Thursday, May 14, 2020

May, 2020, Part 7, Political Class Insanity: More Free POress Failures, Arrogance in the Chicago Mayor's Office, and Bad Priorities In California

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) We have often pointed out that a strong, aggressive, fair, and unbiased free press is critical to defending our rights and freedoms and uncovering scandals and misdeeds by politicians and government officials. We have also often pointed out how the journalism field and news industry in this country have failed to uphold those lofty and important pillars of freedom. 

News reporting and journalism in this country today is a disgrace, amoral, and totally biased to preconceived notions, wants and TV ratings. And the American public has grown more and more tired of journalists and news people being out of integrity for a long time now. According to Gallup, 58% of those surveyed now have very little or no trust in the journalism industry today. That pessimism level was only 28% back in the late 1970s and has trended steadily worse since then.

Nowhere has this failure of the press to be unbiased, fair, and aggressive been more pronounced than in the recent Tara Reade situation. Ms. Reade was a member of Senator Joe Biden’s staff long ago. She has recently accused him of sexual molestation and digitally penetrating her during an encounter many years ago.

When similar accusations were made when Brett Kavanaugh was being considered for the Supreme Court, news outlets, news papers, and news pundits jumped on the accusations immediately and basically concluded that Kavanaugh was guilty of nasty sexual acts without any real proof, facts, or credible evidence, all of which melted away after a very bitter and biased investigation by Congressional Democrats. But the fact remains that the journalism industry in this country jumped on the first inkling of sexual accusation and went hard after Kavanaugh.

But now Ms. Reade comes forth with actually more proof of evidence that Biden is guilty than the Kavanaugh accusers ever had, and the news media, in all forms, somehow choke on their word processing programs:
  • It took the New York Times and Washington Post almost three weeks to even acknowledge that the accusations were being made.
  • CNN took over three weeks to even acknowledge Ms. Reade’s existence on their website and coverage after that was weak and flaccid.
  • And worst of all, National Public Radio (NPR), a left leaning, liberal organization took almost a full month to acknowledge the Reade situation, a fact that NP management recently admitted.
  • NPR reporter Asma Khalid, was assigned the Reade story back in March.
  • Despite the accusations, Khalid did not speak to Reade initially, claiming that she needed to do some research.Her editor at NPR, Kelly McBride, admits that the research process could have been finished inside of one week.
  • Khalid took nearly three weeks to do the “research.”
  • Compare that to the Kavanaugh situation where Khalid issued a report ONE DAY after the Kavanaugh accusations broke, i.e. she didn't take three weeks of research and then another week to put the story together.
  • Not only did it take so long to actually put the Reade NPR story together, Khalid omitted an interview she did with one of Reade’s friends that could have substantiated the claims that Reade has made.
Again, freedom, liberty and democracy relies on a strong and unbiased news industry to process the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Unfortunately, the biases that exist today across all major news outlets not only distorts or ignores the truth, it undermines our freedoms since now nothing is real, nothing is the truth when all news reporting is done for personal, political, or business gain, truth be damned.

2) Let’s go back out to Chicago. The Mayor of Chicago is Lori Lightfoot. She has placed the city under some pretty stringent stay at home rules. But she acted like a typical “do as I say, not as I do” politician when a few weeks ago she had a beauty salon open up, which violated her own rules, to get a haircut. Her response after getting called out for the violation was that she needed to look good since she was in the public eye. Never mind that she violated her own rules and put other Chicago citizens in danger.

But her hypocrisy has continued since that bad optic beauty salon visit:
  • She recently wanted “defiant churches” that she will take action against them if they hold church services in violation of her edicts, the edicts she ignored.
  • She had previously warned churches against holding services via what she called “educational outreach.”
  • Now, she is getting more aggressive and threatening unspecified action if she continues to be ignored: “We’re going to be communicating over and over again over the course of this week. I understand that people are getting anxious. But defying common sense and public health guidance only puts their congregations at physical risk. We’re going to continue to have that discussion but, if necessary, we are going to take action to make sure there is compliance to the stay-at-home orders.”
  • Cristian Ionescu, the pastor at Elim Romanian, called his church’s first in-person service in two months an “extraordinary success” and claimed that his church took extreme measures to protect church participants.
  • He went on to say that political leaders should have worked with the churches in the city and state to protect the First Amendment and the congregants rather than dictate terms and conditions for gatherings: “They should cooperate with us, not dictate to us. I take offense that they think they care more about our people than us.”
  • Joe Wyrostek, pastor of Metro Praise International Church had the same view: “I just feel like we were put at the back of the bus. We were not in any of the discussions. We have to stand up for ourselves at some point. We’ve lost trust in what they’re doing. We have to peacefully resist and see where it goes.”
It is certainly easy to lose trust in elected officials when they violate their own rules to get their hair looking nice. The purpose and skill of a politician is leading and peacefully coming to a consensus that addresses any many issues and concerns as possible across all parties. Dictating what one should do and not do is not leadership, it is authoritarian.

3) One last piece of local political class insanity to finish up today. We have often pointed out how screwed up the state of California is, from huge unfunded budget liability holes to failing schools to crumbling roads to a dysfunctional housing market to an enormous homeless problem to higher and higher taxes. 

Thus, given these critical issues. One would hope that local and state opticians were hard at work, focused on these issues that probably touch every single resident of the state and not in a good way. 

But you hope would be crushed when you find out what one state politician’s priorities are:
  • Evan Low is a California state assemblyman.
  • In February, he introduced legislation that would make it illegal for retail stores with 500 or more employees to have separate boys and girls sections for clothing and toys in their stores.
  • Of course, such requirements would increase store merchandising costs which would either reduce the stores’ profits or much more likely result in higher prices for consumers and shoppers in those stores.
  • Higher prices for absolutely no reason.
  • The basis for this proposed law is that the 9 year old daughter of a member of Low’s staff told Low that she did not like it when boys and girls clothes and toys were separate sections.
  • As a result, the desires of a nine year old, California may soon require private stores to merchandise their stores according to the whims of a 9 year old.
So rather than work on the budget holes, the homeless problem or probably dozens of other, much more pressing and important issues, this politician is taking advice from a 9 year old on an issue that really is not an issue. I am sure that if you took a poll of Californians about what are the top 50 issues their families face, the separate retail merchandising of boys and girls products does not crack the top 100. And yet this politician is wasting taxpayer wealth and resources on this nonsense.

Nonsense in California, nonsense in newsrooms and nonsense in Chicago, no wonder things are screwed up when politicians and news people have such lousy priorities and moral standards.

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:

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



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