July, 2020, Part 9,Political Class Insanity: How Government Cannot Count When It Comes To The Coronavirus, Chapter 2

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.

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.

1) Today we will still be focusing on the coronavirus. Not because it has sickened and killed so many people around the world but because it illustrates the pure incompetence of government and the politicians that operate that government and their inability to simply be able to count effectively. You cannot solve a problem unless you understand the reality of the problem and almost always the reality of a problem is determined by the data and numbers that describe the problem. 

But if you cannot even collect that data and numbers correctly then your ability to solve a problem is almost nil. You are basing any solutions on faulty data and premises and only pure luck will ever get you to the right solution, as we pointed out in our previous post:

• A man in Tennessee was classified as a positively tested coronavirus person even though he had NEVER taken a coronavirus test.
• Multiple virus testing labs in Florida were found to have over counted the number of virus cases by up to ten fold.
• In Colorado, a man was classified as a virus death even though subsequent medical analysis showed he clearly died from acute alcohol poisoning, not the virus.
• We also cited other cases in Colorado where nursing home patients were classified as virus deaths but more testing showed that the virus had nothing to do with their deaths.

But it is not just state government and state politicians who cannot accurately count the actual number of virus deaths, that inability to accurately count may have been established by the Federal government back in the spring:

• Dr. Deborah Birx is the response coordinator for the White House coronavirus task force so she is a very important person in the fight against the virus in the country.
• But back in April, she stated that the Federal government was going to classify the death of any American who had the virus as a death caused by the virus regardless of any underlying, pre-existing medical condition that may have actually been the cause of the death.
• So, if I understand the good doctor correctly, if someone had stage four liver cancer and contracted the virus in the final days of their lives after a losing battle against the liver cancer, the Federal government somehow decided to classify that as a death caused by the virus.
• I think her words verify my conclusion and example: “There are other countries that if you had a pre-existing condition, and let’s say the virus caused you to go to the ICU [intensive care unit] and then have a heart or kidney problem, some countries are recording that as a heart issue or a kidney issue and not a COVID-19 death."

It seems other countries got their logic and counting right: just because someone who died had the virus, doesn't mean that the virus killed them. But for some godforsaken reason, in this country the Federal government says that anyone who dies who has the virus is to be counted as a virus victim, not a cancer, kidney, or other malady victim. 

As a result, we may have a significant over count of the number of deaths in this country caused by the virus which resulted in drastic economic pain and suffering which may not have been necessary because the Federal government did not know how to count. Insanity.

2) This inability to count is finally showing up in opinion polls as Americans begin to doubt what all levels of government are telling them about the virus:

• An Axios/Ipsos poll recently asked a sample of Americans the following question: “Do you believe the actual number of Americans dying from the coronavirus is more, less, or about the same as the number of deaths that have been reported?”
• The poll found that about one out three of those polled think the actual virus death toll is lower than what is being reported.
• 31% of those polled said the death toll from the virus is less, 31% said it is about what is reported and 37% said it is more than what is being reported.
• So in round figures about one third say it is under reported, one third say it is over reported and one third say it is correctly reported, you cannot be much more divided as a nation than that.
• Republicans are much more doubtful of the reported results with 58% of those polled thinking the death toll reported is too high and only 16% saying it is higher than what is reported. 
• Democrats go the other way with 61% saying the reported death rates are too low and only 9% believing that the death toll is lower than what is being reported.
• Again, you cannot be much more divided than that.

The more troubling aspect from the total responses is that those who think the death toll is less has gone up eight percentage points from the poll conducted just two months which would indicate there is growing doubt that the death rate is that high.

Again, if we cannot agree on the numbers and the true scope of the issue, then it is doubtful we will agree on a proposed remedy. All because government and politicians cannot even count.

3) In addition to the state by state cases we have talked about and their serious counting flaws, it turns out that there may be a more basic problem with the whole testing process across the country:

• Department of Health scientists in Connecticut found that a virus test being used widely across the country is causing false positives, i.e. the test results are saying that a tested person has the virus when they really do not.
• The test is made and distributed by Thermo Fisher Scientific.
• In Connecticut they found that out of 144 positive virus tests they looked at between July 15 and July 17, 90 of the 144 were really false positives, a totally unacceptable rate for a medical test of any sort.
• The saddest part of this failure is that patients who were falsely thought to have the virus in nursing homes may have been moved into areas of residents who actually had the virus which means that healthy nursing home patients were unnecessarily and possibly fatally exposed to the virus for no good reason because of the faulty test.

So, bad testing procedures, bad counting procedures, and growing doubt that anyone in the government or politics has a clue to what is really going on. Lord help us, please save us from the “experts” who apparently have no clue themselves.

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:

https://www.amazon.com/Walter-Bruno-Korschek/e/B002KYU08Q/ref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share

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

April, 2020, Part 7, Political Class Insanity: A Senator Lies, A Mayor Hates, and A Congressman Is Useless In Time Of Crisis

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.

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.

