August, 2014 Political Class Inanity, Part 1: Stupid Political Class Quotes, Leave My Corruption Alone, and More

It is that time of the month where every month we review the latest insanity, ineptness, wasteful spending, stupid quotes, and other frivolity of the American political class. Unfortunately, we have a pretty full plate this month, a plate that is going to take a long list of posts to get through as our politicians continue to prove that we are living through the worst set of politicians today that this nation has ever had to endure.

1) Ms. Eleanor Holmes Norton is the non-voting Congressional delegate for the District of Columbia in Congress. At a recent Congressional committee hearing that was looking into potential law breaking by a member of the White House staff, she got real hissy and angrily yelled out that the White House should not be held up to scrutiny. She claimed that Congress, and by proxy the American people, had no right to know what it was doing behind closed doors at the White House, even if illegal acts were being done:

"You don't have a right to know everything in a separation-of-powers government, my friend. That is the difference between a parliamentary government and a separation-of-powers government." 

She made these public comments during a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing.

The key word here is “oversight.” Contrary to what Ms. Norton has to say, this committee by its definition is responsible for overseeing and making sure that government and its representatives act in accordance with the existing laws of this country. Her rant goes against the false promise of this President that he was going to run the most transparent Presidential administration ever. Hard to do that when Congress is held back from doing its job.

The ignition for her rant occurred because the committee's Republican majority voted to ignore a claim by the White House that David Simas, director of it's Office of Political Strategy and Outreach, was immune to a Congressional subpoena to testify. Republicans believe the office is being used a political campaign operation, a violation of Federal election law. So I guess in her mind it is okay to ignore the law as long as you work in the White House.

Her idiotic comments can be viewed at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch=YfXoK68YXFc&feature=youtu.be

2) We have always been a big fan of term limits. Without term limits, politicians tend to very quickly start worrying about their own self enrichment rather than operating an efficient and effective government. Over time their only focus becomes staying in office in order to reap the financial and other benefits of being in office, both legal and illegal. 

That is why when a politician gets caught doing illegal acts it is usually the ones that have been around the longest and have been rigging the system, to their economic well. That is why our term limits website and effort, 

www.howmuchworsecoudlitget.com 

is important, it would help get rid of politicians before their corruption reaches the depths that it does now.

The latest example of a long time politician really running afoul of the law is unfolding in Dallas. After being in political office for about four decades, John Wiley Price, a Dallas County Commissioner, was recently arrested along with three colleagues on suspicion of bribery and fraud. According to a local media station‘s news report, KDFW, law enforcement officials say the long time elected official received nearly $1 million in payouts and other improper benefits for at least a decade beginning in 2001.

Details of this and other shady dealings over the years include the following:

• This current Federal indictment claims that the payments were primarily made “to influence and reward Price to take action or refrain from taking negative action, as specific opportunities arose.”
• The arrest comes after an investigation began several years ago, an investigation that involved FBI raids of his home and office, among other locations. 
• His arrest came just weeks after prosecutors attempted to reach a plea bargain with Price, which his attorney rejected.
• Local U.S. Attorney Sarah Saldana called the indictment against Price “a shocking betrayal of public trust,” asserting that he received a “steady stream” of illegal kickbacks and bribes.
• The charges include one count each of conspiracy to commit bribery and conspiracy to defraud the IRS, three counts of submitting a fraudulent tax return, and six counts of mail fraud.
• According to the Dallas Morning News, Price’s legal troubles began to surface as far back as the 1970s when he served as the Democratic Progressive Voters League chairman. 
• Back then he reportedly pleaded guilty to making false statements during a Federal trial in 1976 but the charges against him were dropped following an appeal.
• During his four decade career in politics, he has been arrested for assault, disorderly conduct, and other crimes, he faced several allegations of outrageous behavior, including shooting a dog and point a gun at its owner, physically attacking multiple police officers, threatening to beat an elderly man, defacing private property, and smashing the windshield of a constituent’s vehicle.
• He was caught on tape threatening a reporter in 2011.

Nice guy. If term limits had been in place, this fellow would have been gone and forgotten 35 years ago and the people of Dallas would not have had to put up with this nonsense, corruption, and dishonesty. More details of his shenanigans can be found at:

http://www.westernjournalism.com/dallas-democrats-arrest-comes-decades-scandal/#Q78FeQ80HeWFHLLp.99

3) This falls into the good news/bad news category. According to New York Times reporting, the governor of New York state, Andrew Coumo, took the bold and correct step when, in the summer of 2013, he established a powerful independent commission to look into and hopefully root out corruption in state politics. Good news, setting up an outside agency to look inwards to state political class corruption.

Now the bad news. The commission was in existence for less than two months when its investigators, hunting for violations of state campaign-finance laws, issued a subpoena to a media-buying firm that had placed millions of dollars’ worth of advertisements for the New York State Democratic Party. Sounds like a legitimate use of the an independent commission’s resources.

