How Badly Did Washington/Obama Butcher The Economic Recovery?

We have often pointed out that Obama’s economic policies, strategies, tactics and results have generally been very anemic. Overall economic growth has been historically tepid, food assistance rolls have stayed way too high, the labor participation rate is at 45 year lows resulting in a real unemployment rate that is closer to 10% than 5%, and wager and household income growth has been stagnant. He doubled the overall national Federal government debt with little to show in return for this wasteful spending. He achieved these horrid economic results despite the following tail winds:

1. He implemented a failed $830 billion economic stimulus program.
2. He had the advantage of record low energy prices for a long period of time.
3. The Federal Reserve pumped up the economy by flooding the market with trillions of fake dollars.

Shows how really bad your economic management skills are when you cannot boost the economy to any great degree with these factors working in your favor.

Rather than referring back to our past writings about the economy, let me summarize some economic analyses that was recently published on the NewsMax website where writer Andrew Schrage did some research and found “10 Reasons The Economy Isn’t As Good As It Seems.” We have touched on some of these areas previously but let’s review everything that Mr. Schrage found:

1) Labor Participation Rate - This important labor measurement has been declining throughout the Obama Presidency despite the end of the recession. This measure tracks the proportion of employed or unemployed (actively seeking work) individuals against the total population of working-age, non-disabled people. According to the Federal Reserve, the labor force participation rate has declined from a long-term high of 67.3% in early 2000 to 62.8% in July 2016. This is lower than at any point since the late 1970s when the country was stuck in Jimmy Carter’s stagflation years.

While some of the drop in labor force participation is because some Baby Boomers are retiring voluntarily, much of the drop is a result a sluggish recovery. People have gotten so discouraged after losing their jobs to the recession and other factors that they stop looking for work and drop out of the workforce. Thus, we now have a record number of adults in this country that are not working and not contributing to the economy or society.

This in turn makes most people misread the traditional unemployment rate, the so-called U3 rate. This measure does not take discouraged workers into consideration and thus underestimates the real unemployment rate. Since these discouraged workers are still unemployed, even if they have stopped looking for work, the better measure of unemployment in this environment is the U6 rate which takes into account these discouraged workers. And the U6 rate is still at a very depressing and disappointing level that is closer to 10% than the 5% or so of the U3 rate.

2) Under Employment - One of the other problems with the U3 unemployment measure is that it does not capture the people that want a full time job but have to settle for a part time job. That reduces the U3 unemployment rate but masks the reality that the job market is unable to generate enough full time, robust jobs for those that want one, forcing them to settle for part time work, and reduced take home pay, only.

3) While more people have found jobs since the recession ended, both part time and fulltime positions, the proportion of workers who have been without a job for 27 consecutive weeks or longer, the definition of long term unemployment, has been stuck well above the long term average. The long term unemployment rate is now still higher than at any point between 1994 and 2007, through both good and bad economic times.

This presents a long term problem since many of the long term unemployed cannot get a job now because they have been unemployed for so long and hiring managers and hiring companies tend to avoid potential hirees that have been out of work for so long. This makes the long term unemployed even longer term unemployed. And as a person spends more and more time unemployed they eventually give up looking for a job which further depresses the labor participation rate discussed above.

All of this results in an economy that is losing the opportunity to hire motivated and skilled workers that would help boost economic growth and make for more fulfilling lives. But not much of that is happening under the economic policies of this administration.

4) Stagnant wages and incomes - Probably one of the most depressing aspects of this so-called recovery is that on average, Americans are not moving up and earning more money over time. Wages and household incomes have been mostly stagnant since this recovery started, a highly unusual trait of a recovery, especially coming off a recession that was so bad.

Even Politifact, a well known liberal and Democratic Party leaning organization, supports this assertion, claiming that inflation adjusted median weekly earnings fell by about 1% from 2009 and 2015, the time after the recession ended. In addition, Politifact found that median household earnings, adjusted for inflation, fell 4% over that same time frame. Americans are working just as hard and getting less buying power for their efforts.

5) Rising poverty levels and government assistance levels - The Census Bureau estimated that the country’s poverty level rose by more than a full percentage point after the recession ended in 2009 through the middle of 2014. Historically, one usually does not see a rise in poverty rates as an economic recovery takes hold.

Similarly, the U.S.Department of Agriculture found that the number of Americans needing food assistance every month rose by 39% from 2009 when the recession ended to 2014, five years into the recovery, or so-called recovery.

6) Collapsing oil and commodity prices - while many people and industries got a positive nudge from lower prices for oil, gas, and other commodity prices, other workers and industries got walloped when energy prices suddenly collapsed. Oil and fracking companies laid off relatively high paid workers when the price of crude oil dropped from near $100 a barrel down below $40 a barrel. Less revenue meant less employees needed and that negative impact rippled through the economy, especially in the high energy producing states in the midwest. 

