September, 2016, Part 4, Political Class Insanity: Moldy Government Buildings, More Chciago Violence, and More

It is the beginning of 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.

The current monthly record for the number of days needed to cover one month's worth of insanity is ten. We almost equaled that record last month when we needed nine days to cover one month’s worth of political class insanity. There is a very good chance that the ten day record could fall this month since as we get closer and closer to the election, the volume of ineptness grows almost exponentially. 

But today and for all of the posts this month, let’s start off with a welcome piece of honest political dialog. It comes from a State Department spokesperson.Mark Toner, who is about to start the daily State Department press briefing. In a joking matter, he makes the following quote: "Welcome to the State Department. I think we have some interns in the back. Welcome. Good to see you in this exercise in transparency and democracy." 

He then burst out laughing at his own quote, indicating he also knew what a joke the Obama administration has been, especially Mr. Toner’s State Department, when it comes to cover ups, lack of transparency, denial of Freedom of Information Act requests, the prosecution of whistleblowers, etc. But at least it was a little refreshing to finally hear some actual honesty out of Washington as we see from the actual clip of the news conference:

http://www.againstcronycapitalism.org/2016/08/when-even-the-state-department-spokesperson-cant-keep-a-straight-face-about-things-anymore-video/

With that context of honesty, let’s see what other insanity has been going down:

1) Unfortunately, every month we have to check in on the gun violence insanity of Chicago. Chicago, which has some of the strictest gun control laws in the country, also has one of the highest gun violence rates in the country, violence that happens at a high rate every day of every month. 

This month is no exception. According to a Breitbart article on August 29, 2016 by Awe Hawkins, 57 people were shot and wounded and 10 were killed during the previous weekend in Chicago. One of the dead was 32-year-old Nykea Aldridge, a mother of four and cousin of Chicago Bulls’ star Dwayne Wade. She was shot and killed Friday while pushing one of her children in a stroller. And these shootings were not over an entire week, they all occurred between 4 pm Friday and 1 am Monday.

The Chicago Tribune reported that with the latest shootings, the year to date total of Chicago gunshot victims is 2,818 and the number who have died as a result of these shootings is 464. For all of 2015, the number of shooting victims was 2,988 and the number who have died was 490. Needless to say, this year’s violence will overwhelm last year’s total year totals.

And as always, the political class has no solution or creativity in resolving this horrific situation. They cannot call for much more gun control because they have already maxed out that failed strategy. 

Any successful strategy has to involve a re-examination of our lost war on drugs since we have previously reported that at least two Mexican drug cartels are violently operating in the city and nothing about the violence will be resolved until the war on drugs is stopped and replaced with something that works. This approach would require a multi-dimensional thought process from Washington, something that has never happened.

2) How dissatisfied are Americans with the current set of American politicians, a set that we assert are the worst set of politicians to ever serve this country? According to the latest Quinnipiac public opinion poll, 62% of Americans want the Presidential debates to include Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson in addition to Clinton and Trump. And even more amazing, 82% American millenials want Johnson to be allowed into the debates.

Obviously, Americans, especially younger Americans, are searching for alternatives to the same tired ideas and people that the two major parties have continually served up. Unfortunately, these same two tired parties have made the bar for getting into the debates quite high. Johnson would have to attain at least a 15% rating in a set of opinion polls to be considered, which creates a catch-22: he cannot get enough exposure to attain the needed poll ratings to get into the debates and by not getting into the debates he cannot get enough exposure to get the higher poll ratings.

But as the poll results show, hopefully America is finally waking up and realizing that something radically different needs to be done to destroy the current political class elitists who are in the business of politics for themselves, not the people they are supposed to represent.

3) Here are another set of depressing numbers from the political class. Hillary Clinton, who wants to be President of the United States, has given only one interview to the New York Times political reporting staff during her ENTIRE campaign. Donald Trump has given over 70 interviews to the Times.

Which raises the obvious question: what is she scared of or what is she hiding? The New York Times is more than likely going to give her favorable treatment despite whatever she says, given the paper’s heavy liberal leaning so what gives? Shouldn’t she be more accessible to the press in order for Americans to find out what she is really all about? Again, what is she hiding or afraid of, democracy?

4) Another interesting and depressing statistic comes to us from the website:

www.fivethirtyeight.com

According to the site, only 37 out of 435 House Of Representative seats are considered to be competitive, i.e. both Republicans and Democrats have a decent chance of winning them. Which means that a whopping 398 House seats are a sure lock to be won by either a sitting Republican or a sitting Democrat. This is because current politicians have rigged the electoral process by gerrymandering Congressional districts and setting themselves up to receive overwhelming financial support as a result of their incumbency, drowning out any alternative options.

Thus, if you are a Republican in a Congressional district that has a Democrat representing that district, your vote likely has no value, given how rigged the system is. Conversely, if you are a Democrat in a Congressional district that has a Republican representing that district, your vote likely has no value. And thus, democracy dies because of the rigging of the system.

We had a number of solutions for this idiocy and disgrace in our book, “Love My Country, Loathe My Government,” which would fix the gerrymandering problem and the problem of incumbents getting too much money from outside interests which overwhelms alternative voices. Visit our website for purchase details or buy it on Amazon:

www.loathemygovernment.com

5) The following insanity and wasteful spending comes to us from the Convention of States website:

• In 1997, the Federal government paid a Pensacola builder $10 million to build a courthouse for the U.S. Court of the Northern District of Florida.
• From the beginning, the building has been plagued with a toxic mold problem that made the building uninhabitable.
• As a result, the General Services Administration (GSA) of the Federal government has had to spend almost $11 million to relocate Federal employees to other locations who would have normally been quartered in this moldy courthouse.
• This extra relocation expense is expected to exceed $20 million before the problem is fixed.
• To fix the mold problem, the GSA says it expects to spend $31 million to fix what is a $10 million building, i.e. it will take three times the amount of money to fix a building than what it cost to build it in the first place.
• Pensacola Congressman Jeff Miller summed up this ineptness quite nicely: “This is a situation where the facility itself has had problems from the very beginning. Poor design problem, poor construction, and GSA, unfortunately, has been trying to sweep the problem under the rug.” 
• This court’s top judge, Chief Judge M. Casey Rogers, also chimed in: “Incredibly, GSA has never answered to anyone, much less its tenants, for its failure to properly address, and competently resolve, the situation.” 

But do you want to bet that no one in the GSA or anywhere else got fired for such incompetence.? This is what happens when government spends our money: it is not their money so they do not take care to be efficient and effective with it, there are no ramifications for not safeguarding taxpayer wealth. And as the Federal government and associated bureaucracy gets bigger and bigger and more bloated, the wasteful and careless spending expands exponentially. And no one is accountable.

That will do it for today’s insanity: paying for moldy buildings, destroying democracy via gerrymandering and too much money in elections, preventing alternative voices to debate, and more death and violence in Chicago. No wonder people are looking for alternatives to what we are stuck with now in office. More insanity 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