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) We have always wondered how Washington politicians retire from office much, much richer than when they were first elected to office. Their increase in wealth cannot be explained simply by their Congressional or Presidential salaries.
But it is not just personal wealth that politicians increase while in office. Many of them also are able to increase the individual wealth of friends and family, as Congresswoman Maxine Walters seems to do so very well:
According to Federal Election Commission (FEC) reports, Congresswoman Walters has managed to divert huge campaign contribution funds to her daughter’s company, Progressive Connections, for almost two decades.
Since 2003, FEC reports show that Karen Walters’ company has gotten about $1.2 million in payments for campaign related services for her mother.
The $1.2 million was used for such activities as “slate mailer management,” campaign managing services, and payment to a musical band for a holiday event.
But her daughter is not the only family living high off of the Congresswoman’s political career.
According to a LA Times article back in 2004, other family members had received over $1 million over the previous eight years.
This type of payment arrangement is not unlawful under FEC guidelines if the family members are providing legitimate services and those services are not in excess of the fair market value of those services. It is unknown if that is the case in this situation but the rule should be changed so that no family members are allowed to provide any services to a politician's campaign unless they are doing it for free. Then there is no question of integrity and conflict of interest like Ms. Walters seems to have raised so many times over the past two decades.
2) We have not been a big fan of the Michigan governor, Gretchen Whitmer, and her handling of the covid pandemic in her state. She seems to have gone way overboard in her (mostly failed) dictatorial decrees that restricted the economic ability and individual freedom of her citizens. And despite her dictates, she violated those very same decrees any number of times:
She was seen without a mask in at least one social situation where her own rules dictated she should be wearing a mask.
She strongly restricted Michigan residents the right to travel out of state but then tried to sneak out of state to visit her dad in Florida, a direct violation of her own rules that she got caught on.
And at the height of her restrictions, her husband tried to coerce a marina owner to let him take his boat out when his wife had banned anyone else from taking their boats out.
And her disregard for her own citizens continues:
Back in November, when her state, Michigan, led the country in new covid virus cases, had its state hospitalization levels hit near pandemic highs, and faced a shortage of covid tests, the good governor jetted off to California to raise campaign money for her reelection from rich Hollywood types.
She raised hundreds of thousands of dollars from private California fundraisers while her state citizens were under a renewed covid siege.
A Hollywood soap opera producer, Colleen Bell, helped Whitmer raise $78,000 at one fundraiser in LA.
The next day she raised $88,650 at two other fundraisers.
Two days later she raised another $56,600 from two Silicon Valley fundraisers.
Back in Michigan, meanwhile, covid inflicted labor shortages resulted in severely delayed ambulance response times for emergencies in her home state.
At the same time she was frolicking in California, Michigan was incurring 10% of the nationwide new covid cases while accounting for only 3% of the country’s population.
So we are really talking about a losing situation from three perspectives:
Her dictator policies were total failures in protecting her citizens relative to the rest of the country.
She apparently cared more about fundraising than her suffering population who were in the midst of a covid resurgence despite her draconian, and failed, covid policies.
On a more general, disgusting point, why should rich people in California be able to finance and influence an election halfway across the country in a state the most of them have probably never even been to?
This last point is a major point made in our book, “Love My Country, Loathe My Government.'' In a perfect world, no one in the country could contribute to any politician’s campaign unless that politician would represent them if elected.
Thus, only Michigan people should be allowed to contribute to a politician running for governor in Michigan. Conversely, no rich people in Michigan should be able to contribute to a California politician running for the U.S. Senate representing California. Disgusting that rich money from around the country can overwhelm the voices and welfare of local, ordinary citizens.
3) In total, all levels of government in this country spend about $124,000,000,000, $124 billion, in taxpayer money every a year on educating our kids. This comes out to about $22,000 per kid. That’s a lot of money in total and a lot of money per child.
Keep those numbers in mind when we tell you what the money is buying in the Baltimore school system:
A Balitomore city teacher has blown the whistle on the reality that 77% of high school kids in a Baltimore high school read at only an elementary school level.
The Balitomore city school where this teacher works has an annual budget of a hefty $12 million but graduates only 61% of its students.
His/her conclusion: “Our children deserve better. They really do. As a whole, the system has failed them.”
These dismal results are not made available to the public, despite the fact that the public pays for the education of these kids, but this teacher found a way to get the results out.
Underneath that pathetic 77% number, test results showed that 71 high school students read at the kindergarten level, 88 students read at the first grade level, and 45 were reading at a second grade level
Only 1.9% read at their high school level.
According to the teacher, the kids are pushed through to the next grade even if they are dismal educational failures.
Pretty disgusting results form the education profession. Now, I would think, hope, that these results are an outlier and not indicative of all schools. But overall, it is no secret that we severely under-educated our kids vs. the rest of the world when measured on standardized tests even though we pay far more per student to get these dismal results.
And I would bet that most of these kids that are underperforming are urban Afrcan-Amercan kids that will never attain their potential or escape poverty with this type of lowly education production. The brave teacher that spilled the beans sums up public government run schools perfectly: “It's heartbreaking. It's heartbreaking to see a child that, when you talk to them outside of the classroom setting, of what are your dreams? And they have these amazing dreams and hopes for the future. But then you realize that with the skills that they have, with the level that they're at, they're going to have to work a thousand times harder to achieve,” the teacher told Project Baltimore. “Our children need a future.”
Our children need a future and American taxpayers need a much better use of their education tax dollars. $124 billion a year has to be better spent than what we are getting from our government/public schools now.
That will do it for today: politicians make themselves rich AND their family members rich using taxpayer wealth, the Michigan governor continues to be a failure, and at least one Baltimore high school shows how poorly the American political class and the government schools they operate perform despite having over $124 billion to spend.
