June, 2017, Part 9, Political Class Insanity: Congressional Crimes and Insanity and More

As we do every month, we review the latest idiocy, lunacy, ineptness, and general insanity from the American political class. We are getting started as little late this month since we needed to review the latest global warming.climate change insanity from the likes of Al Gore, culminating in our review of the 26 reasons why it was appropriate and necessary for Trump to pull us out of the Paris Climate Agreement:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2017/06/june-2017-part-4-i-am-global-warming.html

But let’s quickly get into this month’s political class insanity because over the past month or so there has been a lot of it was Washington implodes into a useless pile of incompetence:

1) If Nancy Pelosi is the best source of political class insanity for this blog, Sheila Jackson Lee, a Congresswoman from Texas, might be a close runner up. This is a member of Congress who erroneously thinks that the Constitution is about 400 years old, who thinks that South Vietnam and North Vietnam STILL exist as separate countries, and who wondered out loud if a Mars on surface vehicle would be driving anywhere near where Neil Armstrong walked on the moon.

Joe Schoffstall, writing for the Washington Free Beacon on May 30, 2017, brings up to date with the latest political class insanity from Congresswoman Lee:

• According to research by the Washington Free Beacon, Lee allegedly and illegally used campaign funds to purchase tickets to the Super Bowl.
• She then posted pictures of herself partying at the Super Bowl on her website.
• The pictures were subsequently taken down once the Beacon report came out.
• The report found that almost $10,000 of campaign funds were allegedly used to purchase Super Bowl tickets: “Three days before the event, Jackson Lee's campaign disbursed $4,900 to 21st Century Fox for Super Bowl tickets. A second transaction was made days after the game when Jackson Lee's campaign reimbursed Gerald Womack, her campaign manager, $4,900 for tickets.”
• On the day of the Super Bowl, Lee posted a picture of herself at the stadium on her Instagram account:

• The photo was taken down soon after the Beacon went public with the campaign fund allegations.
• Since members of Congress are strictly prohibited from using campaign funds for personal use, the Congresswoman has some explaining to do.

Just another politician likely using and abusing the system and taxpayer wealth for their own greedy, unethical, and possibly illegal purposes.

2) Uncountable times we have pointed out how massive Federal government programs like Medicare and Social Security are so inept and infested with criminal fraud that untold trillions of dollars have likely been paid out incorrectly or criminally over the years. As a result, the programs are currently in fiscal distress and face massive problems in the coming years.

Unfortunately, it does not look like the politicians in Washington are getting the problem under control according to as recent report coming out of the Social Security Administration:

• A recent audit found that the Social Security Administration (SSA) erroneously paid out over $1 billion in benefits to people that did not have Social Security numbers.
• These are people that should not be able to get any kind of SSA benefits at all but instead the Federal bureaucracy gave them over $1 billion.
• According to the SSA inspector general: “[U]nless it [SSA] takes corrective action, we estimate SSA will pay about $182.5 million in benefits, annually, to representative payees who do not have an SSN or paper application supporting their selection.”
• Since 2004, the SSA has paid out $853.1 million to these so-called representative payees that had been terminated by the SSA.

Just another day and another couple of hundred billion taxpayer dollars down the drain due to political and bureaucratic bungling in D.C.

3) One last piece of political class insanity for today and for this month, I cannot take any more. This piece of insanity comes to us from the I Have The Truth website in an article written by Kay Francis on June 1, 2017:

• Although Alcee Hastings is only one of six Federal judges to ever be removed from his post by Congress, he is somehow currently a U.S. Congressman from Florida.
• His removal was the result of being busted for asking for a bribe of $150,000 in exchange for favorable treatment in a racketeering case that was before him in court.
• The House of Representatives voted 413 to 3 to have him removed from his judge position, kind of an overwhelming indictment of his guilt.
• Did I mention that even after this crime and removal from the bench he got elected to Congress?!
• He is again in trouble for shady dealings in that he has been giving his girlfriend the maximum allowed taxpayer funded salary for five years to “work” in his field office.
• Oh yeah, to work in is field office she received over $168,000 a year, three times the median household income.
• Oh yeah, he was also sued by Judicial Watch in their support of a former employee who accused him of repeated sexual harassment.
• Despite his despicable behavior over time, he had the nerve to accuse fellow Congressmen of being “nasty to the poor.”
• Hastings also employs the wife of a former staff person who has been convicted for money laundering.

