October, 2026, Political Class Insanity Part 4: Financial Suicide In Seattle, Potential Food Stamp Fraud In Seattle, Biden Ignored The Immigration Violators, and Conflict of Interest In Wisconsin?

 The incompetence and mismanagement of taxpayer dollars and government programs, be it Covid, voting, or over staffing continue to waste taxpayer dollars while never resolving any major issue facing the country.

1)Most recently we have been  talking about the failing city of  Seattle in the context of the “Race To Bankruptcy Court” as the  politicians in the  city hollow out their tax base with stupid programs.  These programs drive businesses and residents out  of the  city. However, let’s look at some recent political class insanity from  the city’s hisotry in today’s discussion:

• According  to Fox 13,  taxes  in  Seattle have grown five times faster than the population in the past 13 years or so.

• City taxes grew  from  $900 million  in  2013 to $2.8 million in 2026, a threefold increase.

• That threefold increase compares unfavorably to a 50% inflation  rate over  that time period.

• This info comes from an analysis by ECONorthwest.

• Their report found that while taxes tripled  since 2013 the population grew only 31%  and employment  grew by 23% meaning that  remaining  residents and  businesses were  paying much more in  taxes than previously.

• City businesses now pay 68% of the  city taxes with most of  the tax burden falling on only 20 companies who  pay almost $360 million a year.

• This 68% is up from 55% in 2016.

• On a dollar basis, business taxes in the city were 2.18 times higher in 2026 compared  to 2018  while  non-business taxes were only 1.32 times higher, i.e. the city placed a heavier  and heavier  emphasis on business taxation.

• As a result of the higher  and higher tax burden  on businesses, the city has lost 24,000 taxpaying jobs since  2020.

• The fleeing of businesses out of the city has caused  business/commercial buildings to lose about  50% of  their assessed value over the past five years with about 35% of the  downtown business office space sitting vacant.

The  report goes into  much more detail  than this summary but you get the idea: politicians implemented new taxes which have driven businesses, employees, and residents out of  town. This has decreased the size of the tax base and  put pressure on the remaining  residents and  business from  a  tax perspective. Since a lot of the tax-collection volume comes from a small base of companies, if even a few of those companies pull  up stakes and move  out of town, the down size  tax implications are huge.

Looking  forward, an onerous and growing tax burden on businesses  will repel future businesses from coming into  the city when they can go elsewhere, both locally and further away to  avoid the ever increasing Seattle city business taxes. And that is how a city goes into a financial  death and eventually bankruptcy. And why we continue  to bet that Seattle  will be the next major city to go bankrupt.

2)While sliding down the  financial death spiral, Seattle government officials and politicians continue to make idiotic decisions:

• Apparently Lam’s is a grocery store  operation in Seattle.

• The business had received $1.7 million  from the city government  as a result  of Mayor  Kate Wilson’s grocery support program.

• The program is supposed to give taxpayer money to city grocers to help them thrive and  serve Seattle communities.

• Lam’s Seafood Asian Market received the money to help  pay for repairs after break-ins and other improvements according to a city’s announcement  hyping the program.

• And then fraud buster, Nick Shirley showed up.

• In  a Shirley video, a woman allegedly offers $60 in cash in exchange  for  a  $120 food stamp/SNAP card, in other words, food stamp/SNAP money laundering.

• The woman  then  brings Shirley inside the store where the cashier allegedly rings up a can of spam and a small sushi package for $120 dollars.

• The transaction  never  got consummated in order  that Shirley not get involved in the money laundering but outside the store he confronted the  woman on video, “You’re  committing food stamp fraud. It’s against  the law.”

• The woman responded on the video with “I  know, yeah.”

• Lam’s denied any wrong doing and  is still considered innocent until proven guilty  if this matter ever gets law enforcement  attention.

• However  it is not the first time that  the store came under suspicion of food stamp laundering, having been investigated by law  enforcement in 2025.

Maybe this is the  lone  exception of  food stamp-fraud in the program and the city, one  bad apple. But given the fraud we have  discussed extensively  over the past several months both in Seattle and beyond, it  is  highly likely that Lam’s, if guilty,  is not the only fraud operating draining Seattle taxpayer funds.

3)David Crowley is running for governor in Wisconsin. He used to be in charge of  Milwaukee county in the state of Wisconsin. Good for him.  But apparently  according,  to some news  reports, there has been  some alleged nepotism with taxpayer  dollars in his family in  the past:

• A nonprofit up in  Wisconsin called Community Advocates (ERA2)  received taxpayer funding via Milwaukee’s Emergency Rental Assistance program.

• Which seems legit, and it may be, but it gets dicey when we find out that when receiving the  funding Mr. Crowley’s  wife was an employee of the nonprofit.

• And the money that went from  the taxpayers through the Crowley county administration  is not small, totaling more  than $65 million since June, 2020.

