The Fiscal Disaster Of Connecticut: Another Canary In the Debt Coal Mine For The Rest of The Country

A few posts ago we did an analysis that showed how pathetically in debt we are as a nation. The total debt and unfunded liabilities of the Federal government and state governments is well over $100 TRILLION:

https://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2018/10/dont-worry-be-happy-any-short-term.html

Our last post looked at one “special” state in particular, Illinois. Illinois was rated the state in the worst shape from a fiscal condition perspective with unfunded pension liabilities that are likely never to be paid off. That post and the dire conditions in Illinois can be accessed at:

https://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2018/10/the-fiscal-disaster-of-illinois-canary.html

This debt burden issue has often caused to ask what state will go fiscally up in flames first, with our favorites for fiscal meltdown usually being New Jersey, California, and Illinois. However, according to a recent Wall Street Journal article, the state of Connecticut is now a dark horse candidate to financially meltdown first given that:

• Despite nine years without a recession, a time when the overall country’s and most states’ economies managed to create year over year economic growth, the state GDP of Connecticut actually shrank 9.3% from 2007 to now.
• Over the past eight years the length of time of the current governor, the state’s economy has shrunk an average of .5% a year.
• Compare this to history when from 1976 to 1991 the state led all other states in state GDP growth, likely due to low taxes and relative lower cost of living despite being in the usually expensive northeast part of the country and adjacent to New York.
• If the state’s economy had grown at the same rate as the overall U.S. average since then, it would now be collecting an additional $3.9 billion in taxes annually and its economy, and the jobs that would have been created, would be about $50 billion bigger.
• But in 1991 Connecticut levied an income tax on state residents of 4.5% for the first time, a tax rate that has grown higher and higher over the years.
• That tax rate now tops out on the margins at 6.99% as a result of the outgoing governor’s efforts and he also imposed 10% surtax on business income over $100 million.
• The state’s 8.25% top business income tax rate is the highest among all neighboring states.
• As a result of the ever increasing taxation, residents and businesses have pulled up stakes and gone to lower taxing states in order to keep more of their hard earned income.
• Thus, rising tax rates usually do not deliver the promised tax revenues because the tax base continues to shrink and Connecticut is no exception.
• This out migration has cost the state the ability to tax $8.8 billion since that taxable income has gone to other states, mostly to Florida which has no state or local income tax.
• Even with all of these additional taxes, state politicians have managed to fund only 50% of its future pension liabilities and face a $2 billion budget shortfall next year, again, even in the face of these additional and ever rising taxes and tax rates.
• It’s outgoing (Democratic) governor now rates as the second most unpopular governor of the entire country.
• But apparently the Democratic candidate to replace him, Ned Lamont, has no concept of why the state is dying fiscally since rather than get taxation and government spending under control he wants MORE government spending and MORE taxation despite the failures of both actions over the years.

But it is not just the Wall Street Journal that has identified the dire financial conditions of the state:

• The Mercatus Center, in its annual review of each state’s financial conditions, rates Connecticut as the 49th worst state in the union, just ahead of Illinois, the worst state in the union.
• Its total long term unfunded liabilities are at 230% of anticipated assets, a shortfall of over $17,000 for every state resident.
• Revenues currently cover only 92% of its expenses.

Wow, this state could really give the big three, California, New Jersey, and Illinois a run for their money when it comes to which one will be the first state to fiscally implode. 

And as we said with Illinois in our last post, that state and now Connecticut could both serve as the debt canaries in the debt coal mine. Since the Federal government has over $100 TRILLION in long term debt and unfunded liabilities, what happens to these two states, from a bankruptcy perspective, will likely give us an idea to what is going to happen to all of us when the Federal government debt bomb implodes.