Adding insult to injury, unexpectedly these job losses were not totally offset by increased hiring in other industries since the additional money in consumers and businesses pockets as a result of lower energy costs only partly made its way back into the economy. 

7) Weak retail sales - Continuing on the last sentence of consumers keeping their money in their pockets, according to Trading Economics, U.S. retail sales growth since the collapse of oil prices has been very tepid. In the past when, oil prices dropped, retail sales surged. For whatever reason, consumer spending, which accounts for about two thirds of the U.S. economy, has been very conservative leading to anemic overall economic growth.

8) Strong U.S. dollar - I call this the “queen of the pigs” theory. While our economic activity has been pretty bad, the economic activity in the rest of the world has been far worse. As a result, we are relatively strong compared to the rest of the world which has made the U.S. dollar’s value rise against other currencies. This makes our exports more expensive and less attractive which hurts our domestic manufacturers and depresses our economic growth.

For example, about two years ago, one euro was worth about $1.40 but now that exchange is down to about $1.10. This makes traveling around the world for U.S. tourists very cheap but does little for our domestic economy.

9) More queen of the pigs talk - Russia and Brazil are in recession, the entire Eurozone is growing just over 1% a year, Canada is being hit hard with low oil prices, and Chinese growth has dropped considerably from the the sky high rates it had been enjoying over the past decade. All of this results in less demand for U.S. goods and services.

10)  Global politics and security - What happens around the world today quickly and directly can impact the U.S. economy. The Ebola outbreak in 2014 slammed U.S. airline stocks. Terrorist attacks shake confidence and reduce tourism and consumer spending. And with the growth and power of ISIS and the worldwide refugee crisis, uncertainty, never a friend of economic growth, is still high.

Here are several other economic factors and realities, that the article did not cover, which should give one pause:

• We are well past the average time between recession and recovery so the likelihood of the next recession, which will happen if history is any indicator, is past due.
• The Federal Reserve has allowed interest rates to stay at historic lows so that if a new recession rises up the Fed has little left in its toolbox to fight that new recession.
• Several govenrment and private surveys have found that over 40% of U.S.households do not think they could afford an unexpected $500 out of pocket expense (e.g. a car repair, a new appliance, etc.) without suffering some financial hardship.
• More people in their 60s continue to work than ever before on a percentage basis, indicating they are feeling uncomfortable about retiring and feel the need to continue to work.
• More people in their 20s are living at home on a percentage basis than ever before, indicating that they cannot find a job that they feel would justify moving out and living on their own. By not forming new households at the historic rate and staying home, the economy suffers.
• Mr. Schrage points out that “57% of respondents in a 2014 NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll falsely believed that the United States remained in recession,” despite being five years officially out of the recession.This lack of confidence results in reduced spending and investment and anemic economic growth.
• The Obama administration has added thousands and thousands of new regulations on business which will continue to be an economic drag for years to come.

And through all of this, Obama continues to publicly claim he saved the economy from destruction and all is well. But even liberal friendly Politifact cannot save him from this delusion: “According to Politifact, falling unemployment, consistent job growth, and rising per-capita gross domestic product fail to offset a host of less-rosy metrics indicating that the economy is actively deteriorating on many fronts, such as historically low labor force participation and high long-term unemployment rates.”

And this was accomplished with the three strong tailwinds we listed above which makes these poor economic results even worst on a relative basis. All of which reinforces our long standing assertion that we are being served by the worst set of politicians ever to serve this country from an economic, foreign affairs, and morality perspective. 

Maybe we can do something about that in November because keeping the same tired people with their same tired ideas in power does not seem to be working.

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

The Department of Veterans Affairs - Why The Government Should Never Be In Control Of Our Health Care, Part 1

Many times in this blog we have tried to determine what is the most inept and most wasteful Federal government agency or organization. Which agency is the most inefficient, sucking up the most resources while falling far short of fulfilling even their basic job functions. Leading candidates usually include the TSA, the IRS, the Defense Department, and the Social Security Administration.

But today’s focus is on another of the usual suspects, the Veterans Affairs (VA) organization. Many, many times we have reviewed how the VA is not fulfilling even its basic role of providing medical care to our veterans, wasting millions of dollars in many different, inane ways while the VA executives get large pay bonuses and salary increases. And while Obama has claimed from the very beginning of his Presidency to fix the VA, his efforts have been little more than empty rhetoric as almost eight years later, veterans are still not getting the medical care they have been promised and deserve.

So let’s check in on the latest embarrassments from the VA and see if they still deserve to be classified as one of the worst functioning government organizations ever:

1) Natalie Johnson, writing for the Washington Free Beacon on August 25, 2016, reported how veteran Peter Kaisen committed suicide in the parking lot of the Northport Veterans Affairs Medical Center on Long Island by fatally shooting himself. Mr. Kaisen had been a patient at the medical center.