1) Obviously, the country is going through some rough times caused by the Chinese coronavirus crisis. Initially, shortages of ventilators, masks, and other supplies were widespread across the country. But various efforts by various government and private sources have helped narrow if not close the supply shortages.

One of the major perceived shortages initially in the crisis was for breathing ventilators in New York city, a city that has been, by far, the worst hit region in the country, accounting for about a third of all cases and deaths. New York politicians realized early on that they probably did not have enough ventilators if things went really bad and asked the Federal government for help in getting more ventilators.

The request resulted in more ventilators being shipped to New York City to relieve the shortfall, many of these ventilators ended unneeded and in storage, and after the virus started to subside in NYC, New York politicians shipped 100 unused ventilators to New Jersey and another 150 unused ventilators to other states where they actually were needed. Bottom line, according to experts in the Trump organization, no one who caught the coronavirus did not have access to a ventilator if they needed one.

But this reality and timeline did not stop Washington Senator Tammy Duckworth from putting out a major falsehood about Trump and ventilators: “As he watches Americans die by the thousands, Trump remains incapable of showing empathy or leadership. He *could* have saved lives by sending more ventilators, but he didn’t. That’s true regardless of who Donald ‘I don’t take responsibility at all’ Trump tries to blame.”

Total tripe. If New York was in such dire needs for more ventilators then why did they ship 100 ventilators to New Jersey and another 150 to other states? Of course, Duckworth provided no proof to her lie, just blather to not only disparage Trump but adding nothing to the solution for the bigger problem.

Three people with knowledge of the situation proved that she was lying:

• During a White House Coronavirus Task Force press briefing this week, Adam Boehler, a former HHS official who is now CEO of the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation and who has been tapped to help with the coronavirus response, said, “There’s been no American that has needed a ventilator that has not received one.”
• Even the governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, stated that Duckworth was lying: “Have we saved everyone? No. But have we lost anyone because we didn’t have a bed, or we didn’t have a ventilator, or we didn’t have health care staff? No. People we lost are the people we couldn’t save.”
• White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx said that there was no evidence that there were any shortages of ventilators around the U.S. “We were reassured after meeting with colleagues in New York there are still ICU beds remaining and there’s still significant, over a thousand or 2,000 ventilators that have not been used yet.”

Never let the truth get in the way of Washington politicians playing politics.

2) In a sane and perfect world, politicians would actually be leaders, uniters, and not political and vengeful hacks. Unfortunately, we don't live in that kind of world. This reality was recently driven home by a hateful, vindictive politician out in California:

• William Kirby was the mayor of Auburn, California until recently.
• He is now out of a job after residents were appalled when he posted some very hateful messages about citizens on social media.
• On social media he compared Trump supporters to be like members of the racist Ku Klux Klan even though many of his constituents were Trump supporters.
• Rightfully so, he came under attack for being such a hateful, loathsome public official and ended up rightfully resigning his post as mayor.
• One of his most hateful posts is when he posted a photo of a hooded KKK member with the caption: “Good news for Trump supporters is that most of them already have masks."
• But his most hateful post went as follows: “If Hitler and everyone who supported him was removed from the face of the earth in 1939 the world would be a much better place. The same is more true of Trump and his supporters today.”
• This is a public official who is supposed to respect and protect the rights, lives, and property of all of his constituents, not wish about half of them to die.

Tough not to live in a hate filled country when many of those in public office are leading the hate brigade.

3) Let’s stay with hate for another incident:

• According to the Washington Examiner, Democrat Congressman Harley Rouda of California recently verbally attacked his Republican challenger.
• His challenger is Orange County Supervisor Michelle Steele.
• Roud’s words: “You can’t make this up: @MichelleSteelCA and her colleagues are standing in masks…refusing to create workplace safety provisions that would give masks to our brave essential workers. This isn’t leadership — it’s reserving the lifeboat for yourself.” 
• Apparently, Mr. Rouda did not understand the reality of the situation and just went off on a political falsehood since Steele had to set him straight: “No, @HarleyRouda What’s shameful is your continued efforts to politicize this pandemic. This is a picture of me accepting 2,000 face masks for the county’s emergency health workers.”

So, Steele is 1) doing her job and getting medical supplies to the workers she supports and 2) she is taking the necessary pandemic precautions as laid out by the CDC by wearing a mask during the pandemic.

And somehow Rouda had to politicize all of her behavior for cheap headlines under false pretenses. 

More despicable behavior and lack of leadership in a time of crisis. By the way Mr. Rouda, if you want to talk about leadership, how about you call your boss, Nancy Pelosi, and have you and her and the rest of Congress get off your vacations and back to Washington and actually do something productive?

A Senator lies, a mayor hates, and a Congressman looks for cheap publicity in the midst of a crisis, which he is doing nothing to help resolve while on vacation. The insanity and pettiness that dominates American politicians today.

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:

https://www.amazon.com/Walter-Bruno-Korschek/e/B002KYU08Q/ref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share

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