Love My Country, Loathe My Government: corona virus

Showing posts with label corona virus. Show all posts

Sunday, September 13, 2020

September, 2020, Part 7,Political Class Insanity: De Blasio Puts NYC Into A Financial Death Spiral, Gretchen Builds a Wall To Protect Herself, and Biden Messes Up Again

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) Gretchen Whitmer is the governor of Michigan. She was probably the second worst performing politician/governor relative to the coronavirus behind the governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo. We have previously gone into her many screw ups and will not repeat them here but she made herself look foolish, inept, and petty so many times.

And her poor performance continues along those same lines in a completely different area:

Apparently, Michigan taxpayers are putting out over $1 million so that the governor can build a security wall and security system around the governor’s mansion where she currently resides.
The fence will be 8 feet high and the cost of the fence and enhanced security for the governor and her family will be about $1.1 million.
This is the same lady that chastised Trump for building a wall along the southern border with Mexico to keep out drug cartels, human traffickers and other undesirables in order to better protect the lives and property of American citizens
But she has no problem using additional taxpayer money to protect herself and her family.
And not only is the wall 8 feet high but according to news reports, there is a sign already in place that claims, “Danger. High Voltage. Unauthorized persons keep out.”

The governor is not beyond spending taxpayer wealth to better protect her family and property but gets all upset if Trump does the same thing. The hypocrisy is amazing. She gets even more protected, the residents in her state’s cities and towns can fend for themselves.

This is shades of what the mayor of Chicago, Lori Lightfoot, did for herself and her family. She used the taxpayer funded Chicago police force to ensure that violent protests and riots did not occur in her neighborhood and endanger her family. The other families in the city’s other neighborhoods did not get the same police support.

Another form of politicians favorite hypocrisy, “do as I say, not as I do.” You common folk go put up with criminals, rioters, etc. will use taxpayer money to at least ensure that I am safe, So sad and pathetic.

2) We have purposely tried to not talk about the upcoming Presidential election, it is tiring and depressing. But as a trained statistician, I could not pass up on a recent Biden screw up when it comes to numbers and how either he is so misinformed or more likely, his cognitive abilities continue to decline dramatically, making coherent sentences and concepts too difficult for him:

At a recent political campaign stop, Biden asserted that 6,114 U.S. military personnel had died from the coronavirus.
Unfortunately, his assertion was a little off...by 6,107 deaths.
Only 7 armed forces personnel have died from the virus according to a Pentagon website, no 6.114.
He also grossly overstated the number of armed forces personnel who contracted the virus by a whopping 79,000.
His campaign tried to say that he had confused the number of deaths and infections in Michigan with the number of deaths and infections within the armed forces but even those numbers don't match.

Bottom line, he screwed up royally, much like he has done during the whole campaign, bringing into question both his integrity when it comes to numbers and/or his ability to think clearly. If he cannot get two numbers right at a campaign stop, who really thinks that he has the cognitive ability to be President?

3) We have recently and often discussed the reality that Bill de Blasio, the mayor of New York City, is one of several American mayors that should be considered the worst mayor in the country. In fact, a fellow New York Democrat recently called de Blasio not only the worst NYC mayor ever but the worst mayor in the history of the country, all cities and all towns included.

He has alienated and insulted the New York Police Department any number of times during his term. He has reduced the police budget by an amazing $1 billion at the same time that violence, murders, shootings, and crime is skyrocketing in his city. Moving companies cannot find enough moving vans to satisfy the demand for NYC resident leaving the city due to the increased crime and higher and higher taxes.

A recent article on the Townhall website by Daniel J.Mitchell laid out how the city is in the beginning of a financial death spiral:

According to the article, the city has a massive spending problem that results in higher and higher taxes to feed the higher and higher spending which eventually drives people to relocate out of the city.
Things are so out of control that even the leftist New York Times believes that only fiscal constraint will fix what ails the city.
The city currently has a $5 billion budget shortfall.
De Blasio has asked the state government to give him the authority to borrow billions of dollars to fill the budget shortfall but the wisdom of doing that is pretty shaky, i.e. incurring more debt to pay off existing debt/budget shortfalls.
Incurring debt to cover operating expenses eventually leads a city to collapse financially, e.g. Detroit.
And most of this budget issue is due to de Blasio since the city’s annual budget has grown from $73 billion in his first year in office in 2014 to a whopping $92 billion in 2019.
This spending increase of 26% is far higher than any measure of economic growth during those years.
And a lot of that growth in city expenses is because of the hiring of thousands of new city employees during that time frame, which means it is not going to be easy to trim payroll to close the budget hole especially if city unions have anything to say about it.
Unbelievably, even given the budget hole, the mayor has yet to implement a hard hiring freeze to slow down the financial bleeding.
But he still doesn't get it since he recently advocated for even HIGHER taxes which will cause the outward migration of NYC residents, especially the wealthier, higher paying tax ones, to leave the city even quicker.
And city companies are not ignorant in seeing how tenuous NYC financials are.
NYC financial giant JP Morgan is already locating some of its NYC employees to other locations, so much so that Texas will soon host more JP Morgan employees than NYC does.
As the wealthier residents leave cities like NYC, the politicians who refuse to cut spending have no choice but to raise taxes on middle class residents who cannot move out as easily as wealthier former residents can.

