The Horrors And Destruction That Donald Trump Has Imposed On America...Just Kidding! Part 13

Before we start today’s discussion, let’s review my voting history: 

• I have never voted for a Republican for President in my life. 
• Thus, I did not vote for Trump. 
• I have rarely voted for a Republican for national office in my life. 

About 18 months ago, many liberals, Democrats, and millennials were besides themselves with grief and fear because their pre-ordained queen, Hillary Clinton, was not elected President. Instead, Donald Trump was elected, an individual that these same people despised, hated, and feared, an individual they felt would endanger and possibly destroy the country and our democracy. For the past year and a half they fretted, worried and lashed out at anything or anyone that even remotely smelled of Donald Trump.

Given that Trump has been in office for over 18 months, I thought, that as someone who did not vote for him, it would be a good idea to review the horror, trauma, and terrible things that Trump has subjected the country to in just eighteen month’s time. This is obviously a very sarcastic comment when you take an unbiased look at what has happened during the Trump Presidency. The many previous posts we did on this topic identified over 160 good things that have happened to America and Americans since Trump became President can found listed in the previous post we did in this series:

https://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2018/09/the-horrors-and-destruction-that-donald.html

To those over 170 good things that Trump has done, let’s us today add another ten positive contributions to the country:

- Trump has probably been the main factor in the increased favorability rating of the Republican party, as measured by Gallup, putting it at the highest level in seven years and now exceeds the favorability reading of the Democrats.

- Republicans favorability among women has risen from 35% to 40% over the past year and has increased by 13 points for men.

- The remains of two U.S. Korean soldiers that Trump got North Korea to give up have been identified, bring peace and closure to their families.

- News reports state that the U.S. and North Korea are making plans to search for more missing remains from the Korean war in addition to the 55 sets of remains that have already been set home.

- Although many criticized Trump’s tax cuts because they felt it would crimp charitable giving, in 2017 charitable giving exceeded $400 billion for the first time, $410.2 billion, with individuals increasing their charitable giving by over 5% and business charitable giving increased by 8%.

- Consumer confidence, as measured by the Conference Board, hit an 18 year high in September.

Another six reasons to add to the previous 170 or so reasons why the first year and a half of the Trump Presidency has not wrought disaster on the country.

For those of you that have hated on Trump since day one, and given your obvious gross error in judgment relative to Trump, let me ask that you to do us all a favor by implementing the following changes in your behavior and attitude:

• Chill out, tamp down your TDS affliction. No matter how much you hate Trump on a sexist, personal basis, get over it. He is the legally and duly elected President, he will be around for a while so refocus your hatred on more constructive issues and matters. You will live a lot longer if you take your hatred out of your heart and soul and devote it to something positive.
• I would really appreciate it if some of you would apologize to the Trump voters you have disrespected in some of the grossest terms possible over the past year. You have called millions of voters racists, ignorant, stupid, Nazis, KKK members, and other horrible names simply because you disagreed with their voting choice. No American should be called such disgusting names simply because they exercised their Constitutional rights to the best of their abilities. Plus, slandering over 60 million Americans is no way to unite the country and get it focused on the real issues facing us all.
• More personally, I would like, no I am demanding, an apology from some of you for your slanderous and disgusting name calling because in doing so, you insulted and disrespected my sister, my family members, my friends, and my co-workers who simply voted their conscience. I will defend their right to vote anyway they wanted and will no put up with your childish and vicious venom and bile directed at them, very important people in my life.
• And finally, I challenge you to read the following blog post, a post that shows quite clearly that it was hateful people like some of you and your silence during the Obama years that actually caused Trump to be elected. Thus, the people you hate for voting for Trump are actually looking back at you in the mirror:

https://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2016/03/how-american-liberals-and-washington.html

If you were silent in the dozens of instances listed in this post then you were responsible for the very thing you hate: a Trump Presidency. Or put another way, a so far successful and productive Trump Presidency. Over 160 accomplishments in a little more than a year and a half is not too shabby despite many of you wanting both Trump and the country to fail.