Did I mention that he is currently serving in Congress despite the above infractions and crimes? Only in America.

That will do it for today and this month. More insanity sure to come the same time next month.

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

June, 2017, Part 8, Political Class Insanity: CNN Rigs The News and Illinois Enters Into Financial Hell

As we do every month, we review the latest idiocy, lunacy, ineptness, and general insanity from the American political class. We are getting started as little late this month since we needed to review the latest global warming.climate change insanity from the likes of Al Gore, culminating in our review of the 26 reasons why it was appropriate and necessary for Trump to pull us out of the Paris Climate Agreement:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2017/06/june-2017-part-4-i-am-global-warming.html

But let’s quickly get into this month’s political class insanity because over the past month or so there has been a lot of it was Washington implodes into a useless pile of incompetence:

1) While the political class has done very little to protect and enhance our freedoms over recent years, the so-called free press in this country have not done much to enhance freedom and truth either. We have previously reported on how the free press has become just as corrupt, just as partisan and just as useless as the political class when it comes to truth in reporting and high integrity journalism:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2016/09/the-perversion-and-death-of-unbiased.html

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2016/09/the-perversion-and-death-of-unbiased_29.html

It seems nothing has changed since these posts from last September, at least when it comes to CNN, which was once known as Cable New Network and then became the Clinton news network while the unabashedly campaigned for a Hillary Clinton victory and they have no further degenerated down into simply the Comedic News Network:

• According to Kristie McDonald, writing for the eHeadlines website on June 11, 2017, CNN in England was caught setting up a fake news story shortly after the latest terror attack in that country.
• CNN personnel were on the streets of London for what they wanted to make look like an anti-terror protest, led by Muslims apparently to show that not all Muslims are sympathetic to Islamic terror attacks.
• But thanks to the reality that everyone with a smartphone also has a video camera, video footage taken by regular people, and posted on YouTube, showed how CNN personnel were staging the rally, not reporting on the rally.
• The person shooting the video reports that there are “more press than anyone else.”
• The Muslim women supposedly protesting the terror attacks were getting their posters and flowers from the CNN personnel, i.e. this was a staged protest for the CNN cameras not a real protest.
• Once the women get their CNN provided props, they cross the street for the filming of this “news” story.

When corrupt politicians lie and cheat and have no integrity, it has always been the important responsibility of the news media and press to call them out on their lies and shenanigans. When the pores are the ones creating false truths and trying to influence views rather than report on facts and realities, our democracy is in very sad place, thanks in this instance of heinous reporting to the Comedic News Network.

The video of the setup to the fake news story can be viewed at:

http://eheadlinespolls.com/breaking-more-footage-leaks-of-cnns-staged-muslim-anti-terror-protest-video/

2) Earlier in this month’s insanity series we reported on how state politicians around the country have so badly screwed up the fiscal integrity of their state’s financial situation, allowing state governments’ unfunded liabilities to soar well over $1 TRILLION. The obvious conclusion is that politicians around the country, be they at the state, local, or Federal level have no ability, no will, or no knowledge on how to operate an effective budget process, incurring $20 TRILLION in debt at the Federal level and trillions of dollars in debt at the state, county and local level.

And at some point these financial insanities will come home to roost. It will then require state government to raise taxes, cut benefits, or eventually declare bankruptcy, all options that are ugly but highly likely to be unavoidable.

