It is the beginning of another month which means it is time again to review the latest political class insanity from the American political class. Each month it takes us multiple posts to cover the wasteful spending, incompetent government organizations and employees, government programs that usually make a problem worse than resolving it, inane and idiotic politician comments, etc.
To review past posts on this insanity and idiocy, just click on the first few posts in each month listed to the right of this page. After reviewing just a handful of these insanity posts we think you will agree that we are currently being served by the worst set of American politicians ever to hold office in our entire history.
1) We have always contended that a very, very basic function of government is to protect the lives and property of the citizens it is responsible for. Even if a government does a lot of other tasks well, if it cannot protect the lives and property of its citizens it is a failure.
Nowhere has the local political class failed more in this premise than in Chicago, as the latest crime reports indicate the continuing violence and crime situation in that city:
Over Memorial Day weekend, 47 Chicago residents were shot and 9 of those shot died from their wounds.
This was over a weekend, not a whole week, not a whole month.
This carnage happened despite the fact that the Chicago police department deployed extra resources and canceled vacation days to put more police officers on the street.
This 2022 Memorial weekend was much more violent than the same weekend last year when 32 people were shot and 3 died.
Despite these numbers, the chief of police in Chicago stated that violent crime is actually down in the city, talk about out of touch.
The shooting incidents included old and young victims, those just passing by and those involved with other shooters.
The school shooting in Texas was horrific and I do not want to downplay that horrible tragedy. But mass shootings happen everyday in many U.S. cities and the American political class has no clue how to stop it. Otherwise, 47 people would not have been shot weekend ago in Chicago.
And more gun control is not the answer in case someone wants to take that stand. The violence in Chicago, Los Angeles, and other liberal cities and states are where gun control is the most strict and it has done nothing to stop the violence. Another failure to protect the lives and property of the citizens the government is responsible for.
2) Many in the political class, especially those on the left end of the political spectrum, are obsessed with the nonsense known as man made climate change and their dream that electric cars will fix a problem that maybe does not even exist. Many, many times we have debunked the notion that man made “global warming,” and the rebranded crisis, “climate change,” is not as bad as they make it out to be.
We have debunked this theory with science, statistics, and historical reviews. But these climate change zealots always look only at the science and “facts” that support their theory and fears, never looking at contrary science or facts.
One of the results of their obsession is the desire to see everyone drive an electric car since, in their eyes, a clean running electric car is much better for the environment. They seem to forget that electric cars only run when they have electricity which does not magically appear at their home’s electric sockets, it has to be produced by burning other forms of energy to get the electricity to
operate electric cars.
Which raises the question as to whether electric cars, when you consider the big picture, are better than gas powered cars for the environment as people like Al Gore, Joe Biden, and other left leaning politicians want you to believe?
Consider:
According to a recent study published by Green Car reports, particulate matter thrown off from electric vehicle tires is 1,850 times greater than what comes out of the tailpipe of a gas powered car.
According to the EPA’s own website, these types of emissions, wherever they come from, can be inhaled and cause health problems besides producing haze across the United States.
Other studies have confirmed these latest results: a 2020 study found that emissions from electric vehicle tires could be 1,000 times greater than those same types of emissions from gas powered cars’ tailpipes.
The reason for the high tire emissions on electric cars is the reality that heavy batteries in the electric vehicles weigh down the car and grind the tires into the road surface, causing the particulates to flake off the tires.
As electric car makers strive to increase the range of their cars on a single charge, that requires more and heavier batteries be installed which weighs down the car and causes even more particulates to be created.
And as electric car makers move into the truck business, the problem gets even more critical.
As happens with just about every societal problem, simple minded politicians usually do not have the ability to comprehend or examine the entire problem. They focus on only a subset of the problem, make changes, pass laws, institute regulations that they think will fix the sub-problem they are looking at but their actions make the real, bigger problem worse.
Such is their solution with electric cars. They think that if they can get everyone into an electric car life will be grand and they would resolve their climate change myth. But they do not look at the total picture in this case and what their “solution” does not take into account:
More electric cars mean more polluting particulates in the air, water, and soil.
More electric cars means more devastating mining of the needed mineral for the electric car batteries, mining that has dire effects on the environment.
More electric cars means more strain on the rickety U.S. power grid which will mean more electric blackouts and brownouts, a crisis that climate change advocates have already experienced in California.
More electric cars and vehicles means higher potential for vehicle fires as witnessed by the electric bus fires in France and house fires in this country when electric vehicles burst into flames for no known reason while parked in home garages, causing extensive home damage.
Every decision in life has ramifications, often beyond the problem at hand. To think that American politicians have the ability to do comprehensive analysis and thus, develop comprehensive solutions to problems, is a fallacy, especially if you look at their track record of failure. Electric cars are no different, politicians do not realize or do not care that their solution in one subset of the problem causes massive problems in other parts of the problem. There is no free lunch in life…or electric cars.
3) We saw and talked about so many examples during the pandemic where politicians were at their best executing the old adage, “do as I say, not as I do:”
The mayor of Chicago shut down all of the hair salons in Chicago for health reasons and to hinder the spread of covid but forced her hair salon to open to get her hair styled.
The mayor of Beaumont, Texas forced all of the nail salons in her city to shut down but forced her nail salon open to get her nails done.
The governor of Michigan prohibited her citizens from traveling out of state but she flew to Florida to visit her father.
The governor of Illinois had a similar travel ban in place in his state to prevent the spread of covid but allowed his family to travel to their horse farm in Florida.
The governor of California prohibited his citizens from gathering at restaurants for dining with friends, and also required them to wear masks when outside, but attend a private dinner party with his friends, none of whom were wearing masks.
We could go on but you get the idea: the rules and laws that politicians impose on us are often treated merely as suggestions for them and their friends and family. Which brings us to the latest “do as I say, not as I do” example:
Ayanna Pressley is a U.S. Congresswoman.
She has been a long time and active advocate of the failed “defund the police” movement.
Those cities that followed her advice and reduced police funding have seen dramatic raises in crime in their cities as fewer police resources resulted in more crime, danger, and violence inflicted on citizens.
But as she has called for defunding police departments, she continues to spend thousands of tax dollars on private security forces for herself:
According to the Daily Caller: “Democratic Massachusetts Rep. Ayanna Pressley, who has repeatedly pushed to defund the police, spent thousands of taxpayers’ dollars on private security, according to newly released Statement of Disbursements of the House records reviewed by the Daily Caller. Pressley spent $14,000 of her Member Representational Allowance (MRA) on “security service” between January and March 2022, according to the new Statement of Disbursements of the House records. In 2021, Pressley spent $63,000 of her MRA on “security service”— spending $28,000 between Oct. 1, 2021 and Dec. 31, 2021, and $35,000 between May 2021 and August 2021.”
So let’s review: a U.S. Congresswoman wants to put ourselves and our families in more danger by reducing the police resources available to protect us. But goes ahead and spends our tax money to provide private security resources for herself, to protect her from the same potential for violence and crime that she denies to us? A classic example of “do as a say, not as I do.”
That will do it for today: more hypocrisy from the political class, more lack of problem solving from the political class, and more violence and mass shootings in Chicago.