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

September, 2018,Part 2, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: Comparing The U.S. And Canadian Health Care Systems

Every month for years now we have had to discuss how bad Obama Care is turning out to be under the continuing theme, “the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care.” This month is no different. As the legislation continues to march through America, driving up health care and health insurance prices as it serves as dead weight on economic growth, it cements its rightful place as the worst piece of legislation Washington has ever produced.

It never had a chance to be successful since it really never addressed the underlying root causes of our ever increasing health costs in the country:

• Americans eat too much of the wrong kind of food, resulting in obscenely high obesity rates for the country.
• Our food chain is infested with overdoses of high fructose corn syrup, salt, sugar, and other unhealthy additives.
• Americans smoke too much.
• Americans do not exercise enough.
• The country is in serious need of health care tort reform.
• Barriers to insurance company competition across state lines need to come down.
• Obama Care never “followed the money” to find out who is actually profiting from the ever escalating healthcare costs in this country and how to get those factors under control.
• Obama Care never got the immense amount of fraud and abuse in current government healthcare programs, Medicare and Medicaid, under control in order to save money to efficiently fund other government health care initiatives.
• Obama Care never put serious research money towards curing the major diseases that drive high healthcare costs such as high frequency cancers and dementia type diseases.

You cannot resolve any problem unless you understand and address the underlying root causes. No difference here: Obama Care legislation never addressed these listed root causes and thus, has no chance of ever being successful.

But it is not just missing the root causes of our healthcare costs that makes Obama Care so horrible. It resulted in millions of Americans losing access to their favored doctors, hospitals, and insurance policies. It has caused insurance premiums, deductibles and copays to escalate substantially. It will likely add trillions of dollars to the national debt. It has exposed millions of Americans to higher than necessary identity theft chances. It has created government bureaucracies that are wastefully spending taxpayer wealth and being exploited by criminal elements. It has stifled economic growth and job creation.

These are just a sample of the types of idiocy that we have been reviewing for the past several years in this blog relative to Obama Care., To read those past posts, just enter the phrase, “the unfolding disaster,” in the search box above.

Today we will just focus on the highlights of a recent article by Carlin Becker from September 18, 20918 that appeared on the Independent Journal Review website. The article took a great, in-depth look at whether ot not the current U.S. approach to health care was worse or better than the long term single payer system that Canada has lived under for years and years. 

It has been our opinion in this blog that the Canadian single payer system, like every other single payer system, provides expensive, low quality, and low quantity health care. But I was willing to have my statistic and reality based conclusions upset if the article could make the case, numerically, that a single payer system is better. So let’s start examining the numbers:

• In the U.S., 56% of the citizen have private health insurance, 35% are covered with government financed health insurance (i.e. Medicare and Medicaid), and 9% are uninsured.
• In Canada, the government provides “free” health insurance to 100% of the citizens but 67% of its citizens pay for additional, needed health insurance coverage.
• The Canadian system while promoted as "universal” does not cover prescription drug costs and dental care costs which leads to a majority of them shelling out additional money to supplement their "free" government insurance.
• Thus, according to the Canadian Institute for Health and Information, many Canadians go without drug insurance or dental care.
• According to the the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the United States spent 17.2% of its gross domestic product (GDP) on health care in 2016 while Canada, on the other hand, spent less on health care, clocking in at just 10.3% of its GDP in 2016.
• In 2016, for instance, the average American spent around $10,345 on health care, including insurance premiums, deductibles, co-pays, and other out-of-pocket costs while the average Canadian spent nearly half that, paying about $6,299 that same year.
• According to a Fraser Institute study, Canadians on average wait 21.2 weeks to see a specialist after a referral from a GP doctor while in the U.S. the average wait time is 24.1 days in metro U.S. areas, according to a Merritt Hawkins study, i.e. it takes about seven times longer to see a medical specialist in Canada than in the U.S.
• The Fraser study also found that in Canada, patients wait 4.1 weeks on average to get a CT scan, 10.8 weeks for an MRI scan, and 3.9 weeks for an ultrasound scan.
• These Canadian wait times for basic diagnostics health tools is very, very much longer than in the U.S., long waiting times that could result in far more serious health and pain levels while waiting.
• The long wait times has led 63,000 Canadians to travel outside of Canada for these basic tests in 2016, travel costs and diagnostic costs that were not covered by their government insurance.
• According to University of Pennsylvania Wharton School professor , Mark Pauly, a professor of healthcare management, “the wait time for scans [in the U.S.] is minimal": “If you are in the ER and need a scan, you will get it right away. There may be some delay in scheduling at a particular facility if you want an elective scan. Though in any large city, I am sure you could find someone who would take you within a few days.”
• Pauly also pointed out in the article that Canadians patients are more likely to suffer from acute diseases, have less access to specialists, and experience worse health outcomes than in the U.S,. since the Canadian system emphasizes primary care vs. acute care medicine and health care: “If you are a basically healthy person and your needs can be satisfied with primary care, you're probably going to be better off under the Canadian system. On the other hand, if you are sick, and especially if you have a chronic condition, you're going to wait longer in Canada and have to hobble around in pain for a longer period of time than you would in the U.S.”
• Canadians have the 13th longest life expectancy rate, age 82, while Americans' expected life length at 79 ranks it 45th in the world.
• Infant mortality rates are also lower in Canada, 4.5 deaths per 1,000 live births vs. 5.9 deaths in the U.S.
• While about 1.7 million people in the U.S. are diagnosed with cancer every year with about 610,000 dying from the disease, according to the Canadian Cancer Society, last year only 206,000 Canadians were diagnosed with cancer with about 80,800 dying from the disease.
• However, since the U.S. has nine times as many people than Canada, the cancer diagnosis and cancer death rates are a little higher in Canada.
• Pauly stated in the article that “ordinary people in Canada are healthier than in the U.S., but outcomes for cancer and very serious illnesses are less good there. It's a great place to live as long as you don't get too sick, as one critic put it.”
• But he also stated that since Canada has many more primary care doctors that can catch bad health trends earlier, which may account for the better ordinary health care and the horrible acute health results.

So, a lot of data but let me summarize: if you are relatively healthy then the Canadian system is better for you. If you do not need specialists, diagnostic scans, prescription drugs, have good, strong healthy teeth, you do not need to travel abroad for basic tests, are willing to risk a slightly higher cancer rate of diagnosis and death, and are willing to wait longer and endure more pain and get sicker and sicker, possibly endangering your life, while waiting to get treated by a specialist for a disease that you do get, than Canada is for you. 

But if you need specialists and need them quickly, your teeth are a problem, you need prescription drugs, you do not have the resources to travel abroad for cheaper care, you want the pain and sickness to go away as soon as possible, but have to pay a higher price the U.S. is for you.

Or the best solution of all: stop treating health care as an insurance problem like the single payer advocates, Obama Care, and Bernie Sanders want to do. 

The health care crisis in this country is a public health issue: Americans eat too much, American eat too much of the wrong kind of food, Americans smoke too much, Americans are too drug and opioid addicted, and Americans do not exercise enough. Fix those problems, and the other root causes listed above, and the American health care costs will go down dramatically while still retaining quick and quality access to scans, specialists, and life saving and pain saving treatments without delay. It is that simple, you cannot resolve a public health crisis with an expensive and eventually ineffective and inefficient insurance solution.

Or as we have said many times before: given that people like Bernie Sanders and his 500 peers in Congress cannot operate an efficient and effective postal system or Amtrak line, tiny, tiny minute industries vs. health care, what in the world makes anyone think that they can handle the health care needs of every American? Absurd to even entertain that idea. Fix the root causes and the costs take care of themselves.

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

September, 2018, Part 1, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: The Idiocy Of The Single Payer System and Frustrated Doctors

Every month for years now we have had to discuss how bad Obama Care is turning out to be under the continuing theme, “the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care.” This month is no different. As the legislation continues to march through America, driving up health care and health insurance prices as it serves as dead weight on economic growth, it cements its rightful place as the worst piece of legislation Washington has ever produced.

