Showing posts with label government shutdown. Show all posts
Showing posts with label government shutdown. Show all posts

Tuesday, November 18, 2025

November, 2025, Part 2, Political Class Insanity: Yet More Corruption In Ukraine, A Congressman Views Porn on a Plane, Biden Pays Off The Federal Workforce and More

 There is a lot going on in the world: Obama and Russiagate findings, the government shutdown aftermath, Middle East powder keg, the Russian/Ukrainian war, etc. But through all this, the American political class continues to constantly deliver its own special brand of insanity, stupidity, wasteful taxpayer spending, self enrichment, and ineffective government programs.

1)During the Biden Presidency, he sent untold billions of dollars to the Ukrainians to help fight the Russian invasion. Unfortunately, while he found it easy to send American taxpayer wealth into an endless war, he never made one attempt to try and end the war. And as we have discussed before, we have evidence that much of that taxpayer wealth was siphoned off via corruption:

  • A former colleague of Ukrainian President Zelenskyy, Tymur Mindich, has been accused of heading up a $100 million embezzlement operation.

  • His alleged scheme was uncovered by the country's anti-corruption watchdogs.

  • He and others were fingered for corruption involving the country’s government run nuclear power company.

  • He allegedly used his government position to pressure contractors to pay kickbacks in order to bypass government requirements and hurdles.

  • However, before he could be  arrested for corruption, he fled the country,  possibly to Israel.

  • While Zelenskyy has not been implicated in the corruption scheme, he apparently is a long term associate of Mindich.

Another day another chapter of Ukrainian government corruption, a government that Biden and the rest of Washington poured billions of dollars into, a country with a reputation of being one of the  most politically corrupt governments in the world.

2)The Federal government shutdown is finally over after 43 days. Millions of Americans suffered, going  without their government paychecks for over a month, from air traffic controllers to members of  the military. They struggled while the clowns in Congress posed and primped and strutted in news broadcasts with empty rhetoric and just plain  idiocy, focusing more on public relations and political  posturing than fixing what they broke.

But one group of Washington employees did  not financially suffer during those 43 shutdown days:

  • Members of Congress, those responsible  for the shutdown, collected  more  than  $20,000 of their salaries during the shutdown.

  • During the shutdown, 1.3 million active-duty service members, over 750,000 Guard and Reserve troops, and roughly 1.4 million Federal workers faced furloughs or worked without pay while lawmakers continued receiving their salaries.

  • While some members of Congress did the right thing, either  declining to accept their salary checks or  donating their wages to charity, the majority of them continued to accept their pay as if nothing else was going on in the country.

  • In fact, one member  of Congress, senator  Ed Markey, actually blocked a bipartisan attempt to suspend Congressional pay during the shutdown.

  • Even the leader of the shutdown,  Chuck Schumer, did not accept a salary but most members of Congress did.

Just another example where the priorities of those in Washington are not on resolving problems, making  life easier for Americans,  or doing anything else positive for the country.  It is always about their self enrichment and their reelection.

3)One  of my favorite pieces of advice goes as follows: “When stuck in a hole, stop digging.” It has so  many real life applications but apparently a California Congressman did not heed this advice when trying to  explain his way out of a wild and pretty disgusting situation:

  • Brad Sherman  is a California Congressman who was recently traveling on a commercial  flight.

  • Unfortunately, other passengers caught the Congressman watching explicit sexual images of scantily clad women on his tablet.

  • And those passengers decided to  take some photos of the Congressman’ indulgence and post them on  the Internet, photos that garnered over 12 million views very quickly

  • Rather than own  up to his perversion, the Congressman’s  office decided, for some unbelievable reason, to  blame Elon Musk and Twitter/X for his viewing and apparently enjoying his indulgence while traveling.

  • The office claimed that the Congressman was just leisurely scrolling his  social media accounts when out of nowhere, Twitter/X forced him to watch the scantily clad women images.

  • It went on  to say that Elon Musk corrupted the platform’s content  delivery system, forcing people to watch material they never requested.

So many problems  with this situation and explanation:

  1. Why was the Congressman so stupid to linger and view these images in an enclosed public situation?

  2. By lingering on  them he  allowed other passengers to see what he was  looking at, make the  connection  he was a member of Congress, and snap multiple  pictures of what he was viewing when that all could have been  avoided if he shut down immediately.

  3. Twitter/X is not  some rogue AI  agent that forces someone to watch something they do not want to see, the  algorithms are apparently built around a user’s browsing history which means this is probably not the  first time that the Congressman viewed this type of material which led to the Twitter/X platform to feed him more of what he probably already viewed.

When you are in a hole, stop  digging.  By  coming up with a ridiculous and  non-viable excuse of what happened he has just dug this embarrassing hole deeper and  deeper and  kept his  name and this disgusting incident in the news.