Now, a single incident like this in isolation does not necessarily mean the VA is still inept. But given that the VA itself confirmed in 2014 that dozens of veterans had died waiting for care at the Phoenix hospital system when hospital employees deliberately erased 1,700 patients from care waiting lists which they then tried to cover up and the Government Accountability Office released a study this past April that concluded the VA system had not fixed its wait time problems, a suicide in a VA parking lot raises some suspicions.

Suspicions that are somewhat confirmed when we find out that two employees at the Northport VA facility told reporters that Mr. Kaisen had gone to the emergency room to seek treatment related to his mental health state of mind and was denied service. He apparently then left the emergency room and returned to the parking lot where he killed himself. 

One of the employees said that Mr. Kaisen should have been referred to the center’s mental health center which is open 24 hours a day but apparently he was not. According to the employee cited in the Free Beacon article: “Someone dropped the ball. They should not have turned him away.”

And yet they did and another veteran unnecessarily died as a result of VA incompetence. On average, 20 veterans commit suicide each and every day of the year. Veterans suicide account for 18% of all U.S. suicides even though veterans make up only 9% of the entire population so it appears Mr. Kaisen’s suicide was not an isolated incident but a pattern of under serving the mental health needs of our vets.

2) Sometimes the VA is just inept and no one dies. But according to the Against Crony Capitalism website on August 24, 2016, their level of insanity in incompetence stretches the imagination. The VA fired one of its own employees because that honest employee had the nerve to report that the Greater Los Angeles VA facility had somehow lost 30 of its 80 vehicles and official government credit cards intended for use for that fleet of vehicles had been misused.

Whistle-blower and VA employee, now former employee, Anthony Salazar, was fired by his manager, Robert Benkeser, after Salazar reported the lost vehicles and credit card abuse. As a result of this incompetence, the VA convened an “administrative investigation board” process that resulted in a “letter of counseling” be sent to Benkeser for his mismanagement of the motor pool. Several months later, surprise, surprise, Benkeser fired Salazar for doing the right thing.

More government incompetence, the protection of the incompetent, and the wasting of taxpayer wealth.

3) The article just mentioned on the Against Crony Capitalism website also contained the following sad joke about VA incompetence:

Q. What’s the difference between a VA nurse and bullet?

A. A bullet can draw blood. A bullet only kills one person. A bullet can be fired.

Think about.

4) Let’s dive into another tremendous waste of taxpayer money, courtesy of the VA. Morgan Chalfant, writing for the Washington Free Beacon on August 15, 2016, reported how the VA had bought almost $300,000 worth of televisions and then left them unused in storage for more than two years. The John D. Dingell VA Medical Center in Detroit purchased the TV sets in September, 2013 as part of an effort to overhaul the patient TV system at that hospital. 

However, a VA inspector general report uncovered the reality that those TV sets were incompatible with the wiring that was installed at the facility. As a result, the 282 TV sets, which had cost $292,000, were put into storage for two and a half years. According to the article: “Officials at the Detroit VA did not communicate with the contractor “in a timely manner” to make sure that the TVs the agency bought were right for the project, the inspector general found. 

The agency was forced to modify the contract by adding $19,000 in additional funds to change the project specifications to accommodate the televisions. The hospital still had not selected a contractor to install the televisions as of June, when the inspector general completed the probe.”

The TVs are now two and half years worth of old TV technology and the warranties have expired since they were not installed during the warranty period. The inspector general also found that the VA facility may have violated the government’s “bona fide needs rule” by using federal dollars available in fiscal 2013 to pay for needs in a future year.

Congressman Jeff Miller had an insightful take on this and other massive wastes of taxpayer wealth: “If VA’s job was mismanaging money, it would have a near-perfect record of achievement. Yet despite this and other high-profile budgetary failures, all too often the department’s knee-jerk response to challenges is to ask taxpayers for more money. This is more proof the department doesn’t have a money problem, it has a management problem.”

One last issue on the TVs. On average these TVs cost over $1,000 each which means they were either very, very high end sets or, more likely, the VA got screwed by who ever sold them to it. Walk through any Best Buy and I dare you to find a really good wide screen TV that costs over $500, never mind over $1,000. 

We have previously reported on how the VA spent an amazing $20 million on high-end art over the last decade despite thousands and thousands of veterans not receiving the medical care they needed or were promised. As of the onset of August of this year, 513,000 veterans had waited more than 30 days for medical care at VA hospitals across the country.

