Political Class Insanity, Part 2:Climate Change Advocates Are Wrong Again, A DC Politician Gets Arrested For Corruption, Home Ownership Becomes More Unaffordable and More

 Over the past couple of weeks  we have discussed the failed border policies of the Biden administration. These failed policies have unleashed violence and crime on innocent American citizens as well as dangers to illegal  immigrants. The first of those posts can  be accessed at:

https://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2024/07/bidens-failed-immigration-policies-and.html

However, during that time, American politicians have continued to show how inept and useless they are so let’s spend a few days catching up on our favorite topic, political class insanity.

1)Many liberals and Democrats like to strut about and talk about the dangers of climate change and that they are the only ones that know how to save  the Earth and humanity. We have  discussed their antics many times in this post on how they only look at studies, facts, and realities that support their opinions while other studies, facts, and realities that dispute their opinions be damned.

First they claimed that we were facing an imminent ice age. But a new ice age never happened. Then they claimed we were facing massive global warming. But that never happened. Then they rebranded global warming as climate change so that whether things got warmer or colder they would be right.

And through the global  warming and climate change phases these folks constantly predicted that the atmosphere and oceans would warm over time as a result of man  made climate change activities. But a recent study throws more cold water on their theories:

• According to a recent  article in New Scientist, the Atlantic Ocean is undergoing a rapid transformation.

• However,  unlike what the supporters of climate change claim, the Atlantic ocean is actually cooling, not warming.

• This is the exact opposite of what climate change advocates predicted would happen.

• According to the study, the cooling is at a record rate.

• This so-called “Atlantic Nina” pattern is thought to precede the  cooling of waters in the Pacific Ocean  also.

• The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration  has verified the decreasing temps of the  Atlantic Ocean.

This is not to say there is not man made global warming or climate change going on. But it proves again that politicians that insist they know what is going  on climate wise really know nothing as they again missed on a major prediction. Thus, the need to surrender our wealth and freedom in the name of climate change is not something we should do at this time, given the ignorance of liberal politicians and the biased scientists that support them.

2)We have proven many, many times in this blog that the American political class has members that are not good at resolving problems facing Americans but are pretty adept at making themselves wealthy. Fortunately, it appears that for once in a long while a politician may be held accountable for his greed:

• Washington D.C. council member, Trayon White, Sr. was recently arrested by Federal law enforcement authorities.

• The arrest was quite dramatic in that it involved almost a dozen FBI agents.

• Apparently the council member has allegedly played loose and  secretive about previous campaign finance issues and problems, having previously been  fined $40,000 for not correctly providing documentation for financial matters.

• After his arrest, details behind the investigation and arrest came to light and included him allegedly accepting over $150,000 in exchange for steering millions of dollars in potential government contractors to the bribers.

• Payments were all in cash and were made over time.

• The deals and payments were documented by hidden voice recordings of the transactions.

Another day,  another corrupt politician, nothing new to see here.

3)One of the biggest and  most expensive failures of the current set of Washington  politicians is the twenty year disaster of the U.S.  involvement in Afghanistan. About $2 trillion in taxpayer dollars were spent over the twenty years, thousands of American service men and women were killed or maimed during the periods, and Biden’s withdrawal form the country was a disaster with the unnecessary deaths of 13 U.S. service people and the leaving behind of tens of billions of dollars in taxpayer funded weapons. 

So we spent two  decades removing the Taliban from  power to leave the country with the Taliban again in charge of the country. And as an insult to the American taxpayer, the Taliban recently had a military parade where they paraded the billions of dollars of U.S. military weapons left behind, billions thought to be in the vicinity of $85 billion. 

Let’s do a little math about the $85 billion of assets left behind:

• The average cost to  provide a  nutritious  meal to a homeless American is about $2.97.

• That means that that $85 billion could have in theory provided about 29 billion  meals for homeless Americans.

• Since there are about 600,000 homeless Americans in the country, those 29 billion meals could have  provided almost 48,000 meals for each homeless American.

• At three meals a day, the $85 billion could have provided three meals a day for about 44 years for every homeless American.

Obviously, this is purely a theoretical example. However, it shows how much the American political class failed at achieving its military goals while wasting away taxpayer wealth that could have been used to alleviate the suffering of Americans.  Disgraceful waste of money and failed execution.

4)While we have focused on  the monumental failures of Biden’s border policies over the past few weeks, his economic failures have been equally horrible. Consider the latest housing troubles under Biden:

• U.S home prices are 50% higher than they were before the covid pandemic, a period that was mostly the Biden Presidency.

• It now costs average homeowners, on average, more than 40% of their  monthly income to afford a median priced home.

• According to Mitchell Feiersteinm the CEO of Glacier Environmental  fund: “Housing shelter costs are near historical highs, making the most unaffordable in 40 years. This is a situation of grave concern.”

