There is a lot going on in the world: LA riots, Middle East powder keg, the Russian/Ukrainian war, etc. But through all this, the American political class continues to constantly deliver its own special brand of insanity, stupidity, wasteful taxpayer spending, and ineffective government programs:
1)In the past several posts we have revealed how both criminals and government employees have been defrauding the government and taxpayers out of millions and millions of dollars. That trend continues in LA today:
A Los Angeles man recently pleaded guilty to laundering about $16 million of Federal taxpayer money.
He did it via defrauding Medicare’s hospice program.
He used the money he defrauded to pay for real estate purchases, pay for his kid’s private school, and other personal expenses.
He was doing the scam with four other individuals who used bogus hospice companies to rip off the government.
But it should not be a surprise that this happened in LA since from 2010 to 2021 the number of hospice agencies in LA county went from 109 to 1841 agencies even though the senior aged population only grew by 40%.
Thus, it should also not be a surprise when a California State auditor report found that in a single year, hospice agencies overbilled Medicare by about $105 million.
Another day another way to defraud the American taxpayer.
2)To those that were objective, it was quite clear that from the beginning of his Presidency, Biden was on a serious downtrend in cognitive ability. The examples of his mental decline are far too numerous to list here.
After he left office, substantial evidence surfaced that much of the official government documents he signed later in his term, e.g. hundreds and hundreds of pardons, were not done manually by his own hand but by an autopend machine.
Given the heavy use of the autopen and his dementia-like mental state, serious Constitutional issues arise as to whether whatever he “signed” during his term by a machine is legal or void. This has caused Congress to open investigations into this issue of legality. Part of the Congressional investigation is to conduct hearings to explore what actually happened inside the Biden White House.
Unfortunately, a key person in the investigation, a very close aide of Jill Biden and a powerful force in the Biden brain trust, Anthony Bernal, has refused to present himself in front of Congress to testify. Obviously, this refusal to voluntarily testify in front of Congress raises the suspicions that maybe Biden had no clue what was being signed in his name via the autopen and Bernal knows what actually happened.
Congress can force him to appear in front of investigative committees so this is far from over. From a freedom perspective, this whole situation raises the analogy with Orwell's “1984” novel. In that story, a “Big Brother“ was supposedly in charge but was completely fictitious. In this reality, a President was supposedly in charge but that was possibly complete fiction also. Not a good way for a democracy and freedom to work, a paper leader with no clue.
3)Dozens of times in this blog we have discussed a competition that is underway at both the state and local government level, namely: which state or major city will get to bankruptcy court first?
What usually happens is that a state or local city government and its politicians continue to raise taxes. This causes residents and businesses to move out and head towards areas with less taxation. This out migration reduces the tax base which reduces the tax revenue stream. Rather than shrink government expenses to match the lower tax revenue stream, the politicians usually just raise taxes even more, driving more residents and businesses out of the area and the financial death spiral is in place.
States likely to go bankrupt first include New York, California, New Jersey, and Illinois. Major cities likely to go bankrupt first include New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.
And the leaders in this race change over time. For a while, it looked like Chicago would go bankrupt first. Then Los Angeles, with its inept handling of the wild fires and riots, made a run to going bankrupt first. But with the recent Democratic Party mayoral primary election, New York City may have jumped out in front of all the suffering and declining major cities:
Ugandan and Muslim immigrant, Zohran Mamdani, won the primary race in NYC.
He is a member of the Democratic Socialist party in New York.
He is anti-Israel and ant-Jewish, he does not like the New York Police Department and is a defund the police advocate, he wants to raise the minimum wage to $30 in the city, he wants to provide free child care, he wants to void the Second Amendment, he wants free bus transportation, free health care, he wants the city government to develop and operate grocery stores in the city, he wants to freeze rents, and become the biggest sanctuary city in the country for illegal immigrants.
Obviously, all of these programs will require untold billions and billions of dollars to provide these services to millions of people.
The only way to pay for such nonsense and “free” stuff is to raise the tax burden on taxpaying citizens which he plans to do by putting additional tax burdens on the city’s wealthiest residents and businesses.
And these are the exact same residents that can most easily afford to move out of the city and out from under the taxation being increased to pay for his dream projects, substantially reducing the tax base.
In fact, he has not been elected yet and luxury real estate agents immediately saw a surge in New York City residents looking to relocate out of the city.
Given the initial reaction to his ridiculous projects and dreams, it is a safe bet that he has New York City positioned to become that next major city to go bankrupt. The wealthy residents and also businesses will move out to get out from under even heavier taxation, Jewish folks will move out to avoid the hate he has previously demonstrated towards them, law abiding citizens will move out because of his defund the police intentions, and all of these folks will be taking their tax dollars with them. Cut to the “Escape From New York” analogies.
4)While New York City and other major American cities are heading towards bankruptcy, at least one member of Congress could not be any further away from that status:
We have often reviewed the reality that politicians going to Washington end their Washington careers much wealthier than when they first get elected, a reality that cannot be explained by their Congressional salaries.
It has long been assumed and proven that some members of Congress appear to have used their access to secret/insider government and legislative information to do insider trading of stocks in the stock market, a reality that gets every other American thrown in jail but apparently they are exempt from this crime.
Former Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, has always been a prime suspect in using insider information to dramatically increase her family’s wealth.
According to a New York Post analysis, Pelosi and her husband saw their personal net worth grow between $7.8 and $42 million in 2024.
The reason the range is so wide is because Washington politicians made the reporting of their wealth and wealth growth to be done in wide categories so that scrutiny is tough.
She is now worth an estimated $413 million, which is up substantially in one year when their 2023 wealth was estimated at $370 million.
Keep in mind that her Congressional salary in 2024 was $174,000, a very small percentage of her overall wealth growth.
Her and her husband not only have millions and millions of dollars in stock holdings but they also own a Napa Valley winery, a political data and consulting company, and a stake in an Italian restaurant.
In 2024, she and her husband dumped 5.000 shares of Microsoft stock a few months before the Federal Trade Commission announced an antitrust investigation of the company.
They also sold $525,000 worth of Visa stock less than three months before the credit card company was served with a monopoly lawsuit by the Department of Justice.
In dealing with Nvidia stock, they made timely purchases that saw a $2.4 million investment quickly become worth $7.2 million.
Over the years, the Pelosi family has constantly obtained stock returns that were bigger than most if not all of the country’s hedge fund returns.
Nice work if you can get it. Rather than focus on helping American families, Washington politicians are often more focused on their own self-enrichment.
Enough for today: corruption in DC, stupidity in New York City, Big Brother is alive and in DC, and another Medicare fraud against the American taxpayer.
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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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