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

The Onrushing State Government Pension Fiscal Crisis and Tsunami

Several days ago we posted a post that discussed the impending fiscal collapse of the state governments in New Jersey and California. These impending collapses are due to the reality that state politicians in those states continued to cater to state government union members in order to get their votes at election time. As a result, we have a system in many states that has a ton of unfunded liabilities based on the promises of robust retirement pensions and health care for retired state government employees and union members. That post can be accessed at:

https://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2018/01/california-and-new-jerseys-impending.html

But according to a National Review article by Lewis M. Andrews on January 26, 2018, these two states are not the only states that have been led to the brink of insolvency by state politicians and that brink is not that far away:

• In Illinois, a recent law went into effect that allows the state Comptroller to seize any Illinois town or country’s share of sales, excise, or other taxes if that town or county does not keep up its pensions payments and contributions.
• This obviously will result in other budget lines of a town or county to go down which will result in less government services to those citizens in those towns and counties.
• For example, Mattoon city officials have already said that they will get rid of ambulance services in order to make up for the lost tax revenue going into pension funding, funding that is half a million dollars more this year than last year.
• Normal, Illinois is going to raise property taxes to make up its pension contribution shortfall.
• East St. Louis, Illinois may see its ENTIRE tax money confiscated by the state to fulfill its pension requirements, leaving it nothing at all for ANY other government service, police, fire, ambulance, schools, etc.
• But the problem of unfunded pension and retirement liabilities, estimated by some to be as high as $6 TRILLION, is not restricted to Illinois, New Jersey and California.
• Florida towns and cities will have to pony up an incremental $178.5 million in the their upcoming budgets to cover their pension liabilities for government retirees.
• The San Diego school district is asking parents of its kids which services they would prefer to get cut in order to make up their contributions to California’s deeply indebted pension system.
• Fulton, Kentucky has already cut back its hospital and ambulance services and still faces an annual $114,000 annual pension shortfall.
• To cover the current deficits, Connecticut would have to raise overall taxes by 14% and New Jersey would have to raise taxes a whopping 26%.

Seriously bad financial conditions and yet rather than fix the root causes of the pension problem, as always, politicians have resorted to tricks, gimmicks, and lies to cover up the impending disasters:

• In 2016, San Francisco’s Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) subway system sought voter approval to bond $3.5 billion in infrastructure improvements even though the needed upgrade was already covered by an ongoing capital fund, causing speculation that the $3.5 billion would be secretly diverted to cover pension expenses.
• Former New Jersey Governor Christie Christie and General Assembly Speaker Vincent Prieto agreed to a shell game that made the state lottery an asset of the pension fund which, while it would help reduce the pension fund deficit, it would rob other state government functions of the funds it currently gets from lottery proceeds.
• California Sonoma County voters recently shot down a proposal to increase the sales tax increase because it was suspected the increase would be only funneled into the local pension fund deficit.

And keep in mind these deficits and funding shortfalls have occurred during a record stretch of positive economic results, we have not had a recession in almost ten years. You can imagine what is going to happen when the economy eventually dips into a recession.

Politicians making bad promises that they cannot fulfill just to ensure their careers and cushy pay checks, pensions and benefits are protected and prolonged. It is going to be a rocky ride, probably sooner than later, when it comes to government's reckoning of its fiscal condition and insanity. And not a politician, or leader, in sight, who has the gumption and courage to do the right thing. 

Term limits anyone?

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

April, 2017, Part 3, Political Class Insanity: Connecticut Wants Your Corpse, Connecticut Wants Your Second Amendment Rights, and Chelsea Clinton Is Aghast

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)Unfortunately, even though we may think that we live in a free country, the government controls a lot of our lives and there is little we can do about it. The government controls our retirement income via Social Security, they control our retirement health care via Medicare, they tax us well into the spring when you consider all of the taxes we have to pay at all levels of government, with Obama Care they control a huge chunk of the country’s pre-retirement health care, etc., etc. One would think that only by dying would we escape the clutches of the government and the politicians that operate it.

