August, 2016, Part 1, Poltiical Class Insanity: Veterns Still Getting Short Changed, Lobbyists INfest the Demcorats, and a Throwback Obama Lie

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. In fact, last month we set a record, needing ten full posts to cover it all.

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.

It looks like our politicians have been especially insane over the past month or so let’s get started with the latest insanity from today’s American politicians:

1) We have often reported on the horrible, horrible job that the Veterans Administration has been doing during the Obama administration in taking care of the medical health needs of our veterans. Scandals at various VA facilities across the country have left our veterans without care, put them on long waiting lists and then destroyed the long waiting lists and other personnel records to enhance the financial aspects of VA executives’ job performance. Although Obama made a change to the leadership of the operation a while ago, persistent reports and evidence showing little improvement have previously been reported in this blog.

One of the reasons why our veterans have not been given the care promised was reviewed in a recent article on the Breitbart website. According to a report by the organization, Open the Books:

• The Veterans Administration spent $20 million on an art collection while veterans' medical needs were going unserved.
• Included in the $20 million was the cost of a whopping 27 foot artificial Christmas tree that cost $21,500 and two sculptures that cost $670,000 that were installed at a California VA facility that, get this, serves blind veterans.
• $483,000 was spent on a decorative rock for the VA facility in Palo Alto which does not include the $807,000 that was spent to prepare the area to receive and display the decorative rock.
• At the same VA facility, the government spent $330,000 for something called a half arc that was placed in the lobby, another $365,000 was spent on a sculpture that was placed near the pool, and $285,000 that went to paste dozens of rocks to a wall that spelled out quotes by famous Americans... in Morse Code.
• In a San Francisco Veterans Administration building, $32,000 was spent to hang 62 framed photographs, not paintings, photographs from the local geographic area, a whopping cost of $500 framed per photo.
• A VA facility in Puerto Rico spent $610,000 on artwork and a facility in Alaska spent $100,000 on a single piece of sculpture.
• To add insult to injury, a letter from Senator Mark Kirk pointed out to the head of the VA that even though the VA issued a moratorium on all art purchases a year ago, the VA went forward and spent $1.8 million despite the so-called moratorium.

Such bad priorities, such bad judgement, such a waste of taxpayer money. Veterans get sick and die without the promised care yet the VA continues to purchase useless and unneeded pieces of likely overpriced artwork even though they promised NOT to do it. 

And Hillary Clinton wants to raise our taxes and give the Federal government even more of our wealth even though the Federal government and the bureaucrats that operate it obviously do not know how to spend it on what is needed and critical to serve the citizens of this country. Pathetically insane.

2) If someone claims that the political system in this country today is not rigged to serve the political class and those that fund them, then maybe a recent article from the Washington Examiner would help convince them. We have previously pointed out, both in this blog and in our book, “Love My Country, Loathe My Government,” that the Democrats rig their Presidential primary processes with so-called super delegates. These are about 700 Democratic Party hacks that have a big say in who gets the Presidential nomination regardless of what Democratic voters want.

An example of their power was shown a few times during this year’s Democratic primaries where Bernie Sanders got a large majority of the primary voters' votes but ended up getting a far smaller percentage of that state’s delegates since the super delegates of that state favored Hillary Clinton. In such places, the voters spoke and the super delegates said “never mind, we know what is best for you."

Well, it gets worse. According to a recent Washington Examiner report by Daniel Chaitin on July 30, 2016, almost 10% of the Democratic Party superdelegates were actually registered lobbyists. Research by the Sunlight Foundation found that:

• 63 out of the 712 super delegates were registered at some point in time as lobbyists at the state or Federal government level.
• These super delegates/lobbyists represented banks, health care insurers, the telecom industry, labor unions, Goldman Sachs, and Planned Parenthood.
• Specifically, super delegate and former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle is currently registered for the healthcare insurance company Aetna, former House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt is a registered lobbyist with the Gephardt Group and former DNC General Chairman and Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell was registered for Ballard Spahr LLP as recently as 2012.
• Sunlight also found an additional 32 individuals it called "shadow lobbyists," which it describes as super delegates who "aren't officially registered as lobbyists, but are heavily involved in the influence industry."