4)Quite possibly the only issue facing the country today is the ever exploding national debt of the Federal  government, currently over $38,000,000,000,000 (38 trillion dollars). This means that every man,  woman,  and  child in the country would have to pay out over $110,000 each to cover the debt, an impossibility.

Unless this atrocity of wasteful  spending is gotten under control, the economy will crash, hyperinflation will overwhelm every American, and our democracy and freedoms will crash. And the saddest part of this financial  crisis is that the trillions of dollars that Washington spent to get us to this point never fixed anything in the country:

  • Social  Security is going bankrupt.

  • Medicare is going bankrupt.

  • Our nation’s infrastructure is crumbling.

  • Millions of Americans are homeless, hungry, and in need of medical care and  health  insurance.

  • Our schools severely under-educate our kids.

And despite this crisis, apparently no  one ever told Biden about the crisis:

  • From 2020 to 2025, most of which  happened during Biden’s term, the Federal workforce expanded by 5%, from 2.77 million to 2.90 million.

  • And yet despite that only 5% increase in  personnel, the salary costs of the Federal exploded by 24% during the same timeframe according to the Open the Books  organization.

  • The number of Federal  government  workers making over $100,000 a year increased an amazing 49% during the Biden Presidency.

  • Even worse, those Federal  employees making over $200,000 a year increased a whopping 82%.

  • And the ultimate taxpayer  insult, Federal  employees earning  over $300,000 a year increased 85%.

  • Across all 127  Federal government agencies, the AVERAGE salary of everyone in 117 of those agencies was over $100,000, an  average that includes clerks, secretaries,  janitors, etc.

  • In 2024, 31,452 Federal employees earned more than EVERY state governor, all 50 of them.

  • These salaries do not include benefits which on average increase the total compensation of  these outrageous numbers by another 30%.

  • The highest paid Federal worker is the director of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, Gary Gibbons,  and he somehow saw his salary go from $406,095 in  2021 to $519,246, a ridiculous 28% increase.

  • Although the Small Business Administration  saw its number of employees go down 26% it saw only a 3% decrease in its  payroll expenses.

With the soaring national debt, Biden obviously did not take the crisis seriously. While members of Congress were paid during the government shutdown they created, it is also the Federal  workforce that is being richly financially rewarded while not resolving any major  problems facing Americans. Must be good to work for the government, not so  good to  be a financially stressed taxpayer paying for their salaries.

Enough insanity for today: Government  workers get hefty raises, a Congressman likes pornography, Congress people do not feel the hurt that their shutdown caused, and the Ukrainians are still  corrupt.

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Saturday, January 12, 2019

January, 2019, Part 8, Political Class Insanity: Even More Nonsense From Ocasio-Perez and Politicians Get Paid, Government Workers Do Not

It is another month which means it is again time to review the latest political class insanity from Washington and around the world. Political class insanity takes many forms including the wasting of taxpayer wealth, criminal fraud within government programs, inane and stupid political quotes and actions, the inability to create and implement effective and efficient government programs, stupid and ill performing economic policies and strategies, and other forms of insanity that continue to evolve and surprise and shock us.

We keep trying to end this month’s political class insanity but every time we think we are done, newly elected Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez opens her mouth and expels something stupid, idiotic or inane and we are pulled back into another January insanity post. So, let’s get started:

1) Let’s start off today with a couple of different definitions of “ignorant” from several different sources:
  • Lacking knowledge, information, or awareness about a particular thing.
  • Lacking knowledge or comprehension of the thing specified unaware, uninformed.
  • Not having enough knowledge, understanding, or information about something.
  • Not having enough knowledge, understanding, or information about something:
  • Unaware because of a lack of relevant information or knowledge.
  • The want or absence of knowledge.
Now consider some of the many gaffes that Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has thrown out over the course of the past few months:
  • She did not have enough knowledge to know how to calculate the unemployment rate even though she has an economic degree.
  • She did not have enough knowledge to know what the three branches of government are.
  • She did have enough knowledge to understand a basic Pentagon audit report before speaking out and embarrassing herself.
  • She did not have enough knowledge to know that her support for the Medicare For All concept and The New Green Deal concept are impossible to finance.
These are realities and facts based on her performance. And because of this we have designated her as ignorant in a wide variety of fields in this blog, something that we are allowed to do under the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights. She is one of 500 people in Congress who will vote on laws that affect every Americans’ life, we should have the right to criticize her for her lack of knowledge.

