Saturday, July 5, 2025

Part 2, By The Numbers: More Chicago Killings, More Medicare and Medicaid Fraud, and More Foolish Funding of the California High Speed Rail Line

 On a regular basis we do  a series of posts labeled, “By The Numbers.” In these posts we  look at real life numbers and discuss them relative to  the fantasies, lies, incompetence, and stupidity of the American  political class. As we have always said, “politicians lie but the numbers do not.”


1)Unfortunately, we review these following numbers all too often. The city of Chicago is a violent and murder infested  urban area. It has been like that for years and apparently, it still is, with no  local, county, or state politician having any  idea how to fix the violence:


  • Recently, in a single drive by shooting incident in the city, four residents were killed.

  • People were out socializing on a summer evening, nothing out of the ordinary, when the drive by happened.

  • In total, 13 women and five men  were shot, ranging in age from 21 to 32 years old.

  • Two women and two men were among the dead.

  • Last year, over the Fourth of July weekend, over 100 Chicago residents were shot and 19 died.


It is a pretty good chance, given the politicians' inactions, the violence numbers this Fourth of July this year in the city will be just as bad.


2)We have also often discussed the pathetic wasting of taxpayer wealth through incompetence, criminal fraud, and employee fraud in the Medicare and Medicaid processes. For decades, they have wasted untold  billions of dollars, dollars that could have been better used to help more unhealthy Americans at a lower cost.


And thanks to recent successes by the Justice Department, we now get a look at what just a small part of the corruption and criminal activity looks  like:


  • As part of the Justice Department’s 2025 National Health Care Fraud Takedown, criminal charges were recently laid onto 324 health care defendants, 

  • They were charged with ripping off the Federal government and the American taxpayer via health care scams to the tune of a whopping $14.5 billion.

  • This action was the result of cooperation across 50 Federal districts and 12 state attorney generals.

  • Those arrested included 96 doctors in addition to nurses, pharmacists and other licensed professionals.

  • The arrests resulted in the seizure of over $245 million in cash, luxury vehicles, cryptocurrency, and other assets.

  • Previous to this take down effort, the government announced in another operation that it had blocked over $1 billion of taxpayer wealth being paid out to bogus medical  claims against Medicare by over 200 individuals.

  • “This record-setting Health Care Fraud Takedown delivers justice to criminal actors who prey upon our most vulnerable citizens and steal from hardworking American taxpayers,” said Attorney General Pamela Bondi. “Make no mistake – this administration will not tolerate criminals who line their pockets with taxpayer dollars while endangering the health and safety of our communities.”

  • According to FBI Director Kash Patel: “Health care fraud drains critical resources from programs intended to help people who truly need medical care. Today’s announcement demonstrates our commitment to pursuing those who exploit the system for personal gain. With more than $13 billion in fraud uncovered, this is the largest takedown for this initiative to date. Together, the FBI and our law enforcement partners will continue to hold those accountable who steal from the American people and undermine our health care systems.”

  • The criminals involved both domestic and international criminals with some of the  criminals from faraway  places like Estonia.

  • The criminals set up fake  companies and began submitting claims to Medicare for catheters and other medical equipment by using stolen identities of American citizens.

  • At least one banker was arrested and charged with helping to launder the stolen Medicare funds.

  • For decades, the state government of California has been trying to build a modern,  high speed rail  line from San Francisco to Los Angeles. 


  • In  another law  enforcement effort, charges were recently filed in Illinois against five alleged criminals in connection with the theft of $703 million in  Medicare funds.

  • A criminal who was arrested in Pakistan stole about $650 million from Arizona Medicaid.

  • Also in Arizona, seven people were arrested and charged with filing over $1 billion in fraudulent claims to Medicare.

  • In Tennessee, prosecutors arrested three  people,  including a pharmacist, with a $28.7 million scheme to defraud the Federal Employees’ Compensation Fund.

  • They billed the Federal  government for injured post office  employees that never had any medicines formally prescribed for them.


