Tuesday, March 2, 2021

March, 2021, Part 1, Political Class Insanity: Lame Priorities Continue in California, the Human Carnage Continues in Chicago, and the Over Regulation of Americans Continues in Washington.

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) The vast number of government regulations that are on the books usually do very little to make life better for ordinary Americans. These regulations usually:
  1. Protect existing businesses and industries from new, innovative, better and market disruptive competitors.
  2. They are rewards that enrich certain companies and individuals that support a politician’s political campaigns.
  3. They are used to justify a government bureaucracy’s existence while not making life any easier or less expensive for Americans.
Trump realized this when he came into office and one of his accomplishments was the severe downsizing of Federal government regulations that were unnecessary and clogged up the free market’s effectiveness and functioning. This downsizing is estimated to have saved the American economy $160 billion (per an analysis from the American Action Forum) over the four year term of his Presidency or about $400 for every man, woman and child in the country. Thus, a four person American family got about $1,600 in economic benefit from his actions.

He accomplished this with a very simple rule: for every new regulation that someone in the Federal government wanted to impose, two existing government regulations had to be abolished. Additionally, he imposed financial limits on how much any new regulation would cost. As a result, Trump had issued almost 300 deregulation orders and his administration had added the fewest new regulations to the Federal register since records were started being kept in the 1970s.

And guess what? The world did not end, chaos did not ensue, criminality did not go up, life was just as good, and economically better, with fewer government regulations.

But along comes Biden and all of that good work goes to waste since one of his first executive orders was to rescind the simple yet elegant rule that two regulations go away for each new one put forth. Thus, the $400 in economic savings we all enjoyed because of Trump is now likely history as the growth in the size and wasteful spending of the Federal government is now back on track.Thus, even when Washington finally does something worthwhile, they still eventually screw it up.

2) Unfortunately, far too many times in this blog we have discussed the reality that Chicago politicians have failed miserably in providing the most basic government service to its citizens: protection from crime and violence. Over the years, Chicago has been the undisputed murder capital of the country with hundreds murdered and thousands wounded by gun violence despite having some of the strictest gun control laws in the country.

And the carnage is still going on:
  • In 1982, Chicago politicians put forth a strict handgun ban to crackdown on crime.
  • Unfortunately, this created the exact opposite effect since gun controlled, law abiding citizens were disarmed and were then at the mercy of gun toting criminals who could care less about gun control.
  • Over a recent weekend, 40 Chicago citizens were shot and 10 died from their gunshot wounds.
  • In just one day over that weekend, 4 were killed and 11 were injured.
  • The violence occurred even though the city had dispatched “community mediators” (think defund the police idiocy) into heavy crime neighborhoods to try and reduce the gun violence.
Thus, Chicago area politicians continue to be clueless on how to curb the violence and death and because of their incompetence, Chicago residents continue to be killed and maimed. A basic function of government and they continue to fail miserably.

3) We have often discussed how much state politicians have screwed up California and how bad the quality of life has become in the Golden State:
  • Given the high cost of housing, caused by idiotic housing rules, regulations and laws enacted by state politicians, California is now the poorest state, on average, in the whole country.
  • California has some of the worst education results in the country.
  • It has the most homeless Americans in the country.
  • The homeless situation in LA is so bad that Medieval diseases (e.g. typhus) are making a comeback because of the explosion in the rat population caused by the unsanitary conditions of a large homeless population.
  • State residents pay some of the highest taxes in the country.
  • The state has huge, unpayable future unfunded financial liabilities.
  • Big city politicians in the state have made it not illegal to defecate, urintate, or shoot up drugs in public.
  • Crime rates are rising rapidly across the state.
  • Poor, middle class, and wealthy state residents are fleeing the state, reducing the tax base and the tax revenue stream requiring the state politicians to raise tax rates and introduce new taxes which drives more residents, and businesses, out of the state and the financial death spiral is underway.
Bottom line: the state is in horrible shape from a quality of life, tax burden, and freedom perspective. In the midst of these disasters, what are state politicians worried about:
  • A propose law by California Assembly members Evan Low and Cristina Garcia would require California retail stores to have one unisex department for children’s products and clothes.
  • In other words, there would be no “Girls Section” and separate “Boys Section” for shopping in stores in the state.
  • The stores would also be forbidden to put up any signs that would indicate a toy or product was meant for a boy or a girl.
  • Names that are allowable include kids, unisex, or gender neutral.
  • According to Low: "This is an issue of children being able to express themselves without bias."
  • A store that had separate sections could be hit with a $1,000 fine.
  • The proposed law only applies to stores with over 500 employees.
So kids in the state are getting a horrible education, many kids in the state are going hungry and homeless along with their parents and other adults, the state economy is in sad shape along with employment opportunities because of the pandemic and the state’s political class botching the recovery and reopening, etc. And of all the issues and challenges that state residents are facing, this is the garbage that two state politicians are focusing on. Such a lame set of priorities.

Lame priorities continue in California, the human carnage continues in Chicago, and the over regulation of Americans continues in Washington.

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