And the leading indicator in that race to fiscal ugliness, according to Nancy Hayes, writing for the Joe For America website on June 19 2017, is the state government of Illinois:

• According to a recent comment by an Illinois state government official, “We are in massive crisis mode, this is not a false alarm.”
• The state government has over $15 billion in unpaid bills on this books.
• The state government has not had a budget in three years.
• It is likely to be the first state government to have its bonds downgraded to junk quality in the very near future.
• A judge recently ruled that the state government is in violation of its own consent decrees and previous judicial orders, putting further pressure on its shaky financial situation.
• In desperation, the governor recently ordered the state legislature back into session to address the financial mess, telling everyone “to get serious and get to work.”
• As with the financial and heaving taxation and regulatory mess in California, people are leaving the state of Illinois with 22,000 leaving in 2015 alone.
• In Chicago, the epicenter of bad fiscal planning by local politicians, over 6,000 people left that city in 2015.
• The Tax Foundation claims that the state of Illinois has some of the highest property tax and other taxes in the nation, probably a leading factor in why both residents and businesses are leaving Illinois for better tax treatment elsewhere, causing Illinois to have 90,000 fewer manufacturing jobs today than in 2008.
• Chief Executive magazine ranked Illinois 48th out of 50 states relative to the ease of doing business in Illinois with taxation ranking the state as 50th out of 50.
• And as if the $15 billion in unpaid bills today is not enough of a headache, the unfunded pension liabilities of the state retirement systems is over $111 billion.

Given the sad state of financial affairs, the already high taxes, the out migration of residents and businesses because of the high taxes, what do Democrats in the legislature want to do? You guessed it, raise taxes. Let’s just throw another few gallons of gas on that fiscal fire, idiots. I what you have been doing for decades got you to where you are today a disaster, why would you want to continue to the same thing over and over again, raise taxes?

It is usually at this point where we cite our favorite Einstein quote: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” And the fiscal ineptness of Illinoi politicians have gotten them the following insanity distinction relative to the rest of the country:

What does it look like when a government and the politicians that operate it have no idea how to operate a fiscally sound budget? It looks like today in Illinois:

• The state Transportation Department will stop any and all road work by July 1 unless budget conditions change.
• The Powerball lottery system may dump the state out of its system since the state cannot and has not paid lottery winners for a while now.
• If the state is judicially forced to pay out what was settled in previous court cases and consent decrees, within a few weeks, the state will be paying out more in payments than it receives in revenue, leaving no money for schools, domestic violence shelters, ambulance services, etc.
• State Comptroller Susan Mendoza, the government official responsible for managing the state government’s cash flow and financials said it best:“I don’t know what part of ‘We are in massive crisis mode’ the General Assembly and the governor don’t understand. This is not a false alarm.” 

What a flipping, political insanity mess. And keep in mind that a lot of this problem developed while the economy was in a growth mode over the past eight years. Imagine what happens when the next recession sets in and Illinois has fewer taxpayer and fewer businesses to offset the recession’s impacts. 

Truly insane but quite possibly coming to a state or Federal government to you very soon. Illinois is the proverbial canary in the coal mine, a coal mine that Federal and other politicians have dug for us all.

That will do it for today’s insanity. Very sad, very depressing, very pathetic and very dangerous: politicians screwing our financial state and CNN screwing up our freedom of the press state. More insanity to follow.

June, 2017, Part 7, Political Class Insanity: Voter Fraud In Indiana and The Scandal That Is Fast and Furious

As we do every month, we review the latest idiocy, lunacy, ineptness, and general insanity from the American political class. We are getting started as little late this month since we needed to review the latest global warming.climate change insanity from the likes of Al Gore, culminating in our review of the 26 reasons why it was appropriate and necessary for Trump to pull us out of the Paris Climate Agreement:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2017/06/june-2017-part-4-i-am-global-warming.html

But let’s quickly get into this month’s political class insanity because over the past month or so there has been a lot of it was Washington implodes into a useless pile of incompetence:

1) One of the most basic tenets of democracy is that every citizen's voice and view have the same weight when it comes to politics and government. Once that tenet is endangered, either in reality or in perception, then the very basis of democracy is severely endangered since the trust and faith that Americans are truly in charge of their fate is in doubt.