• The International Monetary Fund believes that this is not a short term situation: “The increase in the relative price of shelter may well be a lasting feature of the post pandemic economy If that proves to be true, in the coming years we should expect to see a decline in rates of home ownership (and increase in rentals), slower rates of household formation, and a shift of demand toward smaller homes. Younger and lower-income households would be most affected by these trends.”

Thus, Washington in general and Biden in particular have been working hard to make the American dream of owning a home more and more unreachable. 

Enough political class insanity for today: home ownership dream is  dying, the financial and  military fiasco in Afghanistan shows again how inept Washington is, a D.C. politician actually gets caught in his alleged corruption, and climate change advocates strike out again.

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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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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/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:

http://www.reason.com

http://www.cato.org

http://www.openthebooks.com

http://www.conventionofstates.com

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

 

November, 2015, Part 4, By The Numbers: The Economy Stinks and These Federal Reserve Charts Prove It (Continued)

This is the fourth post among a few days worth of discussion of “by the numbers.” We do this theme occasionally where we look at the reality of the numbers in the world and not the lies, deceptions, and spin of the American political class. I used to work for a boss whose favorite quote was: “There is nothing more devastating to an opinion than the correct number.” By looking at the statistics, trends, and numbers in our world we can cut through the politicians’ smoke screen to truly understand what is going on and hopefully, remedy the issues of the day.

The numbers we will look at this week will often have a common thread running almost through all of them: the views, positions, and opinions of the majority of Americans are often the exact opposite of the views and related actions that our politicians own. Since we are supposed to be living in a representative government system one would hope that the laws, rules, and government functions that our politicians oversee reflect the thinking, hopes, and views of the American citizenry.

As the numbers will usually show, that is nowhere close to reality, which I think reflects two underlying negative trends:

1. American politicians vote and act for their own personal interests first, Americans’ interests and well being being of secondary consideration. If a politician’s actions can get them more votes or more campaign cash for their perpetual reelection campaigns, than that is their priority, usually not the priorities of their constituents.
2. Second, I personally believe that today’s American politicians take care of their special interest friends and financiers first and foremost, and the interests of those special interest friends (e.g.unions, corporations, lobbyists, etc.) are usually not in alignment with what the majority of Americans have as their priorities.

Keep these two possibilities in mind as we go “by the numbers” for this week and try to show the major disconnect between what Americans want and what politicians are doing:

Yesterday, we reviewed the latest monthly economic statistics from the Federal government. Although there were a few glimmers of economic hope, for the most part those glimmers are still being overwhelmed by the overall economic situation:

• The labor participation rate is still bouncing around at the same low levels not seen for the past four decades. 
• Almost 14 million Americans are either unemployed or are working at part time jobs even though they would prefer full time jobs. 
• Minority unemployment rates are still much higher than the total national unemployment rate. 
• Over 45 million Americans are still receiving Federal food assistance every month.

These are the short term economic results and numbers. They are not good. But the Daily Caller recently published some long term trend data from the Federal Reserve Board and guess what: the long term economic results and numbers are just as bad. 

Yesterday, we looked at five of the nine long term trend charts that the Federal Reserve recently published. Today, we will look at the final four charts but the results, numbers, and conclusions are still the same: Washington politicians probably could not have screwed things up worse if they had tried to.

6) As we discussed yesterday, and many times previoulsy, the number of people and the amount of taxpayer wealth spent on food assistance every month, while down slightly, is still more than double higher than what it was prior to the recession and six years AFTER the recession ended (click on chart for a larger view):

7) Student debt is rapidly approaching a whopping $1 TRILLION, is about nine times higher than what it was prior to the recession and has skyrocketed since the recession ended. And since a lot of this debt is guaranteed and backed by the Federal government, there is a good chance that American taxpayers are going to get caught with this bad debt and investment at some point in time.

8) Twenty five years ago, the Democrats in Congress and the White House decided it was worth risking trillions of dollars via taxpayer backed loans to credit risky home owners in order to increase the homeownership level of American families. Twenty five years later, and hundreds of billions of dollars spent to bail out Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and other financial institutions, the home ownership rates for American families is actually lower than where it was back then. As with the other Fed measurements, the rate of homeownership decline has accelerated AFTER the recession ended.

9) And finally, this last Fed chart shows that not only have wages stagnated during the Obama years but American median family income is less than it was was in 1998. While bouncing back somewhat since the recession ended, the median is still below where it was prior to the recession and lately its improvement trend has been flattening out.