Oops. The commission investigators did not realize that the firm, Buying Time, also included Governor Cuomo among its clients, having bought the airtime for his political campaign when he ran for governor in 2010. When news of the subpoena got to a top Cuomo aide, Lawrence S. Schwartz, Mr. Schwartz called one of the commission’s three co-chairs, William J. Fitzpatrick, the district attorney in Syracuse. According to three other witnesses that were present when Fitzpatrick received the call from Schwartz, Schwartz allegedly said: “This is wrong,” namely the subpoena to a Cuomo political operative was wrong. And that the commission needed to: “Pull it back.” with the “it” being the subpoena. As a result of the call, the subpoena was withdrawn and the investigation of potential wrong doing by the media company was halted.

According to the Times reporting, “Cuomo said early on that the commission would be “totally independent” and free to pursue wrongdoing anywhere in state government, including in his own office. “Anything they want to look at, they can look at — me, the lieutenant governor, the attorney general, the comptroller, any senator, any assemblyman,” he said last August.”

So much for doing the right thing, so much for independence, so much for government transparency. Cuomo eventually and abruptly disbanded the commission midway through its expect 18 month tenure and now the FBI is investigating the whole sordid mess. I guess it is okay to investigate political corruption as long as you do not investigate my political corruption.

4) One more piece of insanity for today. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz is a U.S. Congresswoman from Florida. She is also the head of the Democratic National Committee. 

In that capacity of representing the positions and views of her entire party, you would hope that she would do a little bit of basic research before opening her mouth in a public forum, a forum that she knew she was going to be a part of. But much like one of her peers, Nancy Pelosi, a politician whose quotes have made our monthly political class insanity posts numerous times, Ms. Wassermann-Schultz leaves you shaking your head over saying stuff that she obviously knows nothing about.

The following exchange took place during a TV interview in the state of Nevada:

Wasserman-Schultz: “Just take a state like Nevada. Where you have a governor who refused to implement a state exchange and as a result people who get Affordable Care Act healthcare plans are getting them on the federal exchange..."

TV Interviewer: “Hang on. Let me just stop you for a second, because you’re misinformed about that. Brian Sandoval put in a state exchange. He did. So, whoever briefed you on that is wrong. He did put in a state exchange. He was the first Republican governor to do that.”

Wasserman-Schultz: “OK. That’s not even the point I’m making. I stand corrected. I’m not from Nevada.”

And she supposedly is one of our Congressional leaders. I am sorry, you cannot be considered a leader when you do not even know basic facts about what you are talking about, in this case, the local Obama Care situation in Nevada. Maybe this is why Obama Care is such a disaster, those who wrote it, voted for it, and supported it do not even know or can comprehend basic facts. 

The live interview of her ignorance can be viewed at:

http://eaglerising.com/7574/democrat-national-spokesperson-idea-whats-going/#scYDP3BZuLb5XQGk.99

That will do it for today. A Congressional representative that wants the White House to do illegal acts while impervious to Congressional and citizen overview, a typically corrupt long term politician, this one in Dallas, a politician that wants to root out everyone else’s corruption but not his, and a Congressional leader that has no grasp of reality or facts. Sounds about right for the first act in this month’s political class insanity.

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

July, 2013 Political Class Insanity, Part 5: Federal Employee Scams, More IRS Incompetence, And Americans Living Week To Week

This is our fifth in this month’s series about the political class insanity that we are subjected to every month by the American political class. Wasteful spending, stupid legislation, unbridled arrogance, and the destruction of liberty, there is no facet of our life that the political class cannot screw up.

The first blog post on this month’s insanity can be read at:

http://www.loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/07/july-2013-political-class-insanity-part_2.html

Thus, let’s get started with the fifth, but not last, set of lunacy and insanity from our politicians:

1) A favorite tactic of gun control advocates to get guns out of the hands of both law abiding citizens and criminals is to conduct so-called “gun buybacks.” At gun buybacks, people can drop off any kind of gun to the police, no questions asked, and receive some sort of compensation in return. That compensation could be cash, tickets to sporting events, and other enticements.

There are a lot of problems with these types of activities. First, any criminal who needs a gun to conduct their criminal activities is not going to turn over that gun for a basketball game ticket.

Second, criminals can use these types of events to dump weapons that have previously been used in crimes since there are no questions asked and the weapons are destroyed in a mass manner, making the potential for solving previous gun-related crimes less likely.

Third, is a basketball ticket really worth giving up the use of your Second Amendment rights?

To this list, we add another problem with gun buybacks. UPI news recently reported that a police department outside Chicago, the St. Charles Police, operated one of these gun buy-back things to “get guns off the streets.” But what did the police do? They turned around and sold many of the guns to ordinary citizens to make a profit and put those guns right back “on the streets.”