Which makes a recent article by Andrew West, writing for the Constitution website, so chilling:

• Twelve people associated with the Democratic party in Indiana have been arrested and charged in a voter fraud scandal.
• Their law breaking could have been as high as affecting 45,000 voters.
• The charges allege that 11 temporary workers used by the Indiana Voter Registration Project created, falsified and then submitted an unknown number of voter applications.
• The supervisor of the 11 temporary workers, Holly Burke, was also charged.
• The Indiana State Police got involved in an investigation when a clerk in Hendricks County, Indiana identified about a dozen suspicious registration forms.
• The State Police investigation quickly expanded to 56 Indiana counties and involved upwards of 45,000 possibly bogus voter registration forms.

Even one bogus vote is a taint against our democracy, thousands of bogus votes seriously undermine the democracy that has worked so well for over two hundred years. The bottom line is that there is now suspicions that my vote is being diluted by underhanded efforts by others associated with the political class. Insanity.

2) We have not talked about the disaster that is Fast and Furious, Obama’s ill fated, illegal, un-Constitutional, and stupid gun running operation for a while. Remember, that was a gun running operation that placed military grade weapons in the hands of the cartels which were then used to kill a U.S. Border Patrol agent, countless innocent Mexican civilians and which resulted in no arrests or prosecutions of any criminals at all. This government effort has to go down as one of the most botched, costly, and fatal efforts of all times.

Well, a Congressional report on that operation was recently completed and made public and it is not a pretty sight:

• According to William La Jeunesse and Andrew O’Reilly, writing for Fox News on June 7, 2017, the House of Representatives Oversight Committee recently released a scathing, nearly 300-page report on the whole Fast and Furious operation.
• The report accuses Eric Holder’s Justice Department of withholding information to cover the the facts of the botched operation, specifically not telling the family of slain border agent, Brian Terry, what actually led up to his death.
• The report also slammed Obama’s use of executive privilege to cover up the operation’s failures and to protect the law breakers in the Justice Department relative to the operation.
• In addition, the report cited the Obama administration for not releasing pertinent documents to Congress.
• According to Congressman Jason Chaffetz, committee chairman: “[Terry’s death] happened on Dec. 14, 2010, and we still don’t have all the answers. Brian Terry’s family should not have to wait six years for answers.”
• Agent Terry was killed in a firefight on the Mexican and U.S. border with drug cartel members who were using Fast and Furious provided weaponry.
• Of the 2,000 guns that Fast and Furious provided to drug cartels and other Mexican crime elements, the Obama administration and Holder’s Justice Department lost track of over 1,400 of them, two of which ended up at the slaying sight of agent Terry.
• According to the report: “More than five years after Brian’s murder, the Terry family still wonders about key details of Operation Fast and Furious. The Justice Department’s obstruction of Congress’s investigation contributed to the Terry family’s inability to find answers.”
• John Dodson, an ATF agent within the Justice Department who helped blow the whistle on the botched operation testified recently in front of the committee: “That decision, the single act of standing up and saying, ‘What we are doing is wrong’… instantly took my standing from being that of an agent of the government – to an enemy of the state. ATF and DOJ officials implemented an all-out campaign to silence and discredit me… Suffice to say, the last six to seven years at ATF have not been the best for me or my career.”
• While the Justice Department knew immediately that Fast and Furious guns had played a role in the death of agent Terry, Holder’s Justice Department insisted that they did not know and that his internal investigation was more concerned about covering up than finding the truth.
• The House report also uncovered the reality that Holder’s Justice Department also stonewalled a Senate investigation into Fast and Furious by withholding information.