That will do it for today. But the results and conclusions from the nine Federal Reserve charts we have reviewed over the past two days charts definitely prove three things: the Obama administration, the current Congressional members, and Federal bureaucrats have saddled us with tremendous amounts of debt, stagnant wages, and tepid job creation. Seems you could not do a worse job managing the economy if you were trying.Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:
www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

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

June, 2015,Part 9, Political Class Insanity: Obama's Failed Promises, The Failed Promises Of Home Ownership Rates, Silk Scarves Or Bribes, and More

It is the start of another month which means it is time to review the latest political class insanity that the American political class has dropped on our heads in the past month or so. We do this review every month in order to continually prove our view that we are currently being served by the worst set of politicians in the history of our country. Their inane quotes, their failed programs and laws, their wasteful spending, their ineptness, and continued focus on their own careers and self enrichment at the expense of taxpayers is constant and disgraceful.

This month could be one of the worst ever, given the backlog that needs to be discussed. The insanity will cover a full range of areas where today’s politicians continue to disappoint and fail us. As always, the new ways they find to screw up is never ending and always creative.

Today is the ninth update to the insanity for this month:

1) Starting with the Carter administration and accelerated during the Clinton administration, mostly Democratic politicians strived to make homeownership more affordable for Americans. This lead to the Federal government, via Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, taking on more and more less creditworthy customers and their mortgages which led to the housing bubble which led to the Great Recession.

In turn, the Great Recession led to record high foreclosure rates, trillions of dollars of wealth lost in the housing market, high unemployment, major banks and financial institutions going out of business or requiring billions in taxpayer bailouts, and the American taxpayer getting stuck paying billions and billions of dollars to bail out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Throughout all of this heartache, stress, and cost at least more American own their homes today, right? Wrong, consider the percentage of homeownership as reported by the U.S.Census over time:

Back in the Carter years and through most of Clinton’s years, the homeownership rate in America stayed pretty constant at around 65%. Six years after the Great Recession ended, after trillions of dollars of wealth was lost as a result of the housing induced recession, the homeownership in America is….about 65%. We have come full circle as a result of the political class’s actions in the housing market. And have nothing to show for it except a weakened economy and trillions more in national debt. A typical Washington program, no progress at great cost. Insane.

2) Followers of this blog know that the Washington political class has never been a beacon of integrity and honesty over the years. This reality was driven home again in a short article that appeared in the May 29, 2015 issue of The Week magazine:

• The House Ethics Committee is looking into a foreign trip that was made by ten members of Congress and 32 members of their staffs to Azerbaijan. 
• While the trip apparently did not cost the American taxpayer any direct money, those on the trip were allegedly showered with expensive gifts and tens of thousands of dollars in trip expenses. 
• The gifts included such items as silk scarves, expensive native rugs, and crystal tea sets with the travel expenses alone costing almost $113,000.
• The trip was secretly sponsored and paid for by the Azerbaijani oil company, SOCAR, who was looking to to have a gas pipeline project it wants to do with Iran exempted from the current economic sanctions the West has placed on Iran.

If Washington politicians had any sense of integrity they would have simply said “No” to the exemption request because that is why the sanctions are in place. Instead, they milked their positions and possibly compromised their integrity for a few scarves and rugs and an expensive trip. Pathetic.

3) We have covered the many failed promises, lies and deceptions of this President too many times to count over the years:

• If you like your current insurance policy, you can keep it under Obama Care. False.
• If you like your current doctor, you can keep him under Obama Care. False.
• Annual insurance costs will go down up to $2,500 for American households under Obama Care. False.
• We will go through every line of the Federal budget to root out wasteful spending. False.
• We will reduce the annual Federal deficit by half by the end of my first term in office. False.
• I will operate the most transparent administration in the history of the country. False.

We could go on and on but you get the idea, this administration has either failed to deliver on every promise or never had any intention of delivering on any promise, using lies and deceptions just for election purposes. And another one of those grandiose promises was broken according to a recent Businessweek article:

• In 2011, the President boldly stated that: “I’m directing our departments and our agencies to make sure 100% of the vehicles they buy are fuel-efficient or clean-energy cars and trucks by 2015. Not 50%, not 75% - 100% of our vehicles.”
• Fast forward to the Businessweek article: In the past six years, only  7% of the Federal government vehicle purchases have fulfilled Obama’s 2011 goal of 100% of vehicles purchased be fuel efficient or clean energy.

Close, missed this goal by just 93%. But I guess this is a better performance than the TSA which failed 96% of the time to find test bombs and weapons at its airport checking stations.

Really sad that whenever we hear Obama boldly state something, anything, we have to assume it is false, a lie, or will never happen, given his poor track record on everything from the budget to Obama Care to government vehicle purchases. Unfortunately, if he should ever tell us something important that is true, we are likely to never believe him, given his abysmal track record of false and empty statements over the years.

That will do it for today’s political class insanity and also this month's insanity. It is not as if we covered it all but after eight posts, and the depressing news that each post contained relative to the ineptness of America’s politicians, it is time to move on to other depressing topics.

Rest assured that the same time next month we are likely to have just about as many examples of wasteful spending, political greed, inept government programs, and who knows what new insanity awaits the American taxpayer.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

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