August, 2020, Part 11, Political Class Insanity: Wasting Millions In Chicago, Wasting Citizens in NYC, and Educational Insanity In Virginia

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) Over the years it has been a never ending story on how politicians can waste taxpayer wealth in so many varied, unique and stupid ways and never pay the consequences for such waste. The latest original way to waste taxpayer money comes from Chicago:

• In anticipation of a huge uptick in coronavirus cases early in the crisis, the city of Chicago renovated a city convention center to handle the expected load of patients that were surely coming.
• The cost to city taxpayers : $66 million.
• The total number of patients handled: 38
• Yes, 38, not 3,800, not 38,000, just 38.
• So the cost to house, not treat, medicate, etc. comes out to just over $1.7 million per patient.
• Now, in one sense, the city had no idea how many patients it would need to treat so they were shooting blindly. 
• But they must have been really blind to come out to a whopping $1.7 million per patient.
• And yet they were proud of this wasteful spending since Samir Mayekar, deputy mayor for economic and neighborhood development, said that he was “incredibly proud of” the effort, claiming that the millions of dollars in taxpayer money was “not spent in vain.”
• Uh, yeah, I think most of it was spent in vain.
• Like we said, no one knew how many people would need medical care because of the virus but the wasted money story does not end there.
• The contract for the renovation went to a company called Walsh Construction, a decision that was very, very shady, according to the Chicago Sun Times: “McPier [the city agency responsible for the effort] solicited proposals from three giants in construction: Walsh, Pepper Construction and Power Construction Company. And it hired Walsh even though Power said it either would forgo any fees or donate them to pandemic relief because it didn’t want to profit from the pandemic. Walsh charged $65.9 million, including more than $5.1 million in fees, records show.”
• In addition, there were a lot of communications and jockeying going on with not surprisingly, given this is Chicago, former Mayor Richard Daley’s daughter being involved and supportive of the Walsh option.
• Furthermore, another option was to reopen, not one, not two, but three closed hospitals, you know, buildings that were purposely built to care for sick people, not conventions, for a total cost of reopening them about $50 million, still expensive, but far less than the cost of the renovating a convention center option that was chosen.

So, the city decision makers chose the most expensive path, electing to adapt a convention center to become a hospital even though there were three closed hospitals that could have been used and probably converted easier and certainly less expensively. Politics and connections seem to be boiling below the decisions to go with the most expensive option, and the decisions turned out to be horrendously useless given the cost. Sounds about right for Chicago politicians.

2) We hate to keep coming back to the distress and horrible and deteriorating condition that city politicians in Chicago and New York City have brought down unto themselves and their residents but it just keeps getting worse. As we have said so many times, a very basic function of government and the politicians that operate it is to protect the lives and property of its citizens.

However, certain mayors and city councils across the country have decided that police forces are the main problem, not criminals, and have disrespected, defamed, and embarrassed police forces in their cities. This disrespect has translated into a total disrespect for the law, the police, and civility and in cities like Chicago and NYC, that disrespect has resulted in increasing violence and crime:

• In a recent week, the New York Post reported that dozens of people in the city were injured in 62 shootings that resulted in 14 fatalities.
• That was an increase in 26 shootings that occurred in the same week in 2019, i.e. almost doubling the 2019 results.
• The number of fatalities was 10 higher this year vs. the same week last year.
• In total, 76 city residents were wounded.
• This increased violence is happening across the five boroughs, in downtown and non-downtown locations, in the light of day and darkness of night.
• The NYC Scanner Twitter account called the current NYC environment a “war zone.”