Given that over 86% of the super delegates voted for Hillary Clinton, a far higher percentage than the percentage of Democratic voters that voted for her during the primaries, you can see how rigged the system is and how alive crony capitalism is with the Democrats. The very people that usually arrange for government bailouts, favorable tax treatment, lucrative government contracts, etc., for their industry employers are the same people who pick who gets to run for office. 

And to think that they are not expecting pay back, after delivering 86% of the super delegate vote, is naive. Pathetic and an insult to democracy and freedom.

3) This last piece of insanity for today is a throwback, retro look at another preposterous Obama promise/claim that he made back when he first ran for the Presidency. In 2008, Obama said Bush was unpatriotic for increasing the national debt by $4 TRILLION during Bush’s eight years as President. But if you go to the actual White House budget website at:

chrome-extension://bpmcpldpdmajfigpchkicefoigmkfalc/views/app.html

you will find some incredible lies and hypocrisy of Obama:

• This website contains a detailed historical compilation of the Federal government’s budget performance since the country’s formation over two hundred years ago.
• If you look down Column D to the Bush years, you will see that Bush had budget deficits that exceeded $400 billion for only two years, making it mathematically impossible for Obama’s $4 TRILLION statement to be correct.
• Obama never had a budget deficit under $500 billion until his sixth year in office and even that year was higher than any annual budget deficit of Bush.
• Obama had four consecutive years of running a budget deficit over $1 TRILLION a year, two to three times higher than the highest Bush budget deficit.
• And while Obama’s lowest budget deficit in 2015 did finally get under Bush’s HIGHEST budget deficit, by a mere $20 billion, his White House budget website currently shows the 2016 deficit to be over $600 billion, the sixth highest budget deficit ever for the country, with Obama possessing the five higher budget deficits.
• And finally as we all know, the combined budget deficit of ALL previous Presidencies will be equal to the the budget deficit created by the Obama administration by itself:

So if Bush is unpatriotic for running up a $4 TRILLION deficit number over eight years, which Obama’s own spreadsheet shows he did not, than Obama should be tried for treason given his many $1 TRILLION annual budget deficits. 

I am against all budget deficits, I am not defending Bush. We now have a national debt that has exceed 100% of the country’s GDP, a financial warning sign if there ever was one. But Obama's claim is just one of dozens of false claims and lies he has put forth over the past eight years, claims and lies that do not stand even the simplest efforts to research the truth. 

I cannot figure out if he and other politicians like them actually believe the lies they spew out or they think we are too dumb to understand when they are lying to us. In either case, they are an insult to integrity and truth.

To hear Obama actually speak these words, go to:

http://www.youngcons.com/2008-obama-said-bush-raising-debt-4-trillion-was-unpatriotic-fox-news-tweet-slays/

That will do it for today’s insanity. A Veterans Administration that wastes gobs of money on artwork while veterans die and get sick because they cannot get the healthcare they were promised, how the lobbyists and vested interests infest the Democratic Party’s political processes, and a throwback Obama lie that the test of time shows was a joke. More insanity for many days to come.

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:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:


http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

Part 3: Why The Obama Administration Deserves To Be Rated The Worst Presidency Since 1945

A recent public opinion poll conducted by Quinnipiac University, a traditional and unbiased source of public opinion, asked a sample of Americans who they thought operated the worst Presidency since 1945. Barack Obama won a plurality of votes in that poll for being the worst U.S. President since 1945. 33% of respondents named him as the worst President over the past seven decades with George W, Bush finishing second at 28%.

