October, 2017, Part 4, Political Class Insanity: Hillary Clinton's Continued Greed, The Preventable Las Vegas Tragedy, and Medicare's Fiscal Insanity

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.

1)Readers of this blog know that we have never been big fans of Hillary Clinton, either as Secretary of State, Presidential candidate, or human being. She lies, she is greedy, and is likely a criminal who has just not been prosecuted. A recent article by Joe Schoffstall, writing for the Washington Free Beacon on October 1, 2017, gave us another reason not to like her:

• According to Mr. Schoffstall, Hillary Clinton’s Presidential campaign apparently has not returned or donated to charity more than $5,000 that it received from a former co-owner of a website that has been linked to underage prostitution.
• The donation came from a major person involved with Backpage.com which is an online classified website that may have connections to child prostitution.
• Jim Larkin used to be a co-owner of that website and gave the Hillary Victory Fund campaign $5,400 on July 26, 2016 that was then transferred to the Hillary For America campaign committee.
• A search of the Federal Election Commission records shows that the money was not returned or donated to a charity.
• And Hillary cannot claim ignorance since a number of other Democratic politicians, mostly in Arizona, have returned the poisoned money they received, from both Larkin and the other co-owner of the site,  Michael G. Lacey, after the child prostitution allegations became public.
• David Garcia, once a Democratic Party candidate for governor of Arizona, disposed of his Backpage donations by donating the money to homeless youth and victims of sex trafficking.
• Other Arizona politicians have done similar things to rid themselves of these donations including Congresswoman Ann Kirkpatrick who is donating her tainted money to the Arizona Coalition to End Sexual and Domestic Violence.
• According to the article: “The controversy surrounding Backpage.com spilled over after Arizona State University partnered with the Phoenix Police Department and found that 80 percent of the postings on the adult section portion of the website involved prostitution. More than 900 ads were found in the Phoenix area alone, including advertisements for underage girls.”
• The article goes into detail on how Congress and law enforcement have been investigating and detailing the misdeeds of this website and its owners and operators, making almost impossible for HIllary Clinton and her people not to know what type of people have donated to their campaign.

And yet, not surprisingly given Hillary’s penchant for greed regardless of the source and ramifications, the Backpage money she received is still with her campaign even though other, less well known politicians have done the right thing with the donations they received. Insane.

2) Everyone is probably aware of the tragic and senseless mass murder that happened recently in Las Vegas. It is very difficult to explain how someone would go to the trouble and effort that the shooter went to to kill innocent people. Horrible.

One of the reasons the carnage is so great is that the shooter used what is called “bump stocks” which turns a semiautomatic rifle, one in which the trigger has to be pulled for every bullet fired, into an automatic weapon in which the trigger only has to be pulled once to continuously shoot bullets. This allowed the shooter to shoot thousands of bullets with minimal pulling of a trigger, making the death and wounding so much easier and horrific. This allowed the shooter to get around long standing laws that prohibit the possession of automatic weapons.

Adding to the tragedy is that the political class and the Federal government were aware of bump stocks years ago and did nothing to outlaw them or ban them:

• In fact, back in 2010, during the Obama administration, the ATF actually approved the sale of bump stocks.
• According to a Conservative Fighter website article: “The ATF approved the devices because they do not convert a semiautomatic rifle into an automatic. Rather, they are an accessory that allows semiautomatic rifle owners to mimic automatic fire for short bursts.”
• The Washington Post has reported that the ATF official, Rick Vasquez, who signed off on the approval to sell bump stocks called them “a goofy, little doodad.”
• The feeling was that the use of bump stocks results in highly inaccurate aiming and firing and makes weapons jam more easily, at least according to Vasquez: “[Bump stocks are] for those guys who want to look like super ninja when they’re out on the range — they’re the people my peer group makes fun of. If you want a machine gun, join the Marines.”

How did Vasquez and others in charge not anticipate is that the Las Vegas shooter did not have to be accurate with his use of a bump stock? There were over 20,000 people packed into a very small area so just firing in the general direction of a large crowd was going to cause a lot of casualties.

This scenario apparently never entered the minds of those in charge of our safety. As a result almost 60 Americans are dead and hundreds have been injured as a result of another government failure to keep us safe.

3) The Federal government’s total debt load has recently passed a whopping $20 TRILLION. Unless something is done soon to reign in runaway government spending, the entire financial system will collapse when the debt becomes too much for the Federal government and American taxpayer to pay off.

Some of the main drivers of the overwhelming debt load is the fact that Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare are out of control government spending programs. Politicians have made promises via these programs that were never fiscally sound to begin with.

This reality was somberly pointed out in an article in the Weekly Standard’s January 13, 2017 issue. According to the article, by 2030, a high earning American married couple will receive almost $360,000 in lifetime Medicare insurance benefits. But on average that couple would have paid into the Medicare program just over $180,000 during their lifetimes.

No financial arrangement will ever endure if the money it is eventually going to pay out is twice the money it collects for payouts. As the article points out, the American political class has come up with a program, Medicare, that it sold as social insurance but is in actuality, a social welfare program. Promising twice as much than what is collected by a two to one margin is surely the most direct route to bankrupting the country.

That will do it for today’s insanity: a government program that is fiscally insane, a Federal government that pooh poohed a weapon that has resulted in dozens of dead Americans and hundreds of wounded Americans, and the greed of Hillary Clinton continues unabated.

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