back without endangering our kids; education?  Consider a different approach that actually exists today and exists within the shadows of the Washington politicians and bureaucrats that get nothing right:

• The following success story comes from an article written by Akash Chougule who is the senior policy analyst at Americans for Prosperity.
• The Opportunity Scholarship Program in Washington D.C.  serves almost 5,000 students, 95% of whom are African-American.
• The program funds private-school tuition for poor families in order that their kids can go to schools  they would otherwise not be able to afford.
• The Federal tax dollars spent on the program  accounts for a minute 0.0005% of the federal budget.
• Ninety one percent of the students in the program graduate high school compared with 56% for D.C. public schools.
• Families who benefit from the Opportunity Scholarship Program have described it as “a godsend for our children,” a “life-saver,” and “our salvation.” One father is quoted in the article saying, “I truly shudder to think where my son would be today without it.
• The program was set up by the Bush administration when it was funded with $20 million of funding while at the same time DC public school, who would lose students to private schools under this program so that the public schools would not be financially disadvantaged.
• But giving more money to schools does not appear to be the solution since according to the article, the country has more than doubled education spending over the past 40 years with no gain in education attainment to show for the investment.

Wow, a simple solution that improves results by about 80%, a solution that parents like and want to continue, and a program that avoids some of the typical bureaucracy we find in public schools today. Would go wrong?

Well, according to the article, President Obama and many Congressional Democrats have been trying to kills this program for years and years. Which is especially disturbing from the President’s perspective since he sends his kids to one of the most exclusive, if not the most exclusive, private schools in the DC area, the Sidwell Friends School, a school that costs tens of thousands of dollars a year to attend. Some serious hypocrisy if you ask me, he can afford to pay for the best education for his kids but wants to deny the opportunity to the poorer residents that live around the White House.

Why would one want to do that? That answer is simple: political election and reelection money. Go to the following link at the fabulous Open Secrets website and you will see that the National Education Association, and other teacher union related entities, donate tens of millions of dollars each year to politicians, the vast majority of which goes to Democrats like Obama:

https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.php?ind=L1300

Teachers unions are scared of successful voucher and private school initiatives like this since it threatens their current monopoly hold on education in this country. Thus, they have found friendly political allies in the Democrats serving in Congress and you can make the correlation case that campaign donations come with the strings attached that private school programs like Opportunity Scholarship Program are discouraged or killed outright, the welfare and education of the inner city youth be damned.

Two steps from “Love My Country, Loathe My Government” would help alleviate this conflict of interest and maybe lead to more inner city kids getting opportunities in spite of political considerations:

• Step 6 would allow only private citizens to contribute to political election campaigns. No PACs, no Super PACs, no dark money, no corporations, no unions, etc. would be allowed to contribute to election campaigns. Nowhere in the Constitution’s First Amendment did the Founding Fathers guarantee that a corporation or union or PAC had freedom of speech protection.
• Step 35 would limit all Federal politicians to one term in office, one and done. Much of the election sleaze that happens in American politics is driven by incumbents desperately hanging onto their office and granting favors to those that will help finance that hanging on.

This program proves that we can resolve problems in this country, in this case when it comes educating our kids. But as we often see, it is the political class that prevents problem resolution in this country,not that our problems are insolvable. The above two steps would go a long way to fixing not only our education issues but who knows what other problems we can resolve once the political class is removed as a road block.

If you agree with us, please visit our companion website to find out how to help get term limits installed at the Federal government level:

www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com

Because really, how much worse could it get if we replaced every current Washington politician with new ones?

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