May, 2017, Political Class Insanity,Part 9: Insanity In Germany, An Obama Attorney Replaces the Supreme Court, and More

It is the beginning of another month which means it is again time to review the latest political class insanity from Washington and around the world. Political class insanity takes many forms including the wasting of taxpayer wealth, criminal fraud within government programs, inane and stupid political quotes and actions, the inability to create and implement effective and efficient government programs, stupid and ill performing economic policies and strategies, and other forms of insanity that continue to evolve and surprise and shock us.

Today and for all of the insanity posts this month, let’s start off with a welcome piece of honest political dialog. It comes from a State Department spokesperson. Mark Toner, who is about to start the daily State Department press briefing. In a joking matter, he makes the following quote: "Welcome to the State Department. I think we have some interns in the back. Welcome. Good to see you in this exercise in transparency and democracy."

He then burst out laughing at his own quote, indicating he also knew what a joke the Obama administration has been, especially Mr. Toner’s State Department, when it comes to cover ups, lack of transparency, denial of Freedom of Information Act requests, the prosecution of whistleblowers, etc. But at least it was a little refreshing to finally hear some actual honesty out of Washington as we see from the actual clip of the news conference:

http://www.againstcronycapitalism.org/2016/08/when-even-the-state-department-spokesperson-cant-keep-a-straight-face-about-things-anymore-video/

With that context of honesty, let’s see what other insanity has been going down:

1) Let us start off today with some international political class insanity to prove the idiocy of our politicians does not make them unique. As we have always said, it is our opinion that one of the only few valid functions of government is to protect the citizens that support it via taxes and votes. Apparently that is not what is going on in Germany, where Middle Eastern immigrants are treated better than property owners in certain sections of Germany:

• In Hamburg, Germany, there are not enough housing units to shelter and support the migrants and immigrants that Prime Minister Angela Merkel has so willingly allowed to enter her country. 
• As a result, the local government and politicians are confiscating commercial properties and privately owned residences and are updating them and using them to house immigrants from throughout the Middle East.
• For example, the local government recently seized six residential units in the Hamm district of the city that are owned by a private landlord but have been vacant since 2012.
• The six units were rundown so the local government renovated them and had the nerve and gall to then turn around and bill the private landlord for the repairs they made even though the landlord cannot rent the units out and recoup his money since the city placed immigrants into the units.
• This power grab is legal under a long time law that enables the local politicians to seize any residential property they see fit as long as it has been vacant for more than four months.

Talk about an overreaching government bureaucracy. The national government unleashes a wave of immigrants across the country and a local government than seizes privately owned property to house the overflowing illegal immigrant population, property rights and private ownership and freedom be damned. Lenin would be so proud.

2) Sally Yates was a leftover attorney in the Justice Department from the Obama administration. She recently testified in front of Congress on why she refused to execute an immigration order from the Trump administration that was meant to enforce current immigration laws already on the books. 

Apparently, she decided unilaterally that the order was unConstitutional and decided that it was her prerogative as a single lawyer in the Justice Department to disobey an instruction from the President. During the hearing in front of Congress, a Senator asked some obvious questions: when did Sally Yates take the place of the Supreme Court, when did a lowly Justice Department attorney become the decider of what is Constitutional? 

According to BizPac Review: On her refusal, Yates told Kennedy that she “believed any argument [the Justice Department] would have to make in its defense would not be grounded in the truth. We would have to argue that it had nothing to do with religion.”

When asked whether or not there was another way to defend the order, Yates responded with her belief that the order’s intent was to discriminate against Muslims who wanted to come to the United States.

Then, the Louisiana senator went in for the proverbial kill-shot: “At what point does an Act of Congress or an executive order become unconstitutional?” Kennedy asked. “I can look at a statute and say ‘I think that’s unconstitutional.’ Does that make it unconstitutional?”