Both of them far outpolled who I generally consider the two worst Presidents of the past hundred years, Jimmy Carter (8%) for being a President who was clueless and totally ineffective, and Richard Nixon (13%) for simply being a vindictive crook. America has to be pretty disgusted with your Presidential administration when you are mentioned 2-4 more times than either Carter or Nixon as the worst president since 1945.

Over the next few days we are going to explore the overwhelming number of reasons while this result for President Obama is not only rational but is well deserved. Before anyone starts with their counter arguments or disputing my list of Obama policy failures, criminal acts, economic ignorance, violations of the Constitution, and broken promises, keep in mind the following facts:

• I have never voted for a Republican for President in my life and I am over 60 years old.
• Up until November, 2010, I had never voted for a Republican for national office.
• In the first two years of his Presidency, Obama’s party was in control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate with filibuster proof majorities in both places, I.e. he could have done anything he wanted politically and legislatively without any assist from any Republican.
• I am not saying that anyone else would have resolved all of the issues listed below but it is difficult to think that at least some of these issues would have been resolved by people such as Truman, Kennedy, or Reagan. The Obama Presidency has been so bad that just about every issue and problem listed below is actually far WORST rather than BETTER since the onset of the Obama administration.
• Consider an old saying: “Don’t tell me how rough the seas were, just tell me you brought the boat safely into the harbor.” In other words, a true leader takes the blame and gives the credit. No one forced Obama to become President, he knew the situation he was getting into. He should be judged on how well he managed the situation he inherited going forward. Unfortunately, instead of leadership and looking forward, he chose instead to whine, look backwards, and to blame others for his failures rather than focusing on moving forward from whatever adverse situation he inherited.

Okay, so that sets out the preliminaries: I am not a conservative, a Republican, or a neocon trying to tear down this President. This President could have done anything he wanted in the first two years of his tenure, he cannot blame the Republicans for blocking anything he failed at since he had a historic window of political opportunity. Instead of leveraging the window and leading the country, he chose to blame the previous President, the Japanese tsunami, ATM machines, and a whole host of other factors in the absence of Presidential leadership.

Thus, without any further delay and in no particular order, consider the following XXXX reasons why the Quinnipiac public opinion poll is probably an accurate view of why America rates the Obama administration as the worst Presidential administration in the past 70 years or so (the first 36 reasons were listed in the previous two posts starting with XXXXX):

37) He has constantly reinforced his masculinity by staging dozens of photo ops with professional and college athletic teams but has had minimal photo ops with outstanding teachers, heroic soldiers, or other outstanding American citizens. 

38) He embarrassed the country and his administration by not sending a high level representative to represent the country at Margaret Thatcher’s state funeral, just another in a long line of snubs against our allies around the world. 

39) His failure to come up with a sane and compassionate drug program, continuing the long failing war on drugs, has lead to the continued enlargement and enrichment of foreign drug cartels who have now established themselves firmly throughout the country, peddling their drugs and getting richer. 

40) His failure to live up to his campaign promise of not having high powered lobbyists in positions of power in his administration, a campaign promise that he promptly broke when he placed many high level lobbyists in his administration. 

Relevant Obama quote (Anthony Holm): “More than forty former lobbyists work in senior positions in the Obama administration, including three cabinet secretaries and the CIA director.” 

41) He failed to live up to his promise of reducing the obscene number of earmarks in the annual Federal government expense stream, with the value of earmarks at almost the exact same level of waste as when he took office five years ago. 

Relevant Obama quote: “We need earmark reform, and when I'm President, I will go line by line to make sure that we are not spending money unwisely.” 

42) He signed the renewal of the Patriot Act with little discussion or change, a piece of legislation that has caused a significant drop off in freedom and privacy in this country. 

Relevant Obama quote: "We will revisit the Patriot Act and overturn unconstitutional executive decisions issued during the past eight years." 

43) His administration has, at times, incurred MONTHLY deficit spending levels that were higher than almost every other ANNUAL spending deficits from every other President including Bush. 

