Today, though, let’s take a quick look at some good old politician hypocrisy. As we have pointed out any number of times, the members of the current political class are almost always greedy, inept, self focused and worse of all, super hypocritical. Nowhere in the recent past has their immaturity and hypocrisy been more on display then during the past year relative to the covid pandemic.
During that time, politicians at the state and local government level have called on their constituents to make incredible sacrifices and changes to their lives in the name of getting the virus under control. Which is fine and good but the problem is that while they were asking us to make sacrifices they decided that they did not have to abide by their own rules and decrees, the classic “do as I say, not as I do.”
Today we will review their lack of leadership and selfishness. The following examples come from previous posts we have done and a recent list of their hypocrisy from the Freedom News Report website:
- The mayor of Chicago, Lori Lightfoot, shut down all non-essential activities earlier this year in order to get the virus under control in her city. Her shutdowns included all hair salons which were deemed non-essential. Except for her, as she had her favorite hair salon open up just for her, defending her hypocrisy by saying that she was the face of Chicago and needed to look good, certainly a non-essential activity on her part.
- NYC mayor, Bill deBlasio, shutdown parks and gyms in his city in order to prevent New Yorkers from co-mingling in those places and potentially spreading the virus. But even though his constituents could not get out and about to walk in the parks or go to the gyms to stay in shape, he allowed himself to walk in the city parks and reopened his gym just for him, justifying his hypocrisy that he had to stay in shape to fight the virus while not caring if his voters could not stay in shape to fight the virus.
- Michigan governor, Gretchen Whitmer, probably put in place some of the most stringent, and stupid shutdown rules of just about any politician. Rather than selectively shutdown nonessential business only in high virus locations like the Detroit metro area, she arbitrarily shutdown the entire state, including far flung counties that had had no or a minimal number of covid cases. She put in place stupid rules that allowed certain products to be bought but only in small stores, not larger stores, But her biggest hypocrisy was even though she had shutdown all recreational boating activities another stupid rule that would do nothing to stop the spread of the virus, her husband tried to get out for a boating trip over Memorial Day weekend, dropping the fact that he was the governor’s husband when the marina would not release his boat to him as they followed his wife’s shutdown rules. She compounded the hypocrisy by saying her husband was just joking. Yeah, right.
- If Michigan had the strongest restrictions on citizen movement, then New York probably had the second strongest via its governor, Andrew Cuomo. As Thanksgiving approached, he urged and shamed New Yorkers to not visit friends and relatives in order to cut down on gatherings and the spread of the virus. But it was his intention to ignore his own warnings and head upstate to visit his elderly mom for Thanksgiving. Only because word somehow leaked out that he was going to violate his own stay at home orders did he cancel his trip.
- The billionaire governor of Illinois, J. B. Pritzer, was another governor who issued stern lock down and no travel orders on his citizens early in the pandemic. But word got out that even though his citizens were forbidden to travel in and out of Illinois, his family had traveled to their horse ranch in Florida, a violation of his own order. When confronted with this possibility, he went nuts on the reporter, admonishing him but never denying his family had violated his no travel order in an attempt to divert attention from this violation. He eventually admitted that they had traveled to Florida but justified that they needed to “feed the animals'' on his ranch. Given that he and his family are billionaires, I am pretty sure they could have hired some local in Florida to “feed the animals,” that his family is not the only folks capable of doing the feeding.
- California governor Gavin Newsom has been a strong advocate for masks, social distancing, and not getting together in groups. He violated all of those tenets when he recently attended a large dinner gathering at the now infamous and elite, French Laundry restaurant, out in California. He had a high end, expensive dinner that was attended by high powered lobbyists all of whom were not wearing masks, were not social distancing, and who were meeting in a large group. Like other hypocritical politicians, Newsom originally thought he was smarter than everyone else and that he could b.s. his way out of the embarrassing situation. When everyone did not buy his lines of justification for attending the dinner, he finally admitted he had screwed up.
- Earlier in the year, Anchorage, Alaska mayor, Ethan Berkowitz, closed all indoor dining places in his city. Which was fine except for the little detail that he had an entire city street roped off and temporarily put out of commission so that his wine bistro could set up tents for outdoor dining, another “do as I say, not as I do” insult to fellow bistro and restaurant owners in the city who did not have the power to shut down city streets for their business’s benefit.. Fortunately, karma has hit him in that he recently had to resign because of alleged accusations that he was exchanging nude photos of himself with his mistress.
- Denver Mayor Michael Hancock ordered his citizens to follow his example because he had cancelled his Thanksgiving plans and was not gathering with friends and family for the holiday and possibly spreading the virus. Seems okay until you realize he jumped on a plane to attend and enjoy a Thanksgiving gathering with his family in Mississippi.
- Austin, Texas mayor, Steve Adler, was adamant when talking to his citizens in that he threatened to shut down the city unless his residents stayed home. Hypocritically, he did not follow his own advice especially since it became known that the video announcing his intentions to shutdown the city was made during his visit to his family’s timeshare in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, where he had flown to AFTER attending a 20 person wedding at a hotel in Austin. So he wants his citizens to hunker down at home, not travel, not get together in small gatherings and he does the exact opposite.
- LA County supervisor, Sheila Kuehl, voted to shut down all outdoor dining in LA County within the next 24 hours. Knowing what was going to happen, she made a beeline to a restaurant in Malibu to eat a nice meal before the 24 hours expired. I guess the virus was dormant for those 24 hours and she did not endanger anyone since the deadline for closure had not yet happened
- The mayor of Philadelphia, Jim Kenney, shut down all dining in Philly for safety reasons and then flew to Chesapeake Bay, Maryland, where he was caught having dinner, indoors, without a mask or social distancing. I guess the virus had not yet hit Chesapeake Bay.
- Back to Chicago mayor Lightfoot who not only opened up a shutdown hair salon only for herself but she also attended a maskless Chicago street party to celebrate Biden’s election victory.
- Despite hair salons being shut down in San Francisco, Nancy Pelosi went to one that opened up just for her to get her hair done, endangering the business of the hair salon owner with fines and license forfeiture. When photos got out of the Speaker walking around in a hair salon without a mask that was not allowed to open, Pelosi took the low road and blamed the salon owner for forcing Pelosi to get her hair done and forced her to do it without a mask: “It was clearly a setup. This salon owes me an apology.” This is not what a leader does, blame others for their own screw ups.
- Beaumont, Texas mayor, Becky Ames, got caught because she leaned on her nail salon to open up to have work done on her nails. She had previously closed down all other nails loans in the city as being non-essential services. But when she needed her nails done she got the owner of her favorite salon to open up. Once caught she tried vainly to say that she was not getting her nails done but getting a substance to remove a mail treatment she had received weeks prior that was giving her trouble. She actually visited the salon, went in, and had a nail treatment. Which I guess was okay since the virus only affects people who are getting their nails done, not people who go to a nail salon to get their nail treatment fixed, subtle difference.
As a side note, be aware that all of the above infractions have been committed by Democrats. Similar infractions, if any, by Republicans have not made their way into news reports that I could find.
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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