There is more VA incompetence to come tomorrow. But just going by today’s list of embarrassments and waste, it is quite clear to any open minded person why the government should never be in charge of any American’s health and medical needs. Between the unfolding disasters of Obama Care and the joke that the VA has become, we have shown hundreds examples of wasteful spending, incompetent management, greedy employees, a general ineptness that results in the deaths of Americans and not the saving of lives and easing of pain. More proof tomorrow.

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

The Department of Veterans Affairs - Why The Government Should Never Be In Control Of Our Health Care, Part 1

Many times in this blog we have tried to determine what is the most inept and most wasteful Federal government agency or organization. Which agency is the most inefficient, sucking up the most resources while falling far short of fulfilling even their basic job functions. Leading candidates usually include the TSA, the IRS, the Defense Department, and the Social Security Administration.

But today’s focus is on another of the usual suspects, the Veterans Affairs (VA) organization. Many, many times we have reviewed how the VA is not fulfilling even its basic role of providing medical care to our veterans, wasting millions of dollars in many different, inane ways while the VA executives get large pay bonuses and salary increases. And while Obama has claimed from the very beginning of his Presidency to fix the VA, his efforts have been little more than empty rhetoric as almost eight years later, veterans are still not getting the medical care they have been promised and deserve.

So let’s check in on the latest embarrassments from the VA and see if they still deserve to be classified as one of the worst functioning government organizations ever:

1) Natalie Johnson, writing for the Washington Free Beacon on August 25, 2016, reported how veteran Peter Kaisen committed suicide in the parking lot of the Northport Veterans Affairs Medical Center on Long Island by fatally shooting himself. Mr. Kaisen had been a patient at the medical center.

Now, a single incident like this in isolation does not necessarily mean the VA is still inept. But given that the VA itself confirmed in 2014 that dozens of veterans had died waiting for care at the Phoenix hospital system when hospital employees deliberately erased 1,700 patients from care waiting lists which they then tried to cover up and the Government Accountability Office released a study this past April that concluded the VA system had not fixed its wait time problems, a suicide in a VA parking lot raises some suspicions.

Suspicions that are somewhat confirmed when we find out that two employees at the Northport VA facility told reporters that Mr. Kaisen had gone to the emergency room to seek treatment related to his mental health state of mind and was denied service. He apparently then left the emergency room and returned to the parking lot where he killed himself. 

One of the employees said that Mr. Kaisen should have been referred to the center’s mental health center which is open 24 hours a day but apparently he was not. According to the employee cited in the Free Beacon article: “Someone dropped the ball. They should not have turned him away.”

And yet they did and another veteran unnecessarily died as a result of VA incompetence. On average, 20 veterans commit suicide each and every day of the year. Veterans suicide account for 18% of all U.S. suicides even though veterans make up only 9% of the entire population so it appears Mr. Kaisen’s suicide was not an isolated incident but a pattern of under serving the mental health needs of our vets.

2) Sometimes the VA is just inept and no one dies. But according to the Against Crony Capitalism website on August 24, 2016, their level of insanity in incompetence stretches the imagination. The VA fired one of its own employees because that honest employee had the nerve to report that the Greater Los Angeles VA facility had somehow lost 30 of its 80 vehicles and official government credit cards intended for use for that fleet of vehicles had been misused.

Whistle-blower and VA employee, now former employee, Anthony Salazar, was fired by his manager, Robert Benkeser, after Salazar reported the lost vehicles and credit card abuse. As a result of this incompetence, the VA convened an “administrative investigation board” process that resulted in a “letter of counseling” be sent to Benkeser for his mismanagement of the motor pool. Several months later, surprise, surprise, Benkeser fired Salazar for doing the right thing.

More government incompetence, the protection of the incompetent, and the wasting of taxpayer wealth.

3) The article just mentioned on the Against Crony Capitalism website also contained the following sad joke about VA incompetence:

Q. What’s the difference between a VA nurse and bullet?

A. A bullet can draw blood. A bullet only kills one person. A bullet can be fired.

Think about.

4) Let’s dive into another tremendous waste of taxpayer money, courtesy of the VA. Morgan Chalfant, writing for the Washington Free Beacon on August 15, 2016, reported how the VA had bought almost $300,000 worth of televisions and then left them unused in storage for more than two years. The John D. Dingell VA Medical Center in Detroit purchased the TV sets in September, 2013 as part of an effort to overhaul the patient TV system at that hospital. 

However, a VA inspector general report uncovered the reality that those TV sets were incompatible with the wiring that was installed at the facility. As a result, the 282 TV sets, which had cost $292,000, were put into storage for two and a half years. According to the article: “Officials at the Detroit VA did not communicate with the contractor “in a timely manner” to make sure that the TVs the agency bought were right for the project, the inspector general found. 

The agency was forced to modify the contract by adding $19,000 in additional funds to change the project specifications to accommodate the televisions. The hospital still had not selected a contractor to install the televisions as of June, when the inspector general completed the probe.”