Relevant Obama quote: “Today I’m pledging to cut the deficit we inherited in half by the end of my first term in office. This will not be easy. It will require us to make difficult decisions and face challenges we’ve long neglected. But I refuse to leave our children with a debt that they cannot repay — and that means taking responsibility right now, in this administration, for getting our spending under control.” 

44) He failed to foresee the Arab spring, resulting in an unpreparedness that has considerably weakened the American influence in the entire Middle East region. 

45) His Obama Care legislation has resulted in many new taxes being directly or indirectly imposed on EVERY American. 

Relevant Obama quote: “If your family earns less than $250,000 a year, you will not see your taxes increased a single dime. I repeat: not one single dime.” 

46) The national debt has increased almost $8 TRILLION during his first six years in office, imposing an individual debt burden of over $50,000 on every man, woman and child in the country. 

Relevant Obama quote: “Nobody wants to put the creditworthiness of the United States in jeopardy. Nobody wants to see the United States default. So we've got to seize this moment, and we have to seize it soon.” 

Relevant Obama quote: "America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better. I therefore intend to oppose the effort to increase America’s debt limit." 

47) Of his many lies, one the biggest lie was to blame Congress for the impacts of the sequester, an idea that he proposed, and an idea he later denied ever proposing despite the public record of his proposal. 

Relevant Obama quote: “The sequester is not something that I’ve proposed. It is something that Congress has proposed.” 

Relevant Obama quote (Bob Woodward): “What the president said is not correct [that he did not propose the sequester]. He is mistaken. And its refuted by the people who work for him.” 

48) In cahoots with Congress, he secretly signed legislation that modified the STOCK Act, a secret signing that allowed Congressional members and their staffs to again conduct stock trading based on their insider secret knowledge of legislation that was pending, proposed or possible in the future. 

49) He allowed his administration to spend millions of dollars to buy fake Twitter and Facebook hits and followers while at the same time signing legislation that reduced the pension benefits of our veterans. 

50) Despite wining the Nobel Peace prize, according to Gallup's international polling, 23% of world citizens in a recent opinion poll still view the United States as the biggest threat to world peace, almost three times more than the next nearest threat (Pakistan), and more than four times higher than either Russia or China. 

51) Despite promising to have the most transparent administration ever, Transparency International recently proclaimed that corruption in the United States was growing faster than anywhere else in the world except Cuba, Dominca, and Burkina Faso. 

52) Analysis of IRS records showed that 36 Obama White House employees owe over $800,000 in back taxes and over 300,000 Federal employees owed about $3.5 billion in back taxes but all of whom were allowed to continue to draw their full Federal salaries and benefits; which should not be a surprise since he nominated any number of tax evaders and/delinquent tax payers to important government positions including Kathleen Sibelius (head of Health and Human Services), Timothy Geithner (Secretary of the Treasury), YYY Solis (head of the Labor department), Tom Daschle (who ended up not working for this administration) and others. 

53) He broke his promise not to sign non-emergency legislation before it had been posted on the Internet for at least five days. 

54) He broke his promise to televise the Congressional hearings regarding Obama Care debates and proceedings on C-SPAN so the entire country would understand what was going into the legislation. 

55) He lied when he stated that the Supreme Court had never overturned any law that had been passed by Congress., he lied when he said the auto bailouts he supported prevented Detroit from going bankrupt (it did go bankrupt), he lied when he said that Al Qaeda was almost defeated since we now know that Al Qaeda controls more physical territory in the world than it ever has before including battlegrounds in Iraq that cost Americans hundreds of lives and billions of dollars, he lied when he denied saying that he had ever declared a “red line” regarding Syria’s use of chemical weapons. (relevant Obama quote: “A red line for us is when we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around.”), he lied when he falsely claimed that health insurance companies were the cause of millions of insurance policies being cancelled when in truth it was the Obama Care legislation requirements that legally forced the cancellations, and he lied when he falsely claimed that an insurance company had refused to pay for his mother’s cancer treatment. 