After some stammering from Yates, Kennedy said, “What I’m getting at, and I don’t mean disrespect… Who appointed you to the United States Supreme Court?”

Yates doubled down with the contention that it’s the Attorney General’s responsibility to say no if they believe an order is unlawful, “and that’s what I did.”

“I believe you believe what you’re saying,” said Kennedy.

Maybe so, but that doesn’t make it constitutional.

I guess that in Ms. Yate’s world, the Constitutional processes and checks and balances so wonderfully set up by the Founders in the Constitutional no longer apply to people like her, that now, it is unelected bureaucrats that get to decide what is and what is not Constitutional. Pathetic and an insult to the Constitution.

This exchange can be viewed at: 

http://eheadlines.com/gop-senator-to-fired-ag-sally-yates-who-appointed-you-to-the-united-states-supreme-court-video/

3) One of the beauties of the Constitution is the limitation it places on government and politicians that your personal lives theoretically cannot be intruded on by government bureaucrats and politicians unless there is a a real potential to hurt national security and personal security of a citizen and that a judge agrees with the request to intrude.

But as was often the case during the Obama administration, the law and Constitution are merely suggestions. According to a May 2, 2017 article on the NewsMax website:

• When the NSA does an information sweep regarding national security threats that have been approved by a court, they “mask” or cover up the names of innocent citizens that may have been swept up in the NSA activity.
• The reason they are masked is to protect the innocent who are just bystanders in the NSA investigation and to protect their Fourth Amendment rights.
• But that safeguard was not something that the Obama administration cared about since a recent uncovered government document showed that the Obama administration asked that the NSA unmask the names of over 1,900 innocent Americans who were swept up in NSA investigations.
• The accusations arising from this “unmasking” effort is that the Obama administration was looking for the names for political purposes, not national security processes. 

This is what happens when politicians and bureaucrats put political objectives ahead of Constitutional rights. Keep in mind, as pointed out in the article, in 2016 the Obama administration collected more than 151 million phone records of Americans. Given this rate of collecting over 400,000 phone records a DAY of Americans’ communications there is little doubt in my mind that Obama and his minions wanted information on his political opponents and could care less about national security in this case.

That will do it for the insanity for today: Obama and his disdain for the Constitution and privacy, an Obama attorney that thinks she is now the Supreme Court, and German political class insanity that proves that government officials around the world care more about foreigners than their own citizens.

Still more insanity to follow.

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

April, 2017, Part 8, Political Class Insanity: Idiocy In Germany, MIscounting In California, Corruption In Maryland, and More

It is the beginning of another month which means it is again time to review the latest political class insanity from Washington and around the world. Political class insanity takes many forms including the wasting of taxpayer wealth, criminal fraud within government programs, inane and stupid political quotes and actions, the inability to create and implement effective and efficient government programs, stupid and ill performing economic policies and strategies, and other forms of insanity that continue to evolve and surprise and shock us.

Today and for all of the insanity posts this month, let’s start off with a welcome piece of honest political dialog. It comes from a State Department spokesperson. Mark Toner, who is about to start the daily State Department press briefing. In a joking matter, he makes the following quote: "Welcome to the State Department. I think we have some interns in the back. Welcome. Good to see you in this exercise in transparency and democracy."

He then burst out laughing at his own quote, indicating he also knew what a joke the Obama administration has been, especially Mr. Toner’s State Department, when it comes to cover ups, lack of transparency, denial of Freedom of Information Act requests, the prosecution of whistle blowers, etc. But at least it was a little refreshing to finally hear some actual honesty out of Washington as we see from the actual clip of the news conference:

http://www.againstcronycapitalism.org/2016/08/when-even-the-state-department-spokesperson-cant-keep-a-straight-face-about-things-anymore-video/

With that context of honesty, let’s see what other insanity has been going down:

1) California is probably the most socialistic state in the union. They have the most generous welfare programs and have no qualms about giving taxpayer wealth to illegal immigrants. But they are starting to run into the insight of Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money to spend.”