The TVs are now two and half years worth of old TV technology and the warranties have expired since they were not installed during the warranty period. The inspector general also found that the VA facility may have violated the government’s “bona fide needs rule” by using federal dollars available in fiscal 2013 to pay for needs in a future year.

Congressman Jeff Miller had an insightful take on this and other massive wastes of taxpayer wealth: “If VA’s job was mismanaging money, it would have a near-perfect record of achievement. Yet despite this and other high-profile budgetary failures, all too often the department’s knee-jerk response to challenges is to ask taxpayers for more money. This is more proof the department doesn’t have a money problem, it has a management problem.”

One last issue on the TVs. On average these TVs cost over $1,000 each which means they were either very, very high end sets or, more likely, the VA got screwed by who ever sold them to it. Walk through any Best Buy and I dare you to find a really good wide screen TV that costs over $500, never mind over $1,000. 

We have previously reported on how the VA spent an amazing $20 million on high-end art over the last decade despite thousands and thousands of veterans not receiving the medical care they needed or were promised. As of the onset of August of this year, 513,000 veterans had waited more than 30 days for medical care at VA hospitals across the country.

There is more VA incompetence to come tomorrow. But just going by today’s list of embarrassments and waste, it is quite clear to any open minded person why the government should never be in charge of any American’s health and medical needs. Between the unfolding disasters of Obama Care and the joke that the VA has become, we have shown hundreds examples of wasteful spending, incompetent management, greedy employees, a general ineptness that results in the deaths of Americans and not the saving of lives and easing of pain. More proof tomorrow.

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

August 2016, Will The Center Hold? Is It Time To Start Ignoring Washington?

On a semi-regular basis, we run a discussion on whether or not “the center will hold?” In other words, what happens if and when Washington issues a law or a decree and the rest of the country simply ignores it, will the center hold? Never in my life have I seen the country so divided and struggling to push back on the over reaching politicians in Washington.

From gun control to school lunches to warrantless spying on citizens to Common Core education standards to health care to many other issues, states and individual citizens are more and more taking formal and informal action and telling Washington types to butt out of our lives, our wallets, and our freedoms. We have gotten to the point where state legislatures are actually passing legislation saying that they will not abide by certain Federal decrees and laws and making such compliance a crime within their state borders.

To review the many previous posts we have done on this question, enter “will the center hold” in the search box above to see the widespread resistance that is building up across the country. For the latest push backs against Washington, continue reading below and you decide: will the center hold?

1) The Obama administration made it very easy for Americans to get Federal government food assistance during the Great Recession which was probably a humane thing to go since so many Americans had lost their jobs. However, after the recession ended, one would have thought that the food stamp/assistance rolls would have declined since Obama bragged that he had saved the U.S. economy from destruction. 

However, from 30 million Americans getting food assistance at the start of the recession, the Federal taxpayer currently still provides over 45 million Americans with food assistance every month. Which means that the economy is not healthy, Obama’s bragging notwithstanding, or there is massive fraud going on that the Obama is doing nothing to stop.

But as we have found out in this series on “will the center hold,” often individual Americans and politicians below the Federal level are actually doing the right thing when it comes to common sense and taxpayer wealth. Nathan Mateer and Rachel Sheffield, writing for the Heritage Foundation, pointed out some of those instances of sanity:

• Seven states decided to reinstate work requirements in order to receive food assistance, a requirement that the Obama administration suspended at the onset of the Great Recession.
• One of those states, Maine, saw its food assistance rolls drop by a whopping 80% within just a few months after re-establishing its work requirements.
• Another of the seven, Kansas, saw its food assistance enrollment go down another whopping 75%.
• A study by Foundation for Government Accountability found that 60% of the Kansas residents who dropped out found employment within twelve months and that “their incomes rose by an average of 127 percent per year.”
• Within six months of putting its work requirements back in effect, Indiana saw its food assistance rolls drop by 68%.
• Indiana’s Family and Social Services Administration found that: “Nearly 5,000 Hoosiers who were receiving benefits in July are no longer receiving assistance because they obtained gainful employment and now have an income that exceeds eligibility standards.”

Another example where some state politicians are telling the Federal politicians and Washington bureaucrats to go pound sand and do the right thing, rather than the political thing, saving the taxpayers millions and millions of dollars without putting undue hardship on citizens. 

2) The American News website has our second example of the country telling the Federal government to get away. President Obama has often acted like a five year old when he did not get his way, that others in the world actually had a difference of opinion with him. Unfortunately, rather than act as a leader, Obama often has a temper tantrum and issues an executive order, under cutting the Constitution and our democracy.

