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) In our last post, we discussed a typical failure of the government and American politicians to protect the wealth of taxpayers when it comes to criminal fraud. An Oregon man conned the Federal government out of millions and millions of covid relief dollars. Fortunately, he was tracked down and plead guilty which led to prison time for him in addition to having to repay the millions of dollars he made off with.
In that post, we assumed that he was not the only person who was conning the Federal government out of covid relief dollars. And apparently we were right and the level of potential fraud is mind boggling:
The Secret Service feels that the covid relief fraud is so bad that it recently named a National Pandemic Fraud Recovery Coordinator to track down the criminals.
The Coordinator will be responsible for coordinating the Secret Service effort to track down fraudsters, an effort that involves a whopping 900 separate investigations.
And these 900 potential fraudulent efforts may involve the Federal government sending out $100 BILLION inappropriately.
If true, that means that every American taxpayer lost about $1,000 each to criminal fraud in the covid relief programs.
And the fraud may have not been restricted to Americans, it is suspected that worldwide criminal enterprises also illegally profited by the Federal government’s inefficiency and stupidity.
So far, the Secret Service has only recovered a few billion dollars in fraud.
Another day, another billion, or 100 billion, dollars lost to fraud and government incompetence. Imagine how much better every taxpayer’s life would be if they had another $1,000 in their wallet. Imagine how many homeless Americans could have been fed or sheltered with that $100 billion. Imagine.
2) And despite continually wasting taxpayer money, the American political class, especially the ones in California, still want to take more and more of their citizens’ hard earned wealth:
The cost of living in California is already sky high with some of the highest tax burdens, highest utility bills and highest gas prices in the land.
The high cost of living is forcing thousands of residents and businesses out of the state to find places where they can keep more of their wealth.
And yet, California politicians do not understand this simple premise: higher and higher taxes equals fewer and fewer taxpayers.
A proposed law in the state legislature would install a so-called single payer health insurance process in the state which would DOUBLE the tax burden of every taxpayer in the state.
That is the conclusion of an analysis done by the Tax Foundation.
The study found that a typical California household would annually pay about $12,250 each to fund this single payer system.
These tax increases would result in an additional $163 billion a year in state government tax revenue, an alltime high.
The top marginal tax rate for the state income tax would be a whopping 18.05%.
The median rate across the country is less than one third of this new proposed rate.
Given that the top marginal tax rate for Federal income taxes is 37%, a high earner in California would be about 55% of their income to just cover state and Federal income taxes.
They would pay additional taxes for property taxes, Social Security and Medicare taxes, gas taxes, etc.
It would probably not be a stretch to say that high earners in California would be paying over 70% of their income in taxes under this new law.
Which means that high earners would be fleeing the state even faster, reducing state government tax revenue even faster which would require more tax rate increases to cover the out of control spending which would drive more people out of the state and the financial death spiral is now in action.
The law would also increase the state payroll tax paid by employers and would put in place a 2.3% gross receipts tax on businesses which would drive more businesses out of the state or out of business.
Unbelievable that grown men and women who happen to be politicians can be that stupid. People and businesses are not going to stay in the state and become economic slaves, handing over 70% of what they earn to the state and Federal governments. The financial death spiral is imminent and these folks in the state legislature obviously don't know what havoc and destruction they are about to bring to the state.
3) Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan, was one of the most despotic and hypocritical governors in the entire country as it applied to the covid pandemic. She imposed draconian and unnecessary restrictions on Michigan residents and businesses while her husband and she tried to and actually violated the very restrictions she put in place.
And the sad part of her dictatorial approach is that Michigan has constantly had some of the highest covid infection rates in the country, meaning that her approach did not protect her citizens as well as other governors while crushing the state economy and businesses in that state.
However, there was recently a bit of good news out of Michigan as a business owner decided that freedom was better than living under a dictator of a governor, fought the government bureaucracy and won the battle:
The owner of the Iron Pig Smokehouse, Moore Murphy Hospitality LLC, sued Whitmer and the state of Michigan in order to save his business.
Otsego County Judge, Colin Hunter, agreed with the Smokehouse and ruled in favor of the restaurant.
The lawsuit started when Whitmer declared that no state restaurant could serve customers inside their restaurants and limited outdoor dining also.
For a while, the Smokehouse ignored the governor’s decrees and ended up getting multiple citations and incurring heavy fines.
The lawsuit alleged that Whitmer did not have the legal authority to unilaterally impose the shutdowns and restrictions:“In order to have the full force and effect of law, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services emergency order must draw its authority from a lawful delegation of power.”
A little good news about freedom, a concept that has taken an unnecessary beating from overreaching and hypocritical politicians. Hopefully, freedom decisions like this will start cropping up around the country.
4) Speaking of Whitmer:
Whitmer was one of the Democratic governors who decided to stick covid infected senior citizens into nursing homes and assisted living facilities across the country, a fatal decision that resulted in a tremendous amount of unnecessary deaths.
A recent audit by the state auditor found that Whitmer’s administration probably under reported the number of nursing home deaths by a whopping 30%.
30% represents thousands of lives, many of whom died unnecessarily because of the faulty decision to house covid senior citizens with healthy senior citizens.
Another news report claims that the under count was 42% based on information that the state's health department was required to produce.
So, people unnecessarily died because of Whitmer, and other governors’ stupid decision, and then Whitmer, like New York’s Governor Cuomo, under reported the deaths due to their ineptness in order to make their bad decisions look less bad. Not surprising, bad politicians making bad decisions and then lying about their fatal actions.
That will do it for today: billions of covid relief dollars probably lost to fraud and government incompetence, California politicians are economic idiots, and Gretchen Whitmer lies about covid and loses in court.
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