56) Three years after the Dodd-Frank financial industry reform legislation has been passed, less than half of the needed regulations required by the legislation have been written by the executive branch. 

57) He vindictively shut down White House tours and DC war memorials during the sequester and government shutdown, claiming lack of government funds, but somehow found government funds to keep his favorite government run golf course open the whole time. 

58) He insulted the families who had loved ones die or be wounded by the Fort Hood terrorist attacker, Nidal Hasan, by claiming they were merely victims of “workplace violence” and not terrorism; this cold designation resulted in those families and victims not getting just compensation for their losses and suffering while at the same time paying over $200,000 in government salary and benefits to the shooter and terrorist Hasan as he awaited trial. 

59) He refused to fire the IRS employees who lost $67 million from an Obama Care slush fund, he refused to fire ATF employees who lost over 400 million cigarettes in their position, he failed to fire anyone connected with the $600 million Obama Care website that did not work, he failed to fire anyone who was connected with the botched rollout of Obama Care including Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, etc. In fact, in a time of massive government corruption, fraud, and incompetence, his administration has failed to fire or prosecute any government employee for any breach of conduct or laws.

60) He refused or did not care to rein in absolutely stupid and unnecessary government spending including research money used to build a robotic squirrel, development of a video game to simulate prom week, conducting pottery classes in Morocco, determining when dogs became man’s best friend, constructing a million dollar bus stop in Arlington, Virginia, keeping a dog handler (earning over $100,000 a year) on the White House payroll to handle the Obama family’s dog’s needs, keeping three full time professional calligraphers on staff, and other such extraneous, unnecessary and wasteful spending and nonsense. 

61) He criticized waterboarding and secret rendition of suspected terrorists but then went forth and simply just killed suspected terrorists and collateral damage civilians directly by drone attacks. 

Relevant Obama quote: "We will not ship away prisoners in the dead of night to be tortured in far off countries, or detain without trial or charge prisoners who can and should be brought to justice for their crimes, or maintain a network of secret prisons to jail people beyond the reach of the law." 

62) He failed to anticipate and then manage the growing humnaitarian crisis on our southern border with the invasion and assaulting of that border by tens of thousands of kids and adults from Central and South America, an assault that is straining border security, straining medical resources, and opening up the country to the potential for terrorist infiltration and disease introduction.

Sixty two reasons which justify why this Presidential administration deserves its ranking as the worst Presidency since 194. And we are not even close to completing the case that more and more of Americans are coming to understand. We will need at least a few more days to finsish up the list of failures and corruption of this Presidency. 

However, the remaining reasons we are going to list out in the coming days are actually more serious than the first 62 reasons. The remaining justifications for proving this is the worst Presdiecney since 1945 are actually actions and reasons for impeachment and removal from office. So far, we have just examined corruption, incompetence, broken promises, inept economic policies, inept foreign affairs management, etc. Going forward, we document and discuss dozens of reasons for both being ranked as the worst Presidency since 1945 and reasons justifying the termination of the Obama adminstration.

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:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

Amateur Hour In D.C., Part 3 - The Three Forms Of Political Class Corruption

This is our third in a serious of posts where we examine how amateurish our political class is when it comes to operating our various levels of government. Of all of the issues facing the nation and American families, most top ten lists would include such major topics as our failing public schools, our lost war on drugs, escalating health care costs, high unemployment, the insolvency of Social Security and Medicare, the lack of a rational and effecive national energy policy, and onerous national debt that will burden current and future generations of taxpayers. By just about any logical, quantifiable, or other reality-based measure, our political class has either not gotten around to fixing any of these problems, does not want to fix any of these problems, or most likely, has no idea how to fix any of these problems. Amateur hour.

One reason for their distraction from solving any problems may come down to one ugly word: corruption. Consider some of the ugly corruption headlines that we have unfortunately come across the past six months or so:

 "California Council Accepts Resignation of Three Managers" - Associated Press, 7/23/10. These city managers had managed to arrange salaries for themselves that were obnoxiously high.