Apparently, this police department saw a way to increase its departmental budget by reselling the guns. Another government program that does the exact opposite of what it is supposed to do.

2) Four years after the recession supposedly ended, economic conditions are really not different for most Americans. According to a recent survey by Bankrate:

• The survey found that a whopping 71% of Americans don’t have enough money in savings to weather a six-month emergency’s worth of living expenses.
• 50% of Americans have no more than three months’ worth of savings.
• 27% have no savings at all.
• One in five Americans feels their overall financial situation is worse now than one year ago.

Combine this information with the fact that the latest government economic statistics show that the economy grew only 1.8% in the first quarter of 2013, not the original estimated 2.4% growth, and we see just more evidence that the Washington political class has no ability, knowledge, or plan to grow the economy, resulting in stagnant economic growth and tenuous economic situations for the majority of American households. Despicable.

3) Every issue of political class insanity would not be complete without with an IRS misadventure. Today's IRS insult and insanity follws up on a recent report that a high ranking IRS official had steered a $500 million contract to a friend of his. According to an article published in The Hill on June 25, 2103, the IRS official helped funnel work to a friend whose technology company received some $500 million in agency contracts, according to a new congressional investigation.

The House Oversight Committee determined that Greg Roseman, the IRS’s deputy director for IT acquisition, helped direct contracts to Braulio Castillo, the chief executive of Strong Castle, “through back channels.” Back channels, just another way of saying illegally and unethically.

The website, Bankrupting America, did some simple math to determine the good that $500 million could have done for ordinary American taxpayers:

• $500 million would wipe out tax bills For 169,434 Middle-Income Americans. The average tax bill for an American household earning $43,400 was $2,951 in 2009 (the latest information available). $500 million would wipe out the bills of 169,434 of these households.
• $500 million would cover a half day of Federal interest payments. The Federal government spent $359.8 billion on interest payments on its debt in fiscal year 2012, about $985 million per day. $500 million would cover about 12 hours of interest payments.
• $500 million would cover the funding for The National Endowment For The Arts for more than three years. The budget for the NEA for fiscal year 2012 was $146 million. $500 million would fund the NEA for about three-and-a-half years.
• $500 million would pay for three weeks of IRS operations. The IRS’s budget for operations for fiscal year 2012 was $11.8 billion, or about $32.3 million per day. $500 million could fund IRS operations for about 15 days.
• $500 million would cover the more than 500 years of White House tours.

But alas, this will never happen since that $500 million was used by a rogue IRS executive to enrich a friend, and probably himself, at the expense of the American taxpayer.

4) The Washington Examiner reported on more government fraud in a June 17, 2013 article. However, rather than reporting on civilians and criminal elements that defraud Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid out of over $200 billion a year, this article reported on how Federal employees defraud the American taxpayer via the Federal employee disability programs:

• A former postal worker was running marathons even though she was drawing Federal disability checks for a bogus back injury.
• A disabled Federal employee was found out to have gone scuba diving, skied in Switzerland and did flips on a trapeze. Additionally, she spent part of her $193,000 in her taxpayer funded disability payments on a boat named "Free Ride" before she was eventually caught.
• A Justice Department lawyer got $90,000 in ANNUAL disability checks after claiming the stress of his job kept him off the job. Apparently the cable TV show he began hosting while drawing disability pay wasn't so stressful.
• Then there was the civilian Navy employee who owned and operated a "gentleman's club" while on disability.

And the worst part of these insults to taxpayer wealth is that the government really has no clue how bad the problem is:

• According to the article, Federal employee disability compensation is highly vulnerable to fraud by Federal employees who exaggerate their bogus injuries they claim keep them from returning to work.
• The Federal employee disability programs cost the American taxpayer $3 billion per year, including about $2.1 billion in direct payments for lost wages and the rest for things like medical treatment and death benefits.
• No one in the Federal government knows how much fraud is occurring because the Department of Labor, which tracks disabilities programs for 70 Federal entities, doesn't even track fraud referrals and convictions.
• Employees claiming workplace injuries can pick the diagnosing doctor to prove their disability then change their stories as needed to be awarded claims. The Federal agency employing the employee claiming the disability cannot order a second medical examination to verify the disability.
• Injured workers are mostly trusted to provide accurate information on things like dependents and outside income.
• Federal authorities cannot get access to payroll databases from the Social Security Administration or the National Directory of New Hires, sources which could show whether a Federal employee on disability is working an unreported side job while collecting disability benefits.

Billions at risk and no way to rein in the fraud. Sound about par for the course when it comes to the political class and Federal government managing our tax dollars.

That will do it for today. Depressed yet? We still have more insanity in store for at least the next few days since if we have learned anything from reviewing politicians antics and actions, the insanity rarely ever slows down and certainly never stops.

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:

http://www.reason.com/
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w