If that is what you think, then at least in Connecticut you might be wrong, death does not get you out of the clutches of the government. According to Onan Coca, writing for the www.constitution.com website, a politician in Connecticut wants the state government to take charge of your vital organs when you die and apportion them out to transplants candidates:

• Senate Bill 750 in the Connecticut senate would amend “the general statutes… to adopt an opt-out policy on organ donation that enables all state residents to become organ donors upon their deaths unless they join an official registry to opt out of organ donation.”
• In other words, if you were to die in Connecticut, the state would own your entire body unless you actively opted out of such an arrangement before you died.
• If you did not opt out, the state wins your body parts even if your relatives and family disagree and the option to delay such confiscation of said body parts would probably not exist since the body parts would have to be used and transplanted almost immediately to be any good.
• Imagine the grief and agony a family would be put through if the deceased never got around to opting out, or more likely, the government bureaucrats screw up the registry like government  bureaucrats screw up everything else they touch.
• Also, how effective would the state be in notifying people about the reality that they do not own their own body parts once they die, there is little incentive for the state for the state to have a lot of people opt out, it defeats the whole stupid idea in the first place.
• A lot of people see this power grab as it truly is including Connecticut Republican state Senator Joe Markley got it right when he observed that “It’s a bill that would seem to indicate that the state owns your body unless you say otherwise.”
• ONe out of state resident in New Hampshire also correctly summarized why this is such a bad piece of legislation in a letter to the New Hampshire Register newspaper: “This proposal opens doors that our government should not be walking through. SB 750 forces all Connecticut residents to become organ donors upon their deaths unless, per the synopsis of the bill, “they join an official registry to opt out of organ donation. Senator Kennedy’s proposal presents three entirely unacceptable conditions for Connecticut residents: 1) It insinuates that after our death, our bodies are by default the property of the state unless we have previously “opted out”; 2) it forces us to trust a state bureaucracy to manage this opt-out registry accurately and safely; and 3) it flies in the face of our nation’s founding principles and the civil liberties that protect all of us.

This is not to say that organ donations is not a good thing. But in a free country, that should be a personal and family decision, voluntarily done, not mandated by the political class and government bureaucrats.

2) Let’ stay in Connecticut since there appears to be a lot of political class insanity up there now. According to John Lott, writing for the Hartford Courant:

• The state government in Connecticut currently charges $140 in initial fees if a resident wants a handgun permit.
• This is currently twice the national average.
• Now, the governor wants to more than double that $140 to $370 and require a renewal fee every five years.
• That proposed initial fee would be about 50% higher than California’s fee which is currently the highest in the country.
• But doing so would hurt the very people that liberal Democrats like the current governor always think they are advocates for, the poorer folks in society.
• Because ask yourself this: who is more likely to require a legal handgun for protection: less wealthy people who are likely living in an area with a higher crime rate but who less likely to be able to afford the new, higher fees or wealthier people who are likely living in an area with a lower crime rate but who are more likely to be able to afford the new, higher fees?
• Because let’s be honest, criminals are not going to be affected by the higher fees since they are criminals and will not be registering themselves or their guns, all this does is make less wealthy state residents less likely to protect themselves.
• The Democratic governor claims that the increase in the fee structure will help offset the state’s $3.6 billion deficit over a two year period the increase in fees is only expected to generate $9 million annually, covering only a measly .5% of the $3.6 billion deficit.
• And that assumes that demand for permits does not fall off once the fees are more than doubled, a highly unlikely economic outcome,meaning that the .5% offset to the budget deficit is even smaller.

Idiotic economic and criminal mind thinking from the state’s political class.

3) I do not quite know what to make of this latest insanity because I am not sure the subject is kidding all not. If she is not kidding, and there is no evidence that she was kidding, then this future politician, Chelsea Clinton, has already crossed over into the political class insanity realm.

Apparently some gentleman named Andrew Lofholm sent out the following, obviously Photoshopped picture of Lincoln wearing a Donald Trump hat via Twitter announcing a meeting of the local Republican club:

The cover of the 2017 Lincoln Day Dinner program for Republican Party of Palm Beach County tonight at Mar-a-Lago.

Chelsea Clinton responded with the following tweet:

✔@ChelseaClinton

Please tell me this is photoshopped. Please? https://twitter.com/andrewlofholm/status/845386461524512768 …

Is she that ignorant? If so, she should make a great politician, fitting in great with the clowns we have to deal with today in Washington and state capitals across the country.

