There is a lot going on in the world: Obama and Russiagate findings, Middle East powder keg, the Russian/Ukrainian war, etc. But through all this, the American political class continues to constantly deliver its own special brand of insanity, stupidity, wasteful taxpayer spending, and ineffective government programs.
1)As we have pointed out many times, the Department of Education was founded during the Carter administration and it is probably a safe bet that over a trillion dollars have been spent by the department over the past forty years or so. We have also pointed out, unfortunately, that the money spent by the department over the years has resulted in an abysmal failure to properly educate the nation’s kids, as the latest test results show:
According to the test results from the latest National Assessment of Education Progress, we as a nation continue to under-educate our kids despite spending large amounts of taxpayer dollars for this endeavor.
For example, eighth grade students lost significant ground in science skills over the past several years.
According to Matthew Soldner, the acting commissioner for the National Center for Education Statistics: “Scores for our lowest-performing students are at historic lows. These results should galvanize all of us to take concerted and focused action to accelerate student learning.”
Test scores are also down in other categories including reading and math.
According to Carol Jago, associate director for the California Reading and Literature Project at UCLA,, 20 years ago it was common for high school students to be assigned 20 books a school year to read while today that reading number is often down to about three books per school year.
With the latest test results, it is obvious that more and more students are not reaching even the basic achievement levels across different subjects.
The average test scores off of the latest testing shows the LOWEST reading score attainment in the history of the assessment process, a process that started in 1992.
Math test scores were the lowest since 2005, almost 20 years ago.
45% of the high school seniors tested scored below "basic" math achievement, also the lowest results since 2005.
Only 33% of high school seniors are now considered academically prepared for college level math courses, a drop from 39% in 2019.
Also disturbing, the gender gap between girl and boy test results in math, science, technology, and engineering has widened significantly over the past five years.
We could go on but you get the idea: our kids are not, on average, getting a good education despite large amounts of money being spent to attain declining and horrible education results. Obviously, the Federal Department of Education has failed miserably in its objective and thus, something has to change, up to and including the dismemberment of the entire Department and spending its budget in better ways..
The old saying applies here: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” For over forty years we have been adhering to this definition of insanity debate with untold billions of dollars being spent every year with nothing to show for the expense.
2)This next gem shows again how members of the American political class never answer a question directly, often because they are not smart enough to answer a simple question or they think they can BS the rest of us:
Today’s example comes to us courtesy of the Democratic Party candidate for governor for the state of Virginia, Abigail Spanberger.
She was recently asked a very simple yes/no question by a local TV reporter from WJLA, Nick Minock.
The question was simply: “Do you support men in women's bathrooms?”
Pretty straightforward question, nothing tricky about it, not trying to trap the politician in a corner, just a straightforward yes/no question.
But that is where the word salad, the political dancing and evading, the basic BS answer started: “The circumstances this legal case plays out is really one of we've had four cases settled or judged here in Virginia, in the fourth district, the former Gavin Britain case related to bathroom usage. And in fact, the argument is, the assessment is there needs to be much clearer guidance in terms of what is an executive orders, binding assessment of Title Nine, versus what has been a decision of a court. But ultimately, the real impact here is, once again, it is the Trump administration taking dollars away from Virginia, threatening education dollars to our public schools is an attack on Virginia's kids. It's an attack on our economy. It's an attack on Virginia's and as governor, the important thing is, as a candidate for governor, the important thing, the important priority for me, is to ensure that we have the best public schools in the entire country. And the reality is, when we have a president who is coming after Virginia, our education system, whether it's K through 12, whether it is our public universities, that is harmful to Virginia, our ability to educate our kids and ultimately our economy.”
Are you kidding me? A simple yes or no question was answered with over 190 words, none of which were “yes” or “no.” She somehow brought Trump into the discussion, the state economy into the discussion, college universities into the discussion and yet never answered the question. She either has no answer or she is afraid to answer this simple question, two traits I would not want as a governor in my state.
This word salad evasive disaster can be viewed at the following link:
3)One of our favorite topics to discuss is to try and figure out which of at least four state governments is going to go bankrupt first: Illinois, New York, New Jersey or California. All of these states are in declining financial health and probably sooner rather than later their liabilities are going to be too much for them to continue to manage and service.
Our theory goes as follows:
These states have a history of higher and higher taxes and higher and higher business regulations.
The ever growing onus of higher taxes and regulations causes residents and businesses to leave the state for greener pastures which reduces the tax base and tax revenue of the four states above that they are leaving.
Rather than reduce state government spending to match with the reduced tax revenue, the state politicians usually just raise taxes to make up for the revenue shortfall.
But the increased tax burden causes more residents and businesses to flee the state further reducing the tax base and tax revenue.
This causes the state politicians to raise taxes even more and they eventually reduce government services which drives more residents and businesses out of the state and the financial death spiral is underway.
The exiting residents and businesses usually head for states that have a better quality of life, lower tax burdens, and lower business regulation burden such as Texas and Florida. This, in turn, allows these states to grow their economy with more people moving in, many of which bring high skill sets and higher than average wealth, along with viable businesses.
The recent scorecard from Lightcast shows how this entire process is unfolding:
For the third year in a row, the Lightcast scorecard scored Florida as the top spot for workforce attraction.
In addition to a big win at the state level, Florida claimed seven out of the top ten spots for best cities across the country for workforce attraction.
Governor Ron DeSantis was rightly happy with the results: "We’re not just preparing for the future – we’re ahead of schedule, building a workforce ready for high-demand, high-wage careers today."
Florida was the top rated state across many measures including overall job growth and “competitive effect,” i.e. doing better than the national trend and results.
The state also scored high for “skilled job growth” (2nd) and “high earning job growth” (3rd).
California came in dead last at 51 (the District of Columbia is included in the analysis) while our other top candidates to get to bankruptcy court first, Illinois and New York, ranked 50th and 49th respectively.
Also, since DeSantis became governor of Florida, almost 4 million new businesses chose to set up shop in the state with over 360,000 launched just in 2025.
And it is not just new businesses coming to Florida since, for example, ServiceNow, a secure data technology company, recently announced it is coming to West Palm Beach Florida and is bringing 850 jobs with it, with an average starting salary of $170,000.
Thus, we now have additional numbers and data that show that our top four states to go bankrupt first are still the favorites as the financial death spiral continues to grow faster and deeper with every passing day. And those politicians in New York, New Jersey, California, and Illinois do not seem to have a clue on how to stop it even though the model for doing so is looking them right in the face in the Sunshine state and other locales
That will do it for today: the same states are still racing to bankruptcy court, word gibberish from a governor candidate in Virginia, and the Department of Education continues to be an abysmal failure.
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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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