January, 2019, Part 2, Political Class Insanity: Government Workers Get No Pay But Congress Does, Fleeing Illinois, and More Math Stupidity From Ocasio-Cortez

It is 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.

Let’s get started:

1) As you all probably know, Trump and the Democrats in Congress have been locking horns about whether or not to build a wall along the Mexican border to better protect Americans from criminal elements coming across the border. Their fight and standoff has resulted in the shutdown of major portions of the Federal government from a budget perspective, the funding of a border wall.

So even though Congressional Democrats have caused the shutdown, these politicians are still getting paid. Even though thousands and thousands of Federal employees are staying home without pay because of the Federal government shutdown, the Democrats in Congress are still getting paid. Even though 54,000 Customs and Border Protection agents are still protecting the country and enforcing current immigration laws, they are not getting paid but Democrats in Congress are still getting paid.

U.S. Border Patrol Council President Art del Cueto described the injustice: "The people that are causing this shutdown like Chuck [Schumer] and Nancy [Pelosi], they're still getting paid. Yet we have men and women that are very dedicated to defending our borders out there now that they don't know when they'll receive another paycheck."

To add insult to injury, not only is Democrat Nancy Pelosi still getting paid but she is out vacationing in Hawaii while thousands of Federal employees are not working and not getting paid during the holiday season. Very, very bad optics but indicative that Washington politicians generally do not care about Americans, only about themselves.

2) Politicians never seem to understand that as they raise taxes higher and higher, the results get worse and worse. Years ago the state of Maryland raised taxes on families earning over a million dollars a year. A few short years later the state government was receiving less tax money from families earning over a million dollars a year despite the higher tax rate. Rich people have the resources to avoid high taxation and politicians never understand this basic fact: higher tax rates usually result in low tax collections.

The state of Illinois is learning this reality the hard way:

• Illinois has lost 157,000 residents to other states in the past five years.
• Over this period the state raised tax rates on just about every possible tax on the books.
• It has lost residents for five straight years with the rate of loss accelerating every year.
• Just in 2018 alone the state lost 45,000 residents.
• On average, an Illinois resident leaves the state every 4.6 minutes.
• As residents leave, fewer and fewer kids are born to in state adults, resulting in a long term trend of fewer and fewer citizens.
• In fact, according to the Illinois Policy Institute, “Since 2011, Illinois has seen an 8.8 percent decline in births. That’s the fourth-worst slide in the nation and more than twice as severe a decline as the average state. Births still outpace deaths. But the margin is getting smaller every year.”
• The number one reason for leaving is high taxes, according to a poll where half of those polled said they wanted to leave the state in 2018, and their number one reason for wanting to leave is high taxation rates.
• Given that the state government has one of the worst pension problems, a declining population level means fewer and fewer taxpayers to pay more and more to support retiring state employees and bigger and bigger pension liabilities.
• To put the problem in perspective, losing 157,000 residents is equivalent to having the fifth, fourth, or third largest city in the state vanishing.

Higher taxation is never an answer to out of control spending by state or Federal government politicians, a lesson that they sadly find impossible to learn.

3) Politicians are almost always bad at math and common sense when it comes to taxes and just about any other government program. Probably just about any government program that has been implemented over the years as ALWAYS overrun its budget. For example, the “Big Dig” in Boston, a system of underground highway tunnels and roads was supposed to cost a few billion dollars but eventually cost over $20 billion.

And a newly elected member of Congress, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, is sure to add to that tradition of either being math ignorant or math devious, lying about a government project cost in order to get it approved, the future increased expenditures be damned. For example, she is a big advocate of the sham known as “Medicare For All.” This program would add about $3.2 TRILLION to the annual Federal government budget, basically doubling the taxation rate for every American and costing about $32 TRILLION in the first ten years alone.

Two obvious questions arise from this math insanity: 1) are you willing to pay twice as much in taxes and trust that the Federal government would do use that additional tax hit efficiently, given its failure in every other failed attempt to operate healthcare efficiently (Medicare, Medicaid, Obama Care, Veterans Administration)? And 2) if the initial estimate out of the gate is a doubling of taxes, what do we think the REAL number would eventually be? If the Big Dig is any indication, the final number would be increasing our taxes by about sevenfold.