Lately, Obama has discussed the distinct possibility that he might issue another executive order to place carbon limits on the country’s use of fossil fuels. But rather than rollover and just accept this tyranny, five state governors immediately spoke up and stated they will oppose any such order. The states pushing back include Texas, Louisiana, Wisconsin, Indiana, and Oklahoma.

Which gets us to the same question we continue to ask in this series of posts: what if Washington issued an edict, passed a law, or signed an executive order and the rest of the country ignored it? Would the center hold?

3) A recent article on the Fix This Nation website gets us back to food assistance and how the states are pushing back on Washington. Back on January 1, 2016, the state of Alabama had 49,000 of its residents signed up for Federal food assistance. Half a year later, after the state politicians reinstated a work requirement in most counties, that 49,000 number has plummeted to only 15,375 still on the program. This action has saved the taxpayers over $6 million.

Thus, we have another state that is bucking the trend of the Federal government by making common sense changes to its food assistance programs and seeing dramatic results without the backlash of people starving in the streets. Makes you wonder why Obama and the rest of the Washington political class are not doing the same thing if they had protecting taxpayer wealth as a priority, which they obviously do not.

4) Several months ago, the Obama administration put out a directive to all public schools in the country, strongly suggesting that all public schools in America allow transgender students access to the bathroom or locker room matching their gender identity on any particular day. This edict would allow teenage boys to declare that they are females anytime they wanted and gain access to girls' school restrooms, locker rooms, and teams.

This is obviously a huge social and moral issue, which was not an issue until the Obama administration decided to make it one. An issue this big should be part of a national discussion and the creation of appropriate laws on the issue once it is discussed and debated. That is how it is supposed to work in a free country. 

But apparently not on Obama's watch. As he is prone to do, if he does not get his way, he pouts, blames others for his lack of leadership, and tries to get around rules and laws with executive orders and these types of edicts. Well, as with other issues that states and individuals are pushing back on from an overreaching Federal government, many states and their governors are not going to go along with such dictatorial approaches to life and bathroom usage.

As of a couple of months ago, 11 states had already banned together to defy the Obama transgender bathroom “suggestion” in a joint lawsuit. Those states include:

• Texas
• Alabama
• Wisconsin
• West Virginia
• Tennessee
• Oklahoma
• Louisiana
• Utah
• Georgia
• Maine Governor Paul LePage
• Arizona Department of Education

A sample of the reasons for the pushback and lawsuit include the following:

• Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton accused the Obama administration of “creating new law outside the bounds of the Constitution.”
• Missouri Lieutenant Governor Peter Kinder, wrote in an open letter: “The letter and its demands are an unconstitutional abuse of authority by your executive branch. It is a blatant attempt to change established law, which is a function reserved for the legislative branch by the Constitution. By threatening local school districts with the loss of federal funding, your administration is seizing local control from public schools while threatening the privacy rights of Missouri students. Further, the demands set forth in the letter directly violate the Constitution’s 10th Amendment, which states that those powers not delegated to the federal government are reserved to the states, respectively, or to the people.”

As you can see, it appears that many local politicians and other Americans outside of the Washington area have a far better grasp of the Constitution than Obama and the other political cronies inside the Beltway. Just another example where this administration wastes its time on unnecessary and probably un-Constitutional activities where other major important issues of our times go unaddressed and are allowed to fester or grow worse.

That will do it for this round of “will the center hold.” State governments pushing back on Federal intrusions into their business and the freedom and liberty of its citizens, from bathroom policy to food stamp fraud and waste to the environment. We have a system of government that was established by the Constitution. But the Washington political class, and this administration in particular, seem to think that they can do whatever they want whenever they want in whatever aspect of their lives they so deem. 

But as we have pointed out dozens of times, the rest of the country is starting to resist this overreach. Which always brings us back to our central question: what if Washington issued a law, edict, or executive order and the rest of the country simply ignored it? That day seems to be coming closer and closer.

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

To Build A Wall Or Not To Build A Wall? Part 2

One of the big issues of this Presidential campaign is whether or not to tighten up security on the Mexican border with Trump wanting to build a wall to prevent illegal immigration and other nefarious activities on the border. Somehow, someway, some people, mostly liberals and Democrats, think that having security on the border is a bad, racist thing to have.

Let’s take a look at what is going on down on the border and then we can decide who is right relative to the need for a secure border, Trump or the Democrats. Today will be Part Two of our discussion on the wall, a discussion that started with the following post from yesterday:

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1) Back in May, the Boston Herald reported on a violent crime from March 13, 2016 when four illegal immigrants assaulted an American man and his girlfriend. Three men grabbed the woman and dragged her away where they repeatedly raped her. One of the illegal immigrants stayed behind to beat up the woman’s boyfriend.

The boyfriend eventually got free of the one beating him and attacked the group raping his girlfriend, eventually having to defend himself from a knife attack: “I thought we were going to die. I really did,” the boyfriend stated. “And I didn’t care if I died as long as I could save her and get her out of there, that’s all I cared about.”