The financial death spiral for NYC is well underway. The question is not longer “if” but is now “how fast.” Higher taxes, higher crime levels, and no solution from the city’s political class is a deadly combination.

4) As I was finishing up the above description of how NYC was probably in a financial death spiral, another article verifying those concerns came to my attention:

A recent New York Times article by Emma Fitzsimmons and Dana Rubinstein discussed a recent open letter that 150 NYC business leaders had sent to de Blasio.
In that letter, “More than 150 business leaders in New York City joined together on Thursday to warn Mayor Bill de Blasio that he needed to take more decisive action to address crime and other quality-of-life issues that they said were jeopardizing the city’s economic recovery."
These companies included such long time NYC businesses such as Goldman Sachs, Jet Blue, Vornado Realty Trust and others.
The letter addressed issues such as crime, public safety, city cleanliness, homelessness, and so-called quality of life issues for their businesses and their employees.
The letter warned de Blasio that people who have temporarily left the city, employees who are now working at home because of the virus crisis and those that have moved out of the city would be slow to return because of concerns over “security and the livability of our communities.”
A response to the letter by the Mayor’s office encouraged business leaders to work with him and the city government to fix the many problems but provided no plans, no strategies, or suggestions how to fix what de Blasio has broken in the past six years.
Kathryn Wylde, the president of the Partnership for New York City, kind of summed up the business employee concerns quite nicely: “All these employers are committed to the city, they want to see economic recovery, but they’re getting pushback from their employees about, will the city be safe, will the city be clean.”
Scott Rechler, CEO of RXR Realty, blamed de Blasio directly for the mess: “The problem right now is leadership. We need a strong leader to address these problems, to encourage people to feel comfortable coming back to the city,” with the obvious implication that the current mayor is not a strong leader.
Rather than come up with an action plan to fix the many problems, the only thing de Blasio could offer was a pathetic plea for business leaders to help him get extra debt borrowing authority from the state (see above why that is a stupid idea) and more Federal aid which Trump, and the rest of the country, is unlikely to agree to, no plan just plain crybaby whining.
On the same day of the letter, de Blasio’s sanitation commissioner, Kathryn Garcia, quit her job because of what she called “unconscionable” sanitation department budget cuts, not a good omen for the city’s cleanliness future.
Most business offices in the city are currently running below 10% capacity as businesses move out of the city or employees of businesses continue to work from home, another bad omen when it comes to city industries that once serviced those employees: cabs, restaurants, barbers, etc.

Not a pretty sight, but all of that is because ultra liberal/shadow communist de Blasio insisted on continually increasing the city budget beyond the city’s taxpayers ability to pay. If he had capped the increases to the annual city budget at say 3% back in 2014, he would roughly have saved the city about $5 billion, enough to close the current year budget shortfall.

If he had capped the annual rise in the city budget at 2%, not an unreasonable target, he would have about $9 billion less in spending, more than enough to cover two years of budget deficits without raising taxes, incurring more debt, or pleading for more Federal help. A classic case of politicians only worrying about the next election, not the next generation, and as a result, that next generation will be faced with government debt, cuts in essential city services, and a lower quality of life.

So, we found out today that: de Blasio has likely put New York City into a financial death spiral, Joe Biden continues to be dazed and confused, and Governor Whitmer, like other politicians, is more concerned about her own safety than the safety and quality of life of her constituents.

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

Friday, September 11, 2020

September, 2020, Part 6, Political Class Insanity: Cuomo Lives In An Alternative Universal When It Comes To Virus Blame

We have often talked about the reality that New York City and New York state have led the country in coronavirus deaths and infections. The governor, Andrew Cuomo, probably unnecessarily killed hundreds, if not thousands. of elderly residents by forcing nursing homes in the state to accept virus patients into their facilities where the virus spread unimpeded. The NYC mayor, Bill de Blasio, was very cavalier early in the virus crisis by telling his residents to go out and party in enclosed quarters with others.