It never had a chance to be successful since it really never addressed the underlying root causes of our ever increasing health costs in the country:

• Americans eat too much of the wrong kind of food, resulting in obscenely high obesity rates for the country.
• Our food chain is infested with overdoses of high fructose corn syrup, salt, sugar, and other unhealthy additives.
• Americans smoke too much.
• Americans do not exercise enough.
• The country is in serious need of health care tort reform.
• Barriers to insurance company competition across state lines need to come down.
• Obama Care never “followed the money” to find out who is actually profiting from the ever escalating healthcare costs in this country and how to get those factors under control.
• Obama Care never got the immense amount of fraud and abuse in current government healthcare programs, Medicare and Medicaid, under control in order to save money to efficiently fund other government health care initiatives.
• Obama Care never put serious research money towards curing the major diseases that drive high healthcare costs such as high frequency cancers and dementia type diseases.

You cannot resolve any problem unless you understand and address the underlying root causes. No difference here: Obama Care legislation never addressed these listed root causes and thus, has no chance of ever being successful.

But it is not just missing the root causes of our healthcare costs that makes Obama Care so horrible. It resulted in millions of Americans losing access to their favored doctors, hospitals, and insurance policies. It has caused insurance premiums, deductibles and copays to escalate substantially. It will likely add trillions of dollars to the national debt. It has exposed millions of Americans to higher than necessary identity theft chances. It has created government bureaucracies that are wastefully spending taxpayer wealth and being exploited by criminal elements. It has stifled economic growth and job creation.

These are just a sample of the types of idiocy that we have been reviewing for the past several years in this blog relative to Obama Care., To read those past posts, just enter the phrase, “the unfolding disaster,” in the search box above.

1) The Freedom Outpost website had a recent article by Mac Slavo that again showed why many, many doctors hate Obama Care, a piece of legislation that has caused untold thousands of doctors to leave the industry out of frustration and idiocy:

• Doctors now spend two hours dealing with paperwork and administrative tasks for every hour spent actually treating patients.
• This result comes from a recent study by the American Journal of Medicine.
• Another finding was that just three years after Obama Care was implemented “Physician burnout increased significantly, from 45.5 percent to 54.4 percent.”
• A lot of the frustration comes from the electronic health records (EHR) requirement of Obama Care that required doctors use electronic health records which has caused the jump in burnout.
• Twila Brase, the President of the Citizens’ Council for Health Freedom explains: “The EHR is causing doctors to leave their patients. Congress forced doctors to buy and use computerized record systems to collect and report patient data to the government. And it’s wreaking havoc on their practices and their patients.”
• The study found that burnout in other industries was unchanged over the same time period: “Parallel studies of all U.S. workers during the same period showed no changes” and other studies “show the doctors spend more face time on their EHRs than with their patients. The hours spent cloning notes in a mandated doctor computer relationship leaves the physician unable to experience the best part of being a doctor.”

Another unfolding disaster from the worst piece of Washington legislation ever enacted. Rather than reducing costs as promised, the law is driving doctors out of the industry reducing the supply of doctors without changing the demand for health care, a simple economic concept that will raise, rather than lower costs.

2) Ph.D Robert E. Moffit recently took a look at Bernie Sanders idiotic plan to give the country a single payer health insurance system, a system that has failed miserably around the world, from England to Canada:

