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)We have often discussed the reality that when people become members of Congress they almost always get much wealthier, far beyond the wealth they would have garnered off of their Congressional salary. They have access to insider information on pending legislation that allows them to play the stock market to their significant financial advantage.
For example, a while ago we discussed the reality that Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, delayed legislation that would have put controls on credit card companies until after VISA did their IPO. Pelosi had insider information and access to VISA shares prior to the IPO, resulting in her making almost half a million dollars on the IPO offering, something that would have been impossible for the ordinary American citizen. She is not alone when it comes to Congressional members getting rich.
But apparently it is not just members of Congress within the Federal government that get richer simply because they are Federal employees:
A Federal investigation has found that thousands of of Federal employees in a single Federal department illegally claimed COVID unemployment benefits even though they were still employed by the Federal government.
The Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general found that almost 2,000 department employees made unemployment insurance applications for “Lost Wages Assistance” under a COVID program.
Some of the applications for unemployment insurance benefits were actually filed from government computers by employees that were still employed.
In addition to the almost 2,000 fraud applications in Homeland Security, five employees in the IRS have been charged with defrauding the Federal government of over $1 million in COVID funds, spending the money on “cars, luxury goods, and personal travel, including trips to Las Vegas.”
In addition to the Federal employee COVID fraud, Georgia’s state government inspector general found that: “We have tentatively identified over 280 full-time state employees who erroneously received unemployment insurance (UI) payments in 2020 or 2021. These payments averaged $23,700 per employee and totaled over $6.7 million. And this is a conservative estimate.”
Just another day where politicians and government workers continue to illegally and immorally enrich themselves rather than serving the needs of Americans taxpayers.
2)But alas, the COVID fraud apparently was not restricted to government employees:
Senator Rand Paul and Senator Joni Ernst are launching an investigation into possibly billions of dollars that were defrauded via the Federal government’s small business COVID relief program.
It is estimated that at least $5.4 billion was bilked out of the Paycheck Protection Program.
This estimate came from an analysis by the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee (PRAC): "Specifically, PRAC reviewed over 33 million applications and discovered 221,427 applications used fraudulent social security numbers. Of those, 69,323 applications were issued EIDL and PPP loans, totaling over $5.4 billion in funds dispensed to fraudsters.”
It makes you wonder if government employees and government programs ever do anything efficiently, effectively, and correctly. And all the while billions (trillions?) of taxpayer dollars are wasted with no positive benefit in return.
3)But it is not just financial misdoings that American politicians do:
Dennis Doyle, the former mayor of Beaverton, Oregon, was recently sentenced to six months in Federal prison.
His crime was being in possession of child pornographic pictures.
He also has to pay $22,000 to his victims who were under 12 years old.
He was charged with possession of child pornographic material between November, 2014 and December, 2015.
After serving his prison time he will be on probation for 5 years and will have to register as a sex offender.
It appears that many, many American poiticians have very low moral standards in so many ways, so sad and pathetic.
4)Many, many times we have discussed the concept of the financial death spiral, a reality that will likely soon crash the financial viability of some American cities and states:
The financial death spiral begins when a government entity, i.e. a city government or state government, has a set of politicians that continue to expand a government’s budget beyond its current ability to cover the cost.
As government costs and expenses expand beyond the current revenue stream, the politicians raise taxes rather than reduce government spending.
The higher tax burden results in residents and businesses moving out of a city or state in order to keep more of their hard earned wealth.
This out migration results in a smaller tax base which requires politicians to raise taxes on the remaining residents and businesses.
This drives more residents out of the city or state, further reducing the tax revenue base which requires more tax increases and possibly cuts to government services which drives out more taxpaying residents and businesses and the financial death spiral gathers speed.
The cuts in services usually includes public safety cuts, e.g. police and fire department budgets, which increase crime which further drives out more residents and businesses.
Our past posts and analyses have predicted that Illinois, New Jersey, New York, and California are the states most likely to go bankrupt as a result of their own financial death spirals. Chicago, New York City, San Francisco, and Los Angeles are most likley to be the next big cities to go bankrupt.
Today, we update our analysis based on more recent information, an analysis that may indicate that New York state and New York City may have taken the lead in the rush to bankruptcy:
According to the New York Post, more people moved out of New York state to Florida in 2022 than any year in history.
The Post based their conclusion on the reality that Florida’s Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles reported that 64,577 former New Yorkers got their Florida driver’s license in 2022.
This was higher than the 61,728 New Yorkers who got Florida licenses in 2021 and 39% higher than the number in 2019.
A state worker in the Jacksonville, Florida Motor Vehicles agency said the fleeing New Yorkers are leaving because of high taxes and quality of life issues: "They come in every day. I hear all the complaints. I feel like a therapist sometimes. It's slowed down a little bit. But not by a whole lot, I can tell you that."
According to the Census Bureau, between July, 2020 and July 2021, Florida experienced the largest net migration with more than 220,000 people moving to the state with Texas and Arizona being the second and thrid most popular positive net migration states.
Not unsurprisingly, New York, California, and Illinois were the top three states when it comes to losing residents.
So our analysis is still sound, given the latest data: high tax states with high crime rates, New York, Illinois, California, are still the most likely states to experience a financial death spiral.
And the sad thing is that the politicians in those distressed cities and states simply do not get it: people want to be safe and want to keep as much of their hard earned wages and wealth as possible. And if they cannot get those basic government benefits, they will go elsewhere for better lives for themselves their families and their businesses.
That will do it for today’s insanity: greedy, self enriching politicians, immoral politicians, and politicians leading their government entities into a financial death spiral and bankruptcy.
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:
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