As a result, the number of New Yorkers killed or infected by the virus easily outpaced the deaths and infections of every other state no matter how you count. Whether you look at absolute numbers of deaths and infections or by population ratio, New York screwed up the most. Until very recently, more people in New York state died from the virus than the number of deaths in Texas, Florida, and California COMBINED.

But in an example of one of the worst perceptions of reality, Cuomo recently blamed Donald Trump for the deaths and infections caused by the virus. He refuses to accept the reality that his screw ups short changed his residents' life and health. Specifically: “Donald Trump caused the COVID outbreak in New York,” then immediately said again, “Donald Trump caused the COVID outbreak in New York.”

Seriously, Trump caused the outbreak?! The Chinese lab that created the virus had nothing to do with it? The World Health Organization that screwed everything up early in the outbreak had nothing to do with it? Nancy Pelosi, who told everyone to go down to Chinatown and not worry about the virus, had nothing to do with it?

Hey governor, let’s review a recent Wall Street Journal article by Karl Rove that reviewed the adverse actions and quotations that you, de Blasio, Democrats, and other New York politicians and bureaucrats have put forth in the past six months:

When Trump banned travel from China, the raging source of the virus, on January 31, Joe Biden accused Trump of being a racist even though the travel ban likely prevented infected Chinese people from coming into the country and spreading the disease even wider.
Specifically Biden accused Trump of fear mongering and xenophobia.
Ron Kain, a former chief of staff for Biden, also opposed the China ban, calling it premature on January 28.
On January 30, Biden’s coronavirus advisor, Zeke Emanuel, told CNBC that everyone should “take a very big breath, slow down, and stop panicking and being hysterical” and that the virus would “go down as spring comes up,” a reality that never happened.
On February 6, another Biden coronavirus advisor, Irwin Redlener, claimed that a global pandemic was “not very likely” and that the chances of “getting a severe, potentially lethal form of the Wuhan virus is negligible,” grossly wrong opinions.
NYC’s health commissioner, Dr. Oxiris Barbot, tried to reassure NYC commuters, in early February, that “this is not something that you’re going to contract in the subway or on the bus,” an incorrect assertion that de Blasio repeated several times in March.
Kain came back with more wrong predictions on February 11 when he doubted that the virus would become “a serious epidemic,” two days later he stated confidently, and incorrectly, that “The evidence suggests it’s probably not that [an epidemic],” and two days later he was also wrong when he said that “We don’t have a COVID-19 epidemic in the US but we are starting to see a fear epidemic.”
Emanuel popped up again on February 20 when he incorrectly stated the country was overreacting and that “warm weather is going to come and, just like the flu, the corona virus is going to go down.”
On February 24, Nancy Pelosi told tourists in San Francisco to “come down to Chinatown.”
Kain supported Pelosi’s invitation three days later when he said people should not be worried by “needless fears about coronavirus” and that everyone “should tonight go down to Chinatown in their city and buy dinner or go shopping.”
On February 29 Emanuel told CNN that “running out and getting a mask is not going to help.”
On March 2, Cuomo nonchalantly stated that “So, when you’re saying, what happened in other countries versus what happened here, we don’t even think it’s going to be as bad as it was in other countries.”
On March 12, Biden advisor Lisa Monaco bitched about Trump’s Europe travel ban, a continent where the virus was raging.
Biden kept holding election rallies without distancing or masks up until March 9.
In early March, de Blasio told his city residents to go out to city bars and restaurants since the virus is not spread by food and drink, an assertion that may be the worst assumption ever regarding the virus.
On March 5, de Blasio reassured the city that there was no need to panic and `”We'll tell you the second we think you should change your behavior”
By mid March most of the country were doing lockdowns but New York was late to that party: “New York City as a whole was late in social measures,” said Isaac B. Weisfuse, a former New York City deputy health commissioner. “Any after-action review of the pandemic in New York City will focus on that issue. It has become the major issue in the transmission of the virus.”
On March 31, Cuomo admitted: “I am tired of being behind this virus. We’ve been playing catch-up. You don’t win playing catch-up.”

And yet, Cuomo thinks that Trump caused the virus. Trump stopped travelers from high infection areas from entering this country and possibly bringing the virus with them but he caused the virus. Trump never told people to go dine and shop in Chinatown but he caused the virus. Trump never told people to go out to bars and restaurants because the virus does not spread by food and drink but he caused the virus. Trump did not work in the Chinese lab that created and lost control of the virus but he caused the virus. Trump never told people to continue to travel on the subway but he caused the virus.

Trump did not do everything perfectly. Testing was lagging. Virus prevention supplies were initially in short demand. But to say Trump caused the virus after all of the bad information, advice, and actions taken by China, Cuomo, de Blasio, Biden advisors, Biden, Pelosi, etc. is certainly a gross denial of reality.