The sad part of this whole violent crime was that the four attackers had already been deported for previously having committed crimes in this country. But they managed to illegally re-enter the country to commit these heinous deeds in Framingham, Massachusetts. 

And as a result, at least two Americans are likely traumatized for a long time into their future: “I’ve lived (in Framingham, Massachusetts) my whole life and I never imagined anything like this could happen just walking down the street,” stated the boyfriend. “The worst part was I felt like I couldn’t do anything.”

2) But it is not just American citizens walking down their city’s streets that are being attacked. According to a report by Brittany Hughes of the MRCTV website, 140 cases of assault against U.S. custom agents have occurred in just a recent three month period. This data was published by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency of the Federal government. 

There have been 421 attacks so far in fiscal year 2016 which still has a couple of months left to go. This is a 17% increase over the same time frame in fiscal year 2015. The vast majority of these attacks have been directed at U.S.Border agents, the ones trying to make our borders less porous and more secure.

3) This past Fathers’ Day, Breitbart carried a very sad story on its website that chronicled the deaths of some Americans at the hands of illegal immigrants. The focus of the article was the families of those killed by illegal immigrants and their ire directed at House Speaker Paul Ryan, calling for his resignation for his stance and policies on illegal immigration.

Dan Golvach, whose 25 year old son, Spencer, was murdered by an illegal immigrant by a gunshot to the head while stopped at a red light: “I would invite Speaker Ryan to forsake spending Father’s Day with his kids to come down here to Houston and visit the place I will spend every Father’s Day for the rest of my life— my American son’s grave. This way Speaker Ryan can see first hand what pandering to the cheap illegal labor lobby means to Americans who can’t afford to put a security fence up around their house. The best thing Ryan could do to protect his family from what my family is experiencing is resign today. His policies are not only treasonous to us, they are also treasonous to any American that ever happens to be sitting at a red light like Spencer was. This wasn’t Syria or Iraq. It was the neighborhood I grew up in. Do your kids ever sit at red lights, Mr. Speaker?”

Billy Inman’s, whose 16 year old son was murdered by another illegal immigrant, stated in the article that it was a disgrace for Congressman Ryan to suggest he might sue Donald Trump if Trump was President relative to the suggestion that Trump might use executive authority to pause Muslim immigration: “He’s [Ryan] more upset with Trump than he is about what happened to our families. If Ryan sues Trump on the Muslim ban, we could sue him and most of our elected officials for not stopping illegal aliens from crossing the southern border.”

Inman’s son was killed when the car he was driving in was rear ended by an illegal immigrant driving over 60 miles per hour. This happened as the family was on their way to celebrate Fathers’ Day with a fishing trip. Inman and his wife were both knocked as a result of the accident, were put into intentional comas for several weeks for their own good and were unable to even attend their son’s funeral. 

Obviously, if the Federal government was doing their job that illegal immigrant would not have been in the country and would have not caused the death and trauma to this innocent American family: “I’d like for Ryan to try wearing my shoes for a week. I don’t think he’d make it a day,” Inman said in the article relative to the pain and sorrow he and his wife go through daily.

George Wilkerson’s 18 year old son, Joshua, was tied up, beaten, set on fire, and tortured to death by an illegal immigrant while he was on his way home from school: “Ryan is just one of Obama’s puppets. I don’t consider him a Republican. His tone is totally against Americans as far as I’m concerned. He’s been paid by the taxpayers, but he hasn’t done anything for them. He’s been there for two decades. He’s not doing his job. He’s not looking out for Americans. He’s doing more for foreign citizens than he is for his own American citizens."

Rapes of Americans, assaults on Americans, attacks on Border agents, and the unnecessary loss of life of American citizens because of the Federal government’s inability to protect us and enforce common sense and the current immigration laws. As we concluded yesterday, we also conclude today that maybe that wall might not be a bad idea after all, if one cares about the safety and lives of Americans.

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

To Build A Wall Or Not To Build A Wall? Part 1

One of the big issues of this Presidential campaign is whether or not to tighten up security on the Mexican border, with Trump wanting to build a wall to prevent illegal immigration and other nefarious activities on the border. Somehow, someway, some people, mostly liberals and Democrats, think that having security on the border is a bad, racist thing to have.

Let’s take a look at what is going on down on the border and as a result of a porous border and then we can decide who is right relative to the need for a secure border, Trump or the Democrats:

1) According to a recent article by Alex Pfeiffer, writing for the Daily Caller website, Mexican drug cartels are driving up the crime rate in major and minor American cities by flooding our cities with cheap, powerful heroin. An FBI report that was released back in May concluded that the spike in murder rates in more than 20 American cities was due to cartel heroin pushing: “I don’t know what the answer is, but holy cow, do we have a problem,” FBI Director Jim Comey stated at the time.