• Sanders’ plan would require the government to control ALL aspects of your healthcare and insurance and prohibit any American from having a private or employer based insurance system
• The cost of his plan is a whopping $32.6 TRILLION over the first ten years.
• This comes out about $3.3 TRILLION a year, which would require a sudden increase in Federal government taxation of about 75%.
• This study comes from Charles Blahous, a former member of the Medicare board of trustees, someone who obviously knows the industry.
• This estimate is consistent with other majors studies of a single payer plan in this country: The liberal think tank, the Urban Institute, estimated Sanders plan to cost $32 TRILLION over the first ten years and Kenneth Thorpe of Emory University, a former advisor to Bill Clinton, estimated the cost at almost $25 TRILLION.
• The Sanders bill would force the government to create a new massive bureaucracy that would not only insure everyone under the age of 65 but would absorb the dysfunctional Medicare and Medicaid programs.
• It would set the rates that doctors and hospitals would charge within this massive government bureaucracy and totally control all patient/doctor relationships, reducing revenues going to doctors and hospitals, further driving disgruntled doctors out of the industry, see the above discussion.
• The INCREMENTAL $32.6 TRILLION would be equal to a whopping 12.7% of the nation’s GDP by 2031.
• Blahous’s analysis was very generous to Sanders’ benefit when doing his analysis but even his generous assumptions still got to a $32.6 TRILLION cost: “Even assuming gains from reductions in administrative costs, drugs, and the big reductions in provider payments, other features of the legislation, such as the abolition of all cost-sharing, would drive the costs of the program upward.”
• The Thorpe analysis, the most conservative estimate, estimated that additional taxes to cover the costs would be a whopping 20% of payrolls across the country and 70% of U.S, households would pay more than they do now for health care and insurance.
• Blahous says that even doubling all Federal individual and business income taxes would still not be enough to cover Sanders’ plans costs.

Oh, and by the way, the Federal government currently wastes $96 billion a year in Medicare and Medicaid from fraud and inefficiencies even though they have been operating these programs for about fifty years. Imagine how much more taxpayer wealth would be wasted if the government controlled ALL health care aspects in this country. 

Oh, and by the way, the Federal government already operates a healthcare process, the Veterans Administration, that often requires veterans to wait months just to see a doctor which has resulted in untold veterans dying from neglect.

Oh, and by the way, the health care quality and quantity in other countries like England and Canada with single paying systems also stinks.

The Federal government cannot operate a postal system or Amtrak efficiently and effectively, there is no way they can successfully operate a single payer healthcare system in this country. To deny the incompetence of the Federal government in anything it touches in the epitome of stupidity and ignorance.

3) Speaking of a single payer system consider this recent reality from the latest edition of Reason magazine: The British National Health Service, the government entity that operates that country’s single payer system, recently reported that 4.3 million patients are waiting for surgery, a ten year high. According to their own rules, no patient is supposed to have to wait no more than 18 weeks for nonurgent surgery. But in reality, 211,434 English medical patients have to wait over six months for surgery. 

So, a country that has been operating a single payer system for decades continues to get worse and worse performance from a quantity and quality perspective.What makes anyone think that the bozos in Washington can do any better than England?

In our next unfolding disaster review we will do an in depth comparison of Canada’s single payer system to the current U.S. system.Trust me, Canada loses in that analogy.

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

September, 2018, Part 8, Political Class Insanity: A Wasteful Jobs Program, Fake News From the New York Times, CNN In Free Fall and Plastic Straw Nonsense

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) More times than I would care to mention we have reviewed hundreds of times when politicians and the government functions they oversee have wasted taxpayer dollars on stupid projects or on an inefficient and ineffective implementation of a project or both. Today we have another effort that was both expensive and stupid:

• An inspector general report recently reported that a Federal jobs program spent $90 million to place women in jobs.
• Which on the surface this does not seem too stupid until you realize that the $90 million placed a grand total of 55 women in jobs, about $1.6 million per successful job placement.
• But it gets worse since these were not even American women, they were Afghan women.
• According to the inspector general: “The United States Agency for International Development program promised to ’empower 75,000 women’ but so far has shown little progress. It is unclear whether the agency can deliver the opportunities it promised the women of Afghanistan.” 
• In 2017, the multi-year program was supposed to help 420 women find new or better work, enroll 1,968 in an internship program and have 900 graduate.
• And despite these rosy predictions only 55 women in a foreign country at $1.6 million per person got a job. This is probably the worst wasting of taxpayer money that we have seen in quite a while.

