April, 2020, Part 5, Political Class Insanity: Insanity From Around The World

It is the beginning of another month which means it is time again to review the latest political class insanity from the American political class. Each month it takes us multiple posts to cover the wasteful spending, incompetent government organizations and employees, government programs that usually make a problem worse than resolving it, inane and idiotic politician comments, etc.

To review past posts on this insanity and idiocy, just click on the first few posts in each month listed to the right of this page. After reviewing just a handful of these insanity posts we think you will agree that we are currently being served by the worst set of American politicians ever to hold office in our entire history.

1) Today let’s stay away from the coronavirus political class insanity and look at the regular, run-of-the mill insanity from our politicians and politicians around the world. Let’s start today with some insane waste of taxpayer money in Worcester, Massachusetts:

• The politicians in that city wanted to provide a new, minor league baseball park for a minor league baseball team.
• The first insult to the citizens of that city was to use eminent domain to condemn and then seize the property of two small businesses for the ballpark.
• They then put up a whopping $100 million of city taxpayer wealth to fund the construction of the ballpark.
• The patrons of the new ballpark will be the top minor league team of the Boston Red Sox.
• Keep in mind that the Red Sox are one of the wealthiest major league baseball teams in the world, annually paying just their major league players around $200 million a year in salaries.
• And yet the politicians in Worcester decided that they needed to put forth $100 million in city funds to lure the Red Sox minor league team away from their current ballpark in Rhode Island where that city’s politicians would only promise a whopping $38 million in stadium upgrades.
• When the Worcester Business Journal asked 10 economists to evaluate the value of this investment, nine of the ten doubted the city would ever recoup its investment. 
• The lone dissenter of the ten just happened to come from Smith College and who had been hired by the city to justify this outrageous waste of taxpayer wealth.

The city of Worcester has just under 200,000 residents which means that each city resident, man, woman, and child theoretically put up $537 to fund the $100 million investment. Does anyone really think that those people will ever recoup their hypothetical $537 tax hit? They are all still going to have to pay for parking, hot dogs, tickets, etc. 

They will never break even even though the $100 million went to support one of the richest team franchises in the world. How many more computers for the city schools could have been bought for $100 million? How many more teachers could have been hired for $100 million? How many city roads could have been fixed or improved for $100 million? Instead the city politicians gave millions of dollars to a billion dollar baseball team. Insane.

2) The following few pieces of insanity come from the April, 2020 issue of Reason magazine. First off, consider the “coincidence” that happened in the local government of Inglewood, California:

• That city has a housing authority that has funding to subsidize the purchase of a first home for needy city residents.
• Sounds like a decent program with good intentions.
• Given that info, consider the backgrounds of a city employee, Jazmine Covington.
• Ms. Covington worked for the city housing authority when the guidelines for the first time buyer housing subsidy program were being developed.
• Her mother is the city’s acting budget manager.
• And yet, given the background of these two folks, city government employees, guess who was the first person to get money from the housing authority to purchase her first home: none other than Jazmine Covington!
• What a coincidence, a person who helped develop the guidelines and criteria for getting taxpayer money, the daughter of the city’s budget manager, she just so happened to get the first subsidy, again, what a coincidence.
• The head of the housing authority, Roberto Chavez, tried his darndest to assure everyone that this selection of a city employee to get the first subsidy was totally kosher, no monkey business here: “There have been no violations of its policies nor special exceptions made for any entrant including Ms. Covington."
• And further, the selection of Ms. Covington was via a lottery process and she just so happened to have the lottery pick her, what are the odds?

The bigger question, Mr. Chavez, is why she was in the lottery in the first place? I would think that a city employee is probably paid decently, more than most other lower income people who were probably more deserving and more in need of housing support. This could all be legit but given American politicians' propensity to take care of themselves and their friends and family first, I have my doubts.

3) Political class insanity is not just an American trait. Consider this insanity from Australia:

• One would think that any investment in fire fighting in a city or other government entity would be solely to provide the most up to date and needed fire fighting equipment to fight fires.
• I mean that is why fire departments exist, to protect the lives and property of the taxpayers who pay the taxes to staff, equip, and support their fire fighting capability.
• That is not quite true in the state of Western Australia.
• You see, they have a rule that says that if the value of any public building is to be over $2 million, then 1% of that cost must be diverted to buying and displaying works of art in that building.
• Yes, rather than buy new and/or better equipment, some fire stations in that state have had to spend taxpayer money to buy art to be displayed in their fire stations.

To hell with saving lives, have you seen that wonderful oil painting next to the fire truck? Too insane to believe sometimes.

4) Sometimes the first act of political class insanity leads to subsequent, even more insane acts of insanity to try and fix the first act. Such is the case in France:

• Apparently in France, only a doctor can pronounce someone officially dead.
• This act cannot be done by a coroner, pathologist, nurse, or anyone else.
• In fact, a dead body cannot be moved until a real doctor certifies them as dead.
• The problem in France is that there is a continually shrinking pool of doctors.
• This has led to a growing problem, especially in rural areas, that if someone dies at home, the family sometimes has to wait days for a doctor to actually come by and actually make the pronouncement of death.
• Rather than logically fix the problem, i.e. allow other trained and certified personnel to make the death pronouncement so that dead bodies do not stay around a family home for days, the brilliance of the French political class shown through.
• The politicians in a town passed a law, according to the New York Times, that made it illegal to die at home.

Somehow dictating where one could be allowed to die was going to solve this idiocy.

You cannot make this stuff up: a local government dictating where you can die, spending valuable firefighting taxpayer money on works of art, nepotism in housing subsidies, and wasting $100 million on a minor league baseball team, uprooting upstanding small businesses in the process. Thus, as you can see, political class insanity rages on even during the days of the coronavirus 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