So in summary, we have an illegal gun running operation that broke international treaties and domestic law, we have incompetence since well over over a thousand guns ended up in the hands of drug cartels and other criminal elements, we have the silencing of whistleblowers, we have unnecessary deaths of a U.S. border agent and many, many innocent Mexican civilians, we have the Senate stonewalling, we have total insensitivity to the family of the slain border agent, and we have un-Constitutional actions of Obama and Holder relative to Congressional inquiries, and nothing to show for any of it. 

If ever there was a case for impeachment and removal from office, this was the it. Insanity.

Only two pieces of insanity for today but important ones: blatant illegal and un-Constitutional behavior by the Obama administration and potentially massive voter fraud in Indiana, both cases being an assault on the rule of law and the Constitution. 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:

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

June, 2017, Part 6, Political Class Insanity: Fiscal Idiocy At The Federal, State and Local Government Levels

As we do every month, we review the latest idiocy, lunacy, ineptness, and general insanity from the American political class. We are getting started as little late this month since we needed to review the latest global warming.climate change insanity from the likes of Al Gore, culminating in our review of the 26 reasons why it was appropriate and necessary for Trump to pull us out of the Paris Climate Agreement:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2017/06/june-2017-part-4-i-am-global-warming.html

But let’s quickly get into this month’s political class insanity because over the past month or so there has been a lot of it was Washington implodes into a useless pile of incompetence:

1) One of the most frequent topics in this blog is obviously wasteful, useless, and senseless government spending. And the worst kind of wasteful spending is government spending that occurs for no purpose at all. It is one thing to waste money to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars a year that provide some benefit to Americans, e.,g. Social Security, Medicare, etc. It is another thing to spend money on nothing.

Ronald Reagan captured that thought long ago when he said: “Nothing lasts longer than a temporary government program.” But fortunately, President Trump finally killed one of those temporary government programs that had gone on for almost two decades longer than necessary:

According to reporting from the Allen B.West website:

• Back in the late 1990s, everyone was worried that computers would crash over the so-called Y2K crisis, the fact that when the calendar rolled over from 1999 to 2000 no one knew what that impact would have on computers in every aspect of life.
• Companies, charities, government entities all put together massive task forces and efforts to ensure that their computer systems were ready to handle the rollover into the new century.
• Fortunately, nothing catastrophic happened and life went on into the new century, computers still humming along.
• Unfortunately, no one suspended the Federal government’s Y2K effort and 17 years later it was still sucking up government resources and taxpayer wealth, according to a recent Bloomberg report.
• That is until the Trump administration finally announced that the massive amount of paperwork and resources still required by the Federal bureaucracy for the Y2K problem, 17 years after it turned out not to be problem at all, will finally be terminated.
• The Federal Office of Management and Budget said that getting rid of the Y2K requirements and other senseless government reporting requirements would save tens of thousands of man-hours a year across the entire breadth of the Federal government.
• According to the Trump administration, it is hoping that such house cleaning of unnecessary programs will continue down into the bowels of the entire government bureaucracy, saving even more taxpayer wealth.

We applaud the effort to clean up bureaucracy in the Federal government and hopefully this is just the start. But a few observations immediately come to mind: 

1. What took so long? Are we saying that no one in the Bush or Obama administration had the insight or will to say, hey Y2K is over, no problem, let’s stop worrying about it and using government resources to manage a non-existent problem?
2. If it took 17 years to recognize the uselessness of this effort, a very obvious waste of money, is it even possible for government bureaucrats and politicians to weed out equally useless but not so obvious government wasteful spending?
3. And finally, remember when Obama promised that he would go through “the Federal government budget line by line” to weed out wasteful spending? Kind of thinking he never did that if he let this obvious useless spending go on for the entire eight years of his Presidency.

Again, as a taxpayer I certainly welcome the elimination of all government programs that are useless waste of taxpayer wealth. But what took so long Washington?

2) It is pretty obvious that Washington has no idea how to manage a budget and spending, a reality that Obama demonstrated so ably when he almost doubled the national debt in 8 years while getting nothing accomplished: our nation’s infrastructure (roads, bridges, dams) is falling apart, our schools continue to under educate our kids, our military is not prepared for an extended battle time, etc.