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

Wednesday, September 9, 2020

September, 2020, Part 5, Political Class Insanity: Businesses Leaving Chicago, Gun Control Fails Again In California, and More

1) We have recently and often discussed the dire situation that Chicago is in from a quality of life perspective. For years it had led the country in the total number of murders every year but that violence has jumped up this year. In addition, the city has been subjected to some vicious and violent riots that has left many businesses looted, burned down, or robbed.

And apparently Chicago business owners have had enough of the ineptness of the political class to provide a basic, basic government service: protect the lives and property of the city's citizens. The city’s business and property management companies have told the mayor, Lori Lightfoot, that unless she and the city take greater control of the violence and crime they may leave the city behind and take their businesses, and jobs, elsewhere.

One single night of recent riots and looting cost Chicago business owners $60 million in damages and losses. One night. All because of a wild and totally false rumor about police violence that did not happen. And when businesses leave an area, jobs leave an area, shopping options leave an area and those residents left behind suffer a severe decline in the quality of life. All because the local political class could not provide a basic government service.

2) New York City has been not too far behind Chicago when it comes to an escalation in crime and violence, a reality we discussed a lot recently. But the mayor, Bill de Blasio, continues to either live in denial or is trying to dress up a pig when it comes to his failure as mayor.

After the recent Labor Day weekend, de Blasio reached the following conclusion, that the city had an “overwhelmingly peaceful weekend.” But in the real world, not the mayor’s bubble world, this was what was happening around town:

A six year old boy got shot in the leg.
His mother also got shot at a city Caribbean holiday street party in Brooklyn.
Almost two dozen other people got shot over the three day weekend.
Another city resident was shot while out walking his dogs with news reports saying that “It’s unclear who attacked him or what the motive was.”
In the first eight months of 2020, NYC shootings are up 87% compared to the same time period last year so even if the mayor was right, which he wasn’t, about a peaceful Labor Day weekend, the total year’s violence is still way up.

Clueless or a liar, tough tell what de Blasio is but neither is a trait you want in a politician in charge of the biggest city in the country.

3) We have also had a lot of discussion recently about how laws, rules, and edicts, especially during the coronavirus crisis and lockdowns, often do not seem to apply to the politicians who are making those laws, rules, edicts and lockdowns. These people live by the code, “do as I say, not as I do.” Consider the recent examples of such pompousness:

The Chicago mayor made her hair salon open so she could have her hair styled even though she prohibited every other hair salon and resident in the city from doing the same thing.
The Beaumont, Texas mayor made her nail salon open so she could have her nails done even though she prohibited every other nail salon and resident in the city from doing the same thing.
De Blasio in NYC made his gym open up only for him to get some exercise even though he had prohibited every other gym and resident in the city from doing the same thing.
The governor’s husband in Michigan tried to get his marina to put his boat in the water so he could use it over the Memorial Day weekend even though his wife prohibited every other boater and resident in the state from doing the same thing.
Nancy Pelosi made her salon open so she could get her hair styled in San Francisco even though every other hair salon and resident in the city was not allowed to do the same thing.

You get the idea, politicians think of themselves as royalty and that common laws and restrictions should not get in the way of their lives. And that snobbery also applies to the mayor of Philadelphia:

Mayor Jim Kenney had made sure that his Philadelphia residents could not go out and dine inside a city restaurant as part of the plan to defeat the virus.
But that did not stop him from driving across the state line into Maryland where he enjoyed a dinner out at an out of state restaurant.
He did apologize for doing so but that hardly makes up for his “do as I say, not as I do” behavior.
I am pretty sure that most of the people he rules over did not have the means or wealth to travel out of state to enjoy dinner out.

I hope he enjoyed what others in his city yearn for but he has prohibited for so long.

4) One last observation on politicians for today. A lot of liberal and Democrats in this country hate the Second Amendment. I am sure if they had their way, which they constantly try to get, they would confiscate every gun that every law abiding American has in their possession that are used only for sport or protection.

The most liberal state in the country is probably California and that is probably the state with the most restrictive gun laws in the country. But that did not stop a mass shooting recently in that state:

It seems that some state residents were operating an illegal marijuana growing operation.
And it seems that someone did not agree with that operation.
You see, someone came by and shot to death seven people associated with that illegal marijuana growing operation.
When police arrived at the shooting scene, they found a wounded woman who was transported to a hospital but who ended up dead.
A search of the property found six other dead bodies who were shot to death.

So years after restricting gun sales, restricting magazine sizes, making more and more difficult to buy a gun in the state, there are still bad, evil people who have guns in their possession. Making that old saying even more true: “if having a gun was a crime then only criminals would have guns.” Ask the seven dead people who died violently by gunshots, pretty sure they would agree that gun control as practiced by the American political class has been a failure.