That will do it for today's insanity: Chelsea Clinton looking totally out of touch with reality, a Connecticut political class that is denying less wealthy residents the ability to defend themselves via the Second Amendment, and a government play, also in Connecticut, to not only control your life and freedom while you are alive but also when you die.

May, 2016, Part 4, Political Class Insanity: Tax Code Idiocy, Gun Control Idiocy, and Other Idiocy

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) Let’s start today’s insanity with some quick hitters. Obama likes to claim that he saved the economy and that every is going great from an economic perspective. We have already proved this point is totally wrong for a number of reasons:

• 45 million Americans still receive Federal government food assistance every month.
• The labor participation rate is at 45 year lows.
• The real unemployment rate is still almost 10%.
• Wages and household income levels have remained stagnant, six years after the recession ended.

And now we have even more damning evidence that Obama has totally mismanaged the economic welfare of this country. According to a recent analysis from the Federal Reserve Board, 47% of Americans would need to borrow money or sell possessions if confronted with an unexpected expense of just $400. In addition, in inflation adjusted terms, middle class American families on average earn 7% less than they did 15 years ago.

Thus, despite spending over $830 billion on a failed economic stimulus program, experiencing the lowest energy costs in decades, and having the benefit of the Fed pumping trillions of dollars into the economy, Obama’s administration and economic policies still could not make it work. As a result, we now have a middle class in America that would find it difficult to replace a busted washing machine, fix a broken car, or cover any other relatively inexpensive and unexpected expense. Insane and so sad.

2) Let’s stay with economic insanity for a bit. As I am writing this, the latest economic conditions, as reported by the government, are not pretty:

• Monthly job growth for April came in at a seven month low.
• Rather than the composite estimate of economists of seeing 202,000 jobs created in April, only 160,000 came about.
• The 160,000 was about 20% lower than the first quarter monthly average of 200,000 per month.
• According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a whopping 94,044,000 Americans are not participating in the labor force, as this measure continues to be near historic highs.
• This increase was an increase of a whopping 562,000 people from March.
• This means that more than three times as many Americans dropped out of the labor force than jobs were created by the economy.
• There were 5,962,000 Americans who had to settle for part time work in April even though they desired full time employment.
• The real unemployment rate, not the one the government uses, was 9.7%, almost double what the official government unemployment rate is, 5.0%.

In other words, the 47% of Americans who cannot outright afford an unexpected $400 expense, did not get much relief from Obama’s economic policies in April, despite the economic stimulus plan, low energy costs and the Fed pumping paper money into the economy.

3) We have often pointed out that the city of Chicago has some of the most stringent gun control laws and rules in the country, if not the most stringent. And yet despite these draconian gun laws, according to a recent article in the Chicago Tribune, over 1,000 people in the city have already been shot this year.

This comes out to about 10 people a day taking a bullet in the city. This is the highest gun violence rate since the 1990s. Although much of the shootings involves gang violence against each other, it does show the fallacy of people like Hillary Clinton who seem to think that MORE gun control laws is a good thing and that it would reduce gun violence. 

Anybody with a lick of sense could see from this Chicago reality that gangs will get guns in the face of any kind of gun control that Hillary puts in place and more gun control equals more gun-related woundings and killings. The insanity is that people like Clinton are so stupid in the face of this reality.

4) As a follow up to the filing of Federal income taxes a few weeks ago, consider the insanity from the nation’s income tax processes as reported by the Washington Examiner and the American Action Forum:

• In total, American citizens spent an amazing 11.4 BILLION hours completing all types of government forms every year including tax forms. 
• This comes out to 35 hours per person, or about a week’s worth of working at one’s job on average.
• The Federal government alone interfaces with Americans via 23,000 different forms.
• The Health and Human Services organization alone has more than 5,000 different forms that citizens have to fill out depending on what their needs are.