And yet, despite this impressive crackdown on  those that would steal billions form taxpayers, Democrats and  liberals across the country are  claiming that Trump is an evil man for protecting taxpayer wealth. I do not get it, so petty on their part, great on  Trump and the Federal  government’s effort to protect our tax dollars.


3)It is rumored that a very smart man, Albert Einstein, once said:  “The definition of insanity is doing the same  thing over and over and expecting different results.”  A current day example of this principle was recently demonstrated in the  final Californai state government budget:


  • The state government of California has been trying, for decades, to build a modern high speed rail line from San Francisco to Los Angeles.

  • I say trying because the project has been a management disaster from the start: severely missed build out deadlines, severely overrun budgets, and little progress at all. 

  • We recently updated the sad state of this failed government project in the following post:


https://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2025/05/trump-and-musk-continue-to-uncover_13.html

  • We will not go into the details of the post but the conclusion from that post is basically that the state has been throwing good money after bad money, that the costs and benefits of the project will never materialize and that failure will cost the  residents untold billions and billions of dollars.

  • And yet, when the latest state budget was approved, the state government politicians did not follow Einstein’s advice and allocated yet another $1 billion a year for the next 15 years or so to fund a PORTION of the original plan.

  • The original plan to build the entire rail  line was supposed to cost $28 billion for the entire project and be done by 2020.

  • Now, the state politicians want to spend another $15 billion to finalize just a portion of the line which is already $100 billion over budget BEFORE this new funding plan.


The true definition of insanity: spend more and  more and get less and less at a much later date. The numbers are bad but the state politicians keep making them  worse.


More killing in Chicago, more fraud in Medicare and Medicaid, more insanity in California, and more political class insanity.


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If you agree that we need to deseat every member of Congress for their lack of success and accomplishment, then please consider going to the following petition link to help the cause:


https://www.change.org/p/deseat-congress-reset-freedom



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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:


Wednesday, July 2, 2025

By The Numbers, Part 1 - “Escape From New York - The Mamdani Documentary"

 On a regular basis we do  a series of posts labeled, “By The Numbers.” In these posts we  look at real life numbers and discuss them relative to  the fantasies, lies, incompetence, and stupidity of the American  political class. As we have always said, “politicians lie but the numbers do not.”


A note before we begin: this blog post practically wrote itself given the stupidity and insanity of the current Democratic Party nominee for mayor of New York, Zohran Mamdani. His views and plans for the city and  its residents if elected will surely result in chaos, rampaging crime and exodus from the city. His ignorance of basic economics and human nature is astounding.


Let’s start with Mamdani’s view of the world and what he thinks of others:


  • He is anti-Israel and anti-Jewish.

  • He does not like the New York City Police Department and is a “defund the police” advocate.

  • He wants lenient sentencing and no cash bail for criminals in the city.

  • He wants to raise the minimum wage to $30 in the city.

  • He wants to provide free child care, free bus transportation, and free health care for city residents.

  • He wants the city government to develop and operate grocery stores in the city.

  • He wants to pay for all of these free services and perks by increasing the taxation of people living in “wealthy white neighborhoods” and city businesses.

  • He wants to freeze rents.

  • He wants to become the biggest sanctuary city in the country for illegal  immigrants.

  • He wants to destroy the Constitution by completely voiding the Second Amendment.


Again, his economic and human nature ignorance is astounding. We could go through each one of these points and point out the dire consequences to the city’s financials and citizen safety but that is time for another post. Today we look at the numbers only and how the above ideas will make a bad situation worse.

Let’s start with some recent New York City statistics:


  • In the middle of the year 2020, the population of New York City was about 8.8 million people.

  • According to the latest available  population statistics, the current population of the city is 8.26 million people.

  • This is roughly equivalent to the city of Baltimore and its entire half a million population moving out of New York City.

  • Thus, in a few short years, the city lost over half a million residents, about 6% of its residential population and probably about the same amount of its business tax base.

  • Between July, 2022 and July, 2023, about 78,000 residents moved out of the state, or about 214 residents, on average, moved out of the state in that one year EVERY DAY.

