July, 2020, Part 5, Political Class Insanity: Politicians Using The Coronavirus To Suck The Taxpayer Dry While Enriching Themselves

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) American politicians do very few things well when it comes to actions that benefit their voters and residents. But things they do very well include acting with a “do as I say, not as I do” attitude that almost always results in their own self enrichment and benefit. This reality will drive all of our political class insanity discussion today, beginning up in the state of Maine:

• Susan Collins is the Republican Senator from Maine and she is up for reelection this fall.
• Democrat Sara Gideon is her likely opponent.
• Gideon has been hammering Collins in ads, claiming that Collins supported the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) that Congress passed to theoretically help American citizens and small businesses to cope with the coronavirus.
• Specifically, Gideon accuses Collins of supporting a program that created funding to bailout large corporations but abandoned small businesses.
• Gideon seems to forget that much of the legislation for the PPP was written by Nancy Pelosi and Democrats in the House and passed with the votes of most Democrats in the House and the Senate but Gideon ignores those facts and reality.
• The ads were such semi-blatant lies that even the liberal leaning, Democrat loving Washington Post could not help but give Gideon’s ads the second highest rating for false claims, three Pinocchios.
• Gideon also somehow forgot to mention that her husband’s law firm, Berman & Simmons, received over $1 million in assistance under the PPP.
• Her husband is a partner in the law firm and owns anywhere from a $250,000 to $500,000 equity stake in the firm.
• If his equity stake is as high as half a million dollars, then it is probably a pretty safe assumption that the equity value of the entire law firm and the partners that own it put the value of the firm probably into the millions of dollars.
• I am pretty sure that if you ask most Americans what a small business is they would refer to mom and pop stores and operations that are not worth millions and millions of dollars like this law firm is likely worth.
• Oh, by the way, the partners in the law firm are heavy contributors to Gideon’s political campaign fundraising, sending over $30,000 to the campaign in 2020.

So, the politician (Sara Gideon) lies about her opponent’s (Susan Collins) record while her (Gideon’s) husband takes advantage of her opponent’s support for the program that the wife criticizes. Do as I say, not as I do...or as my husband does.

2) Let’s stay with the “do as I say, not as I do” theme and jump across the country from Maine to California:

• Gavin Newsom is the governor of California and the nephew of Nancy Pelosi.
• Earlier in July, Newsom targeted some California counties with high virus rates and forced the wineries in those counties to shut down in an attempt to control the spread of the virus.
• He made sure that the county where his winery was located stayed open.
• In addition, businesses owned or tied to Newsom, Lt. Governor Eleni Kounalakis and two other top politicians in the state government all received PPP financial support.
• Newsom alone received somewhere between $150,000 and $350,000 from the PPP.
• Keep in mind that the purpose of PPP financial support was to help small businesses retain employees on their payroll and not close down or limit operations, something that Newsom did not do by exempting his winery from a mandatory shutdown.
• Newsom was asked by a reporter why his winery justified getting taxpayer support: "Some data released today by the federal government shows at least one business that you own received some loans to stay open during the COVID-19 pandemic. I know that before you took office you placed those companies into a blind trust, but I'm wondering if you could address that issue and why the company that you own felt the need to receive that loan?”
• Rather than answer this delicate and embarrassing question, Newsom basically told the questioner to bug off: “You would have to ask the people that are running those businesses. It’s in a blind trust. Period. Full stop.”

As we find out more and more about the PPP it becomes more and more obvious that this intention of helping small businesses keep their employees onboard and their small business open for business in the face of the virus crisis was nothing more than a lie and a charade to help the political class enrich themselves. From a law firm in Maine to a winery in California, the politically connected and wealthy hogs are feeding at the trough of the American taxpayer, small businesses be damned.

3) Let’s move up the Newsom family tree and see how Nancy Pelosi, a prime architect of the PPP, is weathering the storm caused by the virus:

• First off, understand that Nancy and Paul Pelosi, her husband , are super rich, a lot of which came as a result of Nancy Pelosi’s shenanigans in Congress.
• According to Bloomberg News reporting, EDI is a firm of which Paul Pelosi is a major stakeholder.
• EDI is a limited partnership with an investment in the El Dorado hotel.
• EDI received PPP financial support of between $350,000 and $1 million.
• Paul Pelosi’s stake in EDI is listed as between $250,001 and $500,000.
• If his stake is worth upwards of half a million dollars, then the entire value of EDI is likely in the millions and millions of dollars, making it hardly a small business.
• And yet, somehow, PPP and taxpayer dollars ended up in the EDI coffers.

As with the likely million dollar law firm up in Maine, how an investment firm like EDI, also likely worth millions of dollars, ended up getting small business financial support from the PPP is despicable and disgusting. The corruption of Washington apparently knows no bounds when it comes to self enrichment and greed. How many pizza shops, tailors, small restaurants, etc. could have been saved and helped with the millions of dollars that went to wealthy law firms and investment firms? 

Soulless individuals sucking up taxpayer wealth when it was not necessary or in integrity to do so.

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

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