February, 2019, Part 4, Polticial CLass Insanity: A Cowardly Viriginia Politcian, Common Core;s Death In Florida, and Pelosi's Continued Abuse Of Taxpayer Wealth

It is 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) The state government of Virginia recently put together an abhorrent, repugnant abortion bill. That is my opinion but this is not the time to discuss the proposed legislation or abortion in general. This discussion is about a cowardly state legislator who made a fool out of herself once the heat came fast and hard from those that also found the legislation to be...abhorrent and repugnant:

• Keep in mind that this state politician CO-SPONSORED the legislation.
• She did not just vote for it or just support it, she CO-SPONSORED it.
• Once the heat came, she came up with the lame excuse that she would not have co-sponsored the abortion bill if she had read it more closely.
• Politician Dawn Adams sent out an email to her voters that she “did not exercise due diligence.”

So Ms. Adams, you are either a terrible legislator that goes around co-sponsoring legislation that you never really read or understood, especially legislation like this that is sure to be controversial, or you are a coward and a hypocrite who refuses to stand up for what you believe. In either case, lazy or cowardly, you are not worthy to represent your voters.

2) Common Core has been a disaster across the country, one that we have discussed many times. We showed that when Maryland implemented the Common Core curriculum, its test scores that were trending upwards took an almost immediately downward turn. Massachusetts, which traditionally had the top rated public schools in the country, soon found its ranking fall to seventh best almost immediately after implementing Common Core.

Which brings us to a rare positive, good piece of political class insanity:

• According to the Shark Tank website, the new governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, asserted that he will issue an executive order to terminate Common Core in Florida.
• DeSantis said that, “Let’s get this right. We want high quality (education), we want to demand excellence, but we want to do that (reform) in a way that’s responsive to the concerns we’ve had over the years.”
• Rather than rely on the Federal government, a thousand miles away to force standardized and bad education standards on every kid in the country, an effort that has failed miserably, De Santis claims that all state citizens will have the opportunity to provide input to the Education Commissioner for developing the state’s education standards, i.e. bottoms up participation in education vs. the Federal government top down dictate process.
• As a first step to fixing what Washington broke, DeSantis also stressed that he wants to identify ways to make civics education a priority in Florida: “Civics education was something that I promised during the campaign….and it will pay dividends for us far into the future.” 

The real political class insanity is that the Federal government, mostly via the Obama administration, probably wasted billions and billions of taxpayer dollars on a failed education process. At least DeSantis is finally fixing what the Feds broke.

3) Nancy Pelosi has always been, in our eyes, the prototypical useless politician. She somehow manages to get herself reelected time and time again without ever producing anything worthwhile, be it as a regular Congress person or as Speaker of The House. Her verbal gaffes have been classic, showing her to be out of touch and useless when it comes to resolving the major issues of our times.

But her gaffes and inabilities have never slowed her down when it comes to abusing and using taxpayer wealth to her own benefit:

• Judicial Watch, a Washington watchdog group, recently came across a bunch of government documents under the Freedom Of Information Act relative to Pelosi.
• Apparently, she has some expensive tastes when it comes to flying around the world.
• In 2015, she took a group of people, including politicians and their spouses, on a trip to Milan, Rome, and Naples.
• There they enjoyed private tours of the Vatican Museum, Sistine Chapel, a viewing of Vinci’s “Last Supper” and other private tours/viewings.
• They then took a flight over to Kiev in the Ukraine.
• And no fast food for them on the trip since trip their included a meal at the high end James Beard American Restaurant restaurant in Milan, where “more than 30 award-winning chefs from across America will take turns, on a rotational basis, to prepare dinners,” the Milan City Guide reported at the time.
• The average price for a meal at this place: $200 per person, taxpayer funded of course.
• Cost to the taxpayers for this junket: almost $185,000.

Fortunately, Trump shut down another of her planned boondoggle trips, this time to Belgium, Egypt, and Afghanistan in order to get her to focus on the government shutdown.

But this type of ego boosting waste is not new to Pelosi. When she was Speaker under Obama she used military planes often for her vacation like excursions, racking up over $2 million in travel expenses, expenses that included $101,429 in in flight expenses for food and alcohol. 

During just a single trip, Judicial Watch found documents that showed she and her travel partners drank “Johnny Walker Red scotch, Grey Goose vodka, E&J brandy, Baileys Irish Cream, Maker’s Mark whisky, Courvoisier cognac, Bacardi Light rum, Jim Beam whiskey, Beefeater gin, Dewar’s scotch, Bombay Sapphire gin, Jack Daniels whiskey, Corona beer and several bottles of wine.”

So, whenever Pelosi pulls the holier than thou act on us, keep in mind that she has been living high and mighty non taxpayer dollars for a long, long time.

That will do it for today’s insanity: Pelosi abusing taxpayer wealth (nothing new here), hopefully the death spiral of an expensive and failed Federal program Common Core, and a cowardly or lazy Virginia politician that does not know what she it sponsoring when it comes to legislation. More insanity to follow.

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