  • According to news reports, as of the middle of 2023, 158 Wall  Street businesses had left the city, taking almost a trillion dollars of managed assets with them.

  • One has to  assume that many smaller businesses also left the  city during the past few years also, taking their taxable assets with them.


Two conclusions from these numbers: First, due to a higher and higher taxation burden, over regulation, failing schools, and high crime rates, many residents and businesses have  already had enough and are taking their tax dollars elsewhere where the quality of life and financial burden is less. 


Second, once this trend is underway, the out migration of residents and businesses, it is very difficult to stop  since the mindset of those that have left and those that have watched the out migration from afar now believe that the city is not a worthwhile place to live and do business.


Let’s explore another set of numbers relative the ultra wealthy that live in “wealthy white neighborhoods,” the people most likely to take the brunt of Mamdani’s tax  the  rich strategy:


  • There are 123 billionaires living in New York City.

  • The total net worth of those 123 billionaires is estimated at $759 billion.

  • However, the top five wealthiest billionaires in the city are worth about $277 billion so if they take their wealth out of the city like thousands of others before them then he is left with only $482 billion left with the remaining billionaires, assuming they do not leave also.

  • If Mamdani taxes their WEALTH at 1% of their total WEALTH, then each resident of the city could theoretically get about $580 per person. 

  • That translates to about $11 a week, or about $1.60 a day, not enough for a Starbucks stopover.

  • And they would probably not get that much since this example is a 1% tax on WEALTH, not INCOME, which means that $1.60 would be lowered even  further.


But consider some numbers from the billionaires living in  NYC:


  • Michael  Bloomberg is the  richest of the billionaires with an estimated  total wealth of $105 billion.

  • Let’s assume and take a wild  guess that his home in the city is worth, say, $10 million.

  • Thus, his home is worth about .9% of his total wealth, not 9%, .9%.

  • He could very easily donate his home to a charity, get a huge charity donation tax deduction and be living in Miami very quickly without a major hit to his financial situation and not have to pay the current and increased Mamdani white neighborhood additional city taxes.

  • Even Rupert Murdoch, only the fifth wealthiest billionaire at about $21 billion could escape from New York with minimal financial hit since if he was  living in a $10 million city home, that would be less than 5% of his total wealth.

  • Again, he could donate his home to charity, take the tax  deduction, and move to get out from current and future Mamdani tax burdens.


The wealthy can leave New York quite easily without a major financial hit, something that cannot be said of the city government.


The numbers show that taxing the wealthy white folks would not translate to very much per every other New York City resident but would likely drive many of these white wealthy folks out of the city, further reducing the tax base lower than what it is today.


So in summary of the numbers:


  • The multi-year out migration trend continues to be steep for city residents.

  • Billionaires and millionaires are likely to continue to leave the city if Mamdani raises taxes on these folks even more.

  • Jewish folks are likely to accelerate their exodus, given the anti-Israel and anti-Jewish views of Mamdani.

  • Law-abiding folks are likely to accelerate their exodus, given the anti-police and pro-criminal views of Mamdani.

  • Businesses are likely to accelerate their exodus, given that they could not afford the $30 minimum wage Mamdani would impose.

  • Supermarkets are likely to accelerate their exodus, given that Mamdani’s city government-run grocery stores would undercut the prices and profits of real  grocery stores.

  • Rental property owners are likely to accelerate their exodus, given that Mamdani will not let them raise rents to be profitable and take care of and provide maintenance to their properties.


You get it, the numbers are pretty stark. No way that he can maintain the current tax base, never mind milking the current base for incremental taxes for his fantasies listed above. Again, his economic and human nature ignorance is amazing.


 Cue the new film: “Escape From New York - The Mamdani Documentary."


**********************

If you agree that we need to deseat every member of Congress for their lack of success and accomplishment, then please consider going to the following petition link to help the cause:


https://www.change.org/p/deseat-congress-reset-freedom



**********************


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: