Washington politicians could care less if they are making your life better. The could care less if they are keeping you safe or if they are efficiently and effectively spending your tax dollars. They are into being a politician only for their own self enrichment and ego satisfaction.
There are the obvious signs that we have an elitist political class.
- They allow themselves to be paid more than three times the average American household annual income.
- They have outstanding benefits, both healthcare and other types.
- They take numerous vacations times every year, claiming a five week vacation every summer.
- They have rigged their pay/wage system so that they automatically get a raise every year regardless of how poorly they perform their job, which has been at all time low levels.
- They almost always leave political office much wealthier than when they come into office, an increase that cannot be solely explained by their high salaries.
1) Eighteen months or so ago, the Washington political class shut down the Federal government. Rather than take an adult, mature approach to governing, they took the exact opposite approach: partisan fighting, childish name calling, and a complete inability to lead or formulate a strategy and a budget.
As a result, major parts of the Federal government shut down. No one outside of Washington was responsible for the government shutdown. It was all caused by about 500 people in Congress and the White House, who are as inept as they come.
But who suffered? It was everyday Americans who suffered. National parks were shut down, government programs supporting Americans were suspended, etc. The Washington political class, however, felt no pain. They caused the problem but they continued to draw their high salaries, they continued to get their posh offices, they continued to get their benefits, etc. Talk about selfish: cause heartbreak for others due incompetence but rig the process so that they suffer no ill effects.
2) When Obama Care was passed, the Washington political class made an empty gesture that was supposed to force Congressional members and their staffs to purchase health insurance via Obama Care individual healthcare insurance exchanges. This would have resulted in substantially higher out of pocket costs for health insurance for those parties. This was the Washington politicians way of showing that they understood the hardships they were imposing on millions of Americans via Obama Care.
But shortly after Obama Care took effect, it became clear that this was indeed an empty gesture. Congressional leaders went to Obama and convinced him to allow Congressional members and their staffs to purchase health insurance via the Obama Care small business Obama Care exchange of Washington D.C. This would allow these Washington types to pay far less for their health insurance, an option not available to other Americans.
But this was clearly against the law. Not only was it prohibited by the legislation itself, but the D.C. health insurance exchange was explicitly and legally restricted only to businesses that had less than 50 employees. Obviously, members of Congress and their staffs number far more than 50. Nevertheless, Obama let them get away with this slap to the face of all Americans despite its illegality.
Well, at least one Senator has been fighting back against this hypocrisy and illegal move on the Obama administration’s part. U.S. Senator David Vitter, Senate Small Business Committee Chairman, had put forth a motion and effort to find out how this atrocity occurred. Specifically, who in the Obama administration filled out the paperwork and approved the paperwork to allow Congressional members and their staffs to ignore Obama Care tenets and get a break on health insurance premiums.
Sounds like a noble effort. Someone, somewhere broke the law, it is only right to find out who actually broke it and whether or not that Federal employee was told to do so by who. Unfortunately, as always, nobility and integrity are almost always lacking in Washington’s political class. The motion has at least died temporarily in committee as five Republican committee members and along with all Democratic committee members voted down the proposal.
Pathetic leadership, selfish behavior. They broke the law and now they want to cover it up so that Vitter and the country cannot find out what members of Congress and the administration might be responsible for defrauding the government through the District of Columbia’s Obamacare exchange. Vitter had been seeking an un-redacted copy of the Obama Care D.C. exchange application to determine who listed the number of employees as 45, which qualified members of Congress and their staff for special small business employee subsidies.
The stupid thing about these Senators voting no is that eventually someone is going to go to court and the court is going to force the disclosure of who broke the law. The names will get out and now the names will get out for both the original crime and the cover up of that crime. No one ever accused the Washington politicians to be especially smart.
3) A few years ago, the CBS news show, “60 Minutes” broke a scandal that showed how Washington politicians were making themselves rich trading on insider information on pending and proposed legislation. We covered that political scandal in detail at the following link:
Disgusting greed and law breaking that no one went to jail for. If you or I had done the same thing, we definitely would have exposed ourselves to felony jail terms. But Congress had miraculously passed previous legislation that allowed only them and their high level staff members to increase their wealth in insider trading schemes.
Due to the news, Congress immediately passed legislation called the STOCK bill which finally forbade this type of insider trading. Sounds good, right? Well, a little while after they passed the legislation, they very quietly went back and gutted the law with another piece of legislation so that they could keep the flow of insider trading secrets going to the advancement of their bank accounts.
Now it appears that they have gone one step further to ensure they can continue their insider trading. While they gutted the original bill, they did not completely destroy the SEC’s ability to investigate insider trading within the halls of Congress. The SEC started an investigation on how a Mr. Brian Sutter, a former staffer for the House Ways and Means Committee, allegedly passed along information about an pending Medicare decision to a lobbyist. It is alleged that this first lobbyist then shared the tip with other lobbyist firms. Leading hedge funds used the insider tip to trade on health insurance stocks that were affected by the soon-to-be announced Medicare decision.
Sounds like a valid violation of the STOCK law and the SEC began to investigate. That is when the same politicians that passed the STOCK law started to fight back. They got a team of lawyers together that put forth the inane premise the SEC could not investigate members of Congress or their staffs due to the doctrine of separation of powers within the Constitution.
You can draw two absurd logic conclusions here:
- Members of Congress can do anything they want including breaking the law without fear of penalty because of separations of power in the Constitution, according to their lawyers.
- The law they themselves passed has no teeth since they now say they cannot be investigated for wrongdoing under that law that was supposed to penalize them for any wrongdoing.
Roundabout, insane logic, all to cover up their continued and profitable insider trading practices, all of which comes at the expense of the American taxpayer in one way or another.
Again, as we stated above, the Washington political class does not care about you or me. They care about maintaining their high salaries and high benefit levels, they care about their frequent and long vacations, they care about violating the law to minimize their own expenses (e.g. Obama Care), and they will tell you they did the right thing to your face but do the exact opposite behind your backs to maintain their insider trading pipeline to riches.
They are pathetic, liars, hypocritical, and selfish. And on top of that, they are also ineffective, as witnessed by the sad state of affairs the country’s citizens outside of Washington face everyday.
That is why supporting any group or organization that is working towards term limits deserves our support. The current set of Washington politicians have proven to be unable to resolve problems and issues while self enriching themselves to the detriment of the country. If interested in joining this movement to kick out the incumbents that have lied to us so many times for their own financial good, please visit the following site that advocates for term limits:
Because, how much worse could it get if we replaced every single Washington politician with someone new? At least with new, fresh faces in Washington, we would have a chance at honesty and integrity, something we have no shot at today.
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
No comments:
Post a Comment