November, 2017, Part 1, Political Class Insanity: The IRS Apologizes, Politicians' Perversion, and Economic Ignorance Still Exists

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.

Note: we realize that November, 2017 has not started yet but trust me, we have so much political class insanity to get to this month that we are going to start a few days early in order to get it all in:

1) Several years ago it became clear that Obama had weaponized the IRS. This led the IRS to start a scorched earth campaign to make sure that non-liberal and non-Democratic Party groups and organizations would be denied a non-profit status from the IRS. This crippled hundreds of organizations from exercising their First Amendment rights of free speech and quite possibly helped Obama get elected to a second term.

Obama, of course, denied any of this was happening, claiming that rogue agents in one IRS office had done some bad deeds. He made this announcement before any investigation had been done, hoping to kill the scandal in its early stages. Eventually Congressional hearings were held but nothing was done since the 2012 election had come and gone and Obama had been reelected, quite possibly because of his weaponizing of the iRS to harass and impede Conservatives and Republicans.

Of course, Democrats claimed nothing nefarious had happened. But according to a recent article on the Daily Caller website by Jack Crowe on October 26, 2017, it looks like quite a lot of First Amendment trashing did actually occur:

• The Federal government recently settled two class action lawsuits that had been filed by Tea Party organizations that alleged that Obama’s Justice Department discriminated against them solely because of their contrary political views.
• Over 400 organizations reached an undisclosed monetary settlement.
• They got this settlement because, as Attorney Jeff Session said that these organizations had their tax exempt status rulings delayed or denied “based solely on their viewpoint or ideology” and that “The [Internal Revenue Service]’s use of these criteria [holding a contrary political view] as a basis for heightened scrutiny was wrong and should never have occurred...It is improper for the IRS to single out groups for different treatment based on their names or ideological positions.”
• In court filings the IRS apologized: “The IRS admits that its treatment of Plaintiffs during the tax-exempt determination process, including screening their applications based on their names or policy positions, subjecting those applications to heightened scrutiny and inordinate delays, and demanding some Plaintiffs’ information that TITA determined was unnecessary to the agency’s determination of their tax-exempt status, was wrong. For such treatment, the IRS expresses its sincere apology.”

So, not only did Obama help himself in his 2012 election campaign by wiping out the voices of at least 400 organizations that did not support his reelection, misusing and abusing Federal government resources in the process, his antics also cost the American taxpayer and undisclosed amount of money used to pay this settlement. And nobody went to jail for this obviously illegal and unethical use of government power to suppress First Amendment rights of Americans. Insanity.

2) First, we had a Democratic President in John Kennedy who was an adulterer before and during the time he was President. Then along came Democrat Bill Clinton who was a likely sexual predator before, during, and after his time as President. This was followed by Democratic Congressman Anthony Weiner who could not stop himself from sexting with a variety of women even though he was married and his wife was pregnant, eventually being found guilty of sexting to a minor. And most recently, we have movie mogul Harvey E Weinstein, a heavy, heavy supporter of Democrats across the country including Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama now under fire for allegedly sexually harassing many, many young hollywood actresses over the years.

But deviant sexual behavior is not limited to national well known Democratic politicians and supporters. On October 11, 2017, police raided the home of Phillip Ahr who was a member of the Radnor, Pennsylvania Township Board of Commissioners. His alleged crime was child pornorgraphy. The police found hundreds of images and videos of child pornography. According to the news reports of the arrest, the material collected was disgusting in its abuse of kids as young as three to five years old.

It is so sadly insane that so many in the current American political class are useless, inane, inept, and distressingly and morally corrupt, from the White House to Hollywood to a small town in Pennsylvania.

3) We have often discussed the economic idiocy of the political class, especially as it applies to the minimum wage issue in the country. Many politicians have been obsessed with the nonsense concept of a “living wage” and in several areas across the country have raised the minimum wage level to $15 an hour in a futile attempt to get low end jobholders a “livable wage.”

However, ignoring economic sensibilities, the result of jacking up the minimum wage almost always results in businesses going out of business and many people losing their job, giving them a wage level per hour of $0.00. No matter how many real life examples that occur which reinforce the need for the market to set prices/wages, politicians still insist that raising the minimum wage is always a good thing and always results in much more hardship than it saves.

The Independent Journal Review recently ran an article by Will Ricciardella that described an example of a pizzeria that went out of business because it tried to force a $15 minimum wage into a market that would not support it, much like what happens when politicians mandate an unrealistic minimum wage:

• Dudley Dough was a Boston pizza parlor that was dedicated to providing its employees a “fair wage” environment to work in, i.e. it raised its minimum wages to “above marketplace” wages without a politician mandate.
• However, Dudley Dough had to go out of business because its high wages did not enable it to stay profitable, according to reporting by the Boston Globe.
• Bing Broderick, executive director for the nonprofit Haley House, which oversaw the parlor’s operations stated: “The challenge for Dudley Dough was to support itself. While popular, the shop is not breaking even financially.” 
• This was a marketplace issue since three other restaurants opened for business at the same time that Dudley Dough opened and they are still operating.
• So instead of getting marketplace determined wages, the Dudley Dough employees will be getting no wages.
• Making the failure of Dudley Dough even more dramatic is that it could not stay profitable even though Robert Kraft, the owner of the New England Patriots, gave the pizza parlor a $100,000 donation, a head start every other successful restaurant did not get yet they are still in business.

But I would bet that politicians will learn nothing from this basic economic lesson: the marketplace always wins. When politicians or others try to force the marketplace to bend to their prejudices, it never works out for the people that those politicians are supposed to be helping, the workers who lose their jobs because of politicians’ economic ignorance.

More insanity to follow. It is going to be a wild ride of insanity this month, guaranteed.

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