By The Numbers, December, 2020: Stupid Energy Policies In California, Wasteful Covid Spending In Chicago and More

On a periodic basis we do some posts that fall under the theme of “by the numbers.” Rather than trust what the American politician tells us about reality, we like to examine the real numbers and the real reality in the world to understand what is actually going on. Relying on politicians, and their cohorts in the media, to tell us what is reality is always a sucker bet. They have their own agendas and goals, usually centering around their needs and self-enrichment. So we need to look at the reality of the numbers to determine what is really going on. 

Previous analyses of “by the numbers” can be accessed by entering the phrase in the search box above. This is where we look at the numbers to truly find out how good, not likely, or bad, most likely, the American political class is doing in managing our tax dollars, protecting our freedoms, and resolving major issues that affect all of us.

1) The Federal government has about $30 trillion in debt that the American political/criminal class has rolled up over many years. Consider how much money and tax burden that is:

• If you had spent a million dollars a day from the day Christ was born, you would still not have spent one trillion dollars, never mind $30 trillion.
• Every man, woman, and child in the country would have to write a check for about $90,000 each to pay off that debt, which means an American family of four would have to pay about $360,000, not going to happen.
• And you cannot tax the rich more to pay off the debt: for example, if you confiscated the ENTIRE wealth of the country’s richest person, Jeff Bezos, who is worth about $175 billion you could only pay off .6% of the wealth, not 6%, .6%.

If this was not bad enough, a recent study by the Department of Education is showing that due do to government incompetence regarding the college student loan program, that debt problem just got a lot worse:

• The Federal government has lent out $1.37 TRILLION in student loan money.
• This money was lent out without regard to a student’s credit scores, field of study, potential future earning power, or any other measure or safeguard regarding the ability of the Federal government and taxpayers of recouping those student loans.
• The new study estimates that of the $1.37 trillion lend out in the program, $435 billion will never be paid back.
• But this should not surprise anyone since another study found that between 2005 and 2016 40% of all student loan recipients had credit scores below a subprime credit score of 620, i.e., they were poor credit risks and the Federal government still gave them a loan.
• Consider that because of the Great Recession, private lenders and banks lost $535 billion so this student loan loss is approaching the losses that were incurred during the Great Recession.
• Thus, government incompetence will needlessly be adding another $435 billion to the national debt, increasing it about 1.4%.

One program, $435 billion flushed down the drain. Think about how many hungry, homeless, and sick Americans could be taken care of with that now gone $435 billion. Insanity.

2) Consider the energy fiasco that is California:

• Liberal politicians want to get the state’s energy solar and wind energy production profile to 60% of all energy creation in the coming years, up from 33% or so today.
• This misplaced and idiotic emphasis on renewables required state utilities to take their limited investment money and purchase renewal, solar and wind, equipment while forsaking upgrading its electrical grids which would have included burying electric cables and wires and buying better, less fallible transmission equipment.
• This financial neglect of the current grid equipment has resulted in equipment failures which have ignited so many forest fires which have wiped out houses, businesses, and lives while throwing far more pollution into the atmosphere than what was saved by putting in renewable energy sources.
• And renewables are useless when the wind stops or the sun sets which has required state utilities to purchase power from out of state sources, an expensive process that results in California electric customers paying 55% more on average than the rest of the country.
• And not only do state customers pay so much more for electricity but the current electric grid has had to go to rolling blackouts because the renewables cannot handle the peak demand for power.

Thus, bad decisions by the state political class results in a sub-optimal electric grid burdened by unsafe and old equipment that causes forest fires and results in very high electric costs for often only intermittent access to electricity. What a mess.

Given the mess they have created, one would hope that the politicians would take a step back and start thinking a little more rationally. But no, not in their playbook. Despite the expenses and shortages they have placed on state residents and business, they double downed on their energy stupidity:

• Despite not having any crises or problems, the state leaders shutdown a perfectly good nuclear energy plant in 2013, a plant that was providing low cost, reliable electricity to 1.4 million households.
• And now they want to double down on their stupidity and shut down the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant that has been reliably supplying clean, cheap energy to 3 million state households for years.

How can supposedly educated people like California politicians continue to make such bad decisions when the numbers are so clear?

3) COVID has been a bad experience for everyone. Lock downs, lost jobs, people dying and getting sick, economic downturns, etc. But that still does not excuse bad and stupid planning which results in bad numbers which, of course, results in the vast wasting of taxpayer wealth:

• In anticipation of the end of the world from covid, Chicago and Illinois politicians saw to it that McCormick Place Convention Center in Chicago was converted into an emergency medical facility.
• The cost of this conversion was $66 million of taxpayer wealth.
• The center ended up treating a grand total of….38 patients.
• Thus, the cost of the conversion comes out to about $1.7 million per patient served. 

Again, what a waste of money. How many patients could have been treated by diverting that $66 million to treating actual covid victims and not building some grandiose temporary, and unnecessary, medical facility that was so severely underutilized? Who came up with the planning assumptions for this disaster?

4) Across the country, stupid politicians are defunding their police departments without a good replacement for the lessened police presence, resulting in soaring crime rates in those cities. Americans need medical care relative to the covid virus. People are homeless, hungry, and addicted to drugs across the country, i.e.they are in need.

So what does the Federal government do with about $200,000 of Federal taxpayer money? They are sending it out of the country to Costa Rica so that politicians down there can help Costa Rican police forces make women more a part of the Costa Rican National Police force. This incredible waste of American taxpayer money will be used to:

• Create training modules to train police officers in that country on current gender issues.
• Part of the money will be used to develop manuals on good practices that will be used by Costa Rican police officers to verify the “application of gender Equality in daily police and administrative work.”
• And finally, the money will be used to hold the first ever “institutional meeting of women leaders in gender matters.” 

Seriously, we are sending taxpayer money to help a foreign country fix its sexist police force when the number of homeless, hungry and addicted in this country is in the millions? Unreal and so bad priorities.

The numbers do not lie and these numbers show how inept, inane, wasteful and stupid our American political class continues to be, from sexist police forces in Costa Rica to millions of dollars wasted in Chicago to billions of dollars wasted on a horrid student loan program to fatal energy policies in California.

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/s?k=loce+my+country%2C+loathe+my+government&ref=nb_sb_noss

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