Imagine how much more productively those 11.4 BILLION hours could be used. People would have more time to volunteer, to interact with their kids, to help their neighbors, to start a business and help grow the economy. Instead, the Jabba The Hutt, oversized government bureaucracy sucks up our time and energy filling out tens of thousands of different forms for government purposes. Please do not try to tell me that government in this country is not too big, anything with 23,000 different options is way too large to be effective and efficient.

5) It is a pretty well known fact that about 47% of the U.S. adult population pay nothing in Federal income taxes. In fact, for millions of Americans, the tax process is a revenue generator for them. We have pointed out why burdening fewer and fewer Americans with more and more taxes to pay for more and more government spending is a real problem:

- The number of Americans who renounce their citizenship every year and move out of the country has been growing steadily over the past few years. You can be sure that these are not the non-taxpaying, low income, low wealth citizens. These are mostly the highest earning, most productive citizens who have gotten so fed up with shouldering such a high tax burden that they are leaving the country, taking their wealth and initiative with them. But now that they have left but the government has not reduced its spending, that void left by the wealthy leaving now has to be passed to the non-wealthy.

-  We have already shown with a real life example of what happens when you raise the tax burden on your wealthiest, most productive citizens at the state level. The state of Maryland did that several years ago when it raised the tax rate on anyone making over a million dollars a year. Just a few years later, they found that the tax revenue they were receiving from millionaires was less than it was prior to raising the tax rate on millionaires. The state’s millionaires did the rational thing, much like those leaving the country altogether, they moved to a less tax heavy state. This left the non-millionaires with a higher tax burden despite a higher tax rate on millionaires.

The bottom line is as politicians put a higher and higher tax burden on fewer and fewer Americans, without cutting spending, the results are never good. This principle recently played out again in the state of New Jersey, as reported by the Tampa Bay Times:

• David Tepper is a very successful and wealthy hedge fund manager.
• Up until recently he lived in New Jersey but has now moved his home and operations to Florida, a state with no state income tax.
• In stark contrast, New Jersey has a top state income tax rate of almost 9%.
• For a person that averaged about $1.5 billion in income a year from 2012 through 2015, Tepper could save about $130 to $140 million a year on average in New Jersey income taxes by moving to Florida.
• But more important, by taxing the wealthy so much, New Jersey loses that same amount of revenue every year, which according to a recent report by Frank Haines III, the New Jersey legislative budget and finance officer, a move by just one citizen like Tepper and “we may be facing an unusual degree of income tax forecast risk,” i.e., the out of state move by a single citizen could have significant negative impact on the whole state budget.
• In Connecticut, Kevin Sullivan, commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Revenue Services, said that if just five or six of that state’s citizens follow Tepper to Florida to avoid the high Connecticut income taxes on the wealthy, there would be a “measurable impact on the [state’s] revenue stream.”

As we stated above, if the wealthy move, either out of state or out of the country, the government get’s less tax revenue and if spending is not reduced, than the rest of the state’s residents have to pick up the slack. This is not good or fair tax planning, it is economic suicide over time, higher and higher tax rates result in LOWER tax revenue. 

It is insane when one taxpayer in New jersey or five or six in Connecticut can create a budget crisis by simply moving out of state. The need for tax reform and the slashing of government spending has never been so obvious at the state and Federal level.

That will do it for today’s insanity: idiotic tax rules and regulations, a continuing lousy economy despite the lies of the Obama administration, and the continuing idiocy of gun control advocates as witnessed by the violence and murder rates in Chicago. More insanity tomorrow.

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

December, 2014, Part 2, Will The Center Hold: Common Core, Suing The Feds, and Gun Control Rebellion

On a semi-regular basis, we check in with a continuing theme in this blog that we call: “Will the center hold?” Never in my life have I seen a political class so out of control and consequently, we are witnessing a backlash against this overreaching and intrusive political class. 

Which raises a question: are we getting to a point that one day soon we may see Washington enact a law or create a regulation and the rest of the country simply ignores it? What happens when the country tells Washington to go pound sand on something and refuses to support it? Will the center hold or does the country splinter into who know what?

