Every month we devote posts to just general political class insanity that is running rampant through the country. The members of the American political class continue show that they are incapable of operating any level of government in this country.
Even their best efforts are almost always inefficient and ineffective at resolving any problem facing Americans. They spend a great amount of time not trying to improve the lives of their citizens but continually ensuring their reelection and enriching themselves, their families, and their friends in the process, all at taxpayer expense.
Lately it seems like the insanity is getting more frequent and more intense as politicians continue to fail us all. Let’s look at just for of the latest examples of political class insanity:
1)In our last post, we reviewed the real possibility that a handful of high tax states are heading towards declaring bankruptcy. They are steadily losing their tax base as residents and businesses flee to lower tax states. These high tax states include California, New York, New Jersey, and Illinois.
This out migration reduces the home states’ tax base, which causes the politicians in those states to raise taxes to make up for the shortfall which drives more residents and businesses out of the state, further reducing tax revenue and the financial death spiral is in play.
Wallethub recently published information that showed which cities were gaining the most new residents over the past year:
Houston, TX
Las Vegas, NV
Orlando, FL
Phoenix, AZ
Atlanta, GA
Charlotte, NC
Dallas, TX
Jacksonville, FL
San Antonio, TX
Austin, TX
Seven of these cities are located in states that have no state income tax (Nevada, Florida, and Texas) and the other states have relatively low state income tax rates.
Thus, it is not a surprise that people are leaving high tax states to save their hard earned wages by moving to low tax cities and states. The trend could not be any clearer and yet politicians in those high tax states still do not get it: high taxes result in smaller tax bases which will eventually lead to state government bankruptcy.
2)The Fourth Amendment of the Constitution guarantees that Americans should not be subject to unreasonable searches and seizures by any government entity. This leads to putting the burden of responsibility on that government entity to prove to a judge that a warrant is justified to search or seize an American’s property. In this country, a basic legal tenet is that everyone is assumed innocent until proven guilty.
Apparently, the FBI now thinks that these basic freedom and time tested democracy tenets do not apply to them:
According to a recently released report form the Justice Department, the FBI improperly executed warrantless and illegal searches over a quarter of a million times IN A SINGLE YEAR.
Specifically, in the year that ended in November, 2021, the FBI conducted 278,000 illegal searches.
On average, this comes out to almost 800 illegal searches a day, the Fourth Amendment be damned.
After 278,000 violations of Americans’ rights, the FBI basically issued an “Oopsie” apology: "As Director Wray has made clear, the errors described in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court’s opinion are completely unacceptable. As a result of the audits that revealed these instances of noncompliance, the FBI changed its querying procedures to make sure these errors do not happen again. These steps have led to significant improvement in the way we conduct queries of lawfully obtained Section 702 information. We are committed to continuing this work and providing greater transparency into the process to earn the trust of the American people and advance our mission of safeguarding both the nation’s security, and privacy and civil liberties, at the same time."
Seriously, you violated rights 278,000 times before you are caught and say that a few errors were made….a quarter of a million times.
Amazingly, a bunch of FBI “queries” were made to investigate 19,000 donors to a single Congressional campaign, a single Congressional campaign of a candidate who lost their election.
But this should not come as a surprise. Inspector General Michael Horowitz in 2019 found that the FBI blatantly lied in a warrant application to monitor a member of Trump’s election campaign, Carter Page. Thus, the FBI knew several years ago that it was misbehaving and yet continued to violate Americans’ rights to the tune of hundreds of thousands of times since 2019.
3)Far too many times we have reviewed the dangerous and deadly environment that exists in the city of Chicago. Seems that every week dozens of people are wounded by gun violence and a handful of them die. Under soon to be former mayor Lori Lightfoot, her tenure showed no ability to curtail the violence that endangers Chicago residents every day.
.
And recent data shows how dangerous the city actually is and how no city, county, or state politician has any clue on how to fix the problem:
A recent study by the Journal of the Medical Association found that about half of Chicago residents will personally witness a shooting incident before they are 40 years old.
Even worse, the study also found that 56% of Black and Hispanic residents will witness a shooting incident by the time they are 40 years old.
While still horrific, white residents are less than half as likely to witness a shooting incident by the time they are 40, 25%.
Even more unbelievable, the average age of witnessing a shooting incident is only 14 years old.
7% of Black and Hispanic residents reported that they had been a victim of a shooting before the age of 40 with the average age of their shooting incident being 17 years old.
The study was compiled by researchers at Cambridge, Harvard, and Oxford universities so it definitely has credibility.
The study also suggested that long term exposure to the stress of gun violence can lead to lower test scores for kids and lower life expectancies due to heart disease caused by the stress of living in a violent city.
An unbelievable situation. Probably nowhere in the entire country have city, county, and state politicians been so inept and so ineffective in providing the very basic responsibility of any government entity: protecting the lives and property of it’s residents.
4)The Biden administration has been an economic disaster for many Americans:
Early in his term, inflation hit a 40 year high.
While the inflation rate has come down, it is still about two and half times higher than when the Biden Presidency began.
And the high prices are across the board: food, utilities, gas, and many other products have seen price increases not witnessed in decades.
This has caused the Fed to steeply raise interest rates which has depressed economic growth and put the dream of home ownership out of the reach of many American families.
Yes, Biden has been a financial disaster which was recently proven again:
Recent data from the Census Bureau shows that about two out of five Americans (38.5%) are struggling economically over two years into the Biden tenure.
This translates to a staggering 89 million Americans.
These 89 million Americans report they are struggling to pay their bills.
This 38.5% is up from 34.4% the year before, i.e. economic conditions are getting worse.
Also, the 38.5% is three times higher than it was just three years ago.
In addition, over 25 million Americans claim they had to use their credit cards or took a loan out before their next paycheck.
That is up from 22.4 million from 2022 and the highest number recorded since the survey's creation.
What a mess. Biden inherited a steady economy with low inflation, low unemployment and low interest rates and has managed to reverse all of those positive realities into negative nightmares.
More dangerous insanity from the American political class: economic stress, violence in the street, criminal FBI behavior, and the race to bankruptcy continues for many American states.
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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