But it is also apparent that state level politicians across the country are not much better at financial management either, according to a recent article by Reuters:

• Despite a growing economy, state government pension systems saw their unfunded liabilities increase 17% in fiscal 2015.
• Those unfunded liabilities now total $1.1 TRILLION.
• According to the Pew Charitable Trusts analysis, the large increase is due mostly to smaller than expected investment returns, with median overall investment returns coming in at 3.6% vs. the median assumed rate of 7.6%.
• In a single year, "In aggregate, the funded ratio of these plans dropped to 72 percent in 2015, down from 75 percent in 2014." 
• Other factors contributing to the increase in unfunded liabilities was the reality that state governments still are not funding the pensions at the promised rate and an Oregon court restored cost of living adjustments which increased the Oregon liabilities by $5 billion.
• New Jersey has the worst funded pension system with only 37% of its liabilities funded while South Dakota is in the best shape with 104% of its liabilities funded.
• Preliminary analysis of 2016 data shows the trend accelerating with an expected $200 billion increase unfunded liabilities, getting the total to $1.3 TRILLION.
• To theoretically cover the shortfall, every American household would have to write a check for over $10,000.

And this $10,000 does not include the $160,000 check every household would have to write to pay for the $20 TRILLION Federal debt. Which should scare the daylights out of any American paying attention: unless very drastic measures are taken soon, and even that might not be enough, we are heading for a fiscal and economic crisis that this country has never faced before, a crisis that does not have a happy ending.

3) Let’s stay with political class fiscal mismanagement for the last piece of insanity today. Many liberal politicians continue to push for a $15 minimum wage across the country. Rather than let the market set the cost of labor, the liberal politicians think they know what is best from an economic perspective, as if running up a national debt of $20 TRILLION qualifies them as some sort of economic gurus.

We have previously reported on instances across the country where local governments have already pushed the minimum wage to $15 with catastrophic effects. Businesses either cut hours of employees to stay profitable, they cut benefits of employees to stay profitable, they cut jobs to stay profitable, or they mechanized jobs to reduce their labor costs. Thus, many people who were happy to get paid at a $15 an hour rate are not happy anymore since they either have fewer hours, fewer benefits, or have lost their jobs altogether.

Consider the real life case of a Seattle pizza worker who lost his job after Seattle raised the minimum wage in that metro area, as reported by the local Fox 13 TV outlet and Ashley Dobson on the Red Alert website on April 30, 2017:

• Initially, pizza shop worker Devin Jeran was quite excited about getting a raise to $15 an hour for his work in a local franchised pizza shop.
• Unfortunately, he will only get that higher wage until August when the owner of the pizza ship will shut down the pizza shop, unable to afford and pay the higher wages.
• For Mr. Jeran, the reality of having a higher salary but not having a job because of the higher mandatory salary has set in: “If that’s the truth, I don’t think that’s very apparent. People like me are finding themselves in a tougher situation than ever.”
• The owner tried to stay in business by raising prices, cutting hours, and doing some of the work herself to save money but none of that worked enough to offset the $15 minimum wage requirement.
• As a result, eleven employees will lose their jobs in August because of a political action that they had not voice or choice in.

As we have said before the good news is you are getting a raise, the bad news is you are losing your job, meaning your hourly wage is now $0.00 an hour. And as it is usually the case, another political class action has the exact opposite of what was intended. Rather than help constituents, it devastates them. The details of the story and heartbreak can be seen at:

http://redalertpolitics.com/2015/04/30/pizza-shop-worker-loves-seattles-new-15-minimum-wage-finds-cost-job/#xAmedKHy0ZOlu65J.99

That will do it for today’s insanity. As you can see, fiscal political class insanity exists from useless Federal government programs to the fiscal crisis of state government to the economic insanity of local governments. 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