So, another example of how gun control only allows criminals to have guns, a big city mayor scoffs at his own rules, de Blasio continues to be clueless, and Chicago business owners have had enough of the violence, looting and lack of law and order caused by a very ineffective set of city politicians.

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

Sunday, September 6, 2020

September, 2020, Part 3, Political Class Insanity: A Dead Person Has the Virus, The NYC Mayor Is Still Clueless and the Seattle Mayor May Get Yanked

1) Although the coronavirus experience was a new and dangerous experience for all of us, with no historical process or experience to guide the actions of politicians and government, it is pretty obvious that some brutal mistakes were made that caused the virus to infect and kill more people than was necessary.

Many times we have spoken about how the politicians in New York, especially the mayor of New York City and the governor, were late, lax, and stupid in their actions regarding the virus This resulted in the highest infection and death rates in the nation, far beyond any way you measure the effects, given the size of the state and city’s population.

We also saw that no government entity was ready for the massive amount of testing that would be necessary to measure, track, and treat the virus. And when testing was in place it turned out to be faulty in so many ways. We have reported on the man in Tennessee who was called up by the state’s health department to check on how he was recovering from the virus when 1) he never took a test to see if he had the virus and 2) he was never sick.

We talked about testing results in Florida where in some cases labs reported that 100% of all people tested had the virus, a highly unlikely result. And there are now reports of a major national lab that has been doing tests for months and has not reported a single positive case, again, a highly unlikely scenario.

And now we have this story of ineptness in Tennessee:

A woman who has been dead for six months recently received a letter from her county health department that says she has tested positive for the virus and needs to go into isolation.
Her son, Troy Whittington, is having a hard time understanding how his dead mother has a positive virus test: “I’m just having a hard time understanding how they can say someone has COVID-19 when they are not even alive. It’s impossible for someone to be tested on June 20, who passed away on February 16th. I tried to call the health department this morning, ask them why this was going on. She said she would have to get a supervisor. She was sorry for the mistake or she couldn’t tell me any information till she got a supervisor, and I haven’t heard back from them.”
His mom died on February 16th of COPD, weeks before the first case of the virus was even detected in the county and long before any testing was done.
Even more bizarre is the reality that his mom’s body was cremated back in February so it is not even possible that the test was done on her corpse.

Another day, another government bureaucracy screw up. The bottom line is we really have no idea what the virus did to how many people in what way. Faulty tests, positive results on dead people, politicians incompetence and ignorance in handling the crisis, what a mess.

2) And we have discussed recently and far too many times, one of the very, very basic and essential functions of government is to protect lives and property. Across the country in some major cities, politicians have failed miserably in providing that very basic government function:

The deadly violence that has plagued Chicago for years is getting worse and worse.
Seattle lost control of a major portion of its downtown area for weeks several months ago.
Portland has been the scene of 100 consecutive nights of constant violence, riots, looting, and deaths.
The crime rate across New York City has skyrocketed over the past few months.

And it appears that NYC is going to break a lot of crime records this year, and not in a good way:

The city has now experienced over 1,000 shootings this year.
This milestone has been reached even though there are still four more months in the year.
This increase in violence has caused moving companies to run out of capacity to move people out of the city with 10 residents a day moving out and leaving NYC behind.
In 2019 there were 772 shootings in total for the whole year, over 200 fewer than there have been in just 8 months this year.

The trend is not good and the mayor seems not to appreciate how much he has screwed up. He brags that there are fewer people in jail in the city but does not realize that maybe, just maybe, there is a correlation of letting people out of jail for crimes they committed and the increased violence and crime. His ineptness is driving the wealthier and high paying taxpayers out of the city and yet he wants to raise taxes on those wealthy people left behind. His inability to comprehend his damage to the city is unbelievable.

3) Speaking of inept mayors, let’s jump out to Seattle for one of the top contenders for worst mayor in the country. According to the Godfather Politics website and Warner Todd Huston:

Seattle Mayor, Jenny Durkan, has allowed her city to be a lawless battleground of violence.
She famously allowed a major portion of her downtown area to be taken over by looters, rioters, and anarchists for a number of weeks.
As a result, her city’s residents have launched a recall petition drive to have her removed from office because, as we discussed above, she has failed to provide a very basic government service, the protection of the lives and property of her city’s residents.
She has filed a petition with the state supreme court to have this petition drive terminated, claiming that there is no basis for her to be recalled.
She says that since she did not violate any laws, the petition is not valid.