• His wife, Erica Crowley, started working at the non-profit in, wait for it, 2020

• She was later promoted to director  at the non-profit.

• ERA2 claims that Crowley “did not influence  the  decision making process for the ERA2 funding.”

As we  have  said many times, the appearance of conflict of interest is just as bad as  actual conflict of  interest: husband  oversees a  government entity, money approved by the husband goes to an NGO that just happens  to have  the husband’s wife on the payroll who just happens to eventually get promoted to  director. Nothing to see here, move on.

4)Far too many times in this blog we have had  to point out how illegal immigrants allowed to enter this country by the millions have led to  the deaths of  American  citizens:

• Laken Riley, nursing student, abducted, beaten, raped and killed by an illegal immigrant when  she went out for an afternoon  jog.

• Mother Rachel Morin, abducted, beaten raped  and killed by an illegal immigrant  wen  she went out for an afternoon walk.

• Twelve year old Jocelyn Nungaray, abducted, beaten, raped  and killed by two illegal  immigrants.

We could go on  and on but you get the  idea: Biden’s  immigration policies allowed thousands of American innocent citizens  to be killeed, raped, robbed, and their lives ended up seriously damaged  in  one way or another.

And now we have some new insights on why so many Americans’s lives were negatively affected:

• During the Biden administration only  8 illegal immigrants  were  arrested for visa  overstays  out of the estimated 3.1 MILLION  overstays that existed  during  his term.

• This was a finding of the  Department of Homeland Security  inspector general audit.

• Out of the 3.1 million  overstays, only 496 were investigated and only the  eight were arrested.

• Millions of leads  came into the Biden administration regarding illegal  immigrants overstaying their  visa  but  obviously the Biden  administration took little action to  follow up on the lawbreakers.

• Some of those that overstayed their visas but were ignored  by the  Biden administration  went on to  commit crimes against  American citizens according to  the  inspector general findings: “The degree of the Biden Administration’s dereliction of duty, which needlessly put American lives at risk, is staggering and enraging,” DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin said.

Another example where politicians in this country cared more about illegal immigrants than the American  citizens they were supposed to serve and protect and the immigration  laws they were supposed to enforce.

Enough insanity for today: Biden ignored the lawbreakers, potential major conflict of interest in Wisconsin, alleged food stamp fraud in  Seattle, and Seattle politicians continue to commit financial suicide.

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If you agree that we need to deseat every member of Congress for their lack of success and accomplishment, then please consider going to the following petition link to help the cause:

https://www.change.org/p/deseat-congress-reset-freedom

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https://www.amazon.com/Love-My-Country-Loathe-Government/dp/1604942789/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=love+my+country%2C+loathe+my+government&qid=1607716020&sr=8-1

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

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Retro 2 -Part 3, Freedom and Liberty Guest Speaker, Tim Powers: The Many Impressive Accomplishments Of President Obama (Sarcasm Implied)

Given family engagements in town this week, we will be rerunning some of our most popular posts, posts that have garnered the most attention and which showed that we are currently enduring the worst set of politicians America has ever had.

WEDNESDAY, JULY 17, 2013

Part 3, Freedom and LIberty Guest Speaker, Tim Powers: The Many Impressive Accomplishments of President Obama (Sarcasm Implied)

This is our third in our series of guest speakers who present their views of how the political class and the Federal government are shredding the Constitution and destroying liberty in this country. The first two posts can be accessed at :

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/07/part-1-freedom-and-liberty-guest.html

http://www.loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/07/part-2-freedom-and-liberty-guest.html

The first of these posts was written by Thomas Sowell and is where we contended that his random thoughts had more meaning, purpose, and common sense than the combined thoughts of every Washington politicians COMBINED. The second speaker was Steven Foley who does a great job of comparing the Obama Care PR effort vs. the actually disastrous affects of Obama Care’s tenets and regulations.

Today’s guest speaker is Tim Powers who wrote the following piece over a year ago on May 22, 2012 for the Western Center For Journalism website. It has recently resurfaced and is getting some attention.

The hope of his piece was to document the many failures of the Obama administration’s first term in the hope that this losing streak and losing administration would not get a second term. Unfortunately, this hope was not fulfilled.

The title of his piece is sarcastically entitled “Obama’s Rather Impressive List Of ‘Accomplishments.’” We say sarcastically since Mr. Powers list is a list of misdeeds, screwups, and pomposity that any other President would find difficult to live up to, or down to.

We have covered many of these misadventures before but include them here to keep Mr. Powers’ article intact. Certainly nothing to be proud of as President of The United States:

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Obama’s Rather Impressive List Of Accomplishment
Tim Powers, May 22, 2013

Whoever said that Obama hasn’t acomplished anything in his first term?

WHAT AN IMPRESSIVE LIST OF ACCOMPLISHMENTS!…

First President to apply for college aid as a foreign student, then deny he was a foreigner.

First President to have a social security number from a state he has never lived in.