Most of this backlash and pushback is against the un-Constitutional overreach of the Washington political class. Those in Washington have been pushing a variety of issues and actions that do not sit well with large parts of the country. These issues include, but are not limited to, gun control, Common Core education standards, Michelle Obama’s healthy eating/school lunch legislation, Federal government land grabs, NSA spying on innocent citizens, IRS harassment, etc.

Over the past two days, we updated where state and local governments and individual citizens are rebelling against this overreaching and increasingly repressive set of politicians. When reviewing these updates keep in mind the overall question: will the center hold once the rest of the country actually starts to ignore Washington dictates?

Today is the second of two posts to address the “will the center hold” question, the first was posted yesterday.

1) Regarding the push back against Common Core education standards, the Heritage Foundation did a story on their website on December 20, 2014 about how it is being resisted across the country. It was written by Edwin Feulner and was originally published in the Washington Examiner.

Mr. Feulner discusses the reality that parents, teachers, students and lawmakers have become increasingly vocal in their resistance of the Federally developed and implemented Common Core standards and are starting to take action to get out from under those standards. As an example, he cites Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal who once backed Common Core, stating in 2012 that he expected Common Core to “raise expectations for every child.” 

However, two short years later, Jindal decided to pull Louisiana out of the program. He believes that the states and the country were lied to and sold a bad program, likening it “bait and switch.” scam. 

According to this writer, nineteen states have made significant efforts to push back against Common Core. Indiana, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Louisiana have exited the standards altogether already, and others appear poised to do likewise. Why the rebellion, beyond the obvious reason that where Common Core has already been implemented, learning has degraded? Consider a quote from education researcher Lindsey Burke: 

“Adopting Common Core national standards and tests surrenders control of the content taught in local schools to distant national organizations and bureaucrats in Washington. It is the antithesis of reform that would put control of education in the hands of those closest to students: local school leaders and parents.”

Another Federal, mandated, dictatorial program that is not going anywhere if the trend of dumping Common Core continues to spread, leaving the country again poorer and without a solution.

2) No state has pushed back more against Washington’s overreach than Texas. Consider the push back tally that was recently reported by the www.youngcons.com website:

• Texas is one of 24 states that are suing the Obama administration and the Federal government for his illegal and un-Constitutional orders on immigration.
• The latest four states to join the effort are Arkansas, Michigan, North Dakota and Oklahoma.
• Texas has now sued the Federal government 27 times since Obama came into office six years ago. 
• President George W. Bush was sued three times in eight years by Texas during his eight years in office.

The article goes on to tally the “wins” and losses” in this suing the Federal government game by Texas. And while keeping the Federal government in line is definitely the right thing to do, one would have hoped it could have been done by following current laws on the books and the Constitution by the Washington political class rather than diverting taxpayer wealth into lawyers’ pockets and lawsuits.

3) Sometimes out of control government actions are not confined to Washington’s efforts to control our lives. The Maryland state government recently enacted a law a law banning “assault weapons” and magazines capable of holding more than 10 rounds. New gun buyers in Maryland must also submit their fingerprints and undergo mandatory gun training. Failure to comply with the law can result in a three-year prison sentence and/or a $5,000 fine.

In response to these attacks on the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding Americans, 21 other states have come together in a law suit to abolish the new, restrictive gun control laws in Maryland and make sure that they are not implemented elsewhere. While the law which was immediately challenged and upheld by a Federal judge, it is now being reviewed in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. 

4) Staying with the protection of Second Amendment rights by an overreaching political class, consider some facts that were included in a November 12, 2014 article in the Reason magazine’s Hit and Run blog that was written by J.D. Tuccille:

• Tens of thousands of Connecticut gun owners became potential felons rather than comply with that state's new gun registration law. 
• New York's similar gun registration law resulted in such low compliance when it went into effect that government officials refused to reveal how many people have and have not abided by the law. This secrecy resulted in the New York State Committee on Open Government saying the secrecy “thumbs its nose at the law” itself.
• Large numbers of Washington state’s residents are not happy about i594, a law that requires background check requirements on even private transactions, and planned a rally in mass disobedience December, 2014. Research shows that the Washington rally did occur and was well attended by over 5,000 Second Amendment rights supporters. 