But Ocasio-Cortez, someone who has no experience in healthcare, is not done doing silly math, or no math, having jumped on the bandwagon called the “Green New Deal,” something else she has no experience in, the energy industry, but has expensive fantasies about. The Green New Deal would force the country to become 100% reliant on only renewable energy sources within in two decades. 

We have already shown how stupid this concept is in California, a state that is dedicated to being 80% renewable energy driven by 2030. The math, while simple, is very powerful:

• The Boston Clean Air Task Force estimates that for California to reach just 80% of its energy from renewable energy sources, 9.6 terawatts hours of electrical storage would be required.
• Using today’s technology, 9.6 terawatt hours of storage would require the installation of 500 million Tesla Powerwall electricity storage units.
• These Tesla units cost $6,000 which means that 500 million of them would cost $3 TRILLION, a cost that does not include installation costs and maintenance.
• This cost would average out to about $75,000 per Californian, i.e. the cost of such a project would cost over a quarter million dollars for a family of 4 in the state.
• Even if the cost eventually came down 80%, the cost per resident would still be $15,000 each not including installation and maintenance costs.
• As a side note, where would one put 500 million storage units, that is a a lot of land that would be needed, an additional major cost.
• Thus, a California family of four would be on the hook for about $60,000 if the cost of this law’s impacts could be reduced by 80%, more than $60,000 if the cost did not come down that much.

The math in California does not work, something that California politicians did not do or are unable to do. And as always with Ocasio-Cortez, the math does not work for her “Green New Deal” either:

• If the above California numbers are right and California has about one eighth of all U.S. citizens, then the cost of making the entire country’s energy come from renewables would be about eight times the California cost or $24 TRILLION. 
• This cost does not include the cost of installing renewable energy sources for the entire country, maintaining those energy sources over time, the environmental cost of massive new mining, manufacturing, and transportation of raw materials and finished products, the cost of millions and millions of birds being killed by massive numbers of new windmills, the economic cost and environment cost of covering untold millions of acres of land in solar panels, etc.
• And most importantly the lost economic opportunities for America with little impact on the environment. 
• While the taxation on Americans would sky rocket for such folly, the rest of the world would continue to pollute and throw carbon into the air. 
• We have previously discussed how China and India alone have plans for over 2,500 coal burning plants under construction or planned. 
• We have already discussed the reality that less than ten countries have met their Paris Climate Agreement targets of carbon reduction. So folks like Ocasio-Cortez would throw a $24 TRILLION cost burden on Americans with little or no impact on climate change. Pure insanity.

One other little math lesson, Ms. Ocasio-Alexandra: your Green New Deal would cost about $24 TRILLION, your Medicare for All program would cost $32 TRILLION in the first ten years, for a total of $56 TRILLION. On top of that let’s not forget the $109 TRILLION in national debt and unfunded government liabilities that exist, bringing the total $165 TRILLION. This total does not include your plans for free college tuition and free housing which would add to the $165 TRILLION total.

Since the total sum wealth of every American is about $88 TRILLION, this grand total of at least $165 TRILLION would be equivalent to about twice the total wealth of every American. In other words, the country would have to have twice as much wealth than it has today just just to fund the debt and grandiose and stupid plans you have. Not...going...to...happen. Do the math.

So politicians shutdown the government but still get paid while ordinary Federal workers do not, people are leaving Illinois in droves to avoid ever higher taxes, and math insanity from a newly elected person who wants to overhaul health care and the energy sector and has zero experience in either field, an ignorance compounded by minimal math skills. It does not get any more insane than that. More political class 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

Our Continuing Lost War On Drugs - More Fast and Furious Fallout, Cartel Hitmen In The U.S., U.S.Troops In Mexico, and More

Yesterday we started our update to the latest insanity our "war on drugs" has resulted in. From the creativity of the drug cartels to the violence being imposed on the Mexican government and citizenry, there have been very few domestic successes in this expensive and fruitless war.

