Saturday, August 28, 2021

August, 2021, Part 6, Political Class Insanity: Failing The Homeless In California, Andrew Cuomo's Covid Lies, and Elevator Music Insanity In Quebec

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 American political class does do a few things very well, none of which benefit us:
  • They find ways to enrich themselves while in office far above and beyond what they earn in salary.
  • They are incredible hypocrites, “do as I say, not as I do.”
  • They always find ways of spending a lot of taxpayer wealth but never delivering the promised benefits from those expenditures.
That last point was recently proven again, relative to politicians trying to solve the ever growing homeless problem in California, specifically in San Francisco and Los Angeles:
  • Voters in both California cities approved bond and spending plans to address the housing shortage for homeless citizens.
  • In San Francisco, their plan was to place homeless folks in tent camps where they would have tent shelters, meals, showers, and social services.
  • City voters approved the $300 million initiative which resulted in the largest tax increase in the city’s history.
  • The funny thing about this spending initiative, the city politicians were actually against it since, according to Reason magazine, they viewed the tax hike as “excessive and that the plan for spending all that money was vague and lacked accountability.”
  • As unbelievable as it sounds, the politicians were actually right.
  • The program has resulted in the city annually paying about $61,000 a year PER homeless person to get that person a tent shelter.
  • This $61,000 comes out to over $5,000 per month which is over $2,000 more per month than the average cost of a full apartment in the city.
  • Think about that: the city’s program is spending much more to give a homeless person a tent to live in than putting them in an apartment in the city.
  • Also, $61,000 a year is more than what the average American household earns annually.
  • Los Angeles didn't do much better from an efficient spending of taxpayer dollars perspective.
  • That city approved a whopping $1.2 billion bond issue to house homeless folks in that city.
  • The first piece of insanity was that the plan was to use that money to build 10,000 housing units within ten years, a plan that comes to a whopping cost of $120,000 per housing unit.
  • So not only was the cost to shelter a homeless person so high ($120,000), the auditors of the program found that five years into the ten year project only 700 housing units had been completed, only 7%.
  • And finally, there are about 65,000-70,000 homeless people in Los Angeles which means this $1.2 billion program would have only housed about 15% of the city’s homeless population, assuming the 10,000 housing units were actually completed.
  • Given the program, after five years, has only 700 shelter spaces, this $1.2 billion program has helped only about 1% of the city’s homeless problem.
So sad, so much money spent and very few people helped. And those that did see a benefit from these programs that benefit came at an incredibly expensive cost to the taxpayers.

2) No American politician has fallen so far and so hard than recently resigned New York governor, Andrew Cuomo. But it is not like he deserved it, resignation, given has abhorrent behavior over the past few years:
  • He was accused of allegedly sexually harassing upwards of 12 women, the accusation that directly led to his resignation.
  • He may have also misused government regulations and employees to get a multi-million dollar book deal to tout his actions during the pandemic’s early days.
  • His administration may have filed false covid reports with the Federal government, possibly breaking Federal laws.
  • He forced New York nursing homes to accept covid infected elderly citizens into their facilities which resulted in tens of thousands of elderly New Yorkers unnecessarily perishing from covid.
Pretty despicable behavior from a career politician. And things just got worse from a covid death perspective:
  • The new New York governor, Kathy Hochul, revealed on her first day in office that Cuomo’s administration may have under reported covid deaths by 12,000 victims.
  • This brought New York state covid fatalities up to almost 55,400 victims.
  • According to Hochul:“We’re now releasing more data than had been released before publicly, so people know the nursing home deaths and the hospital deaths are consistent with what’s being displayed by the CDC. There’s a lot of things that weren’t happening and I’m going to make them happen. Transparency will be the hallmark of my administration.”
  • Cuomo’s elderly death counts only included covid deaths reported in hospitals, nursing homes, and adult care facilities but incorrectly ignored state covid deaths that occurred in other locations like folks’ homes, prisons, and hospice.
  • Obviously, when you under count the deaths, it makes Cuomo look like his administration was doing a much better job at handling the pandemic than he actually was.
And politicians wonder why people don't trust what they say or what government agencies say. Another example of government lies and political deceptions, behaviors that occur even when it involves death.

3) We usually talk about the inane behavior of American politicians but we have often seen how politicians and government bureaucrats around the world are also just as bad as our politicians. Canada has had a rough time lately as it relates to the covid pandemic. Lagging vaccination rates, closed borders, restrictive traveling, etc. along with the economic downturns that accompanied the covide virus spread.

And according to a recent Reason magazine blurb, Canadian government officials have bad priorities just like their American counterparts:
  • Quebec, Canada’s Culture Ministry has ordered that all music played on elevators in the province can only be music performed by local artists in the province.
  • Economic downturn, citizens getting sick and dying, and the government is spending time and resources on this nonsense.
  • But it gets better since this inane decree also applies to province government buildings, government owned liquor stores, and government owned casinos.
  • How many government employees worked on this nonsense, how much did it cost, and what costs did it impose on Canadian citizens. Just a waste of time and taxpayer wealth.
That will do it for today: more covid lies from Cuomo, more bad priorities for politicians around the world, and still fishing the taxpayers and homeless in California.

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