This is especially true when a state’s accounting processes are so fouled up that they find out after the fact that they spend almost $2 billion more than they thought they had spent:

• The Associated Press recently reported that California had miscalculated the expenses of their Medicaid program, Medi-Cal, by $1.9 billion last year.
• This more than doubled the original estimated 2016 budget deficit of $1.6 billion.
• The state spokesman claimed that this was an “accounting error,” obviously a really BIG accounting error.
• The original deficit of $1.6 billion was driven by a shortfall in tax revenue which has now been exploded even bigger by this “accounting” screw up, a screw up that surprised state politicians: “It makes you wonder what else is not right. … When something like this happens, the trust factor gets eroded, and you lose confidence in what’s being provided to you,” said Sen. John Moorlach, a Republican from Costa Mesa who serves on the Senate budget committee.

This example and the article shows how expensive Medicaid has gotten over time. Not only did the program spend almost $2 billion more than it thought it had, overall it spends a whopping $100 billion a YEAR on total Medicaid expenses, expenses that cover a whopping one third of all Californians. Obviously, operating a program that spends $100 billion a year leaves a lot less for other state government programs such as infrastructure, education, etc.

Oh, by the way, the state government also screwed up the accounting for another medical program, the Coordinated Care Initiative. In that case, they double counted some of the savings which created another budget deficit, this valued at $913 million. This is what kills the credibility of any politician, when major accounting errors lose billions of dollars. Insane.

2) Let’ stay out on the west coast. While California politicians were losing billions of dollars, the Seattle mayor was allegedly doing something even more despicable. According to the Seattle Times:

• A 46 year old Washington citizen has sued Seattle Mayor Ed Murray, accusing the mayor of raping and molesting him over several years beginning back in 1986.
• The accuser was 15 years old at the time.
• The lawsuit says Murray abused the teen on numerous occasions for payments of $10 to $20.
• NBC News reported that this is not the first time that Murray has been accused of abusing youths, that the abuse had happened in at least two other instances.

Obviously, the good mayor is assumed innocent until proven otherwise.

3) Let’s jump to the east coast for the next piece of insanity, proving that political class insanity infects the entire country. According to a recent Justice Department arrest warrant, Maryland State Senator Nathaniel Thomas Oaks of Baltimore, Maryland was charged with wire fraud for allegedly accepting illegal payments in exchange for using his official position to benefit an individual on business-related matters.

I will not go through the details of the scam and the FBI investigation but given that the Justice Department saw fit to arrest the good senator, it does not look good for him. If convicted, he faces upwards of 20 years in prison. Another hit against the integrity and credibility of the American political class.

4) But it is not just state government operations that are screwed up. The latest Federal government screw up comes to us courtesy of the Federal Housing and Urban Development (HUD) agency:

• The inspector general for HUD did a multi year audit of HUD and their findings were not good.
• Their report found “pervasive material errors” in HUD’s 2015 and 2016 financial statements.
• The total errors in the statements totalled a whopping $516.4 billion that were miscounted.
• But these were not the only problems since the audit by the inspector general found a number of “unresolved audit matters” including the auditors’ inability to “obtain sufficient, appropriate evidence to express an opinion.”
• In addition, “this audit report contains 11 material weaknesses, 7 significant deficiencies, and 5 instances of noncompliance with applicable laws and regulations.”

What a mess. A organization that has been around for decades and it still cannot count accurately, massively failing an audit of its books. And if you cannot balance books in a sufficient way to pass the auditors’ review, who knows how many billions of other dollars are being lost from criminal fraud and inefficiencies? Insane.