Additional findings from the FBI study found that:

• Chicago, the home of two rival Mexican cartels, the Sinola Cartel and the Beltran-Levya cartel, will likely finish 2016 with 550 homicides at the current rate of carnage.
• Las Vegas also has experienced a large jump in murders and it hosts three Mexican drug cartel branches.
• An analysis of the data found that there was a strong correlation between the number of drug cartels operating in a city and the increase in murders.
• Heroin usage in this country is at a 20 year high and the United Nations reports that heroin related deaths have increased by a factor of five since the year 2000.
• And that heroin flow now belongs to the Mexican cartels.

Given that thousands of Americans die from heroin overdoses every year, likely using heroin that traveled over the porous Mexican border, at least in this case it might be a good idea to tighten up that border given that Americans are dying as a result of a non-secure border.

2) And while murder rates have been going up for a little while in American cities, other violent crimes have also been going up. We have already covered this Obama administration foolish idiocy previously, but it bears repeating today, given our theme of this post. Elizabeth Harrington, writing for the Washington Free Beacon on July 14, 2016, reported that the Obama administration has released 86,228 criminal illegal immigrants onto the streets of America.

These 86,228 criminals had committed 231,074 crimes including sexual assaults, kidnappings, and murders. So even though the Feds had these people in custody, people that were both criminals and here illegally, most of whom probably came across our porous border, they still released these criminals onto the streets of America. Is it any surprise that crime rates are rising all over America as a root cause of a non-secure border?

These findings were exposed during an Obama administration official testifying in front of Congress. Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz reported during the Congressional hearing: “In the last year alone, ICE, Immigration Customs Enforcement, released—keep in mind these people committed crimes or were convicted of these crimes, they’re in our possession and we release them out into the public—19,723 criminal aliens, who among them had 64,197 convictions, including 934 sex offenses, 804 robberies, 216 kidnappings, and 196 homicide-related convictions.”

The Congressman also stated the heartbreaking obvious: “How do you look the parents in the eye of somebody who was murdered—their son or daughter—because the government said, ‘Well, you know, it’s in the best interest to just let them go back into the public here in the United States.’”

Tragically, Chaffetz discussed to the situation of Casey Chadwick, an American citizen who was brutally murdered by an illegal immigrant in June 2015. That illegal immigrant had been previously convicted of attempted murder in 1997. The illegal immigrant stabbed Chadwick to death five months after his release from prison, was found guilty of murder and sentenced to 60 years in prison: “He should have automatically been deported back to his home country of Haiti after he was released from prison,” Chaffetz said. “But instead, he was released from custody because Haiti refused to take him back and we just accepted that.” And another American died.

3) But it is not just drug cartel violence and criminals we need to worry about because of a porous border and lousy immigration practices by the Obama administration. Bill Gertz, writing for the Washington Beacon on August 22, 2016, pointed out the recent government announcement that the drug cartels are working to smuggle Middle Eastern Sunni terrorists into the U.S. over the porous Mexican border.

The U.S. military’s Southcom Command recently issued an intelligence report via its J-2 intelligence organization that ‘“special interest aliens” are working with a known alien smuggling network in Latin America to reach the United States. The smuggling network was not identified. 

Army Col. Lisa A. Garcia, a Southcom spokeswoman, did not address the intelligence report directly but said Sunni terrorist infiltration is a "security concern”: “Networks that specialize in smuggling individuals from regions of terrorist concern, mainly from the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, the Middle East, and East Africa, are indeed a concern for Southcom and other interagency security partners who support our country’s national security.”

While Obama and others like to downplay the illegal immigration problem, saying that these are just poor people looking for a better life, they are either lying or are out of touch with the reality uncovered by the Southcom Command, said one intelligence official of the Southcom report: “This makes the case for Trump’s wall. These guys are doing whatever they want to get in the country.”

But this Washington Free Beacon article is not the only report on the smuggling of potential terrorists into the country via Mexico. The Washington Times ran an article in June that an international alien smuggling operation in Brazil helped sneak illegal immigrants from Middle Eastern states to the United States, including an Afghan linked to a terror plot in North America. At least a dozen Middle East people reached the Western Hemisphere through this alien smuggling ring that facilitated travel to Mexico, the Times reported based on internal government documents.

That will do it for today but more discussion tomorrow on how the porous Mexican border is dangerous to ordinary Americans, be they addicted to and die from cheap Mexican heroin, the violence that kills Americans in our streets as a result of that heroin trade or they die or attacked from the Obama administration releasing known criminal illegal immigrants onto our streets, and how our porous border may get terrorists inserted into this country. Maybe that wall might not be a bad idea after all, if one cares about the safety of Americans.

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