Now, technically she may be right, that she did not break a specific law, she did not rob anyone, she did not mug anyone, she did not steal a car, etc. But when she took office she did take an oath to uphold and execute the current laws on the books which I assume include laws to prevent looting, arson, and conceding the lives, homes and businesses of many residents and businesses to the anarchists who took over part of the city.

And remember, the basic, basic function of government is to protect the lives and property of those that government serves, and no one can make a case she fulfilled that duty to any degree at all. If the petition drive gets 50,000 signatures in the next 180 days then a recall vote option will appear on next year’s ballot. I wish the petition owners luck.

Okay, a Seattle mayor maybe gets the well deserved heave ho, the New York City mayor continues to be clueless and continues to increase the danger facing his city’s residents, and at least in Tennessee the government counts dead people among their coronavirus patients.

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

Saturday, September 5, 2020

September, 2020, Part, 2, Political Class Insanity: Cuomo Still Does Not Get It, Oregon Governor Gets a 911 Busy Signal, and Portland Mayor On The Lam

1) The coronavirus crisis has been a terrible trauma for both the United States and humanity in total. Over 180,000 Americans have had the virus when they passed away this year and millions have tested positive for the virus. The shuttering of economies around the world resulted in severe economic hardship.

As the world struggles to get past this crisis, the governor of New York decided to write a book of how great he performed during this ongoing crisis. Yes, he wrote a book while residents in his state were still dying, still getting sick and still struggling economically. Makes you wonder what his priorities are during this difficult time.

And Kavin Pham, writing for the Heritage Foundation, points out that writing a book congratulating himself on his performance is pretty ironic given that New York had by far the worst performance and government reaction to the virus:

Of the over 180,000 Americans who died with the virus, almost 33,000 of them lived in the state of New York.
Thus, a whopping 17% of the U.S. virus deaths were in the state Cuomo governs, far higher than the percentage of citizens living in his state.
The total number of deaths from the virus in New York is just under the number of deaths from California, Texas, and Florida COMBINED even though the population of New York is smaller than each of these other states.
New York deaths from the virus were more than double the number of deaths of the next closest state, New Jersey which has had about 16,000 virus deaths.
But probably the most disgusting thing Cuomo has said amid his failures to protect the citizens of New York are his remarks he made at the Democratic National Convention: “COVID is the symptom, not the illness … in many ways, COVID is just a metaphor.”

Now, that's a pretty heartless comment to make in the middle of a virus crisis, a crisis you bungled completely in protecting the residents of New York. COVID is a real DISEASE, it is not a symptom. It is not some mystical metaphor. It is a real disease that has killed over 180,000 Americans and infected millions more. For him to try and make cheap political capital gain with his heartless statement is sickening.

So out of touch with reality, so out of touch with his failures, so out of touch with the families who lost loved ones because of his incompetence.

2) As most people know, the city of Portland has been a riot infested town for over three months. Every night, rioters torch, march and fight with law enforcement and the city’s mayor, council, and the state government and the state’s governor have been too weak and too inept to stop the violence and destruction of a once wonderful city.

After three months of non-stop nightly violence, death, looting, and arson, the governor FINALLY came up with a plan to stop the carnage. However, the plan has a few problems before even being implemented:

The Oregon governor’s plan had six parts and one of those parts was for the outlying counties around Portland, Clackamas County and Washington County, to send their law enforcement people into Portland to help restore order.
However, the plan had a big problem in that the governor had not gotten the county head sheriffs to sign off on that part of her plan BEFORE announcing it.
And when the plan was announced, the Sheriff departments in those two counties said, thanks, but no thanks: We will keep our law enforcement people in our counties, you handle the Portland problem some other way since you screwed it up to begin with and basically have no plan to fix what you screwed up.
Craig Roberts, top Sheriff in Clackamas County had these words for this failed plan: “The same offenders are arrested night after night, only to be released by the court and not charged with a crime by the DA’s Office. The next night they are back at it, endangering the lives of law enforcement and the community all over again.”
Sheriff Roberts also said that a lack of “political support for public safety” and “The criminal justice system will need to do its part and hold offenders accountable.” was why he would not be supporting the governor’s plan.
Washington County Sheriff Pat Garrett was in alignment with those feelings: “[T]he lack of political support for public safety, the uncertain legal landscape, the current volatility combined with intense scrutiny on use of force presents an unacceptable risk if deputies were deployed directly.”

What a sad state of affairs. First, the Governor allows rioting and death to occur in the state’s biggest city to go on unabated for over three months. Then when she FINALLY comes up with a half baked plan she does not share those plans with critical people who would operationalize her plan, the Sheriffs.

