April, 2019, Part 4, Political Class Insanity: More Carnage In Chicago, Lobbying Dollars Beat Out Citizens'Needs and More

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) We often check in with Chicago, a city sitting in a state that both have some of the most stringent gun control laws in the whole country. Politicians, mostly Democrats in Chicago and Illinois, seem to think that disarming citizens of their guns rights and Second Amendment rights will make the runaway gun violence go away in the city of Chicago.

What these fools continually refuse to understand is that having a law does not mean that criminals will obey the laws, they are criminal for heaven’s sakes. So let’s see what is going on in Chicago now that the nicer spring weather has started:

• According to Warner Todd Huston writing for the Godfathers Politics website, gun violence resulted in 18 citizens in Chicago getting shot in just one day, a recent Monday.
• Of the 18 who were shot, three died.
• Chicago has usually had 10 to 30 people shot every weekend but in just one recent day 18 were shot.
• The previous weekend, 28 people were shot and five died.
• Of the 28, 6 people were shot at a baby shower according to the Chicago Sun Times including two toddlers.

The carnage in the city has been going on for years and not a single city or state politician seems to have any clue on how to fix the problem except to make it more and more difficult for honest, non-gang member, non-criminals to use the Second Amendment to protect themselves.

2) According to the Pro Publica website in an article by Justin Elliot, the IRS has had a long standing dream to provide a simple, online process that would allow ordinary citizens to easily, at no cost, to file their income tax returns without the use of a tax preparation service or accountant. The dream is that a citizen could go to the website and the IRS would have already populated a lot of the taxpayer’s tax forms since they would already have access to to a taxpayer’s 1099 and W-2 forms.

Nice idea which is probably why Congress is about to enact legislation that would permanently ban the IRS from providing a free, easy service to citizens:

• The pending legislation is called the deceptive Taxpayer First Act.
• One of the parts of the legislation is to make “it illegal for the IRS to create its own online system of tax filing.”
• Not surprisingly, tax preparation companies like TurboTax, H&R Block and others have long lobbied Washington politicians to not allow the IRS to provide a free, easy service to taxpayers since it would likely reduce their customer and revenue base.
• Apparently, other countries already provide such a process to their own taxpayers.
• The Free File Alliance, a deceptively named industry group consisting of tax preparation companies, “says 70% of American taxpayers are eligible to file for free. Those taxpayers, who must make less than $66,000, have access to free tax software provided by the companies. But just 3% of eligible U.S. taxpayers actually use the free program each year. Critics of the program say that companies use it as a cross-marketing tool to up sell paid products, that they have deliberately under promoted the free option and that it leaves consumer data open to privacy breaches.”
• In fact, a member of the group once publicly told its own shareholders that if the IRS went forward “developing software or other systems to facilitate tax return preparation … may present a continued competitive threat to our business for the foreseeable future.”
• Oh, by the way, the Democrat heading up the House Ways and Means committee which is writing the legislation just happened to receive $16,000 in political campaign contributions from Intuit and H&R Block.
• Overall, last year these two companies have poured $6.6 million into lobbying efforts in Washington as it relates to IRS actions and plans.

But we should not be surprised since when it comes to providing low cost, easy opportunities and advantages for ordinary citizens who have no lobbying punch, it is always the money of big special interests that come first over citizens.

3) In Colorado at least, some citizens are trying to take back their freedoms:

• According to the Conservative Alert website, Democrats control both houses of the state government in Colorado and also have a Democratic governor.
• And they have busy executing a very liberal, radical agenda that includes attacking the oil and gas industry, introducing a pro-LGBT sex education bill that prohibits charter schools from opting out of the program, and a new gun control act. 
• But the last time the state Democrats introduced a severe Second Amendment restrictive bill two Democrats were actually taken down with recall efforts.
• And Coloradans are taking this liberal agenda on again.
• Recall actions are back on the burner with angry citizens circulating a petition to repeal some of these Democratic policies and possibly recall the governor.

Hopefully this effort to regain freedom and control over their lives will be successful and state citizens can go about their lives with minimal interference by politicians.

Another day of insanity: carnage continues in Chicago with no end in sight, Washington politicians continue to be driven by money and greed and not the best interests of the country, and Colorado citizens make a bid to be free again.

More insanity to follow.

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