2) Not only are American politicians not often in integrity, the journalism ethics in this country are usually not much better and thus, the birth of the “fake news” phrase. The New York Time recently proved this point:

• A recent headline and associated first paragraph in the Times strongly implied that Trump’s U.N. ambassador, Nikki Haley had wasted taxpayer money on $52,701 in her official, government residence. 
• If true, this would be a tremendous waste of money and an embarrassment to Haley and her boss, Donald Trump.
• And it turned out that it was true, i.e. the curtains actually did cost $52,701, but were ordered during the Obama administration, Haley and Trump had nothing to do with it.
• But the way the article was written it gave the distinct, fake news impression that the Trump administration was wasting taxpayer money on very, very expensive curtains.
• Somewhere towards the end of the article they clarified that it was an Obama era expense but by that time other left leaning news organizations had picked up only the lead paragraph and went nuts trying to prove how wasteful the Trump administration is.
• But the Times got caught on this purposefully misleading “news reporting” and had to eat crow and issue the following retraction and embarrassing correction: “An earlier version of this article and headline created an unfair impression about who was responsible for the purchase in question. While Nikki R. Haley is the current ambassador to the United Nations, the decision on leasing the ambassador’s residence and purchasing the curtains was made during the Obama administration, according to current and former officials. The article should not have focused on Ms. Haley, nor should a picture of her have been used. The article and headline have now been edited to reflect those concerns, and the picture has been removed.”

No surprise that the American public holds both the mainstream news media and those they report on in such low regard.

3) But fake news is not limited to just print journalism. It is no secret that CNN was all in trying to get Hillary Clinton elected President despite claiming that it was an unbiased news source. In fact, it was nicknamed the Clinton News Network for its obvious disdain for Trump and love for Clinton. 

Fortunately, many Americans have figured out the CNN is nothing more than a shill for Clinton, the Democrats and liberals in this country:

• According to the latest analysis from AdWeek, CNN has lost an amazing 41% market share in daytime ratings in the past year.
• In addition, it has lost an amazing 36% of its prime time market share.
• According to AdWeek: “CNN ranked No. 6 across basic cable in total prime time viewers, and No. 5 in total day this past week. Despite the top 10 finishes, the network was -36 percent in prime time viewers, and -41 percent in total day viewers vs. the same week last year.”
• They are now a very distance third in cable news,way behind MSNBC and Fox News.

Pretty sad when you think you are a major news source but sometimes you may actually have fewer viewers than “Cupcake Wars” on the Food Channel. 

4) One last piece of insanity for this month. We have previously reported on how many liberal cities and even states, i.e. California, have banned or are planning to ban plastic straws from life. In fact, in some places like California you can go to jail for giving someone a plastic straw in a restaurant if they did not ask for one. 

Which is pretty silly since in one major California town that is on the straw bandwagon, San Francisco, it is not illegal to defecate, urinate or shoot up drugs in the city streets but it is illegal to hand out a plastic straw in certain situations. To review our past discussion this issue enter “plastic straw” in the search box above.

But consider how stupid this effort is and how much of a waste it is for state and local politicians to fret about such nonsense:

• We have previously discussed the reality that the U.S. does not even rate in the top ten plastic polluters in the world.
• Now, a recent article in Reason magazine stated that 8 million metric tons of plastic make its way into the oceans of the world every year.
• But the U.S. is responsible for only 1% of that waste.
• Which means that California is responsible for only a fraction of 1% of the plastic waste going into the oceans every year.
• Which means that plastic straws in California are only a fraction of the fraction of the 1% of the plastic waste going into the oceans every year.
• Which means that plastic straws in San Francisco is a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of 1% of the plastic waste going into the oceans every year.
• Which ultimately means that if San Francisco eliminated the use of plastic straws in the city it would make absolutely no difference to the oceans.

Given this reality, would it not be better for San Francisco politicians, and California politicians, focus their energy and attention on their failing schools, their crumbling infrastructure, their street defecation and urination problems, their homeless problems, and a whole lot of other real problems rather than working on a problem that even if successfully solved would have no impact on their citizens or the world? Political insanity at its apex.

That will do it for this month’s political class insanity, more sure to follow 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.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w