Embarrassing lack of foresight, planning and common sense and certainly not a solution to what ails Portland and the inability of the governor and the mayor to provide a basic service of government: to protect the lives and property of its citizens. Sheriff Roberts certainly has a better grasp of the situation and reality than both the mayor and governor: “Had Governor Brown discussed her plan with my office, I would have told her it’s about changing policy not adding resources. Increasing law enforcement resources in Portland will not solve the nightly violence and now, murder.”

Sad that a Sheriff could be so right and a governor could be so wrong. Looks like the governor called 911 and got a busy signal, much like residents and Portland are experiencing as they come under attack by the rioters and anarchists.

3) Ted Wheeler is the current mayor of Portland. We often discuss his ineptness when trying to figure out who is the worst mayor in the country today. He has allowed his city to be under siege for over three months with nightly rioting, violence, looting, and murders. And still after three months he has absolutely no solutions.

In fact, he may be the first mayor in the history of the country who has been forced from his home by the rioters he has not been able to handle or control. On a recent night rioters came to his condo building and started fires in and around his building.

Now, to his credit, he is moving for the safety sake of others that live in the same building as he did. He realizes that since he has been unable to control the violence and anarchy engulfing the city, if the rioters bring that violence to his condo building his presence will be endangering innocent others who live in that building.

According to local news reports, Wheeler told his neighbors in the building that it is “best for me and for everyone else’s safety and peace” that he finds a new place to live and “I want to express my sincere apologies for the damage to our home and the fear that you are experiencing due to my position. It’s unfair to all of you who have no role in politics or in my administration."

According to police reports, a mob of rioters gathered at Wheeler’s building recently and broke windows, robbed a business and lit a fire in an occupied apartment building. When police tried to disperse the crowd, they were attacked by thrown projectiles and commercial grade fireworks. Just another unlawful and violent night in Portland.

You know you have failed as a public elected official when your home residence is no longer safe. That obviously means that you have failed that basic tenet of government: protecting the lives and property of your constituents. When the mob attacks the mayor’s home and forces him to flee, what chance does the average person in Portland have?

So we have a vain and out of touch heartless governor in New York, a totally inept governor in Oregon who cannot even organize a simple plan, and we have a refugee mayor in Portland who cannot even protect his own home, never mind the homes of the people that elected him.

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

Wednesday, September 2, 2020

By The Numbers: California Has A Numbers Problem, Virus Crisis Stimulus Screw Up, and The Virus Numbers Are Looking Different

On a periodic basis we do some posts that fall under the theme of “by the numbers.” Rather than trust what the American political tells us about reality, we like to examine the real numbers and the real reality in the world to understand what is actually going on. Relying on politicians, and their cohorts in the media, to tell us what is reality is always a sucker bet. They have their own agendas and goals, usually centering around their needs and self-enrichment. So we need to look at the reality of the numbers to determine what is really going on.

Previous analyses of “by the numbers” can be accessed by entering the phrase in the search box above. This is the third and final post in this series where we look at the numbers to truly find out how good, not likely, or bad, most likely, the American political class is doing in managing our tax dollars, protecting our freedoms, and resolving major issues that affect all of us.

1) We have often talked about what a disaster the state of California has become because of the idiocy of the ideas and actions of the state’s political class:

Housing prices have skyrocketed due to insane and cumbersome regulations at all levels of California government.
The state government has untold hundreds of billions of dollars in unfunded liabilities in the future.
The state’s infrastructure is crumbling.
The state government’s attempt to build a high speed rail line ended in failure after tens of millions of dollars had been spent with nothing of value in return.
Idiotic and wrong conservation measures have turned the state into a never ending forest fire.
About half of the country’s homeless population live in California and the density of homelessness in Los Angeles has seen the rise of at least one Medieval disease, typhus.
On average, the state is one of the poorest states in the country despite the wealth in Hollywood and Silicon Valley.
The state’s public schools on average do a terrible job of educating the state’s kids.
In many cities in the state it is not illegal to defecate, urinate, or shoot up illegal drugs in public.
The state is now faced with rolling blackouts as political mismanagement of the energy industry leaves the state without enough electricity on a recurring basis.

You get the idea, it is not the ideal dream world to live in it once was with now outward migration of residents higher than the inward migration of new residents, a reality that has not happened for a very long time, if ever.

