August, 2020, Part 15,Political Class Insanity: From Sea To Shining Sea, Political Class Insanity Reigns

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) There has been a lot of insanity coming out of New York City lately. The mayor, Bill de Blasio, has had to deal with a botched coronavirus handling of his own doing, his defunding of the police department in the presence of an ever increasing violent crime wave and a growing and dangerous homeless problem. He really has to qualify as one of the worst mayors currently in office in the country today. In fact, a Congressman from his own party recently declared him the worst mayor in the history of the country regardless of city.

Well, it seems his wife is not much better when it comes to being efficient and effective with taxpayer money:

• His wife, Chirlane McCray, heads up some sort of organization that does work for the city and is funded with city tax dollars.
• She has a staff of 14 people.
• So far, so good.
• Unfortunately, her staff’s salary expense on an annual basis is about $2 million a year, well over $100,000 per employee on average.
• This is allowed to go on despite her whiny husband’s lament that he may have to fire important people on the city payroll like police officers, firemen, and EMTs while her group sucks down $2 million a year just in salaries.
• One member of her staff is a videographer who makes a whopping $70,000 a year.
• She also has a $117,000 speech writer on her staff and a $150,000 senior advisor.
• A spokesperson for the mayor defended his wife and her high salaried employees: “The First Lady manages a robust portfolio and her team works tirelessly to carry out goals and priorities on issues like mental health and domestic violence that will improve the lives of New Yorkers.” 

So the first lady of NYC has a high priced staff of 14 employees. The First Lady of the United States has a smaller staff than 14. I think that maybe the mayor’s wife has an oversized opinion of herself, given the size of her staff and the amount of money she makes off of the NYC taxpayer.

2) While NYC has been mentioned in a lot of our posts, San Francisco is probably not too far behind as regards to bad news. And most of that bad news is due to the mismanagement and inane rules and laws the city’s political class has passed over the years. We have covered the reality any number of times that it is not illegal to defecate, urinate, or shoot up illegal drugs in public inside the city.

This has led to a continually deteriorating set of living conditions and an ever growing homeless population. What once was one of the most exciting, cool, and intriguing cities in the country has been turned into a cesspool of dirt, filth and unsanitary living conditions as outlined in the following video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uw8MACDZ3RI

Of course, some local politicians would blame Donald Trump although these conditions existed in the city, possibly less intensely, long before Trump came into office. Plus, it is the local politicians’ laws that have made the situation so bad, not anything coming out of Washington. The politicians in the city apparently have no idea how to fix what they obviously have broke.

3) Most politicians get insanely rich off of their so-called public service. We have previously covered the reality that Barack Obama owns three homes worth tens of millions of dollars despite never having worked in a lucrative part of the private sector and never having made more than $400,000 a year in salary. Nancy Pelosi is also insanely rich despite never having earned more than a few hundred thousand dollars a year as a member of Congress. The list of enriched Washington politicians could go on for a long time.

But possibly two former city managers in Texas are better at this political self enrichment scheme than any of the crooks in Washington:

• The city manager in Laredo, Texas received over $880,000 when he left his position in 2019.
• And obviously Laredo is no big time American city or not close to being the richest city either with only 261,000 residents whose average salary is only $15,127 a year.
• In May, 2017, the Laredo city council decided to promote Horacio De Leon, Jr. to be interim city manager.
• The following August he was made the permanent city manager and he earned a whopping $314,556 as an annual salary in 2018.
• De Leon had been a long term city employee with a good track record of performance.
• But in 2019, just 20 months after appointing him to be the Lardeo city manager, the town council got rid of him at a cost of $880,486, according to the Open The Books anti-corruption organization.
• Of that $880,486, almost $570,000 of that was a severance payment, vacation and sick leave pay was almost $193,000, his regular salary which was over $76,000, and other payments.
• But this was not the first expensive screw up by the city council’s politicians since in 2017 they fired the previous city manager, Jesus Olivares who got a whopping $651,867 when he was booted out of office.
• Both men will also receive lifetime taxpayer funded health insurance coverage.

The news articles about this corruption did not discuss why both men were forced out. In any case, the city council obviously screwed up royally by either picking the wrong men for the job or giving them a contract that was ridiculously expensive for Laredo taxpayers.

Seems the city council politicians are the ones that should be forced out of their positions, given how they have so mismanaged the taxpayers’ tax dollars. But for De Leon and Olivares, nicely and profitably done.

4) The hypocrisy of many politicians across the country and their “do as I say, not as I do” attitude as been disgustedly display during the coronavirus crisis:

• The mayor of Chicago had her hair salon open so she could get a haircut although she prohibited her city residents and hair salons from doing the same.
• The mayor of Beaumont, Texas had her nail salon open up to get her nails done even though she prohibited her city residents and nail salons from doing the same.
• The mayor of NYC had his gym open up so he could work out even though he prohibited his city residents and gyms from doing the same.
• The governor of Oregon was recently spotted out on a hiking trail without a mask on even though she required all of her residents to have a mask on when they are outside.

You get the idea, you must obey my commands even if I do not. And it looks like the governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, is guilty of the same type of hypocrisy:

• Cuomo has a hit list of about three dozen states that he says have virus infection rates that are too high for his state and NYC.
• As a result, anyone coming into his state from those other states must quarantine themselves for two weeks in order to not infect New Yorkers and increase that state’s virus infection rate.
• This is pretty ironic and hypocritical of him since early in the virus crisis, when New Yorkers were scramming out of the state to their Rhode Island vacation homes Cuomo got really upset when the Rhode Island governor did the same thing to New Yorkers coming into her state but that is a story for another time.
• More recently, Cuomo decided that he would exempt famous musicians from this mandatory 14 day quarantine restriction so that they could travel to New York City for the annual MTV Video Music Awards show.
• So if you or I travel to New York City and disobey the 14 day quarantine rule, we get fined and maybe go to jail.
• Famous people go to New York City and they don't have to follow the same restrictions that get us fined and jailed, sounds about right.
• A spokesperson for the governor tried to whitewash this hypocrisy, saying that these famous rock stars and musicians can “participate in the production of the show, but they will only interact with other members of the cast and crew and will quarantine when not working.”
• The spokesperson went to say that these people will police themselves with “rigorous safety protocols including testing and screening and compliance checks by a special compliance officer.”

Can you imagine the reaction you would get if you told Cuomo that you would police yourself with “rigorous safety protocols” and thus did not have to abide by the state’s quarantine rules? I doubt that he would let you get by with that promise.

But he allows famous people to bypass the safety protocols that he applies to everyone else. Famous people can pass on the virus just as easily as the rest of us, being a good musician has nothing to do with being less contagious. But hey, this is an American politician doing what they do best, “do as I say, not as I do.”

Wasting taxpayer money in NYC, wasting a city in San Francisco, wasting taxpayer money in Laredo, and special rules for special people in New York, political class insanity comes in many different forms.

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