January, 2020, Part 2, Political Class Insanity: NYC School Failures, Ocasio-Cortez Idiocy and Hypocrisy and More California Stupidity

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) More and more it seems like we are talking about how certain states, Illinois, California, and New Jersey are starting into a death spiral along so many dimensions including financial and quality of life. As result, we see more and more people from those states bailing out to find better lives for themselves and their families elsewhere.

And California added to their problems with some looser law enforcement when it comes to crime in the state:

• A state law passed several years ago downgraded certain crimes which made committing those crimes a low risk proposition.
• The law, known as Proposition 47, downgraded theft of merchandise and drugs with a value under $950 to a simple misdemeanor., assuming if the robbers get caught.
• Even worse, the police now do not even respond to these types of crimes which means that the petty criminals and not so petty criminals who keep their thefts under the $950 basically get free reign to steal at will.
• As a result, stores are seeing a surge in shoplifting losses and organized crime rings have formed to steal products and resell them on a thriving black market, all without much chance of ever being arrested and prosecuted.
• And it is not just stores, if someone steals something out of your car that is valued less than $950, good luck getting the police or City Hall to help you find and arrest those that stole from you. 
• According to a San Francisco Fox News report: “Over in the City by the Bay’s famous Tenderloin district, Cassie, a 21-year-old mother of two and a former heroin junkie, told Fox News that when times were tough, she too has stolen from stores. “If my babies need diapers or formula, who is going to get that for me? No one. I have to do it,” she said. “They ain’t out here arresting people for (shoplifting) and everyone knows it.””

Again, law abiding, tax paying citizens are not going to stand for this nonsense forever. At some point, people and businesses are going to leave the state and leave the lawlessness and financial death spiral behind. In our last post we talked about how California is losing loads of population every year, so much so that they are likely to lose a Congressional seat after this year’s Census.

California politicians have raised the level of political class insanity to all time levels.

2) America spends more on a per student basis to educate our kids but American kids always get their butts kicked when measured against the educational attainment of kids in other countries. Public education, ultimately the responsibility of politicians at the local and state level, is generally a miserable failure in this country.

Nowhere is this failure more obvious than in the New York City school system:

• Based on an analysis of recent test scores, 90% of NYC schools had failed to educate their kids in English and math skills, only 10% did a decent job of educating their kids.
• According to a New York Post article: “More than 140 New York City elementary and middle schools had at least one grade where more than 90 percent of kids flunked their state exams last academic year.” 
• 23 NYC schools had at least one entire class where not a single kid passed the math or English proficiency test.
• And these dismal results are attained despite the city education department having an annual budget of $24 billion, spending a whopping $17,500 per student on average.
• In some of the failed schools the cost is even more outrageous, up to $30,000 spent on each kid for failing test results.
• In a middle school in Harlem, 57 eighth graders took the math test and NONE of them passed.
• Another city school, Ethan Allen Elementary school, had all 47 of their fifth graders also flunk the math test.
• Of the 57 students at Williams T. Davis Elementary School, 57 third graders took the math and English tests: only one out of the 57 passed the math test and only three out of 57 passed the English test.
• When Department of Education spokesperson Danielle Filson was asked why 90% or more of the city schools are showing the failing scores, of 142 failing schools, she optimistically stated that, “This is actually good news. Why? Because in 2017, they had more than 190 schools in that category.”
• Talk about attaining a low bar of achievement, we still stink but we do not stink as much as we did last year!

Obviously there are some big root causes of failure here. Maybe it is overworked teachers. Maybe it is lousy teachers with lousy teaching abilities. Maybe it is a lack of a supportive family for these kids. Maybe it is a lousy teacher union structure that allows lousy teachers to continue to teach at low levels. 

I do not know, I am not an education expert. But it seems that something is really, really wrong when $24 billion a year gets you a bunch of uneducated kids EVERY year. Or, maybe it is just a case of low performing politicians. Over the past six months the mayor of New York City, Bill de Blasio, has been busy: 1) running for President and 2) publicly complaining that Dominos charged $30 for a pizza on New Years Eve. Maybe if he stopped running a vanity Presidential effort and bemoaning the price of pizza for a single day out of the year he might have some time to fix the horribly broken NYC schools.

But that would require some ability, a trait that very few American politicians have these days.

3) We have tried to keep our discussion regarding Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortezx to a minimum. In the beginning, her ignorance and idiocy was amusing. Over time she has become a drone of hateful rhetoric without providing any solutions. 

But sometimes she says something so awful, so wrong, and so hateful that we need to address it. At a recent Bernie Sanders campaign event, she made the following three statements:

• “We need to fight to start this work, the establishment of an advanced society,” Ocasio-Cortez whined, implying the United States is not advanced.
• “The richest country—who cares about how much gold is being amassed if we can't realize an advanced society with those resources?” 
• “We're here to say that what we're living in right now is not an advanced society, a society that allows people.”

Where to start, so many idiocies in these three short statements:

- If we are not an advanced society, than what country is?

• Most of those living in this country have clean running water, safe sewage systems, a top notch communications system, and public education for every kid.
• Even people that live in poverty in this country likely have a color TV, a cell phone, and a car.
• We have the longest running democracy in the history of mankind.
• Our free market based system has created the largest and wealthiest middle class in the history of mankind.
• Many, many devastating diseases have been conquered in labs across this country, giving us healthier and longer lifetimes.

- You talk about “gold being amassed” but you say these words while wearing large gold earrings and wearing an expensive designer outfit like you have done many other times with your $300 haircuts. Not quite walking the talk Congresswoman.

- ”That allows people…” to do what? What is the goal you want, what is the way to get it. Or are you just blowing hot air? In this country you can try to do just about anything you want in any career that you want in any part of the country that you want. What are you not allowed to do?

As with everything she says, she never has a solution to a problem or issue. She just bitches about something that upsets her and lashes out at anyone who has a different opinion than hers. In all her blathering she never has shown the ability to understand root causes of a problem and thus, will never provide a solution to any problem. 

Oh, by the way, she went on to describe the current situation in the country as fascism. But she obviously does not have a clue to what facism is so we will give her a break on that idiocy and not dwell on this stupidity.

4) But we will close with her hypocrisy. More than once she has railed against rich people inserting their money and influence into politics. Okay, her right to complain about too much money in the country’s politics, we would probably agree with her at some level on this reality. 

But if you are going to rant and rave about billionaire’s using their private wealth to support their own campaigns or promote others, you cannot accept money from those same billionaires that you are criticizing. Which is exactly what she did. According to OpenSecrets.org, she accepted a $2,700 donation from billionaire Tom Steyer for her campaign back in 2018. This is the same Tom Steyer that is spending his megabucks on his own Presidential run this year.

But her hypocrisy extends beyond her 2018 campaign and extends to a recent rant she had: “It’s called giving a damn. It’s called having standards for your conduct to not be funded by billionaires, but to be funded by the people.”

As with most politicians, do as I say, not what I do. Whether it is accepting campaign contributions from billionaires while cursing billionaires’ money or buying designer clothes and getting $300 haircuts while criticizing the country that made that wardrobe and hair style possible, the hypocrisy of American politicians has no end or integrity. Insanity.

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:

https://www.amazon.com/Walter-Bruno-Korschek/e/B002KYU08Q/ref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share

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