First President to preside over a cut to the credit-rating of the United States.

First President to violate the War Powers Act.

First President to be held in contempt of court for illegally obstructing oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.

First President to defy a Federal Judge’s court order to cease implementing the Health Care Reform Law.

First President to require all Americans to purchase a product from a third party, a violation of the U.S. Constitution.

First President to spend a trillion dollars on ‘shovel-ready’ jobs when there was no such thing as ‘shovel-ready’ jobs.

First President to recommend changing our National Anthem as it portrays and promotes violence and is warlike in its theme.

First President to cancel the National Day of Prayer Breakfast and activities.

First President to initiate a Cash for Clunkers Program to clean up exhaust that adds to global warming, then extended it because it was so popular — wasting hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars.

First President to abrogate bankruptcy law to turn over control of companies to his union supporters.

First President to bypass Congress and implement the Dream Act through executive fiat.

First President to order a secret amnesty program that stopped the deportation of illegal immigrants across the U.S., including those with criminal convictions.

First President to demand a company hand over $20 billion to one of his political appointees.

First President to terminate America’s ability to put a man in space.

First President to have a law signed by an auto-pen without being present.

First President to arbitrarily declare an existing law unconstitutional and refuse to enforce it.

First President to threaten insurance companies if they publicly spoke out on the reasons for their rate increases.

First President to tell a major manufacturing company which state they are allowed to locate a factory in.

First President to file lawsuits against the states he swore an oath to protect (AZ, WI, OH, IN).

First President to withdraw an existing coal permit that had been properly issued years ago.

First President to fire an inspector general of Americorps for catching one of his friends in a corruption case.

First President to appoint 45 czars to replace elected officials in his office.

First President to golf 73 separate times in his first two and a half years in office, 90 to date.

First President to pledge complete transparency while campaigning, then hide his medical, educational, and travel records.

First President to win a Nobel Peace Prize for doing NOTHING to earn it.

First President to go on multiple global ‘apology tours’.

First President to go on 17 lavish vacations, including date nights and Wednesday evening White House parties for his friends; paid for by the taxpayer.

First President to have 22 personal servants (taxpayer funded) for his wife.

First President to keep a dog trainer on retainer for $102,000 a year at taxpayer expense.

First President to repeat the Holy Qur’an and tells us that the early morning Islamic call to worship is the most beautiful sound on earth.

Now it is up to us Freedom-loving Americans to see to it that he is voted out after his FIRST term. May God bless America again. Stay safe, and be aware of your surroundings.

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I cannot not attest to the validity of ALL of these points but I can attest to the validity of MOST of these points since we have covered them in the past with appropriate documentation. The very sad thing is that Mr. Powers has not presented the complete list of dubious "accomplishments" of this administration, a service we provide below:

First President to approve the assassination of American citizens without due process of law, with multiple assassinations of Americans already successfully completed.

First President to have his administration incur a single year TRILLION spending deficit.

First President to have his administration incur four years of annual TRILLION spending deficits.

First President to authorize the collection of just about EVERY electronic communications of EVERY American EVERY day.

First President to have a wife compare living in the White House to living in a nice prison.

First President to take time to go on TV to annually discuss in detail his March Madness basketball picks and brackets.

First President caught secretly confiscating phone logs of reporters who wrote less than stellar reviews of his administration.

First President to kill hundreds of innocent civilians and hundreds of children via drone missile attacks in foreign countries.

First President to incur over 40 consecutive months with an unemployment rate over 8%.

First President who could not deliver a coherent speech or address without a teleprompter present and operating.

First President to purposely violate international arms control treaties with his disastrous Fast and Furious gun running program.

First President to purposely not save U.S. diplomatic personnel by not allowing a timely military rescue mission to proceed to save the two dozen or so U.S. members of the diplomatic staff at Benghazi, resulting in the unnecessary murders of four brave Americans.

First President to have food stamp participation levels go well past forty million Americans.

First President to waste tens of billions of dollars on failed, bogus, and crony-infested alternative energy projects with no societal benefit in return.

First American President to spend approximately $100 million on a First Family vacation.

First President to take absolutely no responsibility for the failings of his administration, the antithesis of Harry Truman’s “The Buck Stops Here” integrity, blaming among others for his failures: it was the fault of the Bush administration, it was the fault of the Tea Party, it was the fault of the Republicans, it was the fault of Congress, it was the fault of the Japanese tsunami, it was the fault of the Euro crisis, it was the fault of wealthy Americans who do not pay enough in taxes, it was the fault of ATM machines that help cause high unemployment, it was the fault of ordinary Americans who have grown “ a little soft” and who “have lost their ambition” over the years, it was the fault of the Chinese, and last, but not least, it was the fault of the Bush administration.

First President of have a First Family budget of over $1 billion a year.

Sad, sad, sad.

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:

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Please visit the following sites for freedom:

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