More examples of citizens rising up to resist politicians violating the Constitution and freedom and liberties. 

Common Core rejection, record number of lawsuits against the Federal government and this Presidential administration, non-violent civil disobedience, and a whole host of other resistance efforts to overreaching politicians continues to raise the issue: what happens if the Washington political class issues a law or regulation and the rest of the country simply ignores it? Will the center hold? More excitement sure to come as the Obama administration strives to create any kind of legacy for this failed presidency, an effort sure to be resisted by the rest of America and Americans.

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

October, 2014 Political Class Insanity, Part 1: No To Chocoloate Milk, Failures In Geography, Over Taxation, and More

It is the beginning of another month which means it is time to check in with the American political class to see what insanity they have wrought over the past month or so. It is always amazing to follow the exploits, quotes, and actions of our politicians and the government entities they operate to see how often idiocy, incompetence, and heartbreak are almost always the output from their actions.

We started dong these updates several years ago, usually taking one or two days every month to get all of their insanity covered. Unfortunately, over time, the insanity has seemed to accelerate almost exponentially, causing us to now have to take six or seven posts each month to get it all in. This month will be no different. As our foreign policy implodes, the economy stagnates, and the midtem elections approach, the insanity levels are intensifying daily.

To check out past instances of political class insanity in this post, simply go to the first week of each month and check out the posts that begin, “Political class Insanity.” For the latest insanity, read on:

1) The Tax Foundation recently published the first ever global statistic called the “International Tax Competitiveness Index.” Details about this latest index measure include the following points and facts:

• This index measures two financial criteria, competitiveness and neutrality, by examining “the extent to which a country’s tax system adheres to”, these “two important principles of tax policy”.
• To do the calculation, the index than analyzes 40 tax positions and policies in each nation studied. 
• The United States does not come off well at all, relative to other countries, finishing an obscene 32nd out of the 34 nations analyzed.  
• Two of the most damaging reasons for ranking the United States near the very bottom of the list include the highest corporate tax rate (39%), as well as the “rare demand that money earned overseas should be taxed as if it were earned domestically”. 
• Thus, the United States outranked out only Portugal and France out of 34 industrialized nations.

Thus, one reason for the tepid/anemic economic growth over the past five years could be the fact that heavy taxation is forcing companies to move their operations and focus to other countries or not investing in U.S. markets since anything they earn will be taxed at very high levels relative to the rest of the world.

How bad and oppressive are U.S. business tax rates and policies? According to analyses done by the accounting firm KPMG, only one country in the entire world has a higher overall corporate tax rate than the U.S. The United Arab Emirates’ 55% rate is an exception, however, because it usually applies only to foreign oil companies.

High taxes = lower economic growth, it is not a hard concept that has been proven over and over, both at the state level in this country and at the country level around the world. Everybody gets it except…. for the Washington political class. And that is likely a main reason why the real unemployment rate is still over 10%, why about 17 million Americans are unemployed or under employed and why we have not annual economic growth over 2% for what seem like forever.

2) It has been a recent, continuing news stories that both the Bush and Obama administration have been providing military grade weapons and armored vehicles to local police forces. This so-called “militarization of American police forces” has created concern and opposition from people throughout the political spectrum.

But according to a recent article by the Education Action Group EAG), it is not just police forces that are getting military grade weapons and armaments. According to a recent EAG article by Victor Skinner, almost two dozen legal, civil rights, and education advocacy organizations have sent a letter to the U.S. departments of Defense, Justice and Education to plead with Federal officials to stop sending military equipment, weapons and armored vehicles to public schools.

It seems that many of school districts across the country have taken part in the Department of Defense’s Excess Property Program, commonly known as the 1033 program. The Huffington Post reported that at least 20 schools have taken in military-grade equipment, from grenade launchers to laptops, since the program started in 1997. The equipment is given to schools, public university police forces and local police agencies free of charge.