5) But political class insanity is not restricted to America. Let’s go overseas for this piece of political class insanity:

• German Chancellor Angela Merkel has been a big advocate of allowing millions of Muslim refugees and immigrants to come into Germany.
• However, she recently admitted that by allowing so many refugees and immigrants into the country that German may have also admitted dedicated terrorists: “There is no doubt that among the so many people who have sought shelter in our country were also persons who have become the focus of the security authorities.”
• Great, realizing your mistake after an untold number of terrorists have entered your country does not provide a sense of relief.
• But then Merkel tries to lamely justify her grave mistake on immigration by asserting that: “We should not forget that our country was already in the sights of Islamic terrorism before the many refugees came to us.”
• In other words, “Hey, it’s okay I let terrorists in without thinking, we were already one of their enemies.”

Unfortunately, Germany has been the victim of some of the people that Merkel’s administration allowed into the country so it is little solace to the families of those that have been killed by terror attacks that Merkel now realizes the error of her ways.

That will do it for today’s political class insanity from across the world, from self inflicted terrorism in German to corruption in Maryland to potential perversion in Seattle to miscounting in California. Never underestimate politicians in their ability to surprise us with their idiocy, greed, and other forms of insanity.

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

How "Hope and Change" Became "Dysfunction and Surrender"

It is pretty obvious to anyone who follows current events that the Obama administration’s record on foreign affairs has been pretty abysmal:

• It has allowed North Korea and Iran to get much closer to having ICBM capabilities of delivering nuclear weapons a far distance.
• It has allowed Russia to re-establish itself on the world stage, becoming a force against Europe and a force throughout the Middle East.
• It has allowed ISIS to become the most terrifying and wealthiest terrorist force of all time.
• It has constantly failed to lead when it comes to fighting terrorism, with Obama not attending the world summit that occurred as a result of the Paris terror attacks while attending a baseball game, learning to tango, and playing golf as Brussels with still cleaning up the carnage of the latest European terrorist attack.
• When a Middle East summit was called by the White House, leaders of many Middle Eastern countries declined to attend or sent secondary representatives.
• The administration ticked off many, many allies when it came to light that the administration was using the NSA to spy on other countries and their leaders, with the Brazilian prime minister cancelling a Washington state dinner in protest.
• It has more or less created the reality where "our friends do not trust us and our enemies do not fear us."

The infamous list goes on and on. This administration and the President that heads it has failed time after time to be the leader that the world expects from the President of the United States. Just yesterday, we reviewed how this President failed to have ”good optics” in the aftermath of the Brussels terrorist bombings, looking unconcerned and uncaring, attending a meaningless baseball game, learning to dance the tango, and playing golf as body bags were being used and wounded were being cared for as a result of the Brussels bombings.

And to add insult to injury, today we review a recent analysis from Forbes magazine which put together its annual list of the 50 greatest leaders in the world today, leaders from all walks of life, politics, sports, business, show business, etc. The 2016 list reads as follows:

• Jeff Bezos – CEO, Amazon
• Angela Merkel – Chancellor, Germany
• Aung San Suu Kyi – Leader, National League for Democracy
• Pope Francis – Pontiff, Roman Catholic Church
• Tim Cook – CEO, Apple
• John Legend – Recording artist and activist, The Show Me Campaign
• Christiana Figueres – Executive Secretary, UN Framework Convention on Climate Change
• Paul Ryan – Speaker, U.S. House of Representatives
• Ruth Bader Ginsburg – Associate Justice, U.S. Supreme Court
• Sheikh Hasina – Prime Minister, Bangladesh
• Nick Saban – Head football coach, The University of Alabama
• Huateng “Pony” Ma – Chairman and CEO, Tencent
• Sergio Moro – Federal Judge, Brazil
• Bono – Lead singer & Co-Founder, U2 & One
• Stephen Curry & Steve Kerr – Point guard & head coach, Golden State Warriors
• Bryan Stevenson – Founder, Equal Justice Initiative
• Nikki Haley – Governor, South Carolina
• Lin-Manuel Miranda – Composer, lyricist & author, “Hamilton”
• Marvin Ellison – CEO, J.C. Penney
• Reshma Saujani – Founder & CEO, Girls Who Code
• Larry Fink – CEO, BlackRock
• Scott Kelly & Mikhail Kornienko – Crew members, International Space Station
• David Miliband – CEO, International Rescue Committee
• Anna Maria Chávez – CEO, Girl Scouts of the USA
• Carla Hayden – Nominee, Library of Congress
• Maurizio Macri – President, Argentina
• Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors & Opal Tometi – Co-founders, Black Lives Matter
• Chai Jing – Freelance journalist, China
• Moncef Slaoui – Chairman of Vaccines, GlaxoSmithKline
• John Oliver – Host & Executive Producer, “Last Week Tonight”
• Marc Edwards – Professor, Virginia Tech
• Arthur Brooks – President, American Enterprise Institute
• Rosie Batty – Founder, Luke Batty Foundation
• Kristen Griest & Shayne Haver – Rangers, U.S. Army
• Denis Mukwege – Founder, Panzi Hospital
• Christine Legarde – Managing Director, IMF
• Marc Benioff – CEO, Salesforce
• Gina Raimondo – Governor, Rhode Island
• Amina Mohammed – Minister of Environment, Nigeria
• Domenica Lucano – Mayor, Riace, Italy
• Melinda Gates & Susan Desmond-Hellman – Co-chair & CEO, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
• Arvind Kejriwal – Chief Minister, New Delhi
• Jorge Ramos – Journalist, Univision
• Michael Froman – U.S. Trade Representative, Executive Office of the President
• Mina Guli – CEO, Thirst
• Ramón Mendéz – Head of Climate Change Policy, Uruguay
• Bright Simons – President & Founder, Mpedigree
• Justin Trudeau – Prime Minister, Canada
• Clare Rewcastle Brown – Editor & Founder, Sarawak Report
• Tshering Tobgay – Prime Minister, Bhutan

As you see, the list of leaders includes a university football coach but does not include President Obama. It includes a couple of NBA basketball players but does not include President Obama. It includes two governors from two of the smaller states, South Carolina and Rhode Island, but does not include President Obama. It includes a music composer but does not include President Obama.

You get the idea. The head of the most powerful country in the world, the country with the largest economy and largest military, the country that is probably still the single superpower left in the world today, did not make the Forbes list of the top 50 leaders throughout the world in 2016. 

Now, one might question the criteria and analysis that Forbes used to arrive at a list of leaders that omits the President of the United States and that would be a fair question. But consider what Fortune editor Alan Murray explained why he left out the ‘Leader of the Free World’:

“I voted for Barack Obama in 2008 largely because of his call to unite blue states and red states behind a politics of hope. But it hasn’t happened. At home our politics are as divided—and our federal government is as dysfunctional—as they were when he took office.

Abroad, the record is worse. Many wise foreign-policy analysts believe the President’s public waffling on Syria not only fed the terrorism of the Islamic State, but also emboldened thugs around the world— notably Vladimir Putin. The President has dismissed their criticism by saying he is “less concerned about style points.” But when it comes to leadership, style matters...In his book On Becoming a Leader, the late Warren Bennis said the differences between leaders and managers are “the differences between those who master the context and those who surrender to it.” It’s a good distinction. Faced with difficult circumstances, President Obama has surrendered.”

“President Obama has surrendered….the Federal government is as dysfunctional.” Harsh but nevertheless true. Every month in our political class insanity posts we review how dysfunctional the Federal government still is and in fact, is probably more dysfunctional than it was back in 2009 when Obama took office. We listed the foreign affairs blunders up above which Mr. Murray correctly characterizes as surrender on behalf of the President.

The motto of “hope and change” is now been reduced to “dysfunctional and surrender.” So much so, that the leader of the most powerful country in the world might not even make the top 50 of the most influential leaders in the world, regardless of how the selection is made. So sad, just another American political class sham and failure.

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