But of course, the biased mainstream media would have none of that First Amendment rights stuff, as a recent Washington Post article illustrates:
  • Eugene Scott of the Washington Post recently wrote that pushing back on Ocasio-Cortez’s lack of knowledge and experience is racist.
  • In a recent 60 Minutes interview, she called Trump a racist, certainly within her rights to do so.
  • But the White House reacted back to her statement of racism by pointing out “that Ocasio-Cortez’s “sheer ignorance on the matter can’t cover the fact that President Trump supported and passed historic criminal justice reform,” adding that the president has also “repeatedly condemned racism and bigotry in all forms.”
  • At which point Scott tried to make this defence a racist remark because the White House accused a “young Latina woman of ignorance.”
There it is, the classic liberal, racist ”dog whistle.” Do not agree with someone’s opinion when comes to a minority, you must be a racist. Never mind the facts that the word ignorance means the lack of knowledge or ability and was correctly applied in a life situation where someone says many, many ignorant things, you must be a racist. 

Rosa Parks experienced real racism. Martin Luther King, Jr. experienced real racism. Millions of other minorities experienced real racism. Calling someone out on their ignorance based on the many incorrect and inane statements they made is not racism. And that is the bigger tragedy of liberals in our society today. When everything is seen as racism, then nothing is racism and that is an insult to those of the past who fought, and sometimes died, to fight real racism.

2) According to the Godfather Politics website, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had a very interesting take on who are real Americans:
  • Apparently she thinks that illegal immigrants are “more American” than American citizens.
  • Yes, those that come here and break our existing immigration laws, those that have not paid a penny in taxes and yet always seem to get government assistance. Those that have little or no knowledge about our country or our heritage are more American than real Americans.
  • Responding to Trump’s White House speech on immigration she stated that, “In the actual address, there was falsehood after falsehood and we have to make sure that we get our facts straight. Everyday immigrants commit crimes at a far lower rate than native-born Americans. And not only that but the women and children on the border seeking refuge and opportunity in the U.S. with nothing but the shirt on their backs are acting more American than any person who seeks to keep them out ever will be.”
  • Of course she makes no distinction between legal immigrants and illegal immigrants because if she did she would find radically different crime statistics between the two groups.
  • By combining them together she covers up the crime rate of illegals that includes drug cartel members, MS-13 gang members, and other assorted undesirables.
  • But as she herself has stated, she does not want to be bothered by facts.
  • She went on to say that, “Right now what we are seeing is the violation of human rights. These children and these families are being held in … basically freezing boxes that no person should be maintained in for any amount of time let alone the amount of time they are being kept on.”
  • She fails to mention that no American, including Trump, put these people in this situation, they put themselves in this situation of their own free will. 
  • And there is no such thing as “freezing boxes,” where does she get this nonsensical stuff?
  • The border is basically desert and warm areas, those folks on the other side of the border might actually welcome the cooling effect of freezing boxes, if they even existed.
Insulting Americans, ignoring facts, and making up stuff that do not exist, but I guess I am a racist for pointing all of this out.

3) Let’s finish this month’s political class insanity visit with a most pathetic and disgusting move by the Washington political class. As always, our politicians lecture us on what needs to be done, how to behave, how paying more taxes on our part is necessary to finance their stupid and ineffective plans, and how we need to make sacrifices for the “greater good.” 

But their hypocrisy always shines through. As most of you know, the Federal government has been shutdown because Trump and the Democrats in Congress cannot agree on funding for a necessary border fence to protect the country and its citizens. 

Hundreds of thousands of Federal government employees have now gone without pay or work for about three weeks, obviously causing hardships for them and their families. Businesses in areas with high concentrations of Federal employees are also suffering as employees cut back on their expenses. I know of at least one local family that will have a hard time meeting their mortgage payments if the shutdown goes on much longer. A lot of people are suffering because Washington politicians cannot resolve this problem and have not been able to resolve it for decades, a sure sign of incompetence.

But while regular Federal government employees are not getting paid, guess who is getting paid? The very people, members of Congress, continue to be paid even though they are responsible for this mess. In fact, Nancy Pelosi cares so little about the suffering of Federal employees and other Americans that at the onset of the shutdown she jetted off to Hawaii for a luxurious vacation as hundreds of thousands were looking for ways to cut expenses.

And the hypocrisy is strongest with, of course, Ocasio-Cortez. Back in late 2018, before being sworn into office, she publicly lamented the hypocrisy that members of Congress would be getting paid during the shutdown, probably the only thing I have ever agreed with her on. But now that she is part of the Washington political class, there is no indication she has given up her Congressional salary or is donating her salary to those in need.

How quickly do you think this crisis would be resolved if members of Congress had not been paid for the past three weeks.? My bet, pretty quickly. But this way is better because they get to pontificate with no consequences and obviously not care or pity for those whose lives they are seriously injuring every day this shutdown goes on. Disgusting, hypocritical, disgusting and business as usual for American politicians.

That will do it for this month’s political class insanity, not because we ran out of insanity, but because we ran out of patience dealing with and writing about these very small minded, inept, despicable people.


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