This story hits quite home for me since as a resident of Pinellas County, Florida, the article documented the fact that Florida’s Pinellas County School District, received almost two dozen M16 rifles under the program. Really? M-16 rifles for a school system that is responsible for educating kids from kindergarten through high school? 

What possible situation could arise that would require school district personnel to break out M-16 rifles? Shouldn’t that be a job for local police and local SWAT teams, not art teachers? Possibly even worse, American tax dollars were used, and wasted, to provide armored personnel vehicles capable of withstanding mine explosions to San Diego and Los Angeles school districts.

I do not get it. I doubt any personnel in any school system is properly trained to handle M-16 rifles and armored personnel carriers. I can think of not situation in my entire lifetime where a school principal lamented that if only they had had a dozen or so M-16s on site they could have better handled the situation. 

I have yet to hear a teacher complain that the lack of an armored personnel carrier resulted in lost lives. The probability that these situations ever arise is too small to measure since they have never happened before. Wasting of taxpayer money, endangering of our kids.

3) Connecticut legislators recently passed state legislation that bans chocolate milk in the state’s cafeterias. The bill was passed in response the Michelle Obama-driven Federal standards for healthy lunches. Supposedly, those who supported the ban said chocolate milk isn’t suitable for children because of high levels of sodium.

Really? Chocolate milk has too much sodium which makes it a health danger? What happens when kids that only like chocolate milk no longer drink ANY milk and start having calcium deficiencies: “What concerns me is that if chocolate milk is not one of the available options, then students will decrease consumption of milk overall,” said Lonnie Burt, the head nutritionist in Hartford’s school district.

Fortunately, the governor has repeatedly said he will not sign this bill into law. Do state legislators have nothing better to do in this difficult economic times than worry about chocolate milk? Especially since their remedy is to deny kids access to a great and nutritious option at meal time? Political class insanity is not restricted to Washington. 

4) The Obama administration recently started bombing suspected terrorist sites within the sovereign country of Syria. The sales job included the fact that ISIS terrorists within Syria could attack other countries including our own and that is why they needed to be destroyed now even if it meant attacking another country.

This is very serious stuff. It involves endangering the lives of U.S. military personnel and probably billions and billions of dollars of American taxpayer wealth in this pursuit to destroy a perceived enemy. One would hope that the Obama administration had all of its ducks in a row in order to do the best job possible. 

But it seems that hope of any kind left this administration long ago. Despite the gravity and seriousness of the situation, during a recent press briefing, a senior Obama administration official, who was not identified by name under well-established rules, was speaking on a conference call with reporters about ISIS when he made the geographic screw up when he said: “ISIL has been, I think, a galvanizing threat around the Sunni partners in the region. They view it as an existential threat to them. Saudi Arabia has an extensive border with Syria … So what we have here is a galvanizing threat from ISIL that is, I think, leading our Sunni partners in the region to join us along the range of potential capabilities that my colleague mentioned.” 

The screw up is that Saudi Arabia does not have an extensive border with Syria, in fact it is NO border with Syria:




If you are going to lead your country into a war, don’t you think you would have a better grasp of basic geography of where you are leading the country to? Leaves a big doubt in one’s mind that the administration knows what it is doing if it has no concept of where we are doing it.

Steven Bucci, who knows his way around the Middle East as a former Army Special Forces officer and who now oversees foreign and defense policy at The Heritage Foundation, called the senior official’s comment “embarrassing” as the White House prepares for military action in the Middle East” “It is not reassuring when the leaders of the Obama administration, on the day of a huge address by the President, make a gaffe this embarrassing.” 

That will do it for today. Chocolate milk as a priority, failing grade in geography, excessive taxation, and armaments in schools. The scope and variety of political class insanity never ceases to amaze us. And rest assured, you will be amazed even more over the next week or so as we have only scratched the surface of the latest insanity from Washington and elsewhere.

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http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
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