"Fraud Gets Ex-Obama, Clinton Fundraiser 12 Years" - Associated Press, 7/15/10

"House Panel Charges Rangel With Ethics Violations" - Associated Press, 7/22/10

"Rangel Case Disturbing, Some Dems Say Resign" - Associated Press, 7/31/10

"Dems Say Swamp Of Corruption Drained" - Associated Press, 8/2/10

"TARP Recipients Spend $114 Milllion In Lobbying" - Opensecretsblog.com

"Kerry Dodges Massachusetts Boat Taxes" - The Week, 8/10/10

"Ethics Violations" - USA Today, 8/16/10

"3 Corruption Trials In New Jersey" - Associated Press, 10/6/10

"Audit - City Mismanaged over $50 Million In Funds" - Associated Press, 9/22/10

"Candidates For (NM) Governor Talk Corruption" - KRQE, 9/22/10

"Casino Owners, Senators Charged In Alabama Bingo Probe" - Associated Press, 10/4/10

"Congressional Aides Buy Bank Stocks" - The Week, 10/22/10. This article discussed how Congressional staffers, working for politicians working who would determine what banks got how much bailout money, used this insider trading information to get the edge in bank stock purchasing.

"Franks Gets Campaign Cash From Bailed Out Banks" - Associated Press, 10/22/10. Congressman Barney Franks' conflict of interest behavior - getting campaign donations from the industry he is supposed to oversee and regulate.

"Reid Aide Admits To False Immigration Marriage" - St. Petersburg Times, 10/26/10

"California Welfare Recipients Waste Welfare Money" - The Week, 11/12/10

"California Lawmakers Keep Vehicle Perk" - Associated Press, 12/10. Despite facing a huge budget shortfall for their state, California politicians continue to be the only state in the union that pays for cars for their state politicians.

Ex-Senator Chris Dodd's quote on how money perverts our election process - Businessweek, 12/6/10

This small sample of corruption and politics is illustrative of the first two types of corruption in our political class today. The first type is conflict of interest corruption. In this area, we see how politicians use their positions of power and trust to take campaign donations from the very industries and companies that they are supposed to be providing protection from for the American public. Congressman Barney Franks accepts campaign donations from banks even though he was the chairman of the House committee responsible for overseeing the banking industry and the bailout of banks in that industry. Congressional staffers trade stocks of banks using insider trading they may have gleaned from their Congressional jobs, actions that would get regular Americans arrested for violating insider trading laws. Conflict of interest corruption can cause politicians to act in the best interests of themselves and those that benefit the politician, not the American public.

The second type of corruption illustrated above is one of simple greed. Senator John Kerry, one of the richest people in the entire country, decides to save tens of thousands of dollars in Massachusetts state taxes by stashing his yacht in Rhode Island. Alabama state senators get kickbacks from developers to vote favorablyy on casinos in their state. Corruption of this type becomes a campaign issue in New Mexico's governor race. This type of corruption diverts polticians attention from the problems that need to be solved in order to devote their focus and energies on how to game the system for their own personal benefit. This type of greed also results in sub-optimal political actions since the right answer and proper course of action is secondary to personal financial gain.

The third type of corruption has no examples listed above. This type of corruption is really a moral form of corruption. Consider the following list of leading politicians that many would think have had moral corruption problems, usually in the forms of tax evasion, adultery, and/or lying:

1. President Bill Clinton (adultery and lying)
2. New York Governor Eliot Spitzer (adultery and lying)
3. New Jersey James MacGreevey (adultery and lying)
4. South Carolina Governor Stamford (adultery and lying)
5. U.S. Senator John Ensign (adultery and lying)
6. U.S. Senator John Edwards (adultery and lying)
7. Ex-Senator Tom Daschle (tax evasion)
8. Treasury Secretary Geithner (tax evasion)

Adultery and tax evasion probably takes a lot of energy and focus, energy and focus that cannot be used to focus on solutions to real problems.

