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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