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) Gretchen Whitmer is the governor of Michigan. She was probably the second worst performing politician/governor relative to the coronavirus behind the governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo. We have previously gone into her many screw ups and will not repeat them here but she made herself look foolish, inept, and petty so many times.
And her poor performance continues along those same lines in a completely different area:
- Apparently, Michigan taxpayers are putting out over $1 million so that the governor can build a security wall and security system around the governor’s mansion where she currently resides.
- The fence will be 8 feet high and the cost of the fence and enhanced security for the governor and her family will be about $1.1 million.
- This is the same lady that chastised Trump for building a wall along the southern border with Mexico to keep out drug cartels, human traffickers and other undesirables in order to better protect the lives and property of American citizens
- But she has no problem using additional taxpayer money to protect herself and her family.
- And not only is the wall 8 feet high but according to news reports, there is a sign already in place that claims, “Danger. High Voltage. Unauthorized persons keep out.”
This is shades of what the mayor of Chicago, Lori Lightfoot, did for herself and her family. She used the taxpayer funded Chicago police force to ensure that violent protests and riots did not occur in her neighborhood and endanger her family. The other families in the city’s other neighborhoods did not get the same police support.
Another form of politicians favorite hypocrisy, “do as I say, not as I do.” You common folk go put up with criminals, rioters, etc. will use taxpayer money to at least ensure that I am safe, So sad and pathetic.
2) We have purposely tried to not talk about the upcoming Presidential election, it is tiring and depressing. But as a trained statistician, I could not pass up on a recent Biden screw up when it comes to numbers and how either he is so misinformed or more likely, his cognitive abilities continue to decline dramatically, making coherent sentences and concepts too difficult for him:
- At a recent political campaign stop, Biden asserted that 6,114 U.S. military personnel had died from the coronavirus.
- Unfortunately, his assertion was a little off...by 6,107 deaths.
- Only 7 armed forces personnel have died from the virus according to a Pentagon website, no 6.114.
- He also grossly overstated the number of armed forces personnel who contracted the virus by a whopping 79,000.
- His campaign tried to say that he had confused the number of deaths and infections in Michigan with the number of deaths and infections within the armed forces but even those numbers don't match.
3) We have recently and often discussed the reality that Bill de Blasio, the mayor of New York City, is one of several American mayors that should be considered the worst mayor in the country. In fact, a fellow New York Democrat recently called de Blasio not only the worst NYC mayor ever but the worst mayor in the history of the country, all cities and all towns included.
He has alienated and insulted the New York Police Department any number of times during his term. He has reduced the police budget by an amazing $1 billion at the same time that violence, murders, shootings, and crime is skyrocketing in his city. Moving companies cannot find enough moving vans to satisfy the demand for NYC resident leaving the city due to the increased crime and higher and higher taxes.
A recent article on the Townhall website by Daniel J.Mitchell laid out how the city is in the beginning of a financial death spiral:
- According to the article, the city has a massive spending problem that results in higher and higher taxes to feed the higher and higher spending which eventually drives people to relocate out of the city.
- Things are so out of control that even the leftist New York Times believes that only fiscal constraint will fix what ails the city.
- The city currently has a $5 billion budget shortfall.
- De Blasio has asked the state government to give him the authority to borrow billions of dollars to fill the budget shortfall but the wisdom of doing that is pretty shaky, i.e. incurring more debt to pay off existing debt/budget shortfalls.
- Incurring debt to cover operating expenses eventually leads a city to collapse financially, e.g. Detroit.
- And most of this budget issue is due to de Blasio since the city’s annual budget has grown from $73 billion in his first year in office in 2014 to a whopping $92 billion in 2019.
- This spending increase of 26% is far higher than any measure of economic growth during those years.
- And a lot of that growth in city expenses is because of the hiring of thousands of new city employees during that time frame, which means it is not going to be easy to trim payroll to close the budget hole especially if city unions have anything to say about it.
- Unbelievably, even given the budget hole, the mayor has yet to implement a hard hiring freeze to slow down the financial bleeding.
- But he still doesn't get it since he recently advocated for even HIGHER taxes which will cause the outward migration of NYC residents, especially the wealthier, higher paying tax ones, to leave the city even quicker.
- And city companies are not ignorant in seeing how tenuous NYC financials are.
- NYC financial giant JP Morgan is already locating some of its NYC employees to other locations, so much so that Texas will soon host more JP Morgan employees than NYC does.
- As the wealthier residents leave cities like NYC, the politicians who refuse to cut spending have no choice but to raise taxes on middle class residents who cannot move out as easily as wealthier former residents can.
The financial death spiral for NYC is well underway. The question is not longer “if” but is now “how fast.” Higher taxes, higher crime levels, and no solution from the city’s political class is a deadly combination.
4) As I was finishing up the above description of how NYC was probably in a financial death spiral, another article verifying those concerns came to my attention:
- A recent New York Times article by Emma Fitzsimmons and Dana Rubinstein discussed a recent open letter that 150 NYC business leaders had sent to de Blasio.
- In that letter, “More than 150 business leaders in New York City joined together on Thursday to warn Mayor Bill de Blasio that he needed to take more decisive action to address crime and other quality-of-life issues that they said were jeopardizing the city’s economic recovery."
- These companies included such long time NYC businesses such as Goldman Sachs, Jet Blue, Vornado Realty Trust and others.
- The letter addressed issues such as crime, public safety, city cleanliness, homelessness, and so-called quality of life issues for their businesses and their employees.
- The letter warned de Blasio that people who have temporarily left the city, employees who are now working at home because of the virus crisis and those that have moved out of the city would be slow to return because of concerns over “security and the livability of our communities.”
- A response to the letter by the Mayor’s office encouraged business leaders to work with him and the city government to fix the many problems but provided no plans, no strategies, or suggestions how to fix what de Blasio has broken in the past six years.
- Kathryn Wylde, the president of the Partnership for New York City, kind of summed up the business employee concerns quite nicely: “All these employers are committed to the city, they want to see economic recovery, but they’re getting pushback from their employees about, will the city be safe, will the city be clean.”
- Scott Rechler, CEO of RXR Realty, blamed de Blasio directly for the mess: “The problem right now is leadership. We need a strong leader to address these problems, to encourage people to feel comfortable coming back to the city,” with the obvious implication that the current mayor is not a strong leader.
- Rather than come up with an action plan to fix the many problems, the only thing de Blasio could offer was a pathetic plea for business leaders to help him get extra debt borrowing authority from the state (see above why that is a stupid idea) and more Federal aid which Trump, and the rest of the country, is unlikely to agree to, no plan just plain crybaby whining.
- On the same day of the letter, de Blasio’s sanitation commissioner, Kathryn Garcia, quit her job because of what she called “unconscionable” sanitation department budget cuts, not a good omen for the city’s cleanliness future.
- Most business offices in the city are currently running below 10% capacity as businesses move out of the city or employees of businesses continue to work from home, another bad omen when it comes to city industries that once serviced those employees: cabs, restaurants, barbers, etc.
If he had capped the annual rise in the city budget at 2%, not an unreasonable target, he would have about $9 billion less in spending, more than enough to cover two years of budget deficits without raising taxes, incurring more debt, or pleading for more Federal help. A classic case of politicians only worrying about the next election, not the next generation, and as a result, that next generation will be faced with government debt, cuts in essential city services, and a lower quality of life.
So, we found out today that: de Blasio has likely put New York City into a financial death spiral, Joe Biden continues to be dazed and confused, and Governor Whitmer, like other politicians, is more concerned about her own safety than the safety and quality of life of her constituents.
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:
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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