But it is not just murders and shootings that are on the upswing in the city:

• The Upper East Side of Manhattan is the home of a lot of rich people.
• Traditionally, crime has not been a big problem in that area.
• Crime data from that part of the city shows that in the past four weeks there have been 27 reported robberies, a 286% increase vs. the same time in 2019.
• Fourteen of those robberies involved the victims being held at gunpoint, up form 4 gunpoint robberies in 2019.
• But it is not just the ritzy Upper East Side that is seeing an increase in robberies.
• In the Soho and Tribeca districts, robberies are up 175% year over year.
• In the West Village, robberies are up 50% year over year.
• All of these areas are home to some very rich and wealthy people, these are not rundown, ghetto areas which traditionally have higher crime rates.

In the wake of increased murders, increased shootings, and increased robberies the mayor is doing the worst thing possible from a law and order protect residents lives and properties perspective: he is gutting the police department budget by $1 billion. Yeah that will make the ever rising crime rate go down, good thinking.

3) Okay, let’s get away from the cities in crisis and their increasing rates of violence and mayhem and go to Virginia for old fashioned political/government stupidity:

• As everyone knows, just about every school across the country got shut down in the spring because of the coronavirus crisis.
• This resulted in some haphazard, last minute attempts to educate kids remotely over the Internet.
• Results were generally not good, which is not surprising, since the education system in this country had never been shut down like this so there was no blueprint on how to quickly convert to remote learning.
• In this type of unsteady learning environment, most good parents probably looked for different ways to keep educating their kids so that the learning process went on in any way possible.
• Obviously, wealthy families have more options than poorer families since they could hire tutors, have better Internet access, possibly start homeschooling depending on the education level of the parents, etc.
• This intent to keep making kids smarter would seem like a good thing to do.
• But not according to the school board in Fairfax, Virginia.
• These idiots asked parents to not try to keep educating their kids since it would give wealthier kids a long term advantage over kids’ families that were not so wealthy and could not hire tutors, could not do homeschooling, etc.
• Yes, in the school board’s mind, it was better to keep all the kids stupid than to try and work hard to help EVERY kid to keep up.
• Specifically: “Across the country, many parents are joining together to engage private tutors (who are often school teachers) to provide tutoring or home instruction for small groups of children. While there is no systematic way to track these private efforts, it’s clear that a number of ‘pandemic pods’ or tutoring pods are being established in Fairfax County. We are aware of these tutoring pods, as well as some accompanying community concerns. To be clear, these instructional efforts are not supported by or in any way controlled by FCPS. While FCPS doesn’t and can’t control these private tutoring groups, we do have concerns that they may widen the gap in educational access and equity for all students. Many parents cannot afford private instruction. Many working families can’t provide transportation to and from a tutoring pod, even if they could afford to pay for the service.”

Seriously, so I should completely shut down my kid’s learning even if you, the school board, cannot find a way to continue their education? Maybe if the school board focused their effort more on getting disadvantaged kids educational support, during this crisis, rather than trying to shame parents who actually care and can keep their kids on the right education track, EVERYONE would be better off. 

As one article about this nonsense pointed out: “Do they really think any parent in their right mind would deny their children extra help because other kids can’t afford it?”

Get creative school board, work harder, find a way to keep every kid moving forward rather than wasting time, effort, and your brains to stop some kids from getting educated. So stupid.

So, Chicago wastes millions and millions of dollars, NYC gets more and more dangerous as the mayor does the exact opposite of what should be done, and a Virginia school board wants to stop kids from getting educated. It is a mixed up world we live in today and the political class is, as always, to blame.

Note: we have done a lot reporting on the dire and ever worsening situation in Chicago. The crime, the violence, and the shootings have resulted in more wounded citizens, more fatalities and a more dangerous place to be. In those discussions we have always pointed out that the mayor and those in public office in Chicago have no idea how to fix this deteriorating situation. While the vast majority of people cannot help fix what the local political class has broken, may I suggest that a donation be made to the Boys and Girls Club of Chicago to at least give the kids of the city a chance, a safe place to go and just be kids. The address for donating to this fine organization is:

Boys & Girls Clubs of Chicago Club Support Center

2102 W. Monroe Street
Chicago, IL 60612

Thank you, be part of the solution.

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