I do not know how much corruption contributes to the political class inability to solve any problem. This inability and nonperformance may be a combination of a number of factors including various forms of corruption, the lack of desire to solve any of the major issues, or the intellectual inability to solve the major issues. The bottom line is that failing public schools, the war on drugs, illegal immigration, high taxes, etc. never get seriously addressed, never mind solved.

Several steps form "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" would go a long way to eliminating the factors that contribute to this sad, amateurish situation:

• Step 6 would only allow individual Americans to contribute to election campaigns in order to remove the factor of money out of our politics and eliminate the many conflicts of interest we suffer from today such as Congressional members receiving money for the companies they have oversight responsibility for.
• Step 38 would require all politicians to take an annual oath of ethics and shared values so they at least are told what proper behavior is from a corruption perspective.
• Step 39 would implement term limits for all politicians to remove the corruption of re-election campaigns out of our politics. It would also provide a continuous stream of new people with new ideas into our political system with the hope that these new people might eventually solve our oldest problems. Those politicians that have been in office for twenty, thirty or more years have proven that they cannot solve these problems.

We will never solve our major issues until we have at least minimized the corruption within our political class and get them focused on these issues rather than their current focus on their re-election campaigns, their personal financial advancement (either through maximizing their cash inflows or minimizing their tax outflows), or their adulterous affairs. Until we get professional, serious, and focused people in Washington, we will still be in the confines of of amateur hour.







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 www.loathemygovernment.com. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.


Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment

The Soviet Poitiburo - American Style

Charles Rangel, Congressman from New York, got me thinking today about how the American political class is starting to look more and more like the old days of the Soviet Union with its Politburo and Central Committee. Mr. Rangel is in the news again for neglecting to pay taxes and disclosing assets that he had. This follows the allegations last September about how he neglected to declare earnings from rental properties he owned. I will not go into the details here, there are plenty of credible Internet sources that document in great detail his tax misgivings.

The tragic thing about Mr. Rangel's tax dealings is that he is the chairman of the House Ways and Mean Committee, the powerful committee that oversees and writes the nation's tax code. You would think that someone in his position would be better able to pay his taxes correctly, if he WANTED to. Unfortunately, Mr. Rangel's tax avoidance, whether intentional or not, is totally consistent with so many of Washington's politicians: Treasury Secretary Geithner ($34,000 in back taxes), Ex-Senator Tom Daschle ($130,000), Kathleen Sebelius ($7,000), Ron Kirk ($10,000), Nancy Keiffer, etc. The list seems to go on and on.

That brings me to the Politburo and Central Committee. These two Soviet groups basically dictated all aspects of Soviet life throughout the decades of the last century. They were accountable only to themselves and basically had jobs for life. The rules and rewards were better and different for them as compared to ordinary Soviet citizens. The founders of our country had different ideals, they wanted everyone in America to be equal in opportunity regardless of who they were or what they did for a living. They would be appalled by the way the American political class has involved into an elite "club" with all of the trappings of the Politburo and Central Committee. By controlling election processes, a politician basically stays in office for as long as they want with all of the perks they have voted for themselves: high salaries, best medical care, lucrative retirement programs, free car usage, (House Of Representatives only) and apparently, immunity from violating tax laws. Stalin, Lenin , and the rest of the Red gang would be proud.

"Love My Country, Loathe My Government" proposes a small fix that would start the breakup of this elitism and blatant disregard for the tax laws that the rest of us have to endure and obey or face the consequences. Under Step 5 on page 20, the book proposes that all members of Congress, the President, Vice President, and all Cabinet heads immediately have their tax returns audited for the past few years and the results made public. In order to have any kind of credibility to govern, those that are governed have to believe that everyone is treated the same under the law, unlike the members of the Politburo and Central Committee.

Tomorrow - Another view on the American Politburo and Central Committee analogy,