Given this backdrop, what do some of the numbers say about California:

The state has the highest state income marginal tax rate in the country at 13.3% with some state politicians wanting to raise it even higher to 16.3% and make it retroactive to the beginning of the year.
The state is number one when it comes to highest sales tax and ninth when it comes to highest other local state taxes.
State politicians' insistence that electric utilities get more and more of their energy from renewable sources has caused the state to currently get 33% of its electricity from renewables with plans to get that number to 60% by 2030 and 100% by 2045.
But when it is dark (solar power) or not windy (wind power) the state either has to cause intentional blackouts or buy energy from other states on the spot market, often at up to 10 times the normal price.
This results in Californians on average paying 55% more for electricity than the rest of the country.
Since 2011, California electricity rates have increased five times as fast as the national average.
But it is not just electricity that costs more, state residents pay the 3rd highest amount for their water.
One reason why the state has such a high level of unfunded liabilities is because of the salaries it pays government workers with a recent news article uncovering the reality that a Oakland city DEPUTY Sheriff makes $287,000 a year in salary.
In Menlo Park, California, teachers AVERAGED $106,986 in salary in 2018 before they got a 5% raise.
California has the sixth highest unemployment rate.
The stupid AB15 bill that became law as of January 1 has endangered the jobs of 500,000 Uber and Lyft drivers, not to mention the jobs of thousands of freelance writers, artists, truck drivers, and other gig industry workers.

Job destruction, outrageously high public employee salaries, high water costs, high electricity costs, high taxes, the numbers are not pretty. No wonder residents are leaving the state in droves for greener, cheaper and better life styles.

2) Here are good news/bad news numbers. As you may recall, when the virus crisis hit, the Federal government printed up some money and sent it out to Americans to help with those that lost their jobs or had their work hours cut. This was generally a check for $1,200 per person.

The bad news is that the Federal bureaucracy malfunctioned as it always has since it sent out a whopping $1.6 billion to dead people. The good news is that the Treasury Department thinks it has recovered $1.2 billion of the $1.6 billion that it sent out to dead people.

The bad news is how many other screwups did the Feds do and waste billions and billions of taxpayer wealth on other aspects of the virus relief that we do not know about. I can say with certainty that $1.6 billion is not the only wasteful spending that the Federal government committed.

3) Early in the virus crisis, the experts and politicians decided that we had to shutdown the whole country and the economy in order to avoid catastrophic virus death rates and carnage. This has caused millions and millions of Americans to become unemployed and economic activity to take a nosedive. Schools were closed, churches were closed, businesses were closed or went out of business, and the politicians of the country acted so stupidly in so many different ways.

As of recently, the official national death toll from the virus was over 180,000 that were classified as dying because of the virus. But not so fast, according to the recent pronouncement from the CDC:

According to the CDC, only 6% of the deaths currently classified as caused by the virus were actually caused only by the virus.
This does not mean that the virus did not contribute to deaths but it was only a contributing factor associated with another health issue, not the sole cause of the deaths.
According to the CDC: “For deaths with conditions or causes in addition to COVID-19, on average, there were 2.6 additional conditions or causes per death,”
Thus, the death toll solely from the virus is not over 180,000 but possibly only 11,000 or so, 6% of 180,000.

For comparison to that 11,000:

About 38,000 Americans die in auto accidents in the country every year.
About 72,000 Americans die from drug overdoses every year.
About 250,000 Americans die from medical errors every year.

And yet we do not shut down the country for auto accidents, drug overdoses, and medical errors. I realize that at the beginning of this whole virus thing we had no idea what was going to happen so playing it safe was the right move.

But the need for keeping draconian shutdown measures in place across the country by overbearing and dictatorial politicians is probably not necessary if the CDC analysis is right. The virus was bad, it contributed to deaths, it caused deaths by itself but it is nowhere close to the disaster we are being told it was and still, the CDC numbers say so.

So, the numbers show how bad life is in California, the Federal government still mishandles our taxpayer dollars, and the CDC says the virus was maybe not that bad after all, the numbers don't lie.

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

Love My Country, Loathe My Government

Sunday, September 13, 2020

September, 2020, Part 7,Political Class Insanity: De Blasio Puts NYC Into A Financial Death Spiral, Gretchen Builds a Wall To Protect Herself, and Biden Messes Up Again

Friday, September 11, 2020

September, 2020, Part 6, Political Class Insanity: Cuomo Lives In An Alternative Universal When It Comes To Virus Blame

Wednesday, September 9, 2020

September, 2020, Part 5, Political Class Insanity: Businesses Leaving Chicago, Gun Control Fails Again In California, and More

Sunday, September 6, 2020

September, 2020, Part 3, Political Class Insanity: A Dead Person Has the Virus, The NYC Mayor Is Still Clueless and the Seattle Mayor May Get Yanked

Saturday, September 5, 2020

September, 2020, Part, 2, Political Class Insanity: Cuomo Still Does Not Get It, Oregon Governor Gets a 911 Busy Signal, and Portland Mayor On The Lam

Wednesday, September 2, 2020

By The Numbers: California Has A Numbers Problem, Virus Crisis Stimulus Screw Up, and The Virus Numbers Are Looking Different

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