We will finish up that discussion with some other drug war observations:

1) A little while ago, Wikileaks hacked a number of government computer systems and emails systems and made off with millions of pieces of government information. Some of those emails were related to a private intelligence firm called Stratfor and those emails contained some very distressing war on drug accusations:

• First, there is the accusation that the U.S. Federal government allowed Mexican cartel hitmen to murder people inside the U.S. under the cover of being confidential informants.
• Other stolen emails allege that government sources in both the Mexican and U.S. governments told Stratfor personnel that American special operations armed forces are secretly already physically located in Mexico fighting the war on drugs.
• Other emails accuse the Federal government in Washington of working with certain favored drug cartels — especially Sinaloa — in an effort to put smaller Mexican criminal organizations out of business. The e-mails repeat allegations made in numerous reports and statements by officials, drug-cartel operatives, and other sources, an accusation that we discussed in the following post using different data sources:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-deaths-carnage-and-stupidity-of.html

Scary stuff if true. American troops secretly deployed without the knowledge or approval of Congress or the American people, government partnerships with criminal organizations, and murders being conducted in this country under the auspices of our Federal government. On their own, these leaked emails prove nothing. In the context of the other insanity going on relative to the war on drugs, and the evolving information we are finding out about the Fast and Furious drug running operation, these emails begin to have some serious credibility.

2) In early August, Congressional committees investigating the Fast and Furious gun running disaster issued their first reports, outlining how five senior ATF managers, who were involved with the Fast and Furious operation had either retired or been reassigned. One of the reassigned managers was actually a former acting head of ATF so this program reached pretty high up into the upper echelons of the Federal government.

A U.S. border agent was killed by the guns passed to Mexican drug cartels via Fast And Furious and similar guns have helped kill dozens of Mexican civilians at dozens of Mexican drug cartel crime sites. The blood of those victims have reached deep into the Federal government via the association and reassignment of these five managers.

3) An article in the December, 2012 issue of Reason magazine gave a quick and disheartening history review of the electronic/virtual fence that was supposed to be deployed the Mexican border to inhibit illegal activity. This is different than the actual physical we talked about yesterday, a fence that cartel members tried to drive an SUV over and the same fence that is not a detriment to some drug running since the cartels have simply used catapults to shoot illegal drugs over the fence.

According to the article:

• The pilot project of this effort was passed and funded by Congress in 1977 and was called the Integrated Surveillance Intelligence system (ISIS).
• Since then, many of the ISIS cameras scanning the border malfunctioned from the desert heat when the temperatures exceeded 70 degrees. Since these cameras were deployed in the desert, exceeding 70 degrees was a big problem.
• Ground sensors could not tell the difference between a large cactus from a human.
• The entire program was accused of being infested with fraud and corruption besides inept management.
• According to Robert Maril of East Carolina University, who has written two books about the border, “much of the equipment installed during the ISIS era is rotting in the West Texas wind.” Good, wasteful use of taxpayer wealth, estimated at about $1 billion.

The program was shut down, leaving the Federal government and border patrol officers with zero functionality.

Unfortunately, the death of this ineffective government program could not stay dead. The Department of Homeland Security has set aside almost $92 million in its 2013 budget to try the virtual fence concept again, this time in a pilot program. The article correctly points out that there might not be much value in a virtual fence, even if it works.

A working virtual fence would signal a distant Border Patrol office that someone was illegally coming over the border. But given the unforgiving terrain of the border, any intruder is likely to be long gone before any Border Patrol agents arrived. But this reality will not stop the political class from wasting more taxpayer wealth on virtually nothing.

5) That issue of Reason magazine also had an interview with Douglas Fine, author of the book, “Too High To Fail: Cannabis and the New Green Economic Revolution.” Part of the interview contained a discussion of the pot industry of Mendocino County, California:

• Fine correctly points out that whenever there’s any kind of prohibition, crime tends to be a profit maker, resulting in the super rich drug cartels that have formed.
• Most experts estimate that 70% of the cartels’ profits come from simple marijuana.
• This was the setting for the activities in Mendocino County, California which has become at least one place in the U.S. where marijuana is more or less legal to possess and use as directed by the county Sheriff and the local political bodies.
• This action allowed the county to reap $600,000 worth of revenue from the pot sales in the county and also resulted in reduced county law enforcement expenses since seven police officers were no longer needed once the crime of pot was revoked.

Interesting and progressive thinking in Mendocino. Imagine how much revenue could flow to cash strapped cities and states if the Mendocino experience could be repeated across the country, denying the cartels of 70% of their profit base, reducing the cost of staffing and operating prisons, reducing law enforcement resources, allowing us to focus on treatment rather than incarceration.

Imagine, because obviously our political class cannot.

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.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w