February, 2018, Part 1, Political Class Insanity: California's Massive Plastic Straw Problem, Hillary Protects a Sexual Predator,and More

Note: I know it is not February yet but we have a lot of political class insanity to get through this month so I started this month's series a few days early.

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.

Let's get started:

1) Before we get into days and days of politicians behaving badly and stupidly, let’s review some good news out of Washington. Over the past week or so we have reviewed over 100 instances of good stuff that has happened during Trump’s first year. The final post in that series can be accessed at the following link which also contains three other links to the 100+ good things that have happened:

XXXX

Today’s let’s add one more good thing from Trump’s first year of being President:

• Starbucks recently announced that as a consequence of the Trump tax cuts, it is giving its employees pay raises AND stock grants.
• In addition, employees will be able to earn paid sick time off and the company’s parental leave benefits will include non-birth parents.
• The changes will affect 150,000 Starbucks employees.

It does not happen often but when the political class finally does something good, something to benefit Americans, it is worth noting.

2) Okay, back to the sad reality of American politicians. According to a recent Daily Wire article by Ryan Saavedra on January 26, 2018:

• Hallandale Beach, Florida Mayor Joy Cooper was recently arrested by Federal law enforcement officials.
• The charges include money laundering and corruption activities that were identified by an FBI sting.
• According to the officials in charge, the crimes include "money laundering, official misconduct and exceeding limits on campaign contributions, all of which are third-degree felonies. Prosecutors also charged her with soliciting contributions in a government building, which is a first-degree misdemeanor."
• The Florida governor immediately suspended Cooper as mayor of Hallandale Beach.
• It is alleged that Cooper asked for campaign contributions from a developer that was higher than the legal limit, she accepted money she thought was from an unlawful activity, and falsified campaign treasury reports.
• Cooper could face up to five years in jail for each of the felonies she is accused of and one year for the misdemeanor she is accused of.

Again, in this country Cooper is assumed innocent until proven guilty. But really, do we really think the FBI and Federal prosecutors would bring a case against a sitting politician if they were not pretty confident in their work?

3) As everyone probably knows by now, the country has finally awakened to the rampant sexual predator behavior of powerful men that has been going on for a very long time in politics, the mainstream media, and show business. Fortunately, the problem is being recognized and addressed legally and professionally.

Which brings us to our next piece of political class insanity from an article by the New York Times, written by Maggie Haberman and Amy Chozick, on January 26, 2018:

• When Hillary Clinton first ran for President back in 2008, she had a senior advisor on her staff named Burns Strider.
• Mr. Strider was Clinton's faith advisor, a title that I have no idea what it means. 
• But the bottom line is that Strider was accused during that 2008 campaign run of repeatedly sexually harassing a young woman on his staff.
• Given the multiple witnesses to the harassment, the Times article claims there were four witnesses, Clinton’s campaign manager suggested that Strider be fired.
• However, even given the seriousness of the alleged actions, Clinton instead docked him a few weeks pay, ordered him to undergo counseling and moved the woman being harassed to a new job.
• In fact, Strider was hired five years later by Clinton to lead an organization that supported her 2016 Presidential run.
• He was fired from the group several months later for harassing a young female aide.

Given that the press crucified Trump for his known and alleged sexual harassment and grossness, you wonder if that same press and Hillary followers would have been as vocal if they knew that their favorite candidate knew about a sexual predator in her midst and did nothing about it. Note: Strider never did attend the counseling that was requested of him. 

Hypocrisy and another sad commentary on the leadership in this country.

4) Let’s finish up today’s insanity with some really inane and wacked out priorities out in the crazy state of California. Before we get to the latest idiocy, remember some of the things about California that we have recently written about:

• California public schools stink at educating their kids.
• The California state government is facing a mountain of unfunded future financial liabilities that it has little chance of ever fixing.
• California is now the poorest state in the nation when cost of living adjustments are made to income levels and costs of living in the state.
• 40% of Los Angeles residents are so poor that they qualify for Medicaid.
• Like the rest of the country, the state infrastructure is also falling apart.
• It has a massive and growing homelessness problem.

It is a state and a set of state residents that are in very dire straits. But rather than focus on fixing and alleviating these problems that probably touch just about every state resident, the state political class has been working on the following effort:

• According to January 30, 2018 USA Today article, the state government has proposed a law that makes it a crime for a restaurant waiter or waitress to give a customer plastic straw unless that customer requested it.
• If that waiter or waitress did give a customer a plastic straw that was not explicitly requested, that server would then have committed crime and face a $1,000 fine and possibly jail time.
• Ian Calderon is the Democratic assemblyman who wrote the proposed law: “We need to create awareness around the issue of one-time use plastic straws and its detrimental effects on our landfills, waterways, and oceans.”
• And Calderon is not some first time inexperienced legislator, he is the majority leader in California’s lower house.

Sometimes you cannot make up such insanity. And the insanity gets worse because of the following conditions that Calderon put into the proposed legislation:

• He claimed that amendments would be added to the final bill’s wording to remove the threat of a fine or jail time, which begs the question why put the fine and jail time in the bill at all if you are going to negate it with amendments?
• Second, the bill would only apply to sit down restaurants, not fast food businesses or bars, which begs the question what kind of environmental impact are you going to have by reducing the use of plastic straws in restaurants if you eliminate a major chunk of restaurants, besides eliminating the fine and jail time threat? 

So rather than work on fixing failing schools, repairing crumbling infrastructure, reducing the massive homeless problem, fixing the state’s fiscal crisis, this political leader is going to work on passing a law that would fine or jail restaurant servers for giving out unsolicited plastic straws to restaurant patrons….but he was just kidding with the fine and jail time since he would negate those provisions of his law in the law’s amendments...and he was just kidding about the term “restaurants” since he would exempt probably tens of thousands of restaurants, bars and fast food joints, from the law. Wow, one of the most insane pieces of political action we have ever covered.

That will do it for today’s insanity: bad plastic straws priorities, a sexual predator within Hillary’s inner sanctum (wow, that sounds familiar), another potential crooked and corrupt politician, and a little good news for Starbucks workers courtesy of Trump’s tax cuts. Much more insanity to